#citrus stuff

[randomnameless]

Funny how Jeralt could've used the fact he had a Crest to claim a title but instead went mercenary mode when his own child reveals in Hopes they dislike killing.

Anyway, I am still scratching my head about how he didn't connected the dots together about Rhea and Seiros when he received a Crest and lived for i don't remember how many years

And he also somehow didn't noticed that his beloved wife had a Crest as well. Yeah they don't leave marks but aren't they supposed to give you a boost ?

NGL,

Maybe it's only in my HC or AU, but Jerry suddenly popping up with a Major Crest of Seiros and asking for a title was bound to end up with "and this man helped House Hrym and made an enemy of Adrestia so he must be terminated he and his progeny" false charges to get rid of potential "dynastic threats" to the Adrestian succession.

Jerry still thinks Rhea's scary per her support with Billy in FE16, so maybe he found her "scary" because she was still alive and kicking after all those years (canonically he was there during the Mona Rhea incident and the portrait Ignatz'n'Sylvain found in Nopes, so he knows she fakes her death periodically) - granted, he only started to find her to be sus 280 years after meeting her for the first time, so...

FWIW, Jerry could have sold more of her secrets to randoms (we don't have proof he didn't, even if the game seems to imply the Western Church and Adrestia came to resent Rhea thanks to Agarthan meddling believing she's not "what she pretends to be" and not because a drunk Jeralt casually dropped that Rhea has been running the CoS for 300 years while using a lot of aliases and faking her death periodically) and he didn't !

I guess he knew she was someone "special" or had many secrets, but never bothered to enquire or to thing about them - at least before Billy's birth and Citrus' death.

As for Citrus' crest, I wonder if Rhea didn't explicitely ask Citrus not to tell a soul about her crest, worried as she was about her and how potential Sothis hosts - or just, bearers of the Crest of Flames could be attacked by Agarthans or sought after for the power of the crest.

Granted, Jerry didn't notice Citrus' nature as an artificial being so...

[hanasaku-shijin]

i think the worst thing i ever said about Citrus was “at least they don’t have to worry about taking only one person’s last name when they got married”

[randomnameless]

If i may provide a lukewarm defense of Jeralt's initial reaction to Byleth, i don't recall there being any proof that Sitri lacked a heartbeat or struggled with showing her emotions to the same extent as Byleth does at the start of 3H; i don't find it unreasonable for him to be much more worried about a newborn baby being completely emotionless and not having a heartbeat than about a grown woman being introverted and stoic most of the time but still perfectly capable of showing emotions, along with having a functioning heart.

The defense ends here btw; him raising Byleth as a mercenary since they were a kid and stunting their emotional growth is pretty indefensible, especially when he could have tried to secure a more stable and peaceful job anywhere else in Fódlan, and the games not realizing how much of a neglectful father he was is a pretty big flaw with his writing.

No problems anon!

To be honest, yeah, it could have been just as you said, a difference Jerry noted between bby!Billy and the Citrus he know...

Sothis guesses Billy's lack of, uh, ability to "emote" came from her, because she was asleep (but then Citrus also had difficulties to emotes and yet managed to emote when she was a grown up).

Aelfie mentions Citrus had a hard time showing her emotions, but she smiled a lot in front of Jerry - is it because "twu luf" made her emote, but given how Aelfie knew her since a long time (they were both kids together?) I don't think it's retcon tied to "twu luf" but more something like, while growing up or interacting with "the world" she emoted more and more.

Still, it's kind of strange, Aelfie tells Billy Citrus had difficulties to emote but emoted with Jerry, and yet, we're supposed to believe Jerry didn't know Citrus had difficulties to emote?

Or wasn't interested in how she acted/behaved/felt when she was with other people than with him?

Because if Jerry knew Citrus only "emoted" with him, would he be so surprised about their kid not "emoting" easily? Jerry never met Citrus as a bby, would it be so strange to think Citrus might have started as Billy, and managed to "emote" better as she grew up? But if he indeed never noticed, as Aelfie did, that she had difficulties to, uh, "show emotions" then indeed, discovering Billy had this "specialness" to them would have been surprising - but in a way, only because he never noticed the same "specialness" in his wife, aka Billy's mom.

However, I'm always a bit puzzled at what is "reasonable" or not in a world like Fodlan, I know the fandom loves to project a lot of irl issues - hopefully we have the in-game doctor/nurse who said it's weird af that bby!billy had no hearbeat - but Jerry, as far as he knows, is a guy who is over 300 years old who got a major crest "after birth", something that is not supposed to be possible. Jury's also out on whether Jerry knew about the cardinal business or not.

So is the only reason Billy's "not normal" because Rhea did something to them, or because, as far as Jerry knows, Jerry isn't "normal" himself?

Jerry knows Rhea isn't "normal" either, since she's most likely older than him and didn't age (unlike him!), and yet he was, per his own words, still pretty chummy with her - but when bby!Billy isn't "normal", it's suddenly super frightening?

I can buy Jerry being afraid and going a bit out of rails after Citrus's death, but the "omg not normal" used as an excuse to run away from the Monastery when he knows Rhea and himself aren't "normal" either and yet pretty much alright really felt... imo forced.

(and the games don't want to tell us if Citrus' ears were pointy or not, or if she had a heartbeat too, we only know Rhea used the crest stone as her "heart" so we're not even sure if Citrus had a normal "human" heart or not...)

[randomnameless]

@zevfern replied to your post “If i may provide a lukewarm defense of Jeralt's...”:

I'm pretty sure Sitri was an IV baby, but I have no clue whether she was made using Nabatean DNA (read: Rhea's ovules) or not (she just got them from willing women). And even then, she would have needed sperm and she didn't have any male Nabatean in her vicinity when Sitri was made and born, so she would have been made with either a mix of Nabatean/human DNA or just human DNA. I'm leaning towards the former, which means there is a good chance Sitri had human ears

​Ehh...

Given how Rhea laments about Nabateans not being as powerful as Sothis herself, I think it's less a "man+woman holding hands" origin than, Rhea tried to replicate whatever the fuck Sothis did to create Nabateans, but in Rhea's case, it failed because she is not as powerful as Sothis, so her "creations" aren't as, uh, viable as Sothis's creations.

We know Citrus's heart was Sothis's crest stone, so unless Rhea removed the heart of a potential hybrid/human new being to swap it with the Crest Stone - something I see as highly improbable, we know she stopped the Rite of Rising because she didn't want to bleed to apostles to death, so I don't see her willing to kill someone to rez Sothis - Citrus and the other homonculi were "created" not as IV beings that can and could have developed without the crest stone, but as empty husks that were only animated with the crest stone -

(I'm thinking of FMA, with the late puppets (the white ones who eat their creators!) - as long as stones are used to power them up, they're just "empty husks")

But we don't have any conclusive evidence about one theory or another, even if CS demonstrated Rhea, as Seiros the Warrior, refused to sacrifice people to resurrect Sothis.

It might be the most charitable reading on that topic, but I got the feeling that Rhea tried to create vessels that could host Sothis's soul mirroring the process Sothis used to create Nabateans with Sothis's crest stone as a core, but it always failed either because Sothis's soul didn't awaken in the hosts, or because the hosts developed an entire new soul and became their own persons.

[randomnameless]

Some idiot on Twitter drew Sitri with blue hair. You can't make this up.

Her hair color is never defined iirc?

Green!Citrus, but maybe it's the filter

Ded!Citrust, but maybe it's the light

Ded!Citrus2 - we can see part of her ears, but not their shape (are they pointy or not?)

Tldr : Citrus's hair isn't a vibrant shade of green like Rhea and Flayn's, but it's definitly closer to green than to blue.

Fanart is Fanart, so why not, but... yeah.

It's like drawing Flayn with round ears, it might be an artist's take on the character, but that's not said character's canonical depiction.

[randomnameless]

When I reblogged that Rhea’n’Citrus fan art, I was really happy because while I didn’t have many feelings about Citrus, the “what she could have been” grows on me.

But then I made the terrible mistake of checking some fics on Ao3

Rhea explains how Billy got a rock in the chest -

Billy accuses Rhea of “creating and then destroying” vessels in her quest, to “deny her mother” her “eternal rest” -

Of course Billy is painted as right and no one fucking punches her - Rhea just told her she didn’t “destroy”Citrus, she transplanted the Crest of Flames at Citrus’s own request!!!

But Citrus’s will and wishes and aspirations and worthless, because she .... uh, had pointy ears? Or no peepee?

Or is only used to portray Rhea as “Rhea BaD”??

The person writing this most likely played CS, or at least had a summary run-down to learn what happened during Billy’s birth, how could they seriously pretend Rhea “destroyed” the failed vessels, when she visits Sitri - the 12th failure - in a makeshift tomb, specially made for her, talked to her corpse and is visibly (or audibly, if you don’t play with the US VA) saddened at her ultimate demise?

And Sothis’s Eternal rest... Can I laugh? Sothis is perfectly aware and remembers flashes of events that happened after her murder - she remembers when Seiros punched Nemesis. 

Sothis was not “resting”.

I’d have to confess, the mention of “Sothis’s rage” made me laugh, of course the prospect of a mother dying to save her child would be completely alien to Worst Mom (TM) ! Rhea obviously killed Citrus to turn Billy in the 13th vessel, a Mom (let’s say parent) cannot consciously chose to die to save their child, those things never happen.

Why, should I remind everyone how Tru Piss ends if Sothis is S-supported?

(I’m half-joking at the last paragraph about Worst Mom (TM), but why would Sothis even be pissed that her crest was used as Billy’s pacemaker, at Citrus’s request?).

I swear, one day I’ll find a fic where Rhea sheltering an abandonned puppy will be used to paint her as “BaD”.

Tl; Dr : Just like Cyril, Citrus is often used as “gotcha” to make some people argue how Rhea is “BaD” - and just like Citrus, those arguments completely ignore the few points/things we know about those characters to demonise the evil lizard lady.

[randomnameless]

Wouldn't it make more sense for Jerry to have named Byleth 'Byleth'? He tries (not very convincingly) to tell Rhea that his kid is totally different from the one he had with Sitri, so it would be a bit dumb of him to keep their name. Though it's kinda funny to imagine him lying about this to Rhea while not even bothering to change his kid's name

Oh,

I always assumed (hc) that Billy's name either came from Rhea or Sothis, given how Sitri, just like Byleth are (romanced!) names you can find in the Ars Goetia.

Sitri is the 12th demon when Billy's the 13th. Rhea being the one who most likely named Sitri, I supposed she either lent Sitri her book to look for baby names, or named Billy herself.

I thought it was a nice nod from the devs!

But maybe I honeypotted.

[randomnameless]

Do you think homunculi take a while for them to develop and process emotions? This is basing off how Byleth doesn't develop emotions until much later and it made me wonder whether Sitri was the same. It also makes me wonder whether Jeralt didn't realize that Sitri's heart wasn't beating or didn't bother to care at the time.

Goodness, if Sitri wasn't totally "emotionally developped" and Jerry still got Billy, it's super gross!

Iirc Billy wasn't emoting because Sothis was sleeping inside them ?

I HC Billy had this condition because they were a host, Sitri not being one developped a personality from the beginning (since Sothis wasn't influencing her host ?).

Rhea mentions how Sitri loved others like a "human would", but even for Nabateans, we see how they love and how they emote just like humans, so if Sitri was unable to emote and process emotions, she wouldn't say something like this?

Also, Aelfie seemed to have known Sitri for a long time and fell in love, I suppose she must have had emotions or developed like a "normal" human, else he'd have noticed something was off with her. Jerry notes how Billy doesn't emote, but he never talks about his wife not emoting (else, it'd even more stupid for him to be worried about Billy's condition if his wife had the exact same condition!).

If Sitri's heart wasn't beating, let's say he wasn't the type of guy who cuddled a lot, or his heart was beating so loudly he didn't notice Citrus's heart wasn't beating at all.