♖ — Do people, in your muse’s opinion, ever really change? Do they believe themselves to be capable of changing?
+ / LIFE PHILOSOPHY HC’S. / @agneas & @fenrena
in a word — he would prefer for things and people to never change, but is rational enough to ruefully recognize that, of course, they do. and that often what changes can’t be bought back by any means.
felix is a traditionalist and, more importantly, someone who doesn’t take well to change. he’s generally slow to adapt, largely because he finds a lot of safety in routine and familiarity, and therefore change disrupts his sense of personal security. it puts him in a vulnerable position of newness, one where he doesn’t know what’s expected or where to go from here. any ‘uncharted waters’, so to speak, puts him on edge until he finds out what the new normal is.
i think we can see this from a number of his supports; whenever he makes a remark about how someone “never changes”, it’s said approvingly or in relief ( even if exasperated ).
FELIX: You never change.
SYLVAIN: Nope. I try to stay on an even keel.
FELIX: You’re always…
he doesn’t say it in that moment, but it comes out later, in their A+ support, that it was meant as a compliment:
FELIX: I am… grateful. You’ve been doing this since we were children. Constantly fooling around, but then showing up and helping when we really need you.
likewise, in the byleth S support:
FELIX: Finally, you came. Wars begin and end, but this place never changes. And you don’t change either.
it’s hard to discern through just text, but his tone here is one of palpable contentment as he looks around the training grounds of garreg mach and finds comfort in the fact that it’s remained the same, as has byleth.
that being said, of course, he does realize people change and situations change. he himself is the greatest example of that to himself: as sylvain tells us, felix has become a completely different person from the sweet crybaby child he was before duscur, and dimitri also clues us into this in both their shared group task completion lines and dining hall lines. in each of these instances, felix fires back with dismissal, either deflecting or getting annoyed at the other person for bringing up his past self that’s as good as dead.
he also struggles with the idea that dimitri and ingrid ( at least, as far as he believes ) have changed from the people he knew, and groups them along with the sense of alienation he felt after his brother’s death when it seemed to him that his whole idea of reality and faerghus itself was changing into something he no longer recognized. so just like with faerghus, he pushes them away or tries to conceptualize them to himself in a way that makes it easier for him to digest: in the case of dimitri especially, by ascribing a very black and white view on him because that’s easier than wrestling with the idea that both dimitri and this ‘monster’ exist inside someone he thought he knew so well. ( he comes to this in their A support of course, but that’s not until 5 years and much emotional maturation later ).
the contrast to this is, of course, sylvain, who, felix believes, hasn’t changed since they were kids — a kind of anchor amidst the storm, if you will. and for him, this is definitely a source of solace: the seemingly only familiar thing that remains.
as for whether he believes himself to be capable of changing, we only need to look at the seteth support for that:
FELIX: I’ll consider your advice, but I’m not usually one to change my mind.
i think felix unconsciously actually considers rigidity to be something of a positive characteristic, emblematic of strength, self-possession, self-knowledge, and principle. he’s very stubborn when he’s set in his ways ( some of this comes from a coping mechanism he had to employ in the wake of duscur in order to resist the erasure of his own experiences, but that’s an essay for another time ), and he’d probably be the first to say that he’s not a changeable person. but i think he’s a little more open than he gives himself credit for, as in a number of his supports, it’s clear that he is someone who takes what others say into account and that his perspective on a person or situation can change more than he recognizes.
