#which is what 3Hopes presents | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kiveriah · 2 years

Text

Azure Gleam - Dimitri

We get to see how a Dimitri with a present support network can be a good king since early on, and he could have reached a similar path in 3H if he had the same opportunities, I stand by that.

Pre-timeskip Dimitri is the same, the only thing that changes is that he was crowned sooner and those who were keeping their distance (Rodrigue and Matthias, Lambert’s best friends) are suddenly by his side, supporting him with more than thoughts.

Plus all of the Blue lions leave the academy and follow him, expanding his support network even further. Unlike 3 houses in which everyone kept him at bay, they were closer than any other house, yes, but only Mercedes called him by his name, the others either was love or respect always refer to him by his title (or worse).

Felix and Rufus are the worst offenders. Rufus was one of the people responsible for the Tragedy of Duscur and manages to kill his brother but to his regret Dimitri survives. And then he claims he is ‘scared’ of him since he was a child. He continues to taunt him until his death.

All of his family is either dead (Lambert, his mother) or has betrayed him (Rufus, Patricia/Anselma and Edelgard*). Rodrigue, Felix, Matthias, Sylvain, and Ingrid kept their distance.

But when they need to defeat Rufus all come to aid him and STAY with him as their king. The two most important changes are:

Rodrigue drops his title but helps him with Duscur (second father figure)

Felix becomes the duke and tries to advice him (rekindle their friendship but he stills calls him out, thing the others still have a little trouble doing)

We get to see Dimitri become more open, sharing the burden and trusting the Blue lions. Even if he is still plagued by his ghosts he now holding tight to the living. We reach a similar Dimitri than the one we get to see at the end of Azure Moon which makes me wonder, had he had a support network (he knew he could go back to) in 3 Houses how he did here, would his fate had been any different?

Bonus:

We already had hints in 3Houses about how the lost his eye and why he is so ruthless with Randolph but it is nice(? to get a confirmation in 3Hopes also.

See how Dimitri acts in 3 Houses after getting captured, tortured and threatened (with Dedue / possibly Rodrigue), he tried to follow the same modus operandi as his trauma VS in 3 Hopes he willingly gave himself as a hostage and what Cordelia is threatening him with.

We know Dimitri parrots what other think of him. When his uncle or Felix call him beast/boar he does not deny it, he never pushes back. He accepts all criticism at face value. This is the way he reacts with words and I think this is the way he reacts with actions, he is just parroting or recreating what he went through. It show how when the others took the first step to help him he open up/trust did too.

#3 hopes #azure gleam #fe3h meta #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #fire emblem #fe3h #three hopes spoilers #fire emblem three hopes spoiler #more like random rambles barely stitched together #but #im sure someone with more braincells than i will do a write up lie this soon

73 notes · View notes

travelling-on-the-octopath · 2 years

Note

Tweet I found: "Fire Emblem takes one of the most beloved FE protagonists and makes him live up to the promise of being a morally gray genius who plays both sides ON TOP of giving him a character arc."

I'm sorry, WHAT? One, Claude was only ever originally thought of as anything CLOSE to that; the """""promise""""" of him being anything other than what we got in 3H... never existed past the rough drafts. Like sorry-not-sorry to this fandom that insists so hard on making Claude way more morally dubious than he ever was in 3H, but Claude is for the most part a soft-hearted sucker. He was never half as bad as either he tried to say he was or the fandom ever treated him. And this is partially proven by even the eastern fandom being outraged at Hopes!Claude - the eastern fandom, who was never subject to Meme Man Claude portrayals of him! Like yes he can be underhanded, but the dude's just... nice, overall.

Two, if Claude was ever really someone who "played both sides" in 3H like this person said was """promised""" to us, then why doesn't he ever directly try to willingly help the Empire at any point in 3H? You know, like he does with helping the Kingdom cross Gloucester territory undisturbed, or how Claude gives Dimitri Failnaught, or how the Alliance lords willingly decided to fold back into the Kingdom, in AM? Even though the Empire, on CF, has Byleth to make them seem legit, and even though the Church would've still had the same dogma that Claudelgard insists they have that made him become an asshole?

Three - and I'm cupping my hands around my mouth for this one - A CHARACTER DOING BAD THINGS DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN THEY'RE ON A CHARACTER ARC. Claudelgard is not on any "arc" - not on one that's any sort of competently written, at least. Him killing his brother and him saying he's willing to get his hands bloody afterwards does not, by ANY means, signify that that now means he's willing to COMPLETELY THROW AWAY ANY CHANCES HE HAS AT HIS AMBITIONS FOR BETTER FOREIGN RELATIONS, or that he's willing to believe someone he KNOWS to be a liar on just her word, or that he suddenly gives a shit about expanding his power (when THAT has NEVER been a concern of his, either in 3H or even in 3Hopes before that moment) to the point that's he's willing to help the Empire in any way in order to leech off their influence. Really wished that the people who like Claudelgard would stop throwing around the term "character arc" as some kind of gotcha against those who see the very clear breaks in Claude's character that needed to happen for him to do pretty much anything he does post Chapter 9.

And would, like, just stop being so rude in general actually?? Like, the amount of times I'm seeing say things like "the people who don't like Claude in hopes just don't like him making mistakes" "they flanderized his character and forgot that he can be bad too" "oh to be a Claude fan who knows how to read (<- ACTUALLY SAID)" is enough to make me wanna scream lmao, like holy shit

This got . . . long. Oops.

I'm not going to pretend I haven't said things similar to "they just don't understand"; I've said it about the Lions, and I've said it about Claude, because while it does feel gross to say (who am I, a little clown on her corner of the internet, to go after someone's interpretation of a game), after a certain point it's very clear that the text does not matter to certain consumers nearly as much as their own conceptions of the character, which is . . . irritating, to say the least. It's less about proving right and wrong, and more coming to the conclusion that being selective regarding canon is a consumer's choice, but after a certain point their interpretation cannot be taken seriously because of how little care they give the facts in the original media. Which is to say: People can enjoy this version of Claude if they want to, but I would heavily encourage a breakdown of what they enjoy, and if that's really something that was present in Houses or if it's just something they wished were there. Because people can holler until they're blue in the face about the character Claude could have been, should have been, would have been better as, but at the end of the day, I don't give a shit about the original draft of this game's writing beyond a cute little "huh, that's interesting," because it, frankly, does not matter. It can certainly provide a frame of reference to how they bastardized his character in Hopes; and if you were going to write an essay on how writers treat characters who don't fit into their franchise's usual tropes, and how that result interacts with their consumer base, sure, you could cite the original plans for Claude as a case study, in that he was going to be some sort of conniving middle ground between Blue Lord and Red Emperor--but from a narrative standpoint you cannot reach into the writers' hard drives and say "See! This was the plan all along!" because I think if someone did that to Princes I think I would fucking implode. Intention is not product; there is a reason drafts exist. If the writers really, honestly cared about giving us a morally loose character, they would have taken care to keep him that way instead of allowing his character to become one who's firm enough in his morals to trust the Blue Lord with the state of affairs--and his family heirloom!--while he fucks off back home. The writers made choices; Claude von Riegan, AKA Khalid somethingsomething (WHEN ARE WE GOING TO GET A FAMILY NAME, INTSYS?), is the result of those choices, and while he doesn't get to shine nearly as much as we all would have liked in Houses, he's sure as fuck consistent: He always has a backup plan, he doesn't take well to people using violence to get their way, he very much cares about those closest to him, and above all he treasures his ambitions and protects it with everything he has, without feeling the need to throw away his life. People are more than within their right to want something different but . . . oh well? Like I'm sorry, I really am, but that is not what we got. Frankly, that's what fanficiton is for.

And......I'm going to ask this in the most respectful manner I can, but:

What fucking character arc? Because Claude remains tragically one-note on Golden Wildfire. He's made to work for the plot, again, instead of having it go the other way around. That means he can never be confident in his plans, because the plot needs him to get to a certain point to make Decisions(TM); that means he has to throw aside common sense and his stance already established in this game to make an Alliance that makes absolutely no sense for his character, but it necessary for the plot for . . . *checks notes* reasons. There were no ups and downs for this Claude, because he was little more than a plot device instead of a full-fledged character.

The reality of it is: Claude in Hopes was poorly written, and he is by no means comparable to Claude in Houses as a means of saying what should have been. He's not even allowed to walk away with the title of smartest dude on the board because half of the decisions he makes are just straight-up idiotic. I can't look at this guy and cheer that this is the guy we were supposed to get because a) the guy we got in Houses was flawed without being insufferable, and b) you can't just undo a whole game's worth of canon because you want to. Hopes, as per the developers, is not meant to override Houses, which means they're meant to co-exist, and as we've established by this point, these two guys are . . . nothing alike. If people want to look at my takes and the takes of others and say we simply never understood Claude, or that we can't appreciate a scheme-y schemer . . . well, sorry, but no.

#i really wanna play VW but like #can I go through a game without the Lions?#do I wanna let dimitri turn into a porcupine?#fe #fe3h (the remix)#s dunks on clyde #s responds #fire emblem warriors: three hopes spoilers #fewth spoilers #fea-and-fehf-headcanons #anyway thank you for another ask that let me word vomit gdlkfgj #i do like rotating claude von fire emblem in my mind all day

32 notes · View notes

blazestarre · 2 years

Text

Okay, now that I’ve gotten to experience some of the game beyond the demo (haven’t reached *that scene yet* but I have a better idea on story direction), here’s some further thoughts on Claude’s characterization:

It’s definitely debatable how well the writers handle everything, but I think I understand how they came to the decisions they did with Claude.

It’s not just that he never met Byleth, he never went through White Clouds AT ALL. What I think 3Hopes demonstrates is that most of Claude’s development was during the school phase. He gets to know his classmates, discovers there’s a lot of Fodlan he doesn’t understand (leading to him trying to figure out these mysteries during the rest of the game), and he meets someone who he feels can help guide Fodlan to a better future. In 3Hopes, he spends, what, two weeks at Garreg Mach? A month, at most. With how distrusting he his, that’s not enough time for him to change his mind about anything.

1.) Gets to know his classmates - Claude views the GD as his friends, sure, but not in the same way he did in 3H. I reached Claude and Lorenz’s C support in 3Hopes and damn, that hurt. Those two do not trust each other one bit. Well, Lorenz doesn’t. Claude’s a sad boy who wants to trust, but isn’t willing and tries to deflect. On top of that, Claude hides his plans from all the GD, including Shez. Yes, he hid his plan about getting help from Almyra from the GD in 3H, but he still tells Byleth. Then, after he’s confronted about, he explains in detail why he did what he did. He doesn’t hide his future goals. It’s presented completely different in 3Hopes. In 3Hopes, I get the feeling of Claude doesn’t trust the GD with his plans and the GD don’t trust him. There’s no found family with the GD this time around.

On top of that, there’s Edelgard and Dimirti. I’ll get to Dimitri in my last point, but as far as Edelgard? Claude doesn’t know Edelgard had been planning the war before they even went to Garreg Mach. He doesn’t know what she’s willing to do to reach her goals. And Claude is desperate, that much is clear from what I’ve played so far. He’s extremely stressed, worried about the future of the Alliance, and everyone’s questioning him, which seems to lead to him doubling down on his decisions. I think I see how, in that state and not actually knowing much about Edelgard except surface level stuff, he can end up making a decision that he never would in 3H.

2.) Discovering he doesn’t know everything - My views on this haven’t really changed since the last post, so I won’t say much. However, while Claude is definitely someone willing to admit he was wrong and change his mind, he still needs evidence to do so. No White Clouds means he never discovered there was a greater mystery to the Church and Fodlan as a whole. He has no reason to think Rhea has answers that could explain how Fodlan ended up as it is. So to 3Hopes!Claude, Rhea has no importance other than just being the Archbishop. Why would he want to keep her alive if he believes her death could stop the war? Not saying this is great logic, but with being overly stressed and the fact he doesn’t actually know what Edelgard is capable of, I think I can see how this can come about.

3.) Meeting Fodlan’s future leader - You thought I was just talking about Byleth, huh? Nope! This is Byleth AND Dimitri, depending on the route. On VW, SS, and even CF, Claude believes Byleth can help guide Fodlan to better future, one that can lead to a better relationship with Almyra. Yes, even CF, considering how he reacts to Byleth in battle. On AM, though, this role goes to Dimitri, which is important. Claude gets to know Dimitri in White Clouds. He knows Dimitri can be a great leader. And in AM, Claude puts all his his trust in Dimitri to come to Derdriu’s aid.

In 3Hopes? Claude doesn’t know Dimitri and flat out says it. He’s not willing to put his trust in the Kingdom because he doesn’t know what’s going on in Dimitri’s head (which he directly states). This was the moment I realized where the writer’s were going and how they got there:

Claude doesn’t need Byleth, he needs White Clouds. He needs to bond with his classmates, discover there’s more to what’s going on, and he NEEDS to get closer to both Edelgard and Dimitri to better understand them. Without White Clouds, Claude never gets his character development. He keeps his facade of the ‘embodiment of distrust’. He’s not really listening to other people, either, and you add that to the stress of leadership, suddenly making a decision that 3H!Claude would never consider makes some sense.

Again, I’m not saying this is done extremely well or something we should be satisfied with. I haven’t gotten that far into the story to solidify my opinion, but I will say that I don’t think this is the character assassination we all thought it was. I see the logic on how the writers got there, which makes the whole thing more...fun? for me. To me, this has become an interesting ‘What-if’ scenario with a heavy dose of dramatic irony. Because the writing doesn’t seem to be saying that Claude is in the right. With how the other characters are reacting, I’d say that the story is trying to say that Claude’s making poor decisions, and if things continue like that, I think I’ll be just fine with Claude’s route.

#if other's are still unhappy #i won't blame them #but how it's been presented so far has made me feel a bit better #writing quality is another matter #one i really won't get into #because that also deals with translation issues #but thinking about the direction they're trying to go?#i get it #i think the logic is there #fire emblem #few3h #fe3h

20 notes · View notes

faroreswinds · 2 years

Text

I finally have some time to answer some asks. Thank you for your patience.

If I didn’t answer an ask, that’s because tumblr swallowed it whole and I’m sorry about that. :(

Since you browse JP forums, do you know what the general opinion of 3Hopes seems to be?

Not happy, really. A lot of fans are pissed of about Claude, and how Rhea got shafted. Some comparisons to Putin and Hitler for Edelgard, etc. Some fans enjoy it but I’ve really seen more negativity more than anything.

Byleth I’m so sorry I was so mean to you apparently you’re influence is why I even liked Claude in the first place I need to lie down and question my life

I know right? Who knew?!

But to be fair, this IS an AU. Besides weird characterizations, even some lore stuff doesn’t quite match. Seteth, for instance, is the only person who is supposed to have the Major Crest of Cichol. Well, that ain’t true anymore.

So, is this game really canon? Ehhhhhh.... yes-no. It’s complicated.

But we all owe an apology to Byleth. The grass is always greener, as they say.

I may be wildly misinterpreting something, but does Edelgard get pseudo-lobotomized at the end of AG? Because that’s a whole other level of disgusting.

Yes. And it is.

But for me, not because I’m angry that Edelgard gets mind fucked. Which may be cruel of me, true. But... Well, it just ruins Dimitri’s route. He didn’t NEED Edelgard to be reduced to a child. Edelgard was well enough a villain on her own. It takes away his victory over her. It’s not as empowering anymore. And it does also ruin Edelgard’s own agency.

Not to mention it makes you question why the Slithers don’t do this to her all the time.

But it’s realistically the only way Dimitri and Edelgard could have survived in the same route. Sort of. This Edelgard is more merciful than her Houses counterpart, and this Dimitri is more willing to surrender if it means his people will be safe. But Edelgard, no matter the game, will never give up her ideals for another. So, she must either die, win, or be subdued in a way that can never be questioned. Well, they clearly didn’t want her to die. And she can’t win in Dimitri’s route. So.... brain washing it was.

In Edelgard’s route, though, I might see Dimitri surrender. That’s basically a conqueror winning and I don’t see Claude letting Edelgard have the Kingdom like that. He doesn’t WANT a united under one banner Foldan. So... who knows?

But we do have to be honest with ourselves. Edelgard is both the red emperor and a marketable waifu. She’s much cuter in this game with high boots and a mini-skirt. Making her a 12-year old little girl is almost par the course. That is how the devs view her. A young girl to protect. Not the ruthless emperor we want to believe in (except for the original writer of Houses. He’s the only one who thinks of her as a legit villain from what I can tell).

I have a question about the secret ending. I know you need to spare jeralt and byelth to access it but why? I just watched it and they aren't even involved in defeating arval? That it seems they never sothis and arval directly interact. It would make sense you need sothis/byleth help to defeat them, so it seems like a waste to not have them present.

@happiighost

I don’t know all the details myself, but my guess is that Arval basically just kinda goes crazy because the evil child Goddess is still alive.

But it’s such a waste that Sothis and Arval really have so little time to actually like... interact. It is a waste indeed.

Part of that is because Arval isn’t actually a god. Sothis is Arval’s archnemesis but Arval isn’t Sothis’ archnemesis. He is merely one of many of her enemies. The relationship isn’t equal. It’s a shame they tried to frame it in a way that it was.

Wait, where did that convo w byleth and Claude come from?? I thought byleth only had supports w jeralt and shez???

It’s not a support, it’s Claude talking to Byleth after Byleth is recruited just... in general.

I believe it comes from SB, but I may be misremembering.

A friend pointed out Dimitri and Edelgard wear lighter colors while Claude wears darker ones here in 3 Hopes. And well I really feel this is connected? Like we had them visually show a scene of Claude’s troops soldiers trampling flowers as he gives his big tone deaf speech.

I think that’s just coincidental. I have very little faith in the dev team to be that clever. Unless they come out and say that Claude is the bad guy in this game, I don’t think they thought that deeply. I think they just went “cool design!” and that was it.

But it’s still a nice coincidence, at least.

The flower thing is very intentional though.

So in conclusion to all this, everyone in Three Hopes drank Dumb-Bitch Juice, but they drank so much of it that there wasn’t any if it for Dimitri.

Basically. Dimitri had a sip but Dedue and Felix came swooping in and knocked it out of his hands.

Edelgard had a bit of the intelligence muffin, but not enough to knock some sense into her. She’s still kinda ridiculous. But she’s much nicer and even more reasonable in this game overall. I still wouldn’t call her a good person though.

But Claude man. He didn’t just drink the kool-aid, he swam in it.

Claude is shown drinking the kool-aid even when he makes clear he knows the Alliance/Federation is next when the Kingdom is gone. He’s quite literally being a smug jackass who thinks he knows everything he knows. Just like Edelgard.

His logic makes NO sense when you think about it.

He is literally nobility from another land. What, does he just not have responsibilities over there ‘cause there is no church? Are there no forced marriages in Almyra ever in all its history?

No, he just suddenly blames the church for everything wrong in Foldan. Like, all of it. It’s absolutely baffling. He even suggests that Dimitri could be free to do... something, he stops himself before finishing. But Dimitri is king! Even without the Church, those “responsibilities” would still be there!

WTF Claude, think!

I wonder what Claude is trying to achieve in ThreeHopes. World peace through diplomacy and finding common ground? By literally pissing off every single nation possible?

Wreaked havoc in the Kingdom by invading as well as instigating(?) Sreng to invade and kill the Kingdom people’s beloved border protector, backstabbed the Emperor and angered the entire Empire by using their army as meat shields and cannon fodders, pissed off every single Seiros believer by murdering their archbishop who is also their equivalent of Jesus-in-disguise, slayed his own brother, an Almyran Prince and angered the Almyran people, betrayed the trust of every Alliance noble who put their trust in him as a leader to put a crown on his own head - ignoring the Alliance’s proud tradition of ruling through the Roundtable conference and literally going against the very point of the founding of said nation - and ruined the lives of the average Alliance citizen by dragging them into a war no one ever asked for, making them fight alongside the tyrannical emperor who might set out to conquer them next once she had the chance, then backstabbing her all of a sudden only to make the Alliance soldiers face the archbishop who can turn into a fucking fire-breathing dragon with over 1000 years of combat experience under her belt in battle. If his goal is to unify Fodlan and Almyra through a common cause by giving them an enemy everyone hates, then congratulations, he is very successful.

It’s like he literally did EVERYTHING wrong. It’s almost amazing, really.

I guess at least he’s not a conqueror? But I mean.. I might actually prefer Houses Edelgard to Hopes Claude. That is quite a feat, really.

Edelgard is pretty misguided but Claude is straight-up villainous. He turns on his allies, backstabs anyone and everyone when he can, and the thing he claims to fight for he also does actions that would realistically hinder such progress. You want open borders with your neighbor? Maybe don’t encourage their meaner neighbors to invade and kill the Margrave and other innocents.

Like, Edelgard using her own citizens as meat shields was bad enough. Claude using a foreign country with a history of invading another to kill innocents because it will distract the army is honestly quite worse imo.

Seriously. His ending doesn’t even say the war will likely end now. It says the opposite. Good job, was it worth it?

Is Erwin Gloucester decent? Cause every clip I seen, is him bouncing off Clout and being a good dad to Lorenz. He's the same guy that killed Godfrey with collateral.

He’s... interesting. He’s both better than I can image and just as bed as I figured. Like, he seems like he’s actually a decent guy. But he also betrays the Alliance fairly early on.

Dude is turncoat when he sees a better opportunity.

But I have more respect for him than Claude. At least he has regrets, like not helping Lysithea’s family when times were... rough

Interesting how byleth simultaneously doesn’t figure much in the story despite being ON THE BOX ART, but the game still punishes players if they make shez kill byleth and jeralt

That’s because Byleth is quite literally GOD so of course you should be punished for killing God.

But yeah, that plotline is weird. It just tags along the war plotline. It just drags everything down and doesn’t really mean much in the end.

Except in SB apparently, since SB got two endings (minor differences) while AG and GW do not. Although I think they were supposed to. Either they cut those endings, or there is a glitch.

I'm fully convinced that an Edelhead wrote this cause there's no way in 9 eternal flames, that Claude from 3 houses would do this. Granted I know you gain support points if you say you hope Rhea's dead but actually killing her?! Buzz off with that 3 nopes.

This is a Claude without proper guidance apparently. :/

In all honesty, I’m just chalking it up to being a literal different universe. It’s so different that even some facts are different. Hence, a nicer Edelgard, and a crueler Claude.

Which fucking sucks.

Claude doesn’t even like... use his brain, he just suddenly fell into the rabbit hole and when he looked up and saw no sky, failed to realize that it was because there was dirt over his head.

But someone wrote this to REALLY try to make Edelgard look good. It’s backfiring because even people who don’t really like Rhea feel bad for her. How bad do you have to mess up to get haters to feel sorry?

#three hopes #anon asks #asks

15 notes · View notes

mysticdragon3md3 · 1 year

Text

...

6:14 AM 4/26/2023

I still like to read El's fatal flaw as her unrelenting Resolve. The same ideal that's advocated by so much Shonen Manga and anime in general, shows off it's negative, flip side in FE3H through her. As I've said before, she never doubts herself, but that also means she never checks herself. She is always moving forward, unquestioning her path. In my opinion, it's also why she neither seriously considers changing her overall strategy, nor questioning the costs/"ends justifying the means". She laments the costs of her path, but she never lets it change her---which I think is the big difference between Dimitri's past of "villainous deeds" vs her past/present of villainy. (She's the villain of 3 out of 4 routes, the character designers put horns on her head and dressed her all in red like a devil, and then named her house "black" like darkness even though her house color is clearly red. FE3H did a lot to hint she's the villain. But that doesn't mean she still can't be the hero of her own story, and I think the FE3H devs honestly wanted that too.) I think it's symbolic that at the end of Azure Moon, she tries to kill Dimitri with the dagger that he had given her once in their childhood, which she says encouraged her to move forward, and a second time as adults, while Dimitri told her to use it to cut her own path. At the end of Azure Moon, El is defeated and Dimitri offers her a truce. But she is so myopically focused on her predetermined path, that she brings out the dagger that symbolizes her moving forward with her plans, no matter who/what she has to cut through or at what costs. And she uses it to try to kill Dimitri, because she honestly thinks she can still win. She can't see any other path for herself, besides the one where she wins thru force and conquest. But as admirable as Determination and Resolve are, in and of themselves, she demonstrates their tragic aspects by not even considering the alternate path of cooperation and drastically changing her strategy.

It's kind of ironic that she is so tied to her predetermined path of solving all of Foldan's problems through conquest, even if that path was determined by herself. Because she has so many moments where she almost sighs forlornly up at the sky, like at Gronder, and simply moves forward saying "And so we fight on", as if she's so sad about fighting all her old classmates, but helpless to stop it---or worse, willing to push down and ignore those feelings of dissonance and compassion, in order to make their deaths acceptable costs. And that latter is supposed to be "strength"??? El demonstrates a lot of good questions that the writers probably want us to ask, but blindly following her like she "did nothing wrong" deprives people from those productive questions. As I understand it, she has many moments throughout her route, of feeling bad for what she "must" do. But for all her "strength" in following her Determination and Resolve, she seems more helpless against it and powerless because of it. The ironic thing being that it is within her own power at any time to stop the war, cooperate instead, and/or pinpoint her attacks onto specific problematic authority figures (whether Rhea, the Agarthans, or those Faerghus nobility she mentioned, I think in 3Hopes, who were too tied to the Church). But instead, she is helpless against a predetermined path of her own making…knowingly, because she thinks it gives her strength.

(Not to bring up Sengoku Basara 2009-2011 again, but… This is just like Toyotomi Hideyoshi, thinking he has to prove his Resolve to himself, and thus his commitment to becoming "stronger" or his Resolve in being "strong", by killing the person he loved the most. As if killing those you care about are proof to yourself that you can achieve Resolve and walk a path towards "strength". But is it really Strength when you're killing off your compassion towards others? Making calculations weighing some lives as worth the nebulous "better future world" you're still speculating to make?)

Anyway, another thing I thought interesting was how each of the 3 main lords seem to represent different paths by contrasting each other.

People often say they don't understand the point of the Golden Deer, as if Claude's route seems too unrelated to the personal drama between Dimitri and El. But I think Claude was a vital contrast to El. Not only was he someone who was shown in his Supports to question himself, when confronted with being wrong, immediately pivoted to fix his flaws, but also when confronted with his blind spots, he took them in earnestly and head on. He is not someone who only finds Strength in rigid Resolve, but also in flexibility and adaptability. He also constantly reminds us that there are better ways than war to get even the dirty jobs done. I find it so strange that we have one lord, El, who acts like war/conquest is the only solution, while we have a prominent lord character, frequently reminding us that poisoning, subterfuge, and manipulation ARE A THING. To paraphrase an old ninja saying, a general killed in his bed in his sleep, is just as dead, as if you had sent hundreds of your soldiers to die on the battlefield, trying to take the general down. It is continuously ironic to me that El worked with subterfuge practitioners like Hubert and the Agarthans, and yet she is too set in her ways to consider making full use of such tactics.

The 3 main lords tell 3 different types of stories, which are made more interesting in how they clash and contrast with each other. El is on the anti-hero path in her route and the villain path in 3 other routes. She is in a tragedy story, because she refuses to acknowledge or change her flaws; she does not change/Grow. Dimitri is on a more typical hero or anti-hero route. He has a fall and does a lot of terrible things for a long time, but we witness his journey through that, towards repentance and redemption. He CHANGES and is the one forever bringing up his commitment to change and repentance. Claude on the other hand is on more a paragon story. He has already done almost all his Growth before the main story even starts. By the time he reaches Fodlan, he has already settled into an ideal of turning his tragic experiences into fuel for constructive change in himself and compassion extended outward to others, while not letting his past bog him down into sadness or obsession. And his plans to extend his compassion outward, also takes into consideration, respecting others' differences and accepting the hard work it would take to persuade dissenters without always resorting to violent force. He is already mature enough to not be looking at only himself and his past trauma, unlike the other 2 main lords. Meanwhile, we experience with Dimitri, his obsession with his past trauma, his reconciliation with his past trauma, and his eventual mature state of mind, focusing his efforts more on others than on his revenge, just like Claude. Meanwhile, El uses it as motivation for all her actions, which could be said to be pretty much revenge against the Church, the Agarthans, her past, the systems of Adrestia, and the whole world. She does all this self-focused mindset and actions, while refusing to acknowledge how she's centering everything in her world around her trauma and in a non-constructive manner towards others, thus still actually making everything about herself and her trauma. Meanwhile, Claude has already looked past his trauma and focuses more on others, and Dimitri's entire story is about his process of working to look past his trauma, to focus on others instead. As someone mentioned once, the majority of Claude's Supports are him offering help to the Golden Deer and solving their problems. Similarly, Dimitri takes on the mantel of king as a responsibility to serve his people, taking it as even more important than whether it's a position he deserves or if his past crimes can ever be redeemed.

I once said of Sengoku Basara 2009-2011's Date Masamune that his infinite Strength came from his heart being externalized outward. He seemed invincible because the thing he cared about most, wasn't obsessing over his past trauma or his own selfish wants---which he demonstrated in episode 1 he was willing to forgo for the sake of others. The thing he cared about the most, were his soldiers, the normal people of Sendai, the normal people of his entire country, who just wanted to live peaceful lives. There are only 2 times in that series when he actually puts his hand to his eyepatch, as if his traumatic lost eye was actually painful to him: When he worried about endangering the lives of his soldiers. A warrior of Strength and maturity, extends their concerns outwards, not centered on themselves. A general, waging wars to prove their own "strength" to themselves, to become "stronger", to avenge their past traumas, all while ignoring how it effects the normal people, who shouldn't have to be soldiers, is not a good leader. Whether Toyotomi Hideyoshi or El.

But since El is all about "the ends justify the means", why not interpret this by her own terms. She's doing all this horror, in order to establish a system that will supposedly be more beneficial for all. And that's where I think the contrast with the other main lords becomes interesting again. Claude is repeatedly said, within the canon text, to have the same goals and interests as El. Yet they contrast in their methods to achieve those goals. In a war story like Fire Emblem, it would be very easy, and often is the case of such stories, to just assume war as the only option. It's how the plot happens for the expected genre. But it's very interesting that we have a 3rd lord like Claude, who comes in to remind us that not only can conflicts be resolved through negotiation, but he is often spoken of (and in 3Hopes, shown) to be actually doing the hard work of negotiation with other authority figures, until he can convince them to his side. The best part being that Claude is flexable enough that we can trust him to be open to compromise, rather than rigid stubbornness in his positions. We've seen him admit mistakes and blind spots in his Support conversations. He knows how to meet conflict with a laugh, then actual practical argument points (see his Support with Lorenz), as well as pivot to integrate what he can learn from those that he has had conflict with. Even with people he conflicts with, Claude is always smoothing things over and encouraging cooperation. (Not just in his Lorenz support, but also in his Fire Emblem Heroes conversations with El. He is always luring her in with agreement, but then sliding in a contradictory point to consider, with the least amount of intimidation, until he moves the conversation the way he wants it to go.) Claude demonstrates that El's methods are unnecessary and methods more true to Compassion can achieve the same goals.

(And anyway, as the video essay "Edelgard Will Always Lose" by BOOFIRE191 noted, she is essentially creating the same system and similar problems as Rhea. A pure meritocracy always sounds nice, until you realize it's ignoring needed equity, for twisted versions of equality, while pretending external misfortunes don't exist, as if everyone in misfortune deserves it for not "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps". Or as Dimitri said, "It is the path of the strong, so it can only benefit the strong.")

Anyway, that was too much rambling about my problems with El. I guess I had stuff to get off my chest for a long time. As someone mentioned, Claude's flaw was being too secretive and still having a little more Growth to go, towards being as open to forging bonds with other people, as would have ideally better facilitated cooperation. Maybe some people wouldn't have felt the need to start wars if they were earlier and better made to feel they could collaborate with and trust others. Who knows? And Dimitri's flaw was his obsession with his revenge. We know that; we saw his entire Growth through his story. But that's as even as I'm willing to get about the 3 lords' flaws. I still have more problems with the Emperor, than the other 2 lords.

#lrb~lrt #rambling #random thoughts #contrasts #I don't know why I stayed up writing this after an all nighter #this is a jumbled mess #please ignore my idiocy #please don’t pick a fight over this as i don’t have the emotional resiliency to deal with internet fights #fe3hfuukasetsugetsu #elredeaglescrit

2 notes · View notes

travelling-on-the-octopath · 2 years

Note

I am honest to god confused at to 3Hopes!Claude's views on responsibilities. Because he has a line where he says "[The Church] steals away your freedom and forces an endless list of duties and obligations simply because you have a Crest" and it's like... that's... not true... for specifically him. For specifically Claude.

The Church had 0 things to do with anything of Claude's ascension to duke, and his Crest didn't even give him the immediate ticket to all of these "forced" lists of duties and responsibilities Clyde prattles on about. The closest connection with the Church Claude had coming into Fodlan was, apparently, the devout believer Judith - who is so devout that that fact about her went completely and utterly unmentioned in the entirety of 3H, but, whatever lol. This doesn't even get into how, in 3Hopes specifically, he gives himself more work to do than his position requires (again looking to Leonie's support) so it sounds like he's complaining about getting hit when he's the one punching himself lmao.

If anything, it was the literal opposite for specifically Claude - he chose to come to Fodlan once he found out about his noble ties there (so nothing was "forced" on him), he came to the officer's academy with the set purpose of becoming the Alliance's leader (so, again, he actively sought out these supposedly "forced" responsibilities), again his Crest didn't land him an immediate spot into becoming heir - and in 3Hopes, where he had far less time interacting with students of the other two regions, he'd only have his own experience and maybe the experiences of the other Alliance nobles to go off of.

Which. Like. Which include Holst and Hilda. Who IN 3HOPES ARE SHOWN TO DESTROY THIS ENTIRE STUPID BELIEF HE HAS??? HOLST is the one without a Crest, not Hiida! And yet it's Holst who's the heir, Holst who's the one tasked with defending the border despite not being able to wield a Relic, Holst who is renowned across not just the Alliance but ALL OF FODLAN, and Hilda is LITERALLY INTRODUCED BY CLAUDE as a lazy pampered noble girl WHEN SHE HAS A CREST! She literally DOESN'T have any duties or obligations! Again, the literal opposite of what he says he believes!

So if he himself doesn't embody this belief, and if he has no experience witnessing this belief play out firsthand in this game (I mean he wouldn't really have the experience in 3H either lmao but you get the idea), and if he acted in ways before 3H's plot started that went against this belief, and if he in fact has solid evidence against said belief being true, then, like... whyyyyy does he have it? Why is it one of his core motivations in killing Rhea/dismantling the Church? Where does it come from? 3Hopes literally sets it up to where he should hold the antithesis of this belief, I'm so confused???

Claude in this game is really just. so fucking unreal. Like I don't have much more to add to this that I don't go into in my upcoming GW post, but the way he was written is just . . . nauseating, honestly. From both a standpoint of knowing what he's supposed to be from Houses and as someone who's become Her Majesty lite. The reluctance to sit down for a fucking second and think about these things they've found themselves believing when the evidence to the contrary is presented in spade is fucking maddening.

#i wanna wring his neck a little i'm not going to lie #fe #fe3h (the remix)#s dunks on clyde #fewth spoilers #fire emblem warriors: three hopes spoilers #s responds #fea-and-fehf-headcanons

24 notes · View notes

blazestarre · 2 years

Text

I finished Scarlet Blaze last week and currently on Ch 11 of Azure Gleam. Keeping with the theme of my other 3Hopes post, I’m once again focusing on Claude and his...interesting depiction, this time on SB.

Why did I mention where I am in AG? Because the route made me realize something: GW is just a copy-paste of SB’s story. I thought the routes would all be similar stories, just with slight variations based on which route you choose. Nope! The events on AG, while they start the same as SB and GW, takes a huge swerve at the end of part 1, completely changing the story. AG is unique, SB is unique, GW is not. Once again, Claude doesn’t get his own unique route and has to settle with Black Eagles leftovers. I don’t think VW suffers all too much from it, because the story still works - Claude just doesn’t get as much of a spotlight as Edelgard and Dimitri do in their routes and has to share the lead with Byleth. Since Byleth’s presentation is lackluster (I love Byleth, but the devs really did not balance their role as avatar AND main character very well), SS suffers from the lack of a strong lead. VW just takes SS and gives it that strong lead in Claude. So it works.

GW, on the other hand...oh boy. The biggest weakness of GW is that the story does not support Claude’s actions and so they had to have Claude use troll-logic to make any sense of it. I’ve mentioned before that I think I know what direction they were trying to take Claude - desperate and stressed enough to take actions that he normally wouldn’t consider. He lacks the character development he had in WC, never got to know Edelgard and Dimitri, never realizes there’s something more going on with the Church. I get all that and I actually think GW has some really interesting ideas for how Claude could negatively develop as a character. The bits that are good are really good. Everything up to Ch 8 is excellent and there are even pieces of Ch 9 and 10 that work, too (mainly the GD calling out Claude).

Here’s the problem: GW Part 1 has the Alliance winning. They drive out the Empire, stay united, and even beat Count Bergliez. Then there’s the Almyra invasion, which was also excellent. Claude’s moment at the end of the chapter, refusing to participate in a post-battle feast because he just killed his brother? Beautiful. But none of this sets up Claude teaming up with Edelgard. He’s not in a situation to be desperate. The Alliance is united AND they have the support of Nader and Almyra. There’s no reason they can’t ally with the Kingdom like they do on AG.

But SB? Claude’s decision to ally with the Empire makes sense. Here, Claude IS desperate, and in the cutscenes where he appears, they make that very clear. Shahid doesn’t attack on SB (for some reason), so Holst and his troops have to remain at the Locket in case he does attack. Meaning Almyra is a very real threat to the Alliance’s eastern border. Count Gloucester and Count Ordelia both defect to the Empire, along with Margrave Edmund (or he at least shows his support, but he doesn’t have all that many troops anyway). This leaves Riegan and Goneril troops, and the latter are defending the Locket. So really, Claude’s the only Great Lord who can do anything against the Empire. And considering when all 5 Great Lords combined have the smallest army in Fodlan, Claude’s not in a good position.

The Kingdom and Church are not in a strong position, either. They fail to take back Arianrhod and still have to deal with their own civil war. At this point, without WC to learn more about the other leaders in Fodlan, Claude has to take choose which side to take based on what will give the Alliance the best chance possible (he also never forms the Federation here). From his position, joining the Empire is the logical choice, but not one that he’s happy about.

Claude’s rhetoric about the Kingdom and Church are absent in SB. When talking with his allies, he makes it clear that the only reason they are attacking the Kingdom is because the Empire is requiring them to based on the pact. No insane troll-logic about taking down Rhea so Edelgard loses her justification for war. Instead, it’s clear he’s backed into a corner and does what he can to help Leicester survive the war. Hell, he might even be thinking along the same lines as CF!Claude - try to keep the Alliance around, but if that’s impossible, make the transition to the Empire as peaceful as possible.

What makes it clear to me that Claude allied with the Empire because he felt he had no choice is how easy it is for him to be convinced to betray Edelgard. Now, I recruited Byleth so I didn’t get this scene, but I have watched it online. Byleth seems to give him another option, one he didn’t consider before, and that convinces him to turn against the Empire. His speech to the Alliance army is much more in character than his various excuses in GW. Yes, he also declares war on the Kingdom and Church, but I don’t really blame him here. He’s been the aggressor against them already, and again, he doesn’t know Dimitri here. It might just be Claude trying to show that the Alliance is tired of being the third-wheel in Fodlan. Again, he’s been through a lot in SB, losing most of his battles with the Empire and then having them walk all over the Alliance. To me, this is a glimpse of what a negative character arc for Claude could have looked like.

Now, Claude still isn’t portrayed as an upstanding person here, but I can give that a pass since you’re playing from the Empire’s POV and Edelgard has never had a high opinion of Claude. But despite that, the story still gives solid logic to his choices. This truly is a Claude who is desperate and stressed enough to take actions that he normally wouldn’t consider.

It’s like the developers wrote AG and SB, but when they got to GW, the were just like, ‘Ah fuck, another one? Let’s just slap together something from the other stories. Claude sided with Dimitri and the Church in 3H? Well, have him team up with Edelgard this time for something different.’ Then they did, added some Almyra and gave Claude some lines to justify things without actually rewriting the story, and BAM! GW!

GW could have been a great Claude story, but instead they plucked Claude from Edelgard’s route and tried to shove him in a route where he’s winning. Now he doesn’t know what to do with himself and the other characters don’t understand what’s going on either.

#am i salty?#yes #yes i am #listen i don't care about bad stories #those i typically ignore #why put time and effort into caring about something like that?#but stories that waste their potential on the other hand #especially when using pre-existing characters?#that gets me going everytime #and gw is the epitome of wasted potential #the pieces are all there!#they just needed to write a story tailored to claude to justify those actions #instead they copy-pasted sb but because now you're playing the alliance #well it's no fun to play on the side that's always losing #except now all of claude's problems from sb are gone #but they kept his character development and decisions the same #even though now they make no sense in context #so glad i saved ag for last #it's so good and the characters are consistent #fire emblem #few3h #fe3h

3 notes · View notes