#Three Houses Discourse

[emblemxeno]

Definitive “Feelings On 3H” Post

So I’m making one big post on my feelings on major things worth discussing about 3H and how I feel about it. Don’t feel obligated to really interact with this one much, it’s mostly just for my sake, as something I can just link to and say “go to section X about how I feel about Y”.

The reason behind this is I just don’t really want to actively engage in 3H discourse anymore. I feel as if I’m a broken record at this point. If I have new things to say about it somehow, I’ll say it, but for the most part, I’ll refer people to this if they wanna know how I feel about general 3H talk. 

Story

Story Section 1- General narrative feelings on each route.

Azure Moon is, in my opinion, the most solidly constructed route in terms of writing, character development, and storytelling. It knows what it wants to accomplish and, aside from a few gripes, I will always applaud it for that. Verdant Wind and Silver Snow meanwhile, aren’t bad and I certainly didn’t have a terrible time playing through them. However, the unique story bits in each route don’t justify the gameplay experience you have to work through in order to get to them. Still, the big reveals in each route were nice to hear for the first time, and specifically for VW I enjoy Claude very much. Crimson Flower I don’t enjoy that much at all. Its story is what I can only describe as a static, eye-roll inducing victory march, which makes up for its lack of length with its seemingly intentional negative character development; everyone is ignorant, an asshole, or sad as fuck aside from the CF exlcusive cast. I would give the route props had the game bothered to stand in its foundation rather than flounder and make numerous attempts to depict every perspective as absolutely equally valid and righteous. 

Story Section 2- In trying to appeal to every perspective, the game lacks focus, foundation, and respect for itself.

It should be expected that a game with multiple routes tackle different specific subjects. However, in Fire Emblem, there always, always manages to be a unifying theme or foundational story philosophy-an Aesopian type moral if you will-no matter the route. Alm and Celica learn that their one individual philosophies can’t exist on their own, and that leadership requires strength and compassion of equal measure. Eirika and Ephraim learn that personal wishes must take a backseat for the good of Renais and Magvel as a whole, as their routes in FE8 use their own weaknesses to develop them as leaders and royalty. Corrin’s one constant in the Fates games is that conflict is inherently meaningless and does nothing but perpetuate a brutal cycle of hatred, vengeance, and violence. 

Even in games like FE7 and FE10, where the technical ‘route splits’ are more unconventional, there’s still unifying themes that manage to wrap back around at the end (7′s ‘single-minded pursuit of justice and strength/power to protect can actively hurt you and those around you, especially if you are ignorant to the pain others are going through’ and 10′s ‘people have as much capacity to be good as they have to be evil, they will hurt each other due to petty misunderstandings and bigoted views, however, they are worthy of living as they are because of the ability to grow, change, and aspire to something better’).

3H, to put it simply, does not have any grand unifying theme unique to itself. The closest examples I can think of is ‘It’s worth it to reach out to those around you to share your pain so you don’t become engulfed in it’ and ‘no matter what side you fight for, war makes everyday life a living hell for everyone’.

But to me, both of those things are just... basic truths and story elements present in every dialogue heavy FE game. War has been showcased as being terrible since FE1, where characters were held hostage, threatened to fight for a cause they didn’t believe in, innocent villages were destroyed, there was a literal child slave market, etc. And sharing your pain with those close to you in order to bear life’s challenges has been a constant trope with many FE characters, story significant or otherwise, since at least FE6 with Guninivere (probably earlier if I’m missing something from FE4 or 5). The only difference is that 3H has a fun little song to go with it.

That leaves the specific themes of each route and perspective, but because each leading character is so different from the other, and the writers didn’t want to overtly favor one over the rest, every dialogue regarding these things feels compromised; half baked, or lacking a point. 

‘Crests are symbolic of a harmful power structure but also are a symbol of justice used to ward away threats but also are a tool used to gain social and political capital in order to change the world but also are an ancient power obtained through destruction that must be used with wisdom.’ Four different perspectives from four different routes that the game attempts to depict in a balance in almost every single dialogue regarding them. And this same process is applicable to the game’s attempts at discussing race/ethnicity, xenophobia, classism, religious views, mental health, etc. There always has to be two, three, four, or five sides to every story in 3H, and that results in an exhuasting and stretched thin narrative that, in its attempts to appeal to everyone, ends up lacking substance in every point it tries to make.

Now, that itself would make for a fascinating and meta theme for the game to uphold, where ‘attempts at trying to balance and accept every perspective leads to an ineffective world that desperately needs unwavering, unconditional, and compassionate leadership’ but 1) that would require the game to play up the need for ‘seeing every side’ as something to be deconstructed, and the game doesn’t do that, it’s played painfully straight, and 2) when it’s one major power (Edelgard) vs. three major powers (Dimitri, Claude, and Rhea), the attempt at balance fails no matter what you do. This lack of focus reads to me that there was lack of respect for the game’s story itself.

Story Section 3- “It insists upon itself, Lois.”

Every time I think about the finer details of story bits in 3H I don’t care for, my brain always comes back to that Family Guy scene where Peter talks about not caring for The Godfather and saying that it’s because the movie insists upon itself. Now, that was done for comedy, but for 3H I must say that it’s a perfect sentence to use. 3H insists upon itself. This is in spite of the fact that there’s no one unifying point that it’s trying to convey to the player, beyond what any other FE games was able to do. So to make up for that, each small instance reads like the game beating the player over the head with whatever minute moral or lesson it’s trying to convey.

Crests are bad? Roll out the Edelgard, Sylvain, or Lysithea dialogue saying so. Church is sus? Get Edelgard or occasionally Claude. Nobles are pretentious? Get the sad NPCs or the few actual commoner characters to imply it. War is bad and cruel? Fire the next “Sad Dorothea” dialogue at the player’s face. Interactions feel artificial, ostentatious even. Part of that is because there’s no other way to get these points across due to Byleth being a silent avatar, the other part though? Feels as if the writers were overtly proud of themselves. “Wow, the war means Bernadetta leaves her room more often, isn’t that a sign that it really changes people?” Yeah, no shit. 

Perhaps the most egregious example is the endless instances of the game pushing the idea that there’s “no good side” in war or that “war is a battle of ideals and no one is fully correct” or other moments that want the player to know how deep and Morally Gray the narrative is. It’s cheap and inauthentic, especially when you have a faction like the Slithers. You can’t prop up Gray Morality and have an inarguably evil underground terrorist group. 

To be crude, this game explains things to you like you’re five despite being rated T for teens in a series catered mostly to young adults. I get the point you’re trying to make, you did it poorly, now stop repeating yourself, your final grade is a D+.

Story Section 4- 3H likes spectacle over substance.

3H revels in being showy over being constructive. There’s great moments, but there’s not a great plot. 

For example, Byleth has many flashy moments that show how awesome they are! They’re connected to a goddess, they can wind back time, they have a super cool historical sword, they’re a top tier mercenary, they’re a great teacher, they’re next in line for Archbishop or the throne for all of Fodlan, their Crest is the game’s version of the Fire Emblem!

Cool! What’s the significance behind all these choices in the writing room? Seemingly next to nothing other than it sounded cool. That’s how it feels anyway.

The SotC doesn’t do anything in the story beyond be Sothis’ bones, likewise the Crest of Flames is nothing other than symbolic since it lacks gameplay or story significance beyond “main characters have it”, Divine Pulse has weak narrative justification for what should be a simple gameplay exclusive rewind, the goddess in question is an underutilized character who checks out before part 1 ends, there’s no gameplay basis showcasing that they’re any better at fighting than their students, and every high level position Byleth is granted makes no sense for them to have given what little established character we get.

That’s 3H in a nutshell. Crests don’t matter other than to be a story device. Being noble or commoner doesn’t matter. The hidden technology doesn’t matter. Abyss is a joke. And on and on and on. 3H profits off of being enticing and cool looking for the sake of it, without actually utilizing or explaining any of this flashy stuff that matters for a video game medium. It makes for underwhelming gameplay and artificial characters. Example, for as much as I love Yuri, take a few minutes to read his backstory; it’s batshit and nigh unbelievable. And it’s indicative of the fact that 3H cares more about including things that sound cool than it does about making sense of anything. We see the impact, but never any material significance, which is the opposite of what you want in a detail oriented narrative like this.

Story Section 5- 3H has very gross tropes.

During 3H’s first year of being out, I desperately wanted to stay true to a view that “hey now, just because it’s depicted like this, doesn’t mean we should blast it, it’s just a video game” but, y’know. I grew up. And part of growing up is recognizing the nuanced parts of these kinds of things. 

I won’t accuse the writers of being actively ignorant or bigoted, cuz I don’t know anything about them. But fuck. Fuck, does this game read worse and worse over the years in terms of how utterly terribly it handles sensitive issues.

Multiple brown characters treated like trash by the white/pale majority, with countries said brown characters hail from described as savage and animalistic. Rampant misogynistic tropes, most notably selling women off to be married. Strange, and incessant sympathy for the character starting a war that upends the lives of common people, said character also allowing human experimentation to occur. The offensive and archaic handling of mental illnesses, specifically anxiety disorders, personality disorders, and PTSD in certain instances (IMO only Dimitri and Marianne are done with any sort of grace). And that’s just the explicit stuff! Just the other day I was talking about how there’s incredibly disturbing anti-Semitic undertones regarding the Empire (confirmed to be based on Germany btw) and the Nabateans, something that’s, at times, uncritically repeated by people in this game’s community. This game is mired in terrible allegories and metaphors, which make me cringe the more I think about the real world implications that these lines of thought can have on people in volatile corners of the Internet.

And the kicker is that the writers are so committed to making these things relate to Crests or nobility, as if either of those things are strictly the reason why oppression or discrimination occurs.

The game employs drastic harmful stereotypes, and undercuts all of them by foisting its half-baked unique gameplay/lore toy onto the conversations. It fumbles the ball and didn’t even clean up the mess well.

Characters

I have a tier list of how much I enjoy the characters right here. 

Long story short, when the characters are good, they’re good. Like, holy fuck, love them. But when they’re bad? Throw them away. Can’t stand them. And sometimes characters fall in the middle where I see the good but they’re at times written in ways that piss me off.

Worldbuilding/Setting - More is not always better

First off, when you make a character tell the player “Go read in the library for lore”, you’ve lost me. There’s nothing fun and interesting in 3H as a game for you to read in the library.

Fire Emblem’s gameplay cycle doesn’t mesh too well with the typical JRPG standard of storytelling, so the common solutions to building the world and crafting the stories was 1) make as much use as possible of cutscenes, art/cgs, and narrations to communicate the important details before and after battles and/or 2) make an intuitive inclusion to ‘break the pace’ between maps, such as a home base, in order to supplement what’s already present. Alongside this, support conversations were an ingenious tool to develop the characters and the world at the same time, as your varied and quirky cast can help you infer what their place of origin is like. Plus, the game actively rewards the player for seeking this auxiliary information out, granting extra stat bonuses when you purposefully put characters next to each other.

3H, on paper, understands this well. However, the game has too many minute details for a typical FE game structure to handle. The devs themselves even said the game became a “living creature on its own” and claimed no one on the team knows everything about 3H’s story or world. Ignoring how that’s a serious flaw for a video game narrative, what this ultimately means is that since cutscnes and a standard base can’t cut it, we need more and more and more. Libraries, side quests, tea time, ally notes, gifts, NPCs that exposit at you, etc. The DLC even added another damn library for you to sift through, as if the first one wasn’t a pain already.

And though these little flavor texts, landmarks, and set pieces are fun to read about... that’s it. The game hardly uses any of it. It’s flavor without substance, once again. It’s why half the fucking fandom is confused every other day when you bring up these tertiary details as evidence to prove a point, since the active story is too busy trying to weave the other 600 plot threads together to use any of it. That means, for all of this supposed great details regarding each nation and the important territories, we hardly see a damn thing that’s actually different. More is not always better, and in this case, it’s actively worse for both the game experience and the community experience. Not a good look for a game that the devs explicitly wanted people to talk to each other about.

As a fan of FE ever since 2013, who has gone back to play several of the games to see how they tick, 3H’s methods of describing its setting are just so antithetical to what makes the series enjoyable, and for so little reward. It sounds hypocritical given that I love Fates and Engage, but those games actively set up their glorified bases to be as unintrusive as you want them to be. 3H, however, has its gameplay built around a boring and unintuitive cycle.

Gameplay- Fire Emblem but half the time you’re not playing Fire Emblem

Gameplay Section 1-Monastery

The monastery is the most debated gameplay aspect of 3H, and IMO, for good reason.

It sucks.

Worldbuilding wise, while it makes sense that an important location is the hub for the game, that doesn’t account for how dull it is. 12 months and 4 seasons pass and does the place ever look different? No. A shame, since an improved aesthetic would drastically help ignoring the fact that the place is a bitch to traverse. For as fast as Byleth can run, they can’t outspeed the load times. Quick travel only makes the issue more apparent, as well. From door to door, and from week to week, you’ll endure more load times in one in-game month than an entire playthrough of a GBA FE game.

The other aspects of the monastery gameplay, such as teaching, activities, professor level, and motivation, while freshly fun in a first playthrough, become a repetitive slog in subsequent playthroughs. Giving gifts and lost items, eating meals, planting the right things for the garden, optimizing support point gains, using the sauna, taking care of the statues, etc. This cycle is not something I enjoy in an FE game, and unlike Fates or Engage, I can’t actively ignore it without huge penalty. 

You can skip right to each main mission, but you’d be giving yourself a huge handicap by doing so; not actively teaching students at max motivation in order to maximize skill point gain is a huge detriment in the long term. It means longer wait for better weapons, longer wait for better spells, longer wait for class change, and longer wait for better skills and battalions. Now on Normal you can get away with this, not as much on Hard, and sure the fuck not on Maddening. To me, it feels like sloppy balancing on top of an already exhausting and dull game cycle. Why let the player skip months if you didn’t bother to carefully balance the game so that the players who do skip months could have even a small chance to clear the game? Honestly, it just feels as if they thought “people might find it annoying so let’s just tack on a skip feature”, and that’s disappointing and lazy.

Overall, I hope nothing similar to the monastery’s implementation is included in any future Fire Emblem game. It’s too antithetical to FE’s main gameplay structure, IMO.

Gameplay Section 2-Battles

To be honest, Fire Emblem has never been the pinnacle of balanced gameplay, and frankly I don’t want it to be. It’s a single player game with fun anime sword guys, magic powers, and dragons. So long as it’s not dreadfully easy or overly complicated, I have no qualms about certain classes or characters being better or worse than others.

3H though is a mess. A fun mess, but still a mess. Movement decrease to foot units means you want a mount cuz the game’s maps are big, and the speed penalty for cav classes means you want a wyvern or a pegasus. Physical units do just that (or maybe War Master for Quick Riposte), you get your dancer, have a Stride unit, have your Magic units and warpers where you need them, and congrats! You solved the 3H meta. 

Half-joking, honestly. The game is extremely easy to break, the hardest part is getting to that point (after all, slugging through the monastery is a bigger test of your patience than anything else). Maddening mode, of course, you have be extra careful in the beginning (cuz they probably didn’t play test it cough cough) and utilize your combat arts and gambits effectively, and being extremely conscious of positioning. But, much like Awakening before it, 3H is very easy to snowball. Especially on NG+. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun, but it can get mindless. I don’t personally play that way, but even still, tools such as weapons mostly not being class restricted, Crests, combat arts, gambits, and accessories make the game incredibly simple. It’s a breeze, and only gets harder when certain things are stripped away from you or your debilitated somehow. Again, it’s still fun, because FE is always fun, but challenging? No. Not in a way that I find meaningful, anyway.

The maps themselves? Meh. They look pretty! Lots of small missable details that you wouldn’t see if not for the zoomed in view, that was a neat feature. Not at all useable for actually playing the game, of course, but fun to mess with and to sight see. It does make me resentful, cuz again, we could’ve potentially seen lots of rich, detailed, and varied locations bustling with townsfolk and entering villages to really feel each location. But alas, this is as good as we get.

Anyway, the maps are...fine-ish? Part 1′s maps are seared into my brain, for better and for worse (mostly worse) cuz you have to play them at least 3 different times for all the routes. Prologue through Chapter 5 are either boring, terrible, or both. Chapter 6 is the first map on my most recent playthrough that I say I had fun with in Part 1, then it continues for 7 and 8, then nosedives for 9 and 10, before picking back up for 11 and 12. In short, more than half the story maps for part 1 I find are either unexceptional or plain bad.

Now Part 2? Hunting By Daybreak is atrocious, Garreg Mach defense is pretty fun, Ailell is boring as fuck, Myrddin Bridge and Deirdru are good, Gronder Part 2 ebbs and flows between being awesome and awful, Merceus, Enbarr, and Fhirdiad are okay but tend to drag, Tailtean is alright, Shambhala is hot garbage, CF endgame is pretty fun, AM endgame is okay, VW endgame is awesome, Snow endgame is terrible. I think all routes’ part 2 is better than part 1, but not by much.

All of Cindered Shadows is peak, every map was good IMO.

Paralogue maps I have no opinions on, they are recycled maps with nothing meaningfully interesting about them that I remember aside from Dedue’s, Ashe’s, and Petra’s. 

In short, the battle maps in 3H are okay for FE standards. It’s just pretty fucking insane how many times they get reused, so I got tired of them very quickly.

Fandom

Last but not least, just a shoutout to a very unpleasant community experience. Though it might be the best selling FE game as of now, it comes with the price of having some incredibly disrespectful, vicious, and ignorant fans.

Never have I been witness to or been the target of as much harassment on the internet as I have with certain 3H fans. Entire discord servers made to make fun of groups of people with differing opinions, taking over old blog domains to mock people, deliberately seeking out people who want nothing to do with you just so you can defend your favs, etc. And that’s just on this site! There’s editing wars on TV tropes and the wikis, mods on various sites having to do deleting sprees of 3H discourse, artists being harassed on Twitter, and in general just... inserting yourselves into places and spaces where you were not invited nor encouraged to comment. Some of these people lack basic human deceny, respect, and boundaries, and it’s not cool.

Part of the reason why I’m breaking away from 3H now is because this behavior is something I got wrapped up in too, and I’m deeply ashamed of it. It’s toxic, and not at all something I want associated with one of my favorite video game series anymore. I got real life things to worry about and other games to play.

-

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. All of my general thoughts on 3H, localized on one post. Sayonara, Fodlan Discourse, you won’t be missed. 🤗

#fire emblem discourse #edelgardiscourse #three houses discourse #rant #definitive 3h post #seriously though this stuff gives me metaphorical hives #and this will save me headaches and brain power in the long run

[faroreswinds]

I'm amazed that even after 3+ years we're still having people refusing to admit that the Ladle and by extension the Empire are the antagonists. She's not a mustache twirling villain like the Slithers are, but she's still doing and causing bad things. Like even if the game gives her a hefty amount of sympathy, it shouldn't be hard to deduce that conquering two countries over misguided information and revanchist nationalism and trying to extinct a race that had already suffered a genocide while spewing out racist rhetoric are not heroic at all.

Ah, but you see, that is not what people see. They see

She is saving the other nations from the control of the Church.

She is lying to protect people from the truth right now, because the truth would be too much for them to handle

There is no nationalism!

She doesn't actually want to kill Nabateans. She even spares Seteth and Flayn, and offers mercy to Rhea! See? She's not trying to kill anyone!

Etc.

As such, it becomes much easier to defend her unilateral grab of power and dictatorship.

#anon asks #Three Houses discourse #edelgard discourse

[pollyanna-nana]

Look. I know some people are going to want to mail a pipe bomb to my house for three houses discoursing again in 2023-almost-2024 but can we please, for the sake of my goddamn sanity, agree that Edelgard waging war for any reason was objectively bad. “Well it was to oppose the church-“ Starting a war is bad. “The other countries didn’t give in so she had to-“ Starting a war is bad. “Well there was nothing else she could have done-“ Starting. A. War. Is. Bad. There is no possible justification on this planet for doing so that makes it a remotely okay thing to do. It is not a “necessary evil” and I hope people don’t take this mindset into actual real life conflicts happening right now as we speak. Yes she’s hot and cool and interesting but if I see one more person genuinely saying she was 100% correct I’m going to eat glass on live TV.

#Polly rants #three houses #fire emblem #three houses discourse #edelgard von hresvelg #edelgard discourse #for filtering #like I think she’s a really cool character but oh my GOD #I know most people only say these things to fuck with others and like more power to you I dislike ppl saying ‘you’re a bad person for liking #this problematic character’ as the next #and to be clear I am NOT talking about you #I am talking about the ppl I see who I am terrified genuinely don’t think what El did was bad and like #MASSIVE YIKES #anyway normal El fans I’m holding hands with u as a Dimi fan and skipping and frolicking in the flowers enjoying how tragic our chars are

[kid-az]

Three Houses discourse terrifies me

That’s it. That’s the post.

#fe3h #fire emblem #some of the fans can be utterly rabid while discussing fe3h #I just wanna care about my blorbos #three houses discourse

[skelezomperman]

On "Discussion = Good Story" with FE3H

I wrote this originally as a reply to someone on Discord, but I think I want to dump this on Tumblr for future reference. The person whom I was talking to asked about a point that I see being made a lot with the Three Houses vs. Engage discussions: "Three Houses had a better story and you can see because it had enthralling discussions that lasted for a long time." I don't really take a side because both of these games are degrees of "eh" to me (though I'm currently playing Engage) but here's my thoughts on this point.

Firstly, I need to address the elephant in the room. There are indeed people who spend hours every day looking for opinions about fictional characters that offend them about fictional characters and hunting them down. I don't exaggerate - there are groups of people who still do this to their day across various platforms for a game that came out nearly four years ago. It is very, very sad that this evil has not only taken control of their lives but has compelled them to cause harm to other people (and I don't mean "they said mean things," I mean actual harm like stalking). But this isn't unique to our fandom. People do this a lot because people are susceptible to misbehaving. I'm personally bitter about this entire affair, but I don't want to immediately bring down 3H just because of the bad behavior of a few people. That's immature.

To the broader point of discourse, it was really bad around late 2019-2020 and even into 2021. I think a contributing factor was that people had retreated into echo chambers which make them think their side is good and think the other side is bad. If one keeps seeing "bad takes" from the other side and keeps getting exposed to that and circlejerking about that, it makes one get a very warped perception of the community. Many people still have this warped perception, even, that the community has an inherent bias towards or against one side. I cannot underemphasize how bad it was and to an extent still is - it even caused a moderator on the r/fireemblem subreddit to resign, citing the 3H debates as the cause.

I will say, however, that I don't think people who are citing increased discussions from 3H are wishing for these kinds of crazy shitfests. It's more that people perceive that deeper discussions were happening at all with 3H's story, whereas with Engage there hasn't been too much deep discussion on story. I don't think people are wishing for Engage to have generated "ultras" in the same way that Three Houses did - they're not saying that 3H is good because of the tribalism it caused. (I would also note that most people have move passed 3H discourse to the point where even an innocuous post asking "why did Edelgard start war?" will get mass-downvotes and accusations of OP being a flamebaiter.)

That said, I still personally disagree with the point that 3H is better because of discourse. I don't think increased discussions is an inherent sign that a story is better written. There were a lot of holes with the Three Houses story which contributed to confusion which in turn contributed to discourse. Let's not mistake confusion between different points for an intricately crafted story.

#three houses #fe3h #engage #fe engage #three houses discourse #engage discourse #personally i'm just waiting for the fe4 remake #but engage has been pretty enjoyable through seven maps

[dyaus-pita]

If there is one net positive to 3Hopes' existence, it's that it confrims that not only is KT responsible for most of the writing issues of 3Houses, but that KT is fundamentally incompatible with the themes and messages of FE in general.

While Houses did have a lot of KT devs on staff for Houses, it was IS staff that served as director and producer. Hopes was almost entirely a KT production, with Kusakihara only being credited as an illustrator and "consultant/supervisor" this time, KT staff in the director and the producer roles, and two of the writers being replaced. IS basically had almost nothing to do with Hopes; this is very apparent when you compare how the characters, themes and story are handled compared to other entries in the series (the Elibe and Tellius games in particular) and even Houses. I've written about issues I've had with how Houses handled its anti-war and anti-prejudice messages, but there was an actual attempt at communicating said messages. Compare how the relics and the Nabateans are framed in Houses vs Hopes. In Houses, the relics and crests are ultimately the product of human sin and folly, with scenes like Hilda noticing and being repulsed by how her relic seems almost alive existing to draw your attention to it. The big secret Claude learns at the end of his route is not that Rhea was responsible for crests or relics, but that they are the remnants of her family, and she lied about them not to control humanity but because she wanted to protect what was left of her race and couldn't bring herself to kill people for simply being related to her victims. It was not an accident that Rhea turns out to be the one person in Fodlan who understands more Claude's desire for people to live without hiding who they are more than anyone. In Hopes, not only is the nature of the relics and crests completely ignored, the game seems to go out of its way to imply that the Nabateans deserved what happened to them or are equivalent to the people who genocided them for power, which is extremely fucked up.

In fact, the morals of 3Hopes in general are very fucked up, because the messages it communicates basically seem to be the following:

War is a Good Thing to help the common man, and should be the first option. As long as you have a Good Reason, the devastation and death caused by it can be handwaved.

Power and authority should be completely centralized on one "enlightened" autocrat. They shouldn't have to listen to their people because they know best and therefore should be free to do what they want.

It is fine for the enlightened ruler to use religious organizations as puppets to indoctrinate people and lie to them to support your warmongering. It is not ok to lie to people to prevent bloodshed and protect the last members of a genocided race.

The ends ALWAYS justify the means. As long as a ruler SAYS they feel bad, it's completely ok for them to treat civilians as expendable.

Because invading countries is good, defending one's country is bad, and if someone dies trying to stop you, then it is their fault or the fault of their inferior culture. They should always roll over and let you do what you want. Offering surrender is optional.

It is perfectly fine to destroy another country's culture or system of government to impose your own culture's, because yours is obviously better and you're doing them a favor anyway.

If a continent has had a history of other countries trying to conquer them, then they're racist for keeping you out when you attack them for sport. Why should you have to put any effort to understand them?

A true friend will do whatever you say and want and will ignore their own morals and interests. Feel free to lie to them or abuse their trust.

All the social, international, and political issues in the world can be laid squarely at the feet of one person or religion. It doesn't matter what they actually say or do, the fact they exist at all is tyranny and lynching them will fix everything.

Ethnic cleansing is perfectly fine as long as you want their land or personally don't like them.

Humans are great and perfect and should be free from the divine, except when they face the consequences for their actions. In that case, humans are helpless and the divine should always bail them out.

All foreigners want to subjugate you. Their attempts at peace actually mean they want to infiltrate your culture and destroy your traditions so they can rule, so don't trust them. It is much more acceptable as long as they suck up to the culture of a native though.

Always except everything you're told at face value if it's something that confirms your bias. It doesn't matter who it comes from or their ulterior motives, and you don't need to do research or try to understand the full picture because you are Right.

It is perfectly acceptable to inflame centuries old grudges so you can make war, especially if it allows you to help the people who wronged you less than a year ago.

It is also fine to sabotage another nation's diplomatic relations and use a neutral country's soldiers as bait, especially if your goal is to improve international relations. It's all the church's fault anyway.

It is NOT ok to leave an ally of convenience who clearly wants to either control you or conquer you later to die to end a war quicker.

It's a pro-war, pro-imperialist game, and reads more like the manifesto of a Japanese nationalist, right down to the victim complex and refusal to accept responsibility. Edelgard and Claude in that game are not so much characters as they are mouthpieces, and Rhea and the church are standins for everyone the devs don't like. It's not the plot holes introduced or the continuity errors and retcons that should disown 3Hopes, but the thematic and tonal dissonance to both the series as a whole and the entry that it's supposed to serve in the first place.

#fire emblem #3hopes discourse #three houses discourse #fire emblem three houses spoilers #fire emblem three hopes spoilers #japanese nationalism #fuck koei tecmo

[jtavington]

“Fodlan has deep structural issues that require radical reform and will not be solved by one good person” and “It is not Edelgard’s right or responsibility to fix other countries” and “the writers can be wildly inconsistent on some things so that all sides can pull from canon” are things that really should coexist more often.

#three houses discourse

[wild-moss-art]

For disability pride month I’d like to give a shout out to fe3h for all the canonically disabled characters included. Dimitri’s schizophrenia and eye, Constance and Jeritza’s DID, Bernadetta’s agoraphobia and panic disorder, Marianne’s depression, Lysithea and Edelgard’s cptsd and chronic health issues, and a number of other subtextual inclusions. I know people love to poke holes in these things, but I think overall they are well done and I appreciate the game’s obvious attempts to portray them sensitively.

#fire emblem three houses #fe3h #disability pride #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #constance von nuvelle #jeritza von hrym #bernadetta von varley #marianne von edmund #lysithea von ordelia #edelgard von hresvelg #anyway it’s a big part of why I like the game so much #no discourse on this post I’m so fucking serious #lmk if I forgot anyone tho too

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

My hot fire emblem take is that people who never do the black eagles route bc they think its evil are missing out on a shorter but very in depth look at edelgard as a hero who is balancing an empire that has over the last several decades been completely taken over by a regime that is destroying the continent from the inside with her ideals. People claim they want morally gray women but shun her because they think she's a facist when she's actually a socialist trying to convert a fascist party thats controlled her life into a tool to be used before it is irrevocably silenced

.

#fe #fire emblem #edelgard discourse #edelgardiscourse #edelgard fire emblem #edelgard von hresvelg #fe16 #fe3h #fire emblem three houses #fe 3 houses #what am i witnessing #petty playground squabbles

[raxistaicho]

Like a teacher would

There are those who might wonder, "why doesn't Byleth criticize Edelgard for her indirect involvement in the destruction of Remire and the death of Jeralt," and that's a fair question. Let's ask Byleth!

Wow, it's almost like Byleth is consistently portrayed as a patient, understanding, and forgiving person! Like a teacher!

#fire emblem three houses #edelgard discourse #edelgard von hresvelg #edelgard positive #fire emblem engage #byleth eisner #emblem byleth #hortensia

[erindromeda]

I've been doing a Black Eagles run

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem fanart #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem three houses fanart #Edelgard #edelgard von hresvelg #female byleth #edelgard discourse #tag added upon ask request #but ultimately this is in good fun #I actually really like edelgard!

[faroreswinds]

Guess that guy forgot Dimitri's support with Dedue where the crux of the conflict was that Dimitri and wanted to treat Dedue as equals but Dedue wanted to be seen as a vassal.

People use Dedue as some sort of "gotcha" character to prove how terrible and racist Dimitri is. How dare he keep a marginalized, colonized man of color as his vassal.

This completely removes any agency Dedue has himself. These people don't actually like Dedue. They only like what they perceive to be legitimacy to their argument.

They often ignore:

He is not forced to be by Dimitri's side. He actively chooses to be there.

Dedue was not just a prize for Dimitri to cling to. Dedue and Dimitri both relied on each other for recovery from shared trauma, and what one faced, the other faced with him.

Dedue is the one who chooses to keep the relationship professional. Dimitri actively begs him to treat him as an equal, not a superior.

They are both the most important person in each other's lives. They would die for each other.

In the rare cases Dedue chooses to leave Dimitri's side, Dimitri encourages it.

And so on.

A bit of a side-bar, but I noticed that many people in the thread also lamented that Yuri couldn't support Claude or Edelgard. I guess they feel that Yuri has something in common with them.

I don't see it. Yuri may be a rouge who chooses life and winning over morals, but he is also a church-boy at heart. He never expresses hatred for the church or crests the way Edelgard or Claude do. I don't even think he actually hates nobles, he just sees them as pawns for his schemes.

Claude and Edelgard "care" about the common folk but Dimitri walks the walk. He's the only one who actually gets into the dirt with the commoners, walks among them and interacts with more than just his inner circle of commoner friends. This is what Yuri values the most- his people, the down trodden. Of COURSE he would support Dimitri over the other two.

Also, Yuri is from the kingdom, and he doesn't hate his homeland. Which I'm sure some people would insist he should since it's a backwards country or something, idk.

#anon asks #Three Houses discourse

[bowbowis]

In a World for Humanity... There's No Need for Gods...

People trying to make out that CF is the bad ending because Byleth loses their godhood really need to learn about context. As Edelgard says in the very same scene, "when humanity stands strong, and people reach out for each other, there's no need for gods." Byleth's loss of divinity isn't a tragedy because because their godhood is, and always has been, redundant.

Byleth the god didn't show Edelgard she could be loved, or help Dimitri find redemption, or teach Claude to trust others; Byleth the person did. Only one person in the game reduces Byleth to their status a vessel for Sothis's power, and that's Rhea, something even she admits she was wrong for doing in her S-Support. Edelgard doesn't weep in the end of CF because she's mourning that Byleth lost the Godess's power, she weeps because she's overjoyed that the person she loves, the part of Byleth that truly matters, survived.

#fire emblem three houses #byleth eisner #edelgard von hresvelg #fe3h rhea #edelgard discourse #edelgard positive #crimson flower #fe3h

[irrevocably-delicious]

I’m invited to a powerpoint party this weekend, and I decided to do a presentation on Fire Emblem. But SPECIFICALLY why the Engage fandom seems to be a little quiet, while the Three houses fandom gets to keep chugging along (although quieter than before).

I thought tumblr might like to look at some (not all) of my slides as I know this has been a topic of discussion in the community for the past week or so. My basic thesis is that 3H has deeper, more interconnected characters who all have a very clear voice - so they are quite easy to plop into different scenarios and make fanfic/fan comics/etc about them. They are very compelling and it’s easy to fall in love with many of them. The replayability of 3H also means that fans are engaged with it for much longer - so they are probably actively consuming or producing 3H related content longer than they would be for engage. If a game keeps you hooked for a long time, it’s going to prevent you from finding new fandoms to join.

Anyway, these are just my ideas. Who knows if they’re correct, and there are LOADS of other factors that I didn’t discuss as for likely reasons 3houses is a more popular game (first fe switch release, 3hopes spin off, pandemic). I just hope some of you find it mildly thought provoking.

#fire emblem #fe3h #fe enage #three houses #media analysis #fandom discourse #my writing #fire emblem spoilers

[hekxate]

🍊

#sylvain jose gautier #leonie pinelli #fire emblem three houses #fe3h #totally not about discourse now wY

[maelor321]

The wasted narrative potential of the Church of Seiros' weakness.

 The church of Seiros is rather infamous, as it is the organization overseeing the main Faith of Fódlan, akin to the Catholic Church in medieval Europe, including for the small territoires. 

The Church is seen by the Fandom and by many in-universe as truly powerful, controlling the Land through the devotion of the people, with a goal of ruling all of Fódlan as puppet masters at best. 

That however is factually false. 

The Church of Seiros is not some all-powerful organization, and isn't even unified. 

Rhea refuse to use her power to dictate policies of the nations, in fact, she many times is too meek, though it make sense.

The Eastern Church are weaponless and puppets of the lords of Leicester, the Southern Church was destroyed, and Faerghus is divided between the western and Central church, with the Western Church and it's aligned lords being traitors to both the Crown and central Church, and puppets of the Agarthans. 

Furthermore, the ideology of the Church, that promote the restraint from abusing Crests, is utterly ignored whenever convenient. 

And just look what happened with the Central Church being invaded! Many lords of Leicester and Faerghus swore themselves to Edelgard, and even in Adrestia, Edie didn't seem to face opposition. 

Though that last point is a bit horseshit, I'm French, and our own first revolution caused a Civil War with the Vendée region's commoners being the most famous for fighting to defend Crown, lords and Faith, it also show how Hresvelg propaganda against the Church, Hresvelg, not merely Edelgard, destroyed the ability of the Church to call to aid anyone south of Garreg Mach, or even East of it.  

The matter really is a wasted opportunity narratively, because the Church being all powerful is something done often in fiction, but beside the actively treacherous and xenophobic Western Church, none of the Churches is really doing manipulation, and the western Church's plots are guided by the Agarthans anyway.

I think there's a lot of possible stories from a Church-centric POV about how the Faith's weakness and scapegoat status, and the fact that so few care for it in favor of treating the organization as the genderbend Catholic Church on steroids is disappointing.

I've seen the comparison with the schrodinger cat being done with the Church and Rhea, the idea being that they're blamed whenever they "overstep", ignoring how their actions are usually justified, but at the same time blamed when they stay out of shits.

If anyone do know stories which exploit this potential, do tell.

#fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem discourse #rhea positive #church of seiros #church of seiros discourse #canon vs fanon #fanfiction #lady rhea #rhea fire emblem