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kendrixtermina · 5 years

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Thoughts re: antagonists

Fair warning: I will be treating “Rhea is an antagonist” as an axiom here to base further discussion on it, if you disagree with that premise then this post isnt for you but im not gonna go into details about proving/arguing it here.

So on the surface Fodlan appears like your standards issue medieval fantasy setting governed by the rulers of the three countries, but it’s actually a sort of post-apocalyptic leftover of a world where advanced technology once existed, a bit like those legends or pseudoscientific theories about a grand, but sinful civilization before the biblical great flood or Atlantis. Man Grey Proud, wiped out by divine punishment yadda yadda resulting in a setting with two main antagonistic forces that have control and shaped the current state of Fodlans politics through the centuries and have been locked in a costly eternal war:

There’s the remaining Agarthans who want to destroy the surface dwelling civilization AND the Nabateans to rule the surface themselves (which makes them enemies of the church) and there’s Rhea who effectively rules Fodlan from the shadows to the extent that she’s basically arranged the three countries so that her base is in the middle, since the ruling class takes its legitimacy from the church and she makes sure to indoctrinate them when theyre young.

The result is a world thats rife with instability, inequality, xenophobia caused by isolationism, obsession with bloodlines etc. all side effects of maintaining church power, none of which is doing much to keep the Agarthans in check - they deposed the last emperor and assasinated the last king, have agents in Rhea’s own base and Rhea’s too busy lashing out against random revolts brought on by her incompetent rule to investigate and weed out the real enemy

You have Rhea representing “nothing changes”/ eternal stagnation of Fodlan’s sucky state as it is, Lawful Evil or a “rule the world” villain whereas you have the Agarthans who just plain want to destroy the order of Fodlan so they can rule it, Chaotic Evil or “destroy the world” villains - We see what Cornelia and Arundel do in the territories they get a hold of, they just squeeze the peasants for their last tax dollar, do forced labor, institute tyrannical and capricious rule... etc suggesting that if they won the people would basically end up as livestock.

Clearly that’s worse; Rhea’s world sucks but you can still kinda live in it and she will be nice to you if you stay on her good side. But she doesn’t see humans as capable or deserving of governing themselves either. (whereas all three lords basically end up giving the commoners varying degrees of political participation)

They’re even represented as Black (Liberation Army with Agarthan stragglers) and White (Church under rhea) on the map for the chapter introductions whereas the other factions get colors (Empire - Red, Kingdom - Blue, Alliance - yellow, resistance army/reformed church - silver/purple)

The Agarthans are fun conceptually in what they imply for the setting but as characters they don’t get much dimensionality but I don’t think they need to be _ I too used to think pure evil was boring, then I lived through 2016 et al and due to endless frustration with the remaining politicians got to appreciate that the revelant thing about pure evil isn’t the evildoers themselves but how you manage dealing with them in a world with complex webs and balances of power, conflicting self interests etc basically no unambiguos “pure good” everyone can agree on . Pure evil is ultimately an abstraction every evil person likely got evil somehow and could theoretically turn good - but many of them won’t and we still have to deal with it. And that’s the point here - what will the good and neutral people do about it? Will they fall for the traps play the games and be turned against each other?

Often dysfunctional systems happen not so much because there are evil people (there are always evil people) but because the good and neutral people are too busy bickering to stop them even though the good want to do good and the neutral should at least want to protect their own interests from the villains.

Generally Chaotic Evil tends to be sorta more interesting because it’s the cooler villains/creatures or it’s someone lashing out, whereas lawful evil tends to be crotchery old men and kind of pathetic (See Harry Potter for example) and are often engaged with as sorta younger person rebelling against crotchery old people.

But that also comes with the idea that Lawful Evil is Not You. You can easily see your capacity for destruction as you all get mad and have negative emotions but we all like to think we wouldn’t fall prey to blindly following authority... though studies repeatedly show that ppl overestimate themselves.

So Rhea is interesting in that she and her most uncompromising followers are semi sympathetic thoroughly examined version of Lawful Evil. (Sympathetic enough that they let you subject her to “love redeems” if you want to, though her S support still acknowledges that she used to be a villain, deceive everyone and used to care nothing for byleth until very recently - You don’t need to marry, say, Dimitri so that he starts acting responsibly. heck, you could run off with any of his best friends!) Ppl who are especially susceptible to authority often do so because they feel scared, view the world as dangerous and sort of never fully made that transition from child to adolescent and subsequently young adult where you stop doing what your parents tell you and start making your own experiences. They’re scared of the unfamiliar and want a strong parent figure to swoop in and protect them and tell them what to think.

Rhea describes herself as the “last” Child of Sothis meaning she was the youngest, she might’ve been relatively young when the massacre happened (at least by Nabatean standards). She probably survived only cause she hid in fear or because her brothers protected her.

Eventually she raised an army, got allies and dethroned Nemesis and his ilk, effectively ending up as one of the leaders of her country. The people probably loved her alot after all she got rid of the murdery bandit king - seeing as he has a general might makes right attitude and wasnt above massacring a whole clans worth of innocents for power, he was prolly not a good ruler to live under.

She felt she had to live up to the mission left behind by their mother (as Seteth said they view themselves as the protectors of Fodlan) but she still acts as if she were that scared helpless little girl. She never got the memo that she’s in power and privilege now because sometimes that’s kinda how the mind works. So as she started getting increasingly tyranical she saw it all as “protecting herself” or “doing the will of her mother”. You can see how she got to be that way and follow that progression on an emotional level

She views herself not as the leader that she is, but solely as Sothis’ representative holding down the fort till she returns, and doesn’t enjoy being a leader indeed many things like tea quotes, advice box letters, higher order supports etc. imply that she kinda hates it and finds it lonesome.

Which also makes her a contrast for the main characters but in different ways - Claude and Edelgard (incidentally the ones who actively oppose her and find out at least some of what her deal is) are very independent, self-reliant and self-determined even at a young age, and even though they have experienced comparable crap, especially Edelgard. Meanwhile Dimitri actually had a lot in common with her in terms of backstory and character flaws and going overboard/hitting the wrong target in pursuit of initially justified revenge and tending toward black and white thinking. You kinda see why they join up in CF - though he has tons more responsibility, empathy and self-awareness even as his very worst and in his own route he eventually winds up doing pretty much the exact opposite as hes strictly against imposing anything on people and ends up letting them have some say in how he governs them

#Archbishop rhea #seiros #fe3h #fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses

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dyonoi · 7 years

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I'm so glad you love davepetasprite and understand their character too oh my god. they were the first character I've seen who's cannonly non binary and just do casual about it? and i love them so much so when i see people like you calling out people who are being misunderstanding dicks to them i get so happy

davesprite and davepeta are characters of particular interest to me because they explore a hs theme that i find pretty cool

ive seen a lot of people insist one or the other – that davepeta is their own character and not dave and nepeta at all, and that you cant gather any info about either of them from davepeta. then ive seen people say the opposite, that theyre basically just nepeta and dave taking turns at piloting a 3d holographic card in person form. then ive seen both factions insist the other one is completely wrong.

honestly i think it comes straight down the middle. i think davesprites arc is an exploration of the dichotomy between mind and heart. davesprite is a divergence from dave – we see very clearly how he reacts differently to things than dave (getting pissed off at john for being ungrateful while alpha dave tells john its nothing and not to worry about it right after), davesprite saying hes just a janky dave knockoff and not worthy of having friends or relationships of his own, and john very notably telling davesprite to fuck off and that he couldnt wait to meet up with the real dave when he got angry at him during his birthday.davesprite underwent different experiences, different choices, and is different from dave in a measurable amount as a result. this is where you get people insisting that davesprite is his own character completely separate from dave. and while i agree in the same way that bro is not the same as dirk, grandpa harley is not the same as jake, kankri is not the same as the signless, etc, it doesnt mean that davesprite doesnt illuminate certain things about daves character and personality and how he would react to similar situations or his general thought process. (you see this get sort of lampshaded in this conversation, where davesprite says that he just noticed he likes to talk to himself, wonders if alpha dave also made that observation and concludes that nah, he had to be a bird for 3 years to come to it. meanwhile….alpha dave at about the exact same time has this monologue where hes come the same realization, sans birdness factor)its the balance of nature vs nurture, and while davesprite comes swinging in heavily on the mind/nurture side of things (with some indications that its not a complete divergence) and this contributes to his lower self esteem and identity crisis, once he merges with nepeta (a heart player) a more balanced view of this is achieved. davesprite, through davepeta, gains an understanding that hes still technically connected to the greater platonic entity of dave just as much as the current alpha version of dave is and is just as important to the grander scheme of things, which was the main source of his inner turmoil.

this is where you get a lot of complaints saying that the ultimate self resolution to davesprites character went completely against his previous conflict, and while i understand people who say this…. this isnt really taking into account the other things davepeta said about their existence. they still declared themselves a new person, with new pronouns, consciously decided not to act on nepetas former feelings for karkat, and decided to just live their new life as a new person, instead acting on former feelings for jade. (presumably because shes not in a relationship like karkat already is, and the former relationship was requited and just…more thematically tied with jade) while talking about how everyone is connected to a greater self, at the same time they still went ahead and distinguished themselves as a new entity separate from that. you could say it should have been executed better, but its still a balancing act between the two aspects.

anyway this was way longer than it should have been but in conclusion davepeta rules

#rambles #davepeta #homestuck #Anonymous

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