Happy New Year! Silver Snow ramblings!
-No matter how many times I play this game, what irrationally ticks me off is that Alois does the fucking fist pump animation 3 times in a fucking row when talking to Jeralt at the start. It's an indicator of how shallow the production quality in this game is, that they felt the need to reuse animations so much.
-I really do not understand the continued paranoia, not only because it's written poorly (seriously, if you were that worried about Rhea doing something to your baby, you wouldn't still be in Fodlan 21 years later, working as a famous mercenary, AND YOU WOULDN'T COME BACK UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, like why do you think Alois of all people could force you???) but also it never reads as him actually being worried about Byleth. If you keep your child ignorant of things, including the workings of the continent they live in, then it shows you're not actually concerned for their safety, you're just an idiotic, frightened jackass.
-Seteth is based for being one of the few people to not trust Jeralt for being an AWOL fuckwad who used a fire to leave when they probably needed his help
-It's actually extremely fascinating that, for as much as the fandom likes to argue about "THE CREST SYSTUM!", the writers blew ass at writing how Crests work.
"They are power incarnate, exist within the flesh and are passed down through bloodlines." Good enough start, hereditary powers are a common fantasy staple. Now what do Crests do?
"Crest bearers may excel at magic, display exceptional strength, or any number of boons." ...Okay, so that literally means nothing, because in the ludonarrative of Fire Emblem Three Houses, anyone can excel in those areas. Sure, characters may have better stat growths or skill growths in areas, but those aren't known to the characters (or the player without looking them up) nor do Crests in specific areas relate to those growths or skills. For example, Hanneman has a Crest for weapons, but he's not good at using weapons other than Bows and his strength is terrible. Likewise, Jeritza has a Crest for healing, but he has a bane in white magic.
"Each Crest has its own power, the nature of which is beyond mortal understanding. For now." There are two major problems with this line.
The first is the claim that each Crest has its own power. No, they don't. The effects of Crests in game overlap frequently, like Riegan and Chevalier, or Daphnel and Gautier.
Secondly, the other issue is that the line shows they purposefully didn't do any ludonarrative here, and are weirdly proud of it. "The understanding of how Crests work is beyond our understanding at this point." This is an excuse they made to not bother explaining what these things actually do.
The best you get is Dimitri getting all-around superstrength (which isn't consistent with the game because his Crest only works during combat arts), Hapi summoning monsters (part of which is due to the Slithers) and Catherine... knowing when rain is coming. Even the Crest of Flames, representative of the titular Fire Emblem in this game, doesn't have an in-story function. All it has are more random chance effects than other Crests (which I already establish have barely anything to do with in-story strength) and let's someone theoretically use the Creator Sword (a shared trait for all Crests, and itself isn't a remarkable weapon in canon at all, but I'll get to Heroes' Relics later).
Turning back time isn't even a function of the Crest of Flames, that's something Sothis does.
"Sometimes Crest bearers have descendents who don't have Crests, and sometimes there are Crest bearers with no apparent Crest ancestry at all."
Then what the fuck are we doing here?! Why are you trying to write a system of hierarchy based around something as fickle as gene superpowers, when it's a roll of the dice if someone even gets a Crest???
Compare this to FE4 and FE5, where if you had any holy blood in your ancestry, you got the benefit. Yes, these also weren't known to the characters, but they were consistent, present and impacted unit function. Having minor Fjalar holy blood, for example, meant the character would be naturally better with using Fire magic, as you can see through weapon ranks. You also got better magic and HP growths.
And if your parents had any holy blood, their children got it! If they had major blood, then the first born gets it, with any children after only getting minor! And characters can strictly only have two types of holy blood, hence why Seliph doesn't get Loptous blood from Deirdre.
Crest don't have this, the writers literally just say "fuck if we know, lol" and leave it at that!
"Major Crests manifest their power most effectively, while Minor Crests are slightly weaker." But how do people know this??? Because the characters in the game can't see the random number chances that tell us why minor crests proc less often. How do we know, IN-STORY, why Felix would theoretically be stronger than Rodrigue because the former has a major crest and the latter a minor one? Speaking of which...
"It is said that the closer a person's blood relation is to various saints and heroes, the higher their chance of bearing a major Crest." Assuming the closeness in relation has to do with how genealogically close a person is to an ancestor, there's literally no example of this in this game. In fact, the opposite happens very fucking frequently!
Judith is older than Ingrid, but the former doesn't have a Crest, and the latter does. Sylvain has one but Miklan doesn't. Hilda has one but Holst doesn't. Felix has major, Rodrigue has minor. Rufus had minor, Lambert had major.
They literally had to pull Count Bergliez out of their asses to create ONE example of the supposed dwindling of Crests through generations, and that's in a fucking spinoff! So the writers' own flimsy explanation wasn't even correct! That's not how you write a story, yet you're the omniscient creators for God's sake.
Not like it matters though because the NPC Monk repeats Hanneman's line about Crests being "too mysterious to understand" in order to handwave the devs and writers terrible job at establishing how these major tools are supposed to work. Dreadful storytelling! Dreadful lore!
-This is a blatant example of the nobility imposing their values and desires onto the church seen as early as chapter 1, yet most of the fandom continues to ignore it in favor of claiming the relationship is the other way around. And the people who say that are the ones who always tell others to "learn how to read and understand the facts of the story."
-Top two are Japanese, bottom one is English. English version makes it sound like the missions are unknowingly compulsory, whereas the JP version calling it volunteer work makes it seem more like anyone who ends up working for or getting educated at the monastery knows what they're getting into.
Or at least they should, but characters like Dorothea are still like "oh is BATTLE really part of the church's teachings at this officer's academy for military combat??? 🤨🤨🤨"
Top two are Japanese, bottom one is English.
Am I understanding this correctly? Is Edelgard implying in the JP version of this dialogue that the best Kostas can do is "kill enough people to bring to hell with him?"
If so, damn, she really does not give a fuck about the lives of the people at the monastery, including her own classmates.
Top two are Japanese, bottom one is English.
So they changed "Lady Rhea is pushing a lot of things onto me" to "Lady Rhea won't allow it." ???
The JP one is implicative of the fact that the current captain is older and can't do shit anymore, which is exactly what Jeralt confirms and complains about in monastery dialogue the chapter before. So naturally Rhea is putting a lot on Jeralt's plate, he's the de facto captain of an elite group of knights again.
The English one just makes it seem like Rhea is barring Jeralt from suppoting Byleth at all, out of petty maliciousness. Fucking weird.