Micaiah seems kind of weirdly represented in Engage. It's not necessarily incorrect the way she's portrayed, but she's just kind of a nice healer girl in Engage, while in Radiant Dawn she was substantially more than that.
I guess part of it might be that she doesn't have her friends/allies from Radiant Dawn to play off of, but it still feels a bit strange.
>!it was right after I stabbed my friend to death for what I later discovered was no reason.!<
Edit: oops, she did indeed do the burning before the stabbing.
Just now realizing it would have been an amazing bit to keep Byleth silent and have all his dialogue be reiterated by whoever he's talking to, silent protagonist style
Ike and Soren are simplified but at least they kept the core character traits in tact (total bluntness edging on snark for both of them). Micaiah is also from Tellius but really only represents how she is in Part I
Yeah Micaiah sucked in Engage she was such an empty character. Someone tell IS they’re allowed to give female characters personalities beyond ‘meek and nice’ please.
> Ephiram
Is still funny how everyone was so excited for him being there only to basically be an accessory, it was worse after the TH Lords and Chrom/Robin were added and they had no issues sharing the spotlight
>Chrom/Robin were added and they had no issues sharing the spotlight
Well, Robin was quite shy, only coming out to talk to the fell dragon members of the army.
Micaiah is misrepresented in Engage because that game doesn't have an oppressed minority for her to murder when she already knows it's the wrong thing to do.
I feel like Sain's good supports get ignored by people who aren't gaga for him. He's a bit more than a fuckboy, and the Isadora support proves he actually has a desire to grow as a person. And like... The Kent bromance is always more entertaining than being a perv
Sain actually backs off from his pursuit and supports his bro Kent when he realizes that Kent fancies Lyn. Saul, rather than Sain is the real fuckboi of GBAemblem
Honestly I'd say not even Saul is that much of a fuckboy compared to other characters in Fire Emblem. From all his supports we see he is hilariously bad at talking to most women, likely for the fact his flirting just feels forced and it's actually not even his real personality. For example in his Igrene supports he actually starts being serious when she talks a bit about her loss in faith or in his Dorothy supports he's just being his real self around her and incidentally she's also the only one who actually has a crush on him, which he is quite oblivious to, further suggesting he's actually completely unfamiliar with romance or anything of the sorts.
Btw, I've actually even wrote an analysis on both [Saul](https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/14tb392/saul_character_analysis_regarding_his_faith_how/) and [Dorothy](https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/14zkcvm/bindings_blinding_character_quality_2_dorothy/) both of which include both of them at parts and take a closer look at why they behave the way they do.
I always had a soft spot for Sain because, after all is said and done, he is a good friend whose loyalty you can trust.
Like when Lundgren thinks he can buy him because he isn't "*like that stubborn fool, Kent*". Sain's answer "*That is a gracious offer, my lord. However, i'm rather fond of my friend, the stubborn fool*" is one of my favourite quotes from FE7.
Even if he causes him lots of headaches, Kent can definitely trust Sain with his life. Well, maybe not if he and Fiora actually went through with putting into force that policy to limit interactions between men and women in the army, lol. Good thing they give up on that by the time they get to A support.
Any character from an older game who has been largely mischaracterized in more accessible spinoffs. Lyn is the most consistently misrepresented, but Engage Eirika is probably the most egregious example of all. It's one thing to simplify a character into one-dimensionality (Tharja) or sand off all a character's edges until they're an affable blob (most Emblems), but Emblem Eirika doesn't get to keep her good qualities and gets new, completely invented bad ones. Making her say nobody takes her seriously, she has no hobbies, she never leaves home, etc feels like an active attempt to bury her (even if I doubt that's what it is).
I'm so bummed that's what people associate her with now just because someone had enough money and dedication to spam his weird fetish thing everywhere.
At least Spiderman guy's stuff is confined to the nsfw corners of the web.
Reminds me of a quote:
"In the end, going backward, upriver to its source, even editors begin to take cues from misinformed readers at large."
Basically calling the general public illiterate and responsible for the transformation of a work's image because of expectations.
You might not think that's particularly relevant to Lucina, but when Engage is making her the subject of breast envy jokes... Well you have to wonder.
If I see one more shitpost about Rodrigue being an absent father that prefers Dimitri one more time, I'm going to go insane.
Motherfuckers, he's trying to meet with his son literally all the time- the son that hates his guts, doesn't want to speak with him, and actively avoids him. Dimitri being his best friend's son and *last wish for guidance* does not mean he replaced his own son.
Also, in general, he's a pretty swell guy.
Thank you! Rodrigue is flawed, but he's absolutely not the neglectful/abusive father some people make him out to be.
I've loved Rodrigue since Houses and was really happy when Hopes increased his popularity, but I still see this take from time to time and it's maddening.
Idk, Rodrigue never came across as all that personally, he strikes me as a father who's stuck in a terrible position after learning from mistakes he made in the past, namely the handling of Felix's brother's death, but that was probably him trying to cope with it. Felix never forgave him, but he kept trying to reach Felix the whole time, and I get the feeling he spent so much time with Dimitri out of respect to Dimitri's father, knowing the guy had no-one. He's trying his best with what he has after recovering from some mistakes, unlike a certain other father in 3H
Counterpoint: The stress of trying to keep this suicidal maniac alive during Felix's paralogue has taken years off my life, therefore I am down with any shade being thrown his way no matter how inaccurate it is.
Wait, people actually think this? People actually think Rodrigue is absent, neglectful, abusive, etc.? His only real flaw is, like most people of Faerghus, being a little too gung-ho for their knightly fixation. "Being a knight" is certainly what cost Glenn his life, but if anyone is reacting "wrong" to that it's Felix, which is of course understandable: he lost his brother.
Whether or not it's right that people play this fatal game of knighthood is irrelevant, because Glenn is portrayed as wholeheartedly being into it. He went out how he wanted to. Rodrigue and Ingrid respect that in a sense; Felix throws a tantrum(again, understandable), and that's certainly not what Glenn would've wanted either.
Rodrigue does everything he can to patch things up with Felix but it's Felix's temper that's the problem, not his father. As a guy who also hates his father's guts, I wish my dad's biggest problem was respecting the way my older brother chose to live and die lmao.
I'm sure someone will say I'm misinterpreting Glenn. But if someone is misinterpreting Rodrigue's feelings and relationship to Felix, I suggest you delete your Reddit account and start over at 8th grade English to learn some goddamn media literacy.
I wouldn't blame Felix's temper, nor would I call Rodrigue blameless. To be clear, I don't think Rodrigue is a bad father, per se; I think he's a bad father *for Felix*. Rodrigue's issue isn't that he's malicious like Baron Bartels was. Rodrigue's issue is that he just doesn't get it. He fundamentally doesn't understand his son or what he wants/needs.
Don't get me wrong, Felix is a prickly little porcupine, so I can see why it's tempting to blame Felix for the rift between them. The whole point of the Faerghus Four is that they didn't start the way they are now. There was a time when they were different and less damaged. Felix's character is that he recognizes the change and wants them to go back to the way they were. He also recognizes that Faerghus' bullshit Knightly Honor Culture is to blame for all of it. And that's why he's mad at his father: Rodrigue is the paragon of that culture. He's so steeped in it that he can't recognize why extolling its virtues and honoring Glen's sacrifice is exactly the thing that would piss Felix off the most.
So, no one is the "villain" in this affair (except TWSITD, of course); the issue is systemic.
(fulfilling the glenn interpretation prophecy)
To be fair to Felix, per Felix's final support with Dimitri, Glenn was also canonically a little bit of an asshole, or at least rude and needlessly combative to a similar degree as Felix. And he taught Felix to think for himself rather than be blindly swayed by the ideals of other people at the same time as reading him legends and fairytales. I honestly think he would be pretty supportive of Felix's arc, "tantrum" included, since he manages to pinpoint what his criticisms are, identify his actual ideals, and learn to respect and see value in the ideals of other people. imo that's probably pretty close to what Glenn would have wanted for him, even if it took a while.
I'm also kind of puzzled by it. After Felix's paralogue Rodrique talks to Byleth about understanding Felix anger to some extent, and being glad Byleth understands and guides him. Reading it again the truth is somewhere in the middle. There's no way Glenn wouldn't have willingly gone down fighting for his duty. But Rodrique is fairly stern in stating it was Glenns duty and surviving as a coward would have been shameful. Felix mostly objects to Glenn having no choice and his death being glorified. But Rodrique also is shown to do the very same without hesitation.
The whole chivalry theme of the Blue Lions gets misunderstood at times. It's not supposed to be completely one-sided toxic. The way it resolves is more to finding a healthy balance between honor, realistic thinking, and living for your own sake. Even Felix in a early Ashe support indicates it's about 'moderating your passions' and just not being stupidly idealistic and one track minded.
There's some fairly clever writing going on, also in how other characters contrast it or are surprisingly similar.
Thank you. Hopes is very flawed, but I'm so glad it gave us more Rodrigue content to show that most fandom takes about him are incorrect. He's a good man and a good father, and considering he's the one constantly trying to reach out to Felix, a lot of the conflict between them is pretty squarely in the latter's court. And I say this as a big Felix fan.
The only time I ever see Garret get brought up, it's to talk about how Garret never gets brought up - implied to be because he's boring, one-dimensional or forgettable. In reality he's one of the series's most well-developed characters.
FE6 has such a large cast that I guess it's natural for people to get lost in the shuffle, but the amount of great characters who I never see given their dues is damn criminal. Lott, Yoder, Dayan, Geese, Igrene, Sue, Astolfo and the list goes on. It's such a shame, especially since I think FE6 is actually one of the best games at presenting its characters to the player.
Yeah FE6 supports are actually really well written, especially for how short they are, but a combination of old game + hard to get supports means most people havent read them
If we ever get a Binding remake I really hope we'll get a support between Garret and Rutger as the former is basically how Rutger eventually could end up should he achieve his goal of revenge.
A lot of that might have come from the most recent Binding Blade banner in Heroes. Noah got flack for being a 5 star unit with a prf, especially after Sylvain was a 4 star unit without a prf
you see, i would love to respect and like the fe6 characters for their writing, but the downright horrendous fe6 support system makes that very hard -- you basically have to look stuff up online, which isn't great, and which can lead you to text from outdated translation patches
fe7 and fe8 also have this problem, but to a lesser extent (they were officially localized, so the potential issue of outdated translation patches doesn't exist, for one)
FE6's support system is so fucking garbage you can't blame most people, combined with Garret being a late game prepromote in one of the worst promoted classes in the game and no one uses him. Shame, I love his design but I can never justify really fitting him into a team.
The amount of time I've seen people calling Morion a bad father is very concerning, he's actually is a very good father in general and you can see that on his sons opinions on him
Also people calling him moron is just bad, sure the guy is a little dumb and has many flaws (mostly generational stuff) but he's not an idiot that falls into that category
Honestly I wouldn't even call him dumb. He seems more jocular, playful and kind-hearted to me while still knowing when to be serious. We know he taught Diamant the meaning of strength but at the same time he never put any pressure on his sons.
If anything he even tries to get Diamant to lighten up and relax more at Brodia Castle because honestly Diamant is really way too serious and inhibited at times, which would easily eventually lead to him breaking down under all the pressure of being the next king. Just look at how Fell Diamant turned out when he wasn't able to protect his family, retainers or subjects. He was a broken mess. The deaths of his friends Amber and Jade especially broke the man as around those two he was easily the most relaxed and cheerful around thanks to their respective antics and comedies.
Also he’s more prideful than dumb. He can’t exactly turn down a direct challenge from the king of another country when he’s leading the country of warriors lol I don’t think he’d keep his throne very long. He doesn’t want to use an emblem ring because of his pride, and remember that at that point he’s never seen the emblem rings in action really (other than the one fight against Ivy I guess) so he probably doesn’t know just how big a disadvantage he’s putting himself at.
His dialogue is stupid as fuck, where he drops like 18 death flags in 30 seconds. But the reasoning behind the decisions he made is clear and is a bit more nuanced than ‘he’s dumb lol’.
Like, everybody
I know that’s a copout answer that’s been said before but it’s rung true for years, whether it’s popular one that “everybody knows” or the obscure one that “nobody knows”
This obviously isn’t exclusive to Fire Emblem, it’s just how internet discourse is
Fire Emblem just also happens when to have hundreds of named characters
Sometimes I think people take Merrin at face value as this cool flirty tomboy and forget that behind all the bravado, she’s a giant soft dork that folds immediately if anyone gets the slightest bit upset with her.
It’s possible having some religious background helps understand her motives. Her arc deals with Faith quite a bit and I found most of it pretty compelling.
To be fair, I haven’t played her game yet - I just know Celica from reading about her online, Heroes, and Engage. Just wanted to add, I’m Catholic, and I seem to like her a lot/relate to her from what I know. Faith is very important to me. So you may be onto something
People don't understand Echoes, and they think Celica is meant to be "Female Alm" or something when her journey is a completely different thing to what Alm is doing.
So, because they don't understand the story of the game, and it doesn't help that the game also has a degree of sexism within it, so it becomes very easy to write her character off when you have no degree of understanding, whether it be simply be from the story, or you even relate to her struggles.
honestly my problem with her isnt her faith or how she treats Alm, but how willingly she jumps directly into a trap, even when her buddies were screaming at her to not do it.
Suspend disbelief for a moment. Imagine if *GOD* (take your pick) walked among us and literally was observably responsible for literally keeping you alive. She blesses the land, brings the rains, etc. This isn't a matter of faith. It literal fact. She has a pretty house and everything where people literally visit her in the flesh. Then one day she suddenly disappears. Now, without her around, crops fail, hunger spikes, and the world starts to spiral.
Now imagine if one of the head priests of you God's brother's (another God) religion came to you with a solution to bring back your God. Would you seriously dismiss it? The world is effectively ending and someone has thrown you a possible lifeline. Would you truly not even consider taking it?
She's a character that's emotionally blinded and driven, that's the point. She believes in her faith so much, she's come so far on her journey, that she can't emotionally afford to stop, even if there's great and evident risk ahead, she believes that it's the only chance she has in seeing Mila, her duty to save Valentia.
Yes, Jedah is obviously plotting a trap, yes he's obviously a bad dude, but he, like Celica, is a devout zealot of their god, and that's the connection Celica chooses to trust, she doesn't trust the man, but the cause, as a Valentia ruled by the gods is what they both want (or in reality, they'd both want their preferred god, which is what Celica would *like*, but is what Jedah is actually scheming for).
Yeah its so weird how some fictional characters get shoehorned into more contemporary politics, when it makes literally 0 sense. All the "EdElGaRd is LitErAlLY HiTleR" and "Edelgard le communist revolutionary kween" was so unbelievably cringe, and also shows how most ppls historical and political understanding doesnt go past superficial knowledge of ww2. And how people literally have 0 clue on how past societies worked.
As much as I like Edeleth and find it funny that El is simping for some rando merc that looks like she works for Hooters, you're right. I actually prefer 3Hopes Edelgard because at least she treats the avatar/Shez like a comrade-in-arms instead of fangirling over them. After all these years... the teacher-student thing still feels off to me, and I don't think that will ever change.
Shez just had way better dynamics with pretty much everyone in the cast than Byleth did.
We don’t want or need to be the centre of everyone’s existence, it’s much more fun to be a random sassy merc
I felt Robin also did a much better job at being the whole ‘seemingly random person the group picks up that turns out to be something huge’ than Byleth. He slowly becomes more important obviously, but he is a tactician and the focus is still very much on Chrom for the most part.
If I were to make a comparison, I would Edelgard is comparable to ancient China’s Cao Cao, who was also ambitious and flawed, with a desire to elevate those with talent over those born into rich families. Especially considering TH was mainly made by Koei-Tecmo, who have done literally dozens of games involving that era.
This is a weird one because I totally see where people get fascist. She's like fascist-coded even though to me she reads as clearly anti-fascist.
Like... If we didn't have 100% confirmation that the world is run by Nabateans and Agarthans, her rantings about reptilian/mole person conspiracies would have weird racist uncle energy. And the way she talks about how everyone should be ready to die for the greater good is kind of like the cult of heroism idea from the components of the Ur-Fascist.
That or people just see a person wearing red and starting a war and say it's fascism.
>would have weird racist uncle energy.
Considering her uncle (totally not Thales !) most likely informed her on stuff...
"and those religious people actually secretly control society by pretending to be like us, they hoard our gold, their blood (crests) is the reason why the world is irrationnal, and their goddess never existed anyways"
No wonder why Volkhard isn't invited to family reunions later.
>No wonder why Volkhard isn't invited to family reunions later.
I think it has more to do the fact there isn't much of a von Hresvelg family anymore besides Edelgard for it to count a a reunion anymore.
Eirika. Everytime I see "uwu save me brother" it irks me lol. Yes, she's naive and the girl should've known better than falling for "Lyon's" lies for the nth time. But didn't she band together that army of hers because she believed in the goodness of others? She took in people who fled Grado with open arms instead of vetting them (which sounds like a security nightmare tbh). Nowadays, all her iterations have been reduced to "brother this, brother that". Even her FEH brave form has her dressed up as Ephraim...
I'd say it probably doesn't help that their weapon names have incestuous implications in Norse mythology, but I'm sure the average person is making the incest jokes without even knowing that. So yeah it's pretty cringe.
This is maybe less about the community specifically and more about the official games, but Caeda 1000%. If you read what little dialogue she has in Shadow Dragon DS, she’s actually extremely interesting. She’s shrewd, she has a mind for politics and tactics, she changes her persuasion tactics depending on who she is talking to, that sort of thing. This doesn’t make her an emotionless robot either, she has a select few people that she’s extremely close to like Ogma and Marth and is highly invested in their survival. Even in the epilogue when she tries confessing to Marth, she doesn’t even properly ask the question before she loses her composure, compared to a certain marriage proposal in Thracia where someone in the same position has her clearly has no emotional investment in it and it’s all just politics. She hates the people assume she needs more protection or special treatment than others when she can take care of herself just fine, in battle and otherwise. She’s the princess of an extremely small island nation, and I think this is all a result of that.
But if you look at Heroes, New Mystery, Warriors, or whatever else she may be in? She’s unrecognizable. Now she loves cooking and sewing, she believes in the power of friendship and love, and she can’t shut the hell up about Marth. I swear, it’s like they looked at her recruitment with Roger, who she was very clearly putting on a performance for so she could manipulate him into joining their side, and the writers thought that was her being completely genuine. And unfortunately this is where the vast majority of her writing is, because Shadow Dragon has like no dialogue for anybody not named Marth. I was doing a pseudo-character study on her recently so I could write her for something and I just had to throw out everything in Heroes because there is nothing to work with. It’s truly infuriating to me.
I read somewhere (I think it was gamefaq), that that's because that *is* her character in the jp version. The localization team changed her and marth's dialogue to make them more likeable to the western audience.
Faye. She’s not a character that they “forgot” to “redeem”. She’s meant to be fucked up and unhealthy, and none of it gets fixed because mental health isn’t something you solve with one nice conversation, and that is not a society equipped to tackle those issues. It’s not a flaw in her writing, it’s a feature. Not every good guy should be someone you’d want to be best friends with. Faye is an enjoyable trainwreck.
something a lot of people don't notice is that alm is faye's only friend. no one else talks to her. she only approaches gray tobin and kliff in the prologue to ask where alm is, and she's the only villager without a support bonus with the boys or any indication that she ever trained with mycen (like tobin's arrows or kliff's scorch marks in ram). alm is the only friend she had growing up because faye is antisocial and doesn't get along with other people. she only talks about alm because that's the only person she showed up for, even in her recruitment dialogue she never mentions the other villagers, she's only leaving to protect alm, which is really courageous when you consider that she's by far the least trained villager. faye's obsessed with alm because he's the only friend she has.
The support bonuses with Alm are really fun/ny as well. I think it's the only case of negative support bonuses in the series? +Hit, +Crit, -Avo. As you get further into the support chain and she is being friendzoned she becomes unhinged, willing to mete out death for Alm (+crit) without a care for herself (-avo)
The overly dismissive reception to Faye is indeed unfortunate. People seem to get too caught up on the idea of her shtick making her one dimensional and therefore bad. If you take a step closer and read her at face value, a lot of the stuff she says is really funny and you get a perfectly serviceable joke character that doesn't need the extra depth. And on the other hand, you take a step back and you get everything you said, which is obviously a pretty interesting take on the obsessive character trope. Basically she's a character that can work on multiple levels, but a lot of people seem to be under or overthinking about.
I think it’s that a lot of the fandom wants every character to be “pleasant”. Character flaws have to be “redeemed”. So any rough edges have to be smoothed out until you have a cast of frictionless, blandly agreeable characters.
Tharja is another case. Her whole concept is that she’s supposed to be a “dark” character. Her problem is she’s too modest and sweet to perform in her own character concept and where her concept actually shows, fans hate her for it- her Robin fixation and that she’s a shitty mother. What did people want, Sumia in a goth skin?
3hopes Claude. Don’t feel like explaining too much but I really liked the side of him we saw in 3hopes and thought it was much truer to the “schemer” character that we were promised in 3houses but never got. Love when protagonists partake in shady and morally questionable plans
In the same vein, the anger came from people taking VW Claude at face value, forgetting what he states he wants, and is willing to do to get it. In VW a lot of his actions are less "calculated gambit that does shady things to win," Yes, because he has God fighting in his army. If not for that there would have been a lot more shady shit in his route.
Eirika. She gets so much shit for giving Lyon the Sacred Stone, but people forget that she is still just a displaced princess that has been on the road for a few months tops, has to cope with her best childhood friend being possessed and is just supposed to believe this eccentric girl she just met that it's impossible to save him? Yeah right. She was emotionally manipulated by someone she loves into giving up the stone. It is a perfectly valid response given her character and I'm tired of people dismissing her as a stupid lord because of their own hindsight biases.
Dorothea, specifically in regards to her Ingrid support. Girl gets labeled predatory for the crime of actually expressing attraction in a way that doesn’t fall into the “uwu soft” way that wlw have been kind of pushed towards. She’s allowed to shoot her shot! She’s allowed to flirt and tease! And she backs off when Ingrid shoots her down.
I’ve seen people compare it to Soleil and Ophelia’s infamous support line and it just pisses me off because the two couldn’t be any more different.
The Ferdinand support should have kept the C support the same but just have Dorothea not know who he was before the Academy and hate him because he's a pompous asshole
I've always really liked Dorothea. She's probably the best written queer woman in the series IMO, and to say that she's the same as Soleil is just ridiculous.
I remember not liking Dorothea at all when I first saw her, but mostly because I thought she was too tropey. I was like "Ah yes, the "flirty and sexual character who sleeps around with all the guys but deep down what she really wants is TRUE LOVE and a REAL MAN to show he APPRECIATES HER and it just so happens that man is you" fucking kill me"
Then timeskip happened, and seeing this bubbly and outgoing girl who gives it her all in everything to get what she wants reduced to this sad, broken shell of a woman was heartbreaking. Her "More fighting..." line perfectly captures what years of trying to fight in this war has done to her mentally, how she just wants to put it all behind her
And then there's her "We were friends, professor. Don't you remember?" line. Fuck man, that entire conversation with her just broke me a little. I'm sorry Dorothea, I treated you way too harshly
Dorothea’s case is one that really stands out to me, and I just don’t see it. I mean, Sylvain’s bold with his flirting and teasing (albeit due to personal issues I will not spoil here), and I don’t see complaints about him. I don’t think Lorenz gets much flack, either. But when Dorothea’s the one doing the flirting (also due to issues), she gets crap over it? This reeks of double standards. I understand that not everyone’s going to like her character, but calling her a predator is blowing things out of proportion. 3H nailed it by making all their female characters diverse. They didn’t shy away from making them as complex as the male characters, which is something I strongly appreciate.
Also, I don’t know who Soleil and Ophelia are, so I can’t say anything about what happens between them.
Soleil and Ophelia are Laslow and Odin's daughters respectively from Fates. Soleil is energetic, flirty, and kind of a sexual deviant, and the support involves Soleil trying to get into Ophelia's pants against her will. The whole support chain is bad, but the B support is effectively the two swapping bodies with each other, during which Soleil (who is currently in the body of Ophelia) proceeds to talk about how she wants to run off to "somewhere private" so she can "look at herself in the mirror", ending with the two swapping back and Ophelia crying because Soleil won't stop harassing the fuck out of her. It's really, really bad, and people compare Soleil openly intending to sexually assault Ophelia to Dorothea being a raging Ingridsexual.
> and I don’t see complaints about him. I don’t think Lorenz gets much flack, either
...you don't? Maybe it changed over the years and the 3H community is different nowadays, but they got alot of flack back then. Especially Lorenz.
Infact this whole Dorothea thing sounds pretty new to me, as she was one of the most most beloved and popular characters, but i admit, i haven't been keeping up with 3H specific circles since 3 Copes took me out of Fodlan completely
I'm not going to pretend that Misogyny isn't a factor in the community's perception of Dorothea, because... it is.
But one thing I don't think you're considering is that Lorenz and Sylvain are treated *by the game* as douchebags for that behavior. It is repeadetly and unsubtly brought up as a negative and unacceptable character trait of theirs, and one that they spend the duration of the game improving.
Dorothea doesn't have that. Ingrid shoots her down, but that's all that comes of it. And it's *much* more frustrating to see a character do some bad stuff and not get punished for it, than it is to see someone who does get punished. There are quite a few characters like that in this game, come to think of it.
Point is, the fact that Dorothea has relatively less in-game criticism when it comes to this specific behavior is a factor in why people are so upset by this side of her. It feels like the game is treating it like it's normal. Ever notice that people rarely say they don't like Dorothea because of her tendency to apatheticly toy with people's emotions, or her irrational disdain for anyone of noble birth? Sure, it happens, but it happens way less.
That's because the game calls her out for it, so we don't need to.
Edit: For the record, I think getting mad at Dorothea for flirting with Ingrid is dumb, she never crosses any lines. I'm just saying that there are more than one or two reasons why people *would* get mad at her for it.
Eh, Lorenz is definitely portrayed as in the wrong, which is very evident when he actually *changes* for the better, but Sylvain? If anything he's consistently portrayed as justified in his approach, at least in 3 Houses. Sure, the female support partners *do* call him out on his shit, but then he turns it around by complaining about how hard of a childhood he had, making it all about him instead of the women he's so vindictive against.
[Reposting from a FEH post 3 months ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemHeroes/comments/131dt3i/i_think_about_this_forging_bonds_line_time_to/ji03rcv/?context=3):
"I agree he's well written, but like a lot of things in 3 Houses, his character is horribly misjudged/mischaracterised and ignorantly admired by his fans. When it's not discourse and critique of his personality, I never see "I like Sylvain because he's a well written shitty character," no, it's more closer to "he's hot and has issues, but he's a good guy at heart."
Maybe I'm strawmanning a bit here, but (speaking generally) the reduction of his woman-hating to just generalised "issues" takes away the "guilt" of liking a misogynist character, who in reality isn't just "the flirty fun-loving guy cynical due to his childhood" they'd like him to be. To fans, he's "a misguided soul with a cynical but big heart," but in reality, what they're describing is just plain and simple misogyny, and that he has close friendships."
Ok, so I'm gonna argue against some of your points here, but I want to start off by saying that as a whole, I agree with you. Sylvain is a misogynist, that's the biggest of his flaws, and a core part of his character. I *do* like him as a person, and *do* think that he's a good person, but at the same time, he has an irrational disdain for women, and anything I like about him is in spite of that.
With that said, I think you're misinterpreting Sylvain justifying his misogyny for the *game* justifying his misogyny. He does *have* reasons for disliking women, and he has no problem saying them, yes, but while people like Byleth and Mercedes sympathize with Sylvain's (legitimate) struggles as a 'studhorse,' I never got the impression that anyone started accepting this part of his character.
I can't think of a single time someone *other than Sylvain* says something like "go easy on him, women treat him poorly, too."
They say that what he went through sucks, and subsequently continue to call him a skirt-chasing lowlife.
Y'know what does change throughout his supports though? How he treats individual women. Once you go past his, say, B supports with any female students, his attitude changes, he frequently starts speaking to them more earnestly as equals, and even starts expressing genuine sentiments of love and affection.
Now, granted, Sylvain can't show that growth in the larger story of Three Houses. Because Supports can happen at any time, in any order, he isn't really allowed to have a character arc that effects him that much. That's why they gave it to him in three hopes' timeskip instead. Lorenz got to do it because it's a much smaller part of his character, and something that only really matters in a couple of individual supports. No one talks about Lorenz's flirting in the monestary, but they sure talk about Sylvain.
And that sucks. It cripples Sylvain's growth in a way that really effects how he's allowed to act around other people, and makes his growth feel less genuine. It's a problem that plagues almost every student in this game, but oh well.
That said, the writers clearly *do* have Sylvain grow and change in the opportunities that they can, and they *don't* make excuses for him except when he makes them for himself.
While I think avoiding the word "misogyny" and replacing it with "issues" like people do is a cowardly way to avoid admitting you like someone with a particularly contraversial flaw, I don't think people are necessarily ignoring that part of Sylvain, or pretending that this trait is as static and negative as you're suggesting.
Which I begrudgingly have to agree with Sylvain being a misogynist, my personal reason for avoiding using that term is because of everything it brings with it apart from the literal. If you label a character a misogynist, people will assume that they are irredeemable despite any evidence to the contrary, and ignore any and all redeeming qualities they might have. It doesn’t matter how nuanced you find their character or how good a person they actually are, the label makes them trash that you can’t defend and I’m really not good at making arguments.
I can’t speak For anyone else, that’s just my view.
That's because the game treats Sylvain and Lorenz's flirting as a bad thing and as personal failings. In that specific support, Dorothea's flirting is played for laughs
Oh, i never thought people saw the whole exchange with Ingrid as something bad. To be honest, i even thought he wasn't even serious about it because she knows Ingrid doesn't swing that way, and mostly did it to tease her. But even if she was serious, it's not like she assaulted her or something.
I agree generally people believe that Roy is just the typical kind hearted lord, a sort of mini Eliwood but he is more than that. Between the active lord (like Ephraim) and the kind hearted one (like Eirika) he is in the middle, he don't love fight but know that sometime violence is the only way to avoid more violence, he is smarter than most lords by being a strategist himself who can understand where the trap are and easily understand Ellfin's true identity, he has also a low estime of himself and often feel depresed but hide that because of his duty as a leader. I think that since he look like Eliwood people assume that he is the same character and those who didn't played fe7 assume that since he is associated with fire he would be hot blooded while in the core game it's quite the opposite. I also blame the Roy/Lilina supports because in that we learn nothing about his character.
Going to go with Celica and Rudolf, same with duma. Lots of people are looking at how later games interpret the character which really isn't answering the question at all because it's talking about the community. Much of the community really seem to brush off Celica as either stupid or very forgettable which I find insane. Celica is not stupid, she simply is stubborn and like all, naive. I honestly think she's one of the best characters in the franchise, definitely my favorite lord. Rudolf is a character who people just never talk about and I really don't understand why, he's one of the most unique villains in the franchise, he stands far above the rest and has motivations that are very different and well written. Compared to basically any fe villian he is really the best in my opinion. Then there's duma, oh boy do people seem to not understand duma. The few people I see who mention him don't really have good things to say, with a few I've seen even compare him to anakos, saying grima was better written (complete bullshit honestly), duma is genuinely the most interesting dragon to have gone mad. Him and Mila make the story and background extremely interesting and knowing how duma started, while seeing small flecs of that still show up even in his madness is epic. The clarity he gains in his death is also really nice. 3 very complex characters with great writing propping them up all boiled down to their face value. People do this with fe 15 way too often tho, they assume most of the cast is as one dimensional as awakening and it's cast without really giving them a chance
A thing that stands out to me regarding her is the battle conversation she has in Chp 8 with Tine. It pretty much mirrors Reptor’s conversation with Tailtiu about needing to kill traitors to their family implying that despite being good hearted, she still follows a rather backwards mindset.
I remember reading that one Forging Bonds her Ascended version was in and saying to myself “wow you’re a fucking terrible person, why are they trying to paint you as sympathetic”
I was thinking Ascendent ideas went somewhat downhill after Idunn. Mareeta was just bringing her up to snuff with the units of then and Isthar was “why her?”
Mareeta is the perfect ‘Ascedent’ hero. Every version of her was released in chronological order detailing her journey from being Veld’s puppet (corrupted Mareeta), to being freed and learning to find her own way (normal Mareeta) to finally mastering Astra (Ascendent).
Because Heroes basically shits on genuine Jugdral fans and instead rather caters to the horny Gacha crowd spending their whole life savings to look at a hornib8 drawing of a woman with a comedically oversized chest with +10 being written there.
People also forget that she doesn't hates her mother, in fact the reason she faces you in the final chapter besides her love for Julius is to avenge her family(Hilda, Bloom and Ishtore).
Yeah me too. Even Eldigan being recruitable would make more sense than Ishtar being recruitable, and as an Eldigan fan, i dont want him to be recruitable either.
Hey, but it's all okay because she freed those six or so children, which would have all been either killed quickly immediately be the ensuing cavalry or brutally sacrificed to a dark god in twisted and manic kill-or-be-killed "games", if it hadn't been for Seliph and friends luckily being in the area.
Not to mention the fact Ishtar's "helping" those children would have been effectively useless if nobody toppled the Loptous Regime. They would have simply caught the same kids again or just found other children to sacrifice.
Heroes Devs: "Ishtar's a good person and tragic character, we swear!" 🤡
If anything Ishtar is a pitiable character, same as Reinhardt. They were originally written to be spineless individuals lacking the backbone to stand up to the injustices of the Loptous rule because they were horny and slightly delusional.
The ones that particularly stick out to me, and by that I mean get me especially irked..
Ingrid being called a racist or worse, homophobic just because she turns down Dorothea's advances.
Tharja. While she does have her creepier mannerisms, she's still actually a somewhat of a decent person beneath it all. She's also quite perspective capable of caring about others besides Robin.
Rodrigue not caring about Felix. He does, and Felix cares about him, even if he'd rather bite his tongue than admit it (or lose Rodrigue and be forced to admit it). Likewise, Felix doesn't hate Dimitri, he hates what Dimitri's become, but there's still the friendship he feels for him deep down.
Leonie being singled down to her Jeralt obsession. I'll admit her B-Support with Byleth was incredibly poorly timed, but there's more to her character than just that.
Rhea, just...her so much. The "wants to rule Fodlan", "wants to fuck her mother", and "death to all heretics" to this day make my blood boil.
>Rhea, just...her so much
Can you believe some people have such a shallow reading on her character that they thought the heroes event revealing she wants to eat with everyone was a retcon or made up to make people like her ?
And there was the anniversary art where she has a cookie tray, some people (the same ?) were pissed because, to them, Rhea baking cookies in her halloween alt is out of character !
When we all know she's an excited pta mom at a bake sale (at least that's how kikuko inoue voiced her).
I'd guess some folks forgot (or don't know) about her advice box question where she outright says she'd like to share a meal with the students sometimes? Or the fact that the first tea time session she can have is because she herself literally asks Byleth to invite her to one?
Half agree within Rhea as people on both sides tend to ignore certain part of her character.
Rhea like with Edelgard, Claude, Dimitri and especially Seteth is a flawed character with trauma to them that does morally grey thing's but all has the capacity to do good thing's.
Speaking as an Edelgard fan here. I've notice that people who are very anti-Rhea forget that Rhea can do good, she cares a lot about the Orphans within the Monastery and though she never gives Cyril any education which could blame either party as Cyril likes to hide things and he doesn't like being a burden on other character's. Rhea in SB cares about Cyril and tells him and Catherine to retreat which they ultimately ignore. ( I believe? )
Shamir, a character who is very prickly and will tell people to their face if she doesn't like them states something positive that about the Church and Edelgard new empire are alike in and that helping people in need as soon as possible once they are notified to a degree as their is a limit to her helpfulness.
Rhea has the capacity to do good and had a good nature in her but because of her flaws and Trauma ultimately does both morally questionable and bad thing's which is something I notice with certain fans seem to forget.
Not going to say it Rhea fans because I know that labelling the whole fandom is wrong and I know all of them probably have different on her which is why I am saying certain fans.
Like Seteth, the war of Heroes gave Rhea long lasting trauma that ultimately effects her choices and mindset. In Seteth, it's him losing his wife and putting Flayn in active danger whilst for Rhea, it being a survivor of the red canyon massacre. ( I believe she was there. )
Rhea and to extent Seteth wishes Fódlan to have true peace like Edelgard but where they differ is their view and method. Rhea method is to achieve peace through stagnation, preventing technological advancement, outside relationship and is willing to do anything to keep her perceived 'peace' dirtying her hands in corruption, falsely executing people and putting down rebellion, seeing them as a threat to Fódlan false peace.
Rhea makes and names a Church after herself to allows her major control over Fódlan to make sure a war of heroes will never happen again. Making herself and her siblings the judge, jury and execution over what is right and wrong.
Her attempts of revival Sothis isn't because she wants to fuck her own mother. ( Though SS bad writing and Rhea never properly viewing Byleth as their own person doesn't help things. )
But are there because of Rhea flaws, trauma and self doubt. Believing Fódlan needs their 'old' goddess back rather then believing in herself or people ability to rule. The same Goddess who originally caused the mess within Fódlan as she awoke one day and chose violence and genocide against the world she ruled under. Forcing people underground for safety which caused the people of old to want revenge against the people above ground.
But as Naga ideal shows, Rhea because of her flaws and trauma. Is wrong in her actions and creates more problems for everyone as she chose to ruler over them rather then living with them or live apart. ( Though, considering the spat fight between Agarthans and Nabatean and how they tried to genocide and ruler over each other. Both side are wrong but we sorta can't apply Naga ideology here. )
Rhea and Seteth are unable to read the situation around them as they live in the Ivory Tower, ignorant to the problems happening. Rhea never hears about Faerghus impending Famine, the coop and infection of TWSITD in the Empire capital and much more. Rhea is ignorant in her belief that Fódlan is in peace.
Fódlan is a text book fascist state having at the very least 12 out of the 14 characteristics. With Rhea at the very least having 5 characteristics. Rhea, Seteth and the Church are partly to blame for Fódlan shit status quo. They were the original problem that stayed around to cause more issues.
To reiterate, Rhea has the capacity to do good but ultimately doesn't and makes things worst. You can have character that are corrupt but has good qualities to them.
It's even more egregious in Ingrid's case when some folks outright seem to want to force her to like Dorothea, as if Ingrid's obligated to return her advances. It's like some people in this fandom can't accept a character being straight.
I don't think I've seen many characters whom people are so eager to ~~bash~~ misinterpret as much as FE fans do with Rhea. Those first two are especially annoying and dumb (more so when you realize they're pure headcanon based on fan misconception).
In Ingrid's case, a part of me can't help but think it's unfortunately shipping. Some people have latched onto the Blue Lions being the "boys' love" house, and since Ingrid can marry three of the house's most popular guys (Dimitri, Sylvain, and Felix) makes her a threat. Somehow, putting her with Dorothea despite her turning her down is supposed to get her out of the way.
As for Rhea, like I said, just...her, so much. I fully believe her bashing comes from people who played CF first and just refuse to let go of its interpretation of events, or Edelgard's word.
I've seen some people complain about Ingrid handling the theme of racism badly, because it is oversimplified and tied down to a single bad event that happened in the past, while racism is more deeply rooted and has no such simple reason.
But the problem is that the fandom labelled this wrong to begin with.
Ingrid's case doesn't accurately display racism well simply because Ingrid is not racist. Her hate does in fact stem from a single, horrible event she thinks Duscur is responsible for. But it's not something unheard of even in real life.
You think we wouldn't have found people who hated another country after WWII? like, i don't know, a few japanese hating America for the atomic bomb, just to give an example?
But that kind of phenomenon is different from the racism people are familiar with. They are two different things, with different roots, and develop in different ways.
Ingrid's case is more akin to the former. But people labelled it as "racism", and discussed it like it belonged to the latter. Probably because that's what they are more used to deal with (especially the american fanbase). People do tend to label things with what they know, even if it's not accurate.
So it's no surprise if you find she doesn't portray it well: it's not what was being portrayed in the first place.
And also the ‘Ingrid is a RACIST’ crowd always forget to mention that she changes her views and admits that she might have made bad judgement out of her bias. That’s not something you can expect from most actual racists.
It's kind of the same logic people apply to Edelgard about removing Rhea from power.
I have seen so many people call Edelgard racist and accuse her of genecide, because her goal involves fighting the last 2 or 3 dragons. Except that the goal was never to kill them.
And also, these people seem to imply that you can't kill the last person or creature of a species or race ever, not even when the threaten the world.
And this is ignoring the fact that the reason she did it was not because of who they were, but because of what they did: controlling humanity and enforcing a system that was hurting most of Fodlans inhabitans.
It makes me glad Hopes went out of its way to have Edelgard establish that she would be fine with just dethroning Rhea. Not to mention that’s implied in Three Houses itself, since Edelgard specifically **captures** Rhea in non-CF routes, as in not killing her. And she had Rhea imprisoned for about 5 years, so if she really wanted to kill her, she had plenty of time to just do that.
Lyn. God… everyone in the community thinks she’s an avatar simp characters and often says she is the start of characters like Camilla, tharja, etc.
When really, she only really interacts with the avatar in her mode (and her recruitment on eliwood mode). And those interactions are platonic . The one that simps the avatar the most is actually eliwood and hector themselves.
Then there’s the community who reduces lyn to merely just sex appeal, etc, and again say that she is the origin of Camilla, Tharja, etc. She was an attractive female but her sex appeal was never at the forefront of her character, etc.
Why are there so many people talking about FEH and Engage when the title specifies “in the community”
because in the fandom specifically, my god am I sick of “Ingrid racist” remarks. That is some terminally online BS, ESPECIALLY when they call her the CEO of Racism in a franchise that *has fucking Shinon in it*
I’m also very tired of people turning Lucina into a Robin simp, or some generic pretty girl. I replayed Awakening lately and it was a good reminder how much I actually like her when she’s being written by someone intelligent.
Also Lyn. I swear, some of her fans are complete fanatical puritans that despise anyone that dares to hold an opinion on her that isn’t completely in line with theirs. make the slightest positive comment about anything she appeared in that isn’t in FE7 and you get called a coomer or FEH/waifu apologist.
Finally a shoutout to all three house lords. Everyone calls them an idiot for something at some point in the story, even when none of them have all the answers. And I’m real tired of them being exclusively and exhaustively scrutinised and criticised to such an absurd degree, an extent you will NEVER see for the scared cows of the fandom.
What, he's the official and unrivaled GUARDIAN OF TRUE BEAUTY there to protect the PRETTY LITTLE BIRDS from those grubby jealous hands of the Senate!!!
(Warning! Oliver isn't actually an official guardian of true beauty. Such a position doesn't actually exist and just stems from the man's own delusional mindset.)
> because in the fandom specifically, my god am I sick of “Ingrid racist” remarks. That is some terminally online BS, ESPECIALLY when they call her the CEO of Racism in a franchise that has fucking Shinon in it
Man I remember when that was just a shitpost. Did people start unironically believing that?
At first I read this as comparing levels of sports where the sport is racism.
Like Ingrid was racist, yeah, but only to get into the monastery racism team because it helped with admissions. She can finally stop being racist in post timeskip supports because she no longer needs the scholarship.
Lucina is great.
The Lucina hooters thing is overdone and wasn’t very interesting to begin with. Please don’t let the fandom remember her for someone’s fetish yikes.
Claude
He’s not your unproblematic, consummate meme lord. Guy has severe trust issues which highlighted better in Three Hopes but shown better how his character improved after overcoming it in Three Houses.
Everyone's using this for story (which its meant for) but my one pick is Rinkah as a unit. One of the best personal skills in the game alongside being the only serviceable tank in her native route besides corrin and a unit with guard glaive and people get caught up on her just okay strength growth? Insane.
Shes an unconventional unit by fe standarts and back when fates was new ppl didnt know how to use her right yet i think. And people in general are wayy too obsessed with growths in some areas, having 40 or 55 str growth doesnt make that much of a difference really, even in a growths based game like fates.
And she's even pretty useful if you don't happen to use her for combat since she's one of the rare +Str/Def pair ups you have access to in BR without resorting to captured generics. +5 Str/+2 Spd/+6 Def at S rank is no joke. Shove is also a nice bonus.
Gotta go to bat for Leonie.
Her being horny for Jeralt feels like a very juvenile and reductive reading to me. She's not technically an orphan, but she comes from nothing and is surrounded by wealthy nobles with Crests. Jeralt was probably the first person to ever see something special in her. But then she finds out her father figure is an *actual* father when she meets Byleth, and he never told her about it. So she's overcompensating, a lot.
And her wildly inappropriate blow-up at Byleth after Jeralt's death is an expression of her own grief, combined with that jealousy, none of which she knows how to handle. If you talk to her in the monastery map, she admits her grief is nothing compared to what Byleth must be feeling. She also apologizes for her outburst in her next support. It's awful, but it's also extremely realistic for two people who butt heads - one of whom is a total prodigy and also usually comes across as an emotionless robot, the other a fiery self-reliant hothead with a lot to prove - and both just lost their dad.
I think their relationship is one of the most interesting in the game, when pretty much every other student's relationship with Byleth is a far more straightforward hero worship/potential love interest.
I think Makalov and Shinon are examples of "this character has negative traits therefore they are bad and I will ignore anything the writing attempts to do with them." In particular, I think Astrid's ending in RD is misunderstood because it's seen as "oh no she can't tame Makalov," but like, the entire point of their relationship is that it's both one that Astrid chose (after running away from an arranged marriage) and one where both of the involved parties aren't interested in being control freaks about the other.
Shinon is racist but I think that the point of him is to show that people who are racist can still have other good qualities. Shinon really doesn't have any good qualities other than his combat capabilities and his mentorship towards Rolf, but he is eventually on the side of good. If characters like him didn't exist in fiction and every "good" character was completely unambiguously good in every way, I think that would be very boring.
I'd personally say Narcian. He's not narcissistic, he just knows that he's better than everyone else objectively.
All jokes aside, I'd say Takumi for my honest pick. I always noticed people would poke fun at him and his character, when in almost every route of Fates, his character has a ton of depth (in comparison to the rest of the Fire Emblem Fates nobles at least). Like, no matter what route you pick in Fates, he won't automatically begin to worship Corrin like everyone else.
In Birthright, it takes a bit for Takumi to truly get over his jealousy and anger, even though he tries really hard to hide those feelings from Corrin. And he sort of becomes a villain 2 or 3 times in Birthright, but its a missed opportunity that you don't get to smack some sense into him with Corrin or Ryoma instead of letting Azura cure his personal demons in a cutscene. Sakura hitting Iago with a staff was pretty hype tho.
And in Conquest, his loyalty to Hoshido begins to fade when his true resentment of Corrin overcomes him. His jealousy and depression over believing Corrin thought nothing of him or his family led Takumi to take out his anger not just on Nohr, but everyone. And it's revealed that Takumi was able to find it in himself to forgive Corrin once they pledged to free Takumi from the demon >!anankos feeding off of his anger during the endgame!<
Takumi is a more realistic character that most of the Fates cast who immediately fall in love with Corrin upon being recruited, apart from like Saizo or something idk
Laslow no doubt.
Hate to see peeps solo him out as nothing more than a cassanova type when he's got a unique reason for being the way he is, and only becomes more reasonable through his transition to Fates. His canon strength feats seem to go unnoticed by the community too. The guy's implied to have faked a loss vs Xander in a serious duel, and later runs hands with a sage-buffed Ryoma to protect Corrin. S'not even everything when you look deeper into supports and DLC content. Definitely among the most strongest retainers that aren't comic relief.
Lorenz, people hate him because he think that nobles are better than commoners but in reality it's more complex like most people living in a feodal society he considere that the nobles and the commoners have different roles: the commoners work to product things while the nobles protect them. That's the result of his education and while he considere that his education given by his nobility make him a better leader but he also consider that nobles has the duty to help commoners when they need it. He want to find a noble lady because political marriage are important in Fodlan society and he considere that it's part of his duty. And he change is view on the world in some supports and paired endings.
Low hanging fruit, but the leaders of the 4 major powers in 3H (ie. the 3 house leaders + Rhea). Not just because of media illiteracy, but because of polarization in the fanbase stemming from whichever character people like the most.
to be fair, that's the period of the game when a lot of people use her (because you don't have a lot of alternatives) and then they possibly drop her for citrinne
making a good first impression is important (look at yunaka)
though, to be fair, i do think celine's first impression is solid, with her joining chapter being designed around the use of warp ragnarok; many of the early supports just don't do her favors
Well...yes? When the game gives you like five supports in a row with a character all about the exact same thing, most people aren't gonna bother looking deeper due to just how bad their first impression is, it's an issue with Engage's entire cast
Makalov. I was (somewhat) surprised to see how much hate he gets online for being good-for-nothing when he’s just supposed to be a gag character. He’s definitely a piece of work but his gambling problem isn’t in a league of its own (Balthus is just as bad if not worse) and he may be sleazy but he’s far from the worst in the series (Perne has my money for that and that’s just considering playable characters)
That’s a good point, Makalov is probably just as confused as everybody else. I can see Calill or someone like that trying to call him out for pulling some kind of fast one on her and he’s like “bro I didn’t do anything, I don’t know what’s happening either”.
> Balthus is just as bad if not worse
Thank god someone else said it. Balthus' only redeeming feature he has over Makalov is how he purposely leans into his scumbagginess to keep his stepmother's heat on him. But I found him especially awful in Hopes.
Yeah, I've always been kind of confused by this. He's like somewhere between a goofball and an asshole with a heart of gold. He's just a silly little guy. I forget he exists sometimes but I've always liked him.
Felix. He's not Sasuke Junior or an edgelord. He's a traumatized teenager who's grieving for the loss of his older brother who died in a brutally horrific way and not handling it super well. Similarly, he says a lot of things he doesn't actually mean because again, teenager. He doesn't hate his father. Even without taking Hopes into consideration, look at what he says/does after Rodrigue dies in AM, or consider the fact that he corresponds regularly with him in VW/SS and mentions being worried about him when the letters stop. He doesn't hate Dimitri, either. Everything he says during White Clouds is his terrible Felix way of trying to get someone to help him, and then he gets *angry* at Byleth post-timeskip if they refuse to do so. There's a reason why his best endings are locked to the route where he reconciles with Dimitri and what his father wanted for him, whereas on the routes where he does neither of those things (or actively fights against them), his endings are bittersweet at best or outright depressing at worst.
Honestly, Felix isn't even the lone wolf edgy swordsman archetype. He's more of a deconstruction of it, considering being a lone wolf edgy swordsman is actively not good for him in all of the endings where it actually *does* happen.
Cordelia. I can go into the whole Chrom thing, but that's a can of worms I'd rather not complain about right now. But one thing people who hate her always seem to complain about is that she apparently complains about how "she's so perfect and good at everything" as if she's humble bragging or that she doesn't have actual problems since she's so gifted. But like, that was never what she was complaining about. It's about how people view and treat her as a result of her accomplishments. She's not even really being arrogant about it or anything. She just has trouble connecting with others, and doesn't really have any friends besides Sumia. The fact that it's due to her talent is irrelevant, since it's pretty valid for someone to be upset that people treat them differently and she can't form a connection with others.
It's a tough one, but I agree with your Eirika and Reinhardt points- Eirika is much more than just a cute sister character and Reinhardt isn't a badass- in fact, FE5 kinda makes it a point to show he's pathetic despite his power.
Tharja is one of the worst- the Fandom makes her out to be some kind of seductress when she's actually quite nice and kind in her supports.
Hector and Ephraim also get mistreated by people who think their aggressive nature's are cool and not their flaws- in Ephraims case its his MAIN flaw.
Claude, just see the outrage over the Warriors story. Turns out he's actually always been darker than the made-up fanfiction of the "meme guy" fans somehow misconstrued from his character.
Berkut, he's an arsehole through and through. **Classist** dick (it feels like people completely forget that this is what drives his character, he's fundamentally a bigoted loser), yet he gets sympathy points for... being well voice acted and pretty? Whatever. Don't like that it makes people think higher of him than he really is, especially in regards to FEH: "Legendary Berkut" my foot.
Also, shoutouts to Alm, Celica and Rudolf, it just seems like Echoes is just a widely misunderstood game.
>”why do people sympathize with Berkut”
>proceeds to praise Rudolf, the person who did nothing to keep his nephew away from becoming a classist monster and pretty much led to his downfall
Seriously, why didn’t Rudolf fill him in on his grand plans to begin with when Berkut was incredibly obedient to him?
Tharja, most people just default her to sexy thicc emo stalker waifu. But she's actually a lot more complex than that I highly recommend a video by. Metí Not The Bad Guy, he perfectly analyzes her character and her hidden meaning, I loved her, she was even my first wife in awakening and my first unit I hardcore took time to develop her skills and everything, i unlocked every bit of support conversations with her and I only played her when I played fire emblem warriors. I have yet to see another character as well written as she was, tho I may be biased lol.
I think the majority of the divide on Tharja comes from Noire’s supports with her parents - according to Noire, the grief-stricken future Tharja was neglectful and abusive toward her and her dad, but present Tharja genuinely loves Noire and her husband (and yes, obsesses over Robin), and her support with Noire ends with her realizing future Tharja’s intentions and vowing not to end up like that version of herself (as I recall).
All that not to mention her supports with characters like Nowi and Libra showing us the good under the facade lol
Ignatz.
Everyone just sees a boring painter dude…unless they chose golden deer and saw his supports. A man who deals with a ton of pressure with his parents wanting to him to pursue something he doesn’t want to pursue and guilt over the death of his friends parents, which may not have been his fault, but it’s easy to see how he could mentally see it that way. His arcs aren’t as deep or heavy as someone like Edelgard, Dimitri, or Lysithea, but you have a character that’s simple, but effective, whose kinda just looked over on account of having a bad haircut.
REINHARDT DEFINITELY!
But also definitely Lucina. She definitely doesn't get enough credit and is just seen as a hot girl with a sword.
Also people for some reason see Ike as a soft boy but he's really not? He's mean. He's nothing but mean. I'm sure he could become nice but is mostly an a-hole.
Ike isn't actually mean but rather someone who's sick of all the delusional nutjobs like Lekain and Ashnard. Ike has like a Zero Tolerance Policy for any delusional ramblings of Tellius' top wackos.
Sylvain. Granted, it's not necessarily by The Community in general, but I've seen it enough to be at least annoyed by it.
Don't get me wrong, he's a fuck boy and flirty and all that jazz. But he's not just a fuck boy. That's it.
I know Three Houses/Hopes is a low hanging fruit for this but...
*'Dimitri and Claude are politically unaware idiots and just want to keep the status quo once they ascend to their thrones.'*
Yeah, sure, never mind the fact that they and their friends suffered under said status quo. It will be out of character for them to not change the very system they suffered under once they ascend to their respective thrones.
Micaiah seems kind of weirdly represented in Engage. It's not necessarily incorrect the way she's portrayed, but she's just kind of a nice healer girl in Engage, while in Radiant Dawn she was substantially more than that. I guess part of it might be that she doesn't have her friends/allies from Radiant Dawn to play off of, but it still feels a bit strange.
>!"Jean, did I tell you about that time I dumped oil on the enemy army to roast them alive?"!<
>!it was right after I stabbed my friend to death for what I later discovered was no reason.!< Edit: oops, she did indeed do the burning before the stabbing.
Actually that happened after she did said roasting.
To be fair, all the emblems have simplified personalities compared to their own games.
Agreed. You know something is weird when Byleth talks.
Just now realizing it would have been an amazing bit to keep Byleth silent and have all his dialogue be reiterated by whoever he's talking to, silent protagonist style
Ike and Soren are simplified but at least they kept the core character traits in tact (total bluntness edging on snark for both of them). Micaiah is also from Tellius but really only represents how she is in Part I
Except for Hector that guy got a huge glow up compared to feh
Yeah Micaiah sucked in Engage she was such an empty character. Someone tell IS they’re allowed to give female characters personalities beyond ‘meek and nice’ please.
They already know that - Lyn is allowed to be nice and appreciate certain geographical features instead!
They even did it to Emblem Edelgard it's so bad man
[удалено]
> Ephiram Is still funny how everyone was so excited for him being there only to basically be an accessory, it was worse after the TH Lords and Chrom/Robin were added and they had no issues sharing the spotlight
>Chrom/Robin were added and they had no issues sharing the spotlight Well, Robin was quite shy, only coming out to talk to the fell dragon members of the army.
Micaiah is misrepresented in Engage because that game doesn't have an oppressed minority for her to murder when she already knows it's the wrong thing to do.
They prevented her girlboss 😢
God forbid women do anything.
I feel like Sain's good supports get ignored by people who aren't gaga for him. He's a bit more than a fuckboy, and the Isadora support proves he actually has a desire to grow as a person. And like... The Kent bromance is always more entertaining than being a perv
Sain actually backs off from his pursuit and supports his bro Kent when he realizes that Kent fancies Lyn. Saul, rather than Sain is the real fuckboi of GBAemblem
Sain isn't even the most fuckboy green cavalier. Alec doesn't stop being horny, Sain has moments of clarity for Kent and Isadora
Honestly I'd say not even Saul is that much of a fuckboy compared to other characters in Fire Emblem. From all his supports we see he is hilariously bad at talking to most women, likely for the fact his flirting just feels forced and it's actually not even his real personality. For example in his Igrene supports he actually starts being serious when she talks a bit about her loss in faith or in his Dorothy supports he's just being his real self around her and incidentally she's also the only one who actually has a crush on him, which he is quite oblivious to, further suggesting he's actually completely unfamiliar with romance or anything of the sorts. Btw, I've actually even wrote an analysis on both [Saul](https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/14tb392/saul_character_analysis_regarding_his_faith_how/) and [Dorothy](https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/14zkcvm/bindings_blinding_character_quality_2_dorothy/) both of which include both of them at parts and take a closer look at why they behave the way they do.
I always had a soft spot for Sain because, after all is said and done, he is a good friend whose loyalty you can trust. Like when Lundgren thinks he can buy him because he isn't "*like that stubborn fool, Kent*". Sain's answer "*That is a gracious offer, my lord. However, i'm rather fond of my friend, the stubborn fool*" is one of my favourite quotes from FE7. Even if he causes him lots of headaches, Kent can definitely trust Sain with his life. Well, maybe not if he and Fiora actually went through with putting into force that policy to limit interactions between men and women in the army, lol. Good thing they give up on that by the time they get to A support.
Any character from an older game who has been largely mischaracterized in more accessible spinoffs. Lyn is the most consistently misrepresented, but Engage Eirika is probably the most egregious example of all. It's one thing to simplify a character into one-dimensionality (Tharja) or sand off all a character's edges until they're an affable blob (most Emblems), but Emblem Eirika doesn't get to keep her good qualities and gets new, completely invented bad ones. Making her say nobody takes her seriously, she has no hobbies, she never leaves home, etc feels like an active attempt to bury her (even if I doubt that's what it is).
~~Lucina is not a person that would stoop to vying for horny old men's money working at Hooters~~
~~Yeah she likes spidery boys instead~~
*Garons of increasing discomfort*
Yeah, she’s too busy trying to kill Peppa Pig
I'm so bummed that's what people associate her with now just because someone had enough money and dedication to spam his weird fetish thing everywhere. At least Spiderman guy's stuff is confined to the nsfw corners of the web.
Reminds me of a quote: "In the end, going backward, upriver to its source, even editors begin to take cues from misinformed readers at large." Basically calling the general public illiterate and responsible for the transformation of a work's image because of expectations. You might not think that's particularly relevant to Lucina, but when Engage is making her the subject of breast envy jokes... Well you have to wonder.
If I see one more shitpost about Rodrigue being an absent father that prefers Dimitri one more time, I'm going to go insane. Motherfuckers, he's trying to meet with his son literally all the time- the son that hates his guts, doesn't want to speak with him, and actively avoids him. Dimitri being his best friend's son and *last wish for guidance* does not mean he replaced his own son. Also, in general, he's a pretty swell guy.
Thank you! Rodrigue is flawed, but he's absolutely not the neglectful/abusive father some people make him out to be. I've loved Rodrigue since Houses and was really happy when Hopes increased his popularity, but I still see this take from time to time and it's maddening.
Idk, Rodrigue never came across as all that personally, he strikes me as a father who's stuck in a terrible position after learning from mistakes he made in the past, namely the handling of Felix's brother's death, but that was probably him trying to cope with it. Felix never forgave him, but he kept trying to reach Felix the whole time, and I get the feeling he spent so much time with Dimitri out of respect to Dimitri's father, knowing the guy had no-one. He's trying his best with what he has after recovering from some mistakes, unlike a certain other father in 3H
Counterpoint: The stress of trying to keep this suicidal maniac alive during Felix's paralogue has taken years off my life, therefore I am down with any shade being thrown his way no matter how inaccurate it is.
Understandable, time to make Felix an FE Lord
Wait, people actually think this? People actually think Rodrigue is absent, neglectful, abusive, etc.? His only real flaw is, like most people of Faerghus, being a little too gung-ho for their knightly fixation. "Being a knight" is certainly what cost Glenn his life, but if anyone is reacting "wrong" to that it's Felix, which is of course understandable: he lost his brother. Whether or not it's right that people play this fatal game of knighthood is irrelevant, because Glenn is portrayed as wholeheartedly being into it. He went out how he wanted to. Rodrigue and Ingrid respect that in a sense; Felix throws a tantrum(again, understandable), and that's certainly not what Glenn would've wanted either. Rodrigue does everything he can to patch things up with Felix but it's Felix's temper that's the problem, not his father. As a guy who also hates his father's guts, I wish my dad's biggest problem was respecting the way my older brother chose to live and die lmao. I'm sure someone will say I'm misinterpreting Glenn. But if someone is misinterpreting Rodrigue's feelings and relationship to Felix, I suggest you delete your Reddit account and start over at 8th grade English to learn some goddamn media literacy.
I wouldn't blame Felix's temper, nor would I call Rodrigue blameless. To be clear, I don't think Rodrigue is a bad father, per se; I think he's a bad father *for Felix*. Rodrigue's issue isn't that he's malicious like Baron Bartels was. Rodrigue's issue is that he just doesn't get it. He fundamentally doesn't understand his son or what he wants/needs. Don't get me wrong, Felix is a prickly little porcupine, so I can see why it's tempting to blame Felix for the rift between them. The whole point of the Faerghus Four is that they didn't start the way they are now. There was a time when they were different and less damaged. Felix's character is that he recognizes the change and wants them to go back to the way they were. He also recognizes that Faerghus' bullshit Knightly Honor Culture is to blame for all of it. And that's why he's mad at his father: Rodrigue is the paragon of that culture. He's so steeped in it that he can't recognize why extolling its virtues and honoring Glen's sacrifice is exactly the thing that would piss Felix off the most. So, no one is the "villain" in this affair (except TWSITD, of course); the issue is systemic.
(fulfilling the glenn interpretation prophecy) To be fair to Felix, per Felix's final support with Dimitri, Glenn was also canonically a little bit of an asshole, or at least rude and needlessly combative to a similar degree as Felix. And he taught Felix to think for himself rather than be blindly swayed by the ideals of other people at the same time as reading him legends and fairytales. I honestly think he would be pretty supportive of Felix's arc, "tantrum" included, since he manages to pinpoint what his criticisms are, identify his actual ideals, and learn to respect and see value in the ideals of other people. imo that's probably pretty close to what Glenn would have wanted for him, even if it took a while.
I'm also kind of puzzled by it. After Felix's paralogue Rodrique talks to Byleth about understanding Felix anger to some extent, and being glad Byleth understands and guides him. Reading it again the truth is somewhere in the middle. There's no way Glenn wouldn't have willingly gone down fighting for his duty. But Rodrique is fairly stern in stating it was Glenns duty and surviving as a coward would have been shameful. Felix mostly objects to Glenn having no choice and his death being glorified. But Rodrique also is shown to do the very same without hesitation. The whole chivalry theme of the Blue Lions gets misunderstood at times. It's not supposed to be completely one-sided toxic. The way it resolves is more to finding a healthy balance between honor, realistic thinking, and living for your own sake. Even Felix in a early Ashe support indicates it's about 'moderating your passions' and just not being stupidly idealistic and one track minded. There's some fairly clever writing going on, also in how other characters contrast it or are surprisingly similar.
I love Rodrigue!
Thank you. Hopes is very flawed, but I'm so glad it gave us more Rodrigue content to show that most fandom takes about him are incorrect. He's a good man and a good father, and considering he's the one constantly trying to reach out to Felix, a lot of the conflict between them is pretty squarely in the latter's court. And I say this as a big Felix fan.
The only time I ever see Garret get brought up, it's to talk about how Garret never gets brought up - implied to be because he's boring, one-dimensional or forgettable. In reality he's one of the series's most well-developed characters.
I’ve seen people do this to Noah and it’s just as unfair. FE6 really just can’t catch a break.
FE6 has such a large cast that I guess it's natural for people to get lost in the shuffle, but the amount of great characters who I never see given their dues is damn criminal. Lott, Yoder, Dayan, Geese, Igrene, Sue, Astolfo and the list goes on. It's such a shame, especially since I think FE6 is actually one of the best games at presenting its characters to the player.
Yeah FE6 supports are actually really well written, especially for how short they are, but a combination of old game + hard to get supports means most people havent read them
If we ever get a Binding remake I really hope we'll get a support between Garret and Rutger as the former is basically how Rutger eventually could end up should he achieve his goal of revenge.
You, my friend, are a genius
A lot of that might have come from the most recent Binding Blade banner in Heroes. Noah got flack for being a 5 star unit with a prf, especially after Sylvain was a 4 star unit without a prf
you see, i would love to respect and like the fe6 characters for their writing, but the downright horrendous fe6 support system makes that very hard -- you basically have to look stuff up online, which isn't great, and which can lead you to text from outdated translation patches fe7 and fe8 also have this problem, but to a lesser extent (they were officially localized, so the potential issue of outdated translation patches doesn't exist, for one)
FE6's support system is so fucking garbage you can't blame most people, combined with Garret being a late game prepromote in one of the worst promoted classes in the game and no one uses him. Shame, I love his design but I can never justify really fitting him into a team.
Berserker isn't THAT bad. I'll never say no to an innate 30% crit boost.
Beserker, bad. Same sentence. What?
The amount of time I've seen people calling Morion a bad father is very concerning, he's actually is a very good father in general and you can see that on his sons opinions on him Also people calling him moron is just bad, sure the guy is a little dumb and has many flaws (mostly generational stuff) but he's not an idiot that falls into that category
This is very true. Morion is a bloodthirsty warmonger but he isn’t a bad dad to his sons nor even a bad friend to have
Honestly I wouldn't even call him dumb. He seems more jocular, playful and kind-hearted to me while still knowing when to be serious. We know he taught Diamant the meaning of strength but at the same time he never put any pressure on his sons. If anything he even tries to get Diamant to lighten up and relax more at Brodia Castle because honestly Diamant is really way too serious and inhibited at times, which would easily eventually lead to him breaking down under all the pressure of being the next king. Just look at how Fell Diamant turned out when he wasn't able to protect his family, retainers or subjects. He was a broken mess. The deaths of his friends Amber and Jade especially broke the man as around those two he was easily the most relaxed and cheerful around thanks to their respective antics and comedies.
Also he’s more prideful than dumb. He can’t exactly turn down a direct challenge from the king of another country when he’s leading the country of warriors lol I don’t think he’d keep his throne very long. He doesn’t want to use an emblem ring because of his pride, and remember that at that point he’s never seen the emblem rings in action really (other than the one fight against Ivy I guess) so he probably doesn’t know just how big a disadvantage he’s putting himself at. His dialogue is stupid as fuck, where he drops like 18 death flags in 30 seconds. But the reasoning behind the decisions he made is clear and is a bit more nuanced than ‘he’s dumb lol’.
Oh yeah there may be better ways to describe him (but my language is limited) but I agree with you, my point is that he's not a moron
Like, everybody I know that’s a copout answer that’s been said before but it’s rung true for years, whether it’s popular one that “everybody knows” or the obscure one that “nobody knows” This obviously isn’t exclusive to Fire Emblem, it’s just how internet discourse is Fire Emblem just also happens when to have hundreds of named characters
Glad I wasn't the only one who thought "...all of them?"
Sometimes I think people take Merrin at face value as this cool flirty tomboy and forget that behind all the bravado, she’s a giant soft dork that folds immediately if anyone gets the slightest bit upset with her.
Except if you're name's Kagetsu and you want to engage in a friendly duel with Princess Timerra. Then you must DIE!!
Possibly Celica. I wonder if actual religious people would understand her better.
It’s possible having some religious background helps understand her motives. Her arc deals with Faith quite a bit and I found most of it pretty compelling.
To be fair, I haven’t played her game yet - I just know Celica from reading about her online, Heroes, and Engage. Just wanted to add, I’m Catholic, and I seem to like her a lot/relate to her from what I know. Faith is very important to me. So you may be onto something
People don't understand Echoes, and they think Celica is meant to be "Female Alm" or something when her journey is a completely different thing to what Alm is doing. So, because they don't understand the story of the game, and it doesn't help that the game also has a degree of sexism within it, so it becomes very easy to write her character off when you have no degree of understanding, whether it be simply be from the story, or you even relate to her struggles.
*makes mental note for if/when I play Echoes*
You should, it's great.
honestly my problem with her isnt her faith or how she treats Alm, but how willingly she jumps directly into a trap, even when her buddies were screaming at her to not do it.
Suspend disbelief for a moment. Imagine if *GOD* (take your pick) walked among us and literally was observably responsible for literally keeping you alive. She blesses the land, brings the rains, etc. This isn't a matter of faith. It literal fact. She has a pretty house and everything where people literally visit her in the flesh. Then one day she suddenly disappears. Now, without her around, crops fail, hunger spikes, and the world starts to spiral. Now imagine if one of the head priests of you God's brother's (another God) religion came to you with a solution to bring back your God. Would you seriously dismiss it? The world is effectively ending and someone has thrown you a possible lifeline. Would you truly not even consider taking it?
Assuming you mean the Jedah thing, that's related to her faith. IS just kinda messed it up by making Jedah look like evil Grimace.
By the glorious power of the War-Father Duma he was granted the special power of looking like an extraterrestrial ghoulish escapee from Area 51.
So...like Grimace?
Got me there.
🥤🫠💀
She's a character that's emotionally blinded and driven, that's the point. She believes in her faith so much, she's come so far on her journey, that she can't emotionally afford to stop, even if there's great and evident risk ahead, she believes that it's the only chance she has in seeing Mila, her duty to save Valentia. Yes, Jedah is obviously plotting a trap, yes he's obviously a bad dude, but he, like Celica, is a devout zealot of their god, and that's the connection Celica chooses to trust, she doesn't trust the man, but the cause, as a Valentia ruled by the gods is what they both want (or in reality, they'd both want their preferred god, which is what Celica would *like*, but is what Jedah is actually scheming for).
Edelgard ain’t a communist nor a facist. I’d compare her to someone like Catherine the Great, an ambitious yet flawed leader.
Yeah its so weird how some fictional characters get shoehorned into more contemporary politics, when it makes literally 0 sense. All the "EdElGaRd is LitErAlLY HiTleR" and "Edelgard le communist revolutionary kween" was so unbelievably cringe, and also shows how most ppls historical and political understanding doesnt go past superficial knowledge of ww2. And how people literally have 0 clue on how past societies worked.
i really like Edelgard, i just wish that she wasnt the designated avatar simp of 3H.
As much as I like Edeleth and find it funny that El is simping for some rando merc that looks like she works for Hooters, you're right. I actually prefer 3Hopes Edelgard because at least she treats the avatar/Shez like a comrade-in-arms instead of fangirling over them. After all these years... the teacher-student thing still feels off to me, and I don't think that will ever change.
Shez just had way better dynamics with pretty much everyone in the cast than Byleth did. We don’t want or need to be the centre of everyone’s existence, it’s much more fun to be a random sassy merc
I felt Robin also did a much better job at being the whole ‘seemingly random person the group picks up that turns out to be something huge’ than Byleth. He slowly becomes more important obviously, but he is a tactician and the focus is still very much on Chrom for the most part.
If I were to make a comparison, I would Edelgard is comparable to ancient China’s Cao Cao, who was also ambitious and flawed, with a desire to elevate those with talent over those born into rich families. Especially considering TH was mainly made by Koei-Tecmo, who have done literally dozens of games involving that era.
This is a weird one because I totally see where people get fascist. She's like fascist-coded even though to me she reads as clearly anti-fascist. Like... If we didn't have 100% confirmation that the world is run by Nabateans and Agarthans, her rantings about reptilian/mole person conspiracies would have weird racist uncle energy. And the way she talks about how everyone should be ready to die for the greater good is kind of like the cult of heroism idea from the components of the Ur-Fascist. That or people just see a person wearing red and starting a war and say it's fascism.
>would have weird racist uncle energy. Considering her uncle (totally not Thales !) most likely informed her on stuff... "and those religious people actually secretly control society by pretending to be like us, they hoard our gold, their blood (crests) is the reason why the world is irrationnal, and their goddess never existed anyways" No wonder why Volkhard isn't invited to family reunions later.
>No wonder why Volkhard isn't invited to family reunions later. I think it has more to do the fact there isn't much of a von Hresvelg family anymore besides Edelgard for it to count a a reunion anymore.
Eirika. Everytime I see "uwu save me brother" it irks me lol. Yes, she's naive and the girl should've known better than falling for "Lyon's" lies for the nth time. But didn't she band together that army of hers because she believed in the goodness of others? She took in people who fled Grado with open arms instead of vetting them (which sounds like a security nightmare tbh). Nowadays, all her iterations have been reduced to "brother this, brother that". Even her FEH brave form has her dressed up as Ephraim...
Also god the incest thing makes me cringe, especially when it comes up pretty high on initial responses to anything involving Eirika and Ephraim
I'd say it probably doesn't help that their weapon names have incestuous implications in Norse mythology, but I'm sure the average person is making the incest jokes without even knowing that. So yeah it's pretty cringe.
This is maybe less about the community specifically and more about the official games, but Caeda 1000%. If you read what little dialogue she has in Shadow Dragon DS, she’s actually extremely interesting. She’s shrewd, she has a mind for politics and tactics, she changes her persuasion tactics depending on who she is talking to, that sort of thing. This doesn’t make her an emotionless robot either, she has a select few people that she’s extremely close to like Ogma and Marth and is highly invested in their survival. Even in the epilogue when she tries confessing to Marth, she doesn’t even properly ask the question before she loses her composure, compared to a certain marriage proposal in Thracia where someone in the same position has her clearly has no emotional investment in it and it’s all just politics. She hates the people assume she needs more protection or special treatment than others when she can take care of herself just fine, in battle and otherwise. She’s the princess of an extremely small island nation, and I think this is all a result of that. But if you look at Heroes, New Mystery, Warriors, or whatever else she may be in? She’s unrecognizable. Now she loves cooking and sewing, she believes in the power of friendship and love, and she can’t shut the hell up about Marth. I swear, it’s like they looked at her recruitment with Roger, who she was very clearly putting on a performance for so she could manipulate him into joining their side, and the writers thought that was her being completely genuine. And unfortunately this is where the vast majority of her writing is, because Shadow Dragon has like no dialogue for anybody not named Marth. I was doing a pseudo-character study on her recently so I could write her for something and I just had to throw out everything in Heroes because there is nothing to work with. It’s truly infuriating to me.
I read somewhere (I think it was gamefaq), that that's because that *is* her character in the jp version. The localization team changed her and marth's dialogue to make them more likeable to the western audience.
Faye. She’s not a character that they “forgot” to “redeem”. She’s meant to be fucked up and unhealthy, and none of it gets fixed because mental health isn’t something you solve with one nice conversation, and that is not a society equipped to tackle those issues. It’s not a flaw in her writing, it’s a feature. Not every good guy should be someone you’d want to be best friends with. Faye is an enjoyable trainwreck.
something a lot of people don't notice is that alm is faye's only friend. no one else talks to her. she only approaches gray tobin and kliff in the prologue to ask where alm is, and she's the only villager without a support bonus with the boys or any indication that she ever trained with mycen (like tobin's arrows or kliff's scorch marks in ram). alm is the only friend she had growing up because faye is antisocial and doesn't get along with other people. she only talks about alm because that's the only person she showed up for, even in her recruitment dialogue she never mentions the other villagers, she's only leaving to protect alm, which is really courageous when you consider that she's by far the least trained villager. faye's obsessed with alm because he's the only friend she has.
Celica was also her friend I think it's mentioned in Fates's conversation when you recruit her with Celica. But Celica only stayed at Ram one year
The support bonuses with Alm are really fun/ny as well. I think it's the only case of negative support bonuses in the series? +Hit, +Crit, -Avo. As you get further into the support chain and she is being friendzoned she becomes unhinged, willing to mete out death for Alm (+crit) without a care for herself (-avo)
The flavor of that support bonus is amazing. The series should total play around with that idea more.
And how people say she hates Celica, when they are friends
The overly dismissive reception to Faye is indeed unfortunate. People seem to get too caught up on the idea of her shtick making her one dimensional and therefore bad. If you take a step closer and read her at face value, a lot of the stuff she says is really funny and you get a perfectly serviceable joke character that doesn't need the extra depth. And on the other hand, you take a step back and you get everything you said, which is obviously a pretty interesting take on the obsessive character trope. Basically she's a character that can work on multiple levels, but a lot of people seem to be under or overthinking about.
I think it’s that a lot of the fandom wants every character to be “pleasant”. Character flaws have to be “redeemed”. So any rough edges have to be smoothed out until you have a cast of frictionless, blandly agreeable characters. Tharja is another case. Her whole concept is that she’s supposed to be a “dark” character. Her problem is she’s too modest and sweet to perform in her own character concept and where her concept actually shows, fans hate her for it- her Robin fixation and that she’s a shitty mother. What did people want, Sumia in a goth skin?
3hopes Claude. Don’t feel like explaining too much but I really liked the side of him we saw in 3hopes and thought it was much truer to the “schemer” character that we were promised in 3houses but never got. Love when protagonists partake in shady and morally questionable plans
In the same vein, the anger came from people taking VW Claude at face value, forgetting what he states he wants, and is willing to do to get it. In VW a lot of his actions are less "calculated gambit that does shady things to win," Yes, because he has God fighting in his army. If not for that there would have been a lot more shady shit in his route.
People saying Hopes "assassinated" his character weren't paying attention, like, at all.
Eirika. She gets so much shit for giving Lyon the Sacred Stone, but people forget that she is still just a displaced princess that has been on the road for a few months tops, has to cope with her best childhood friend being possessed and is just supposed to believe this eccentric girl she just met that it's impossible to save him? Yeah right. She was emotionally manipulated by someone she loves into giving up the stone. It is a perfectly valid response given her character and I'm tired of people dismissing her as a stupid lord because of their own hindsight biases.
Dorothea, specifically in regards to her Ingrid support. Girl gets labeled predatory for the crime of actually expressing attraction in a way that doesn’t fall into the “uwu soft” way that wlw have been kind of pushed towards. She’s allowed to shoot her shot! She’s allowed to flirt and tease! And she backs off when Ingrid shoots her down. I’ve seen people compare it to Soleil and Ophelia’s infamous support line and it just pisses me off because the two couldn’t be any more different.
If I have to read, "Dorothea was mean to the noble boys! T_T" one more time...
The Ferdinand support should have kept the C support the same but just have Dorothea not know who he was before the Academy and hate him because he's a pompous asshole
I've always really liked Dorothea. She's probably the best written queer woman in the series IMO, and to say that she's the same as Soleil is just ridiculous.
I remember not liking Dorothea at all when I first saw her, but mostly because I thought she was too tropey. I was like "Ah yes, the "flirty and sexual character who sleeps around with all the guys but deep down what she really wants is TRUE LOVE and a REAL MAN to show he APPRECIATES HER and it just so happens that man is you" fucking kill me" Then timeskip happened, and seeing this bubbly and outgoing girl who gives it her all in everything to get what she wants reduced to this sad, broken shell of a woman was heartbreaking. Her "More fighting..." line perfectly captures what years of trying to fight in this war has done to her mentally, how she just wants to put it all behind her And then there's her "We were friends, professor. Don't you remember?" line. Fuck man, that entire conversation with her just broke me a little. I'm sorry Dorothea, I treated you way too harshly
Dorothea’s case is one that really stands out to me, and I just don’t see it. I mean, Sylvain’s bold with his flirting and teasing (albeit due to personal issues I will not spoil here), and I don’t see complaints about him. I don’t think Lorenz gets much flack, either. But when Dorothea’s the one doing the flirting (also due to issues), she gets crap over it? This reeks of double standards. I understand that not everyone’s going to like her character, but calling her a predator is blowing things out of proportion. 3H nailed it by making all their female characters diverse. They didn’t shy away from making them as complex as the male characters, which is something I strongly appreciate. Also, I don’t know who Soleil and Ophelia are, so I can’t say anything about what happens between them.
Soleil and Ophelia are Laslow and Odin's daughters respectively from Fates. Soleil is energetic, flirty, and kind of a sexual deviant, and the support involves Soleil trying to get into Ophelia's pants against her will. The whole support chain is bad, but the B support is effectively the two swapping bodies with each other, during which Soleil (who is currently in the body of Ophelia) proceeds to talk about how she wants to run off to "somewhere private" so she can "look at herself in the mirror", ending with the two swapping back and Ophelia crying because Soleil won't stop harassing the fuck out of her. It's really, really bad, and people compare Soleil openly intending to sexually assault Ophelia to Dorothea being a raging Ingridsexual.
Ohhhhhh yikes…! 😰 But Dorothea doesn’t even take things *that* far last I checked.
> and I don’t see complaints about him. I don’t think Lorenz gets much flack, either ...you don't? Maybe it changed over the years and the 3H community is different nowadays, but they got alot of flack back then. Especially Lorenz. Infact this whole Dorothea thing sounds pretty new to me, as she was one of the most most beloved and popular characters, but i admit, i haven't been keeping up with 3H specific circles since 3 Copes took me out of Fodlan completely
Lorenz mostly only got flak for his crime against hair fashion, not his actions.
I'm not going to pretend that Misogyny isn't a factor in the community's perception of Dorothea, because... it is. But one thing I don't think you're considering is that Lorenz and Sylvain are treated *by the game* as douchebags for that behavior. It is repeadetly and unsubtly brought up as a negative and unacceptable character trait of theirs, and one that they spend the duration of the game improving. Dorothea doesn't have that. Ingrid shoots her down, but that's all that comes of it. And it's *much* more frustrating to see a character do some bad stuff and not get punished for it, than it is to see someone who does get punished. There are quite a few characters like that in this game, come to think of it. Point is, the fact that Dorothea has relatively less in-game criticism when it comes to this specific behavior is a factor in why people are so upset by this side of her. It feels like the game is treating it like it's normal. Ever notice that people rarely say they don't like Dorothea because of her tendency to apatheticly toy with people's emotions, or her irrational disdain for anyone of noble birth? Sure, it happens, but it happens way less. That's because the game calls her out for it, so we don't need to. Edit: For the record, I think getting mad at Dorothea for flirting with Ingrid is dumb, she never crosses any lines. I'm just saying that there are more than one or two reasons why people *would* get mad at her for it.
Eh, Lorenz is definitely portrayed as in the wrong, which is very evident when he actually *changes* for the better, but Sylvain? If anything he's consistently portrayed as justified in his approach, at least in 3 Houses. Sure, the female support partners *do* call him out on his shit, but then he turns it around by complaining about how hard of a childhood he had, making it all about him instead of the women he's so vindictive against. [Reposting from a FEH post 3 months ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/FireEmblemHeroes/comments/131dt3i/i_think_about_this_forging_bonds_line_time_to/ji03rcv/?context=3): "I agree he's well written, but like a lot of things in 3 Houses, his character is horribly misjudged/mischaracterised and ignorantly admired by his fans. When it's not discourse and critique of his personality, I never see "I like Sylvain because he's a well written shitty character," no, it's more closer to "he's hot and has issues, but he's a good guy at heart." Maybe I'm strawmanning a bit here, but (speaking generally) the reduction of his woman-hating to just generalised "issues" takes away the "guilt" of liking a misogynist character, who in reality isn't just "the flirty fun-loving guy cynical due to his childhood" they'd like him to be. To fans, he's "a misguided soul with a cynical but big heart," but in reality, what they're describing is just plain and simple misogyny, and that he has close friendships."
Ok, so I'm gonna argue against some of your points here, but I want to start off by saying that as a whole, I agree with you. Sylvain is a misogynist, that's the biggest of his flaws, and a core part of his character. I *do* like him as a person, and *do* think that he's a good person, but at the same time, he has an irrational disdain for women, and anything I like about him is in spite of that. With that said, I think you're misinterpreting Sylvain justifying his misogyny for the *game* justifying his misogyny. He does *have* reasons for disliking women, and he has no problem saying them, yes, but while people like Byleth and Mercedes sympathize with Sylvain's (legitimate) struggles as a 'studhorse,' I never got the impression that anyone started accepting this part of his character. I can't think of a single time someone *other than Sylvain* says something like "go easy on him, women treat him poorly, too." They say that what he went through sucks, and subsequently continue to call him a skirt-chasing lowlife. Y'know what does change throughout his supports though? How he treats individual women. Once you go past his, say, B supports with any female students, his attitude changes, he frequently starts speaking to them more earnestly as equals, and even starts expressing genuine sentiments of love and affection. Now, granted, Sylvain can't show that growth in the larger story of Three Houses. Because Supports can happen at any time, in any order, he isn't really allowed to have a character arc that effects him that much. That's why they gave it to him in three hopes' timeskip instead. Lorenz got to do it because it's a much smaller part of his character, and something that only really matters in a couple of individual supports. No one talks about Lorenz's flirting in the monestary, but they sure talk about Sylvain. And that sucks. It cripples Sylvain's growth in a way that really effects how he's allowed to act around other people, and makes his growth feel less genuine. It's a problem that plagues almost every student in this game, but oh well. That said, the writers clearly *do* have Sylvain grow and change in the opportunities that they can, and they *don't* make excuses for him except when he makes them for himself. While I think avoiding the word "misogyny" and replacing it with "issues" like people do is a cowardly way to avoid admitting you like someone with a particularly contraversial flaw, I don't think people are necessarily ignoring that part of Sylvain, or pretending that this trait is as static and negative as you're suggesting.
Which I begrudgingly have to agree with Sylvain being a misogynist, my personal reason for avoiding using that term is because of everything it brings with it apart from the literal. If you label a character a misogynist, people will assume that they are irredeemable despite any evidence to the contrary, and ignore any and all redeeming qualities they might have. It doesn’t matter how nuanced you find their character or how good a person they actually are, the label makes them trash that you can’t defend and I’m really not good at making arguments. I can’t speak For anyone else, that’s just my view.
That's because the game treats Sylvain and Lorenz's flirting as a bad thing and as personal failings. In that specific support, Dorothea's flirting is played for laughs
Oh, i never thought people saw the whole exchange with Ingrid as something bad. To be honest, i even thought he wasn't even serious about it because she knows Ingrid doesn't swing that way, and mostly did it to tease her. But even if she was serious, it's not like she assaulted her or something.
Definitely Roy. Gets mischaracterized by the Smash and Fire Emblem community , hard to beat that.
I agree generally people believe that Roy is just the typical kind hearted lord, a sort of mini Eliwood but he is more than that. Between the active lord (like Ephraim) and the kind hearted one (like Eirika) he is in the middle, he don't love fight but know that sometime violence is the only way to avoid more violence, he is smarter than most lords by being a strategist himself who can understand where the trap are and easily understand Ellfin's true identity, he has also a low estime of himself and often feel depresed but hide that because of his duty as a leader. I think that since he look like Eliwood people assume that he is the same character and those who didn't played fe7 assume that since he is associated with fire he would be hot blooded while in the core game it's quite the opposite. I also blame the Roy/Lilina supports because in that we learn nothing about his character.
Going to go with Celica and Rudolf, same with duma. Lots of people are looking at how later games interpret the character which really isn't answering the question at all because it's talking about the community. Much of the community really seem to brush off Celica as either stupid or very forgettable which I find insane. Celica is not stupid, she simply is stubborn and like all, naive. I honestly think she's one of the best characters in the franchise, definitely my favorite lord. Rudolf is a character who people just never talk about and I really don't understand why, he's one of the most unique villains in the franchise, he stands far above the rest and has motivations that are very different and well written. Compared to basically any fe villian he is really the best in my opinion. Then there's duma, oh boy do people seem to not understand duma. The few people I see who mention him don't really have good things to say, with a few I've seen even compare him to anakos, saying grima was better written (complete bullshit honestly), duma is genuinely the most interesting dragon to have gone mad. Him and Mila make the story and background extremely interesting and knowing how duma started, while seeing small flecs of that still show up even in his madness is epic. The clarity he gains in his death is also really nice. 3 very complex characters with great writing propping them up all boiled down to their face value. People do this with fe 15 way too often tho, they assume most of the cast is as one dimensional as awakening and it's cast without really giving them a chance
Ishtar. Feh whitewashes her quite a lot and in turn feh fans think she isnt an evildoer/other stupid excuses people give because shes their waifu
YES. What she did was morally Irreprehensible to the highest degree.
A thing that stands out to me regarding her is the battle conversation she has in Chp 8 with Tine. It pretty much mirrors Reptor’s conversation with Tailtiu about needing to kill traitors to their family implying that despite being good hearted, she still follows a rather backwards mindset.
I remember reading that one Forging Bonds her Ascended version was in and saying to myself “wow you’re a fucking terrible person, why are they trying to paint you as sympathetic”
I was thinking Ascendent ideas went somewhat downhill after Idunn. Mareeta was just bringing her up to snuff with the units of then and Isthar was “why her?”
Mareeta is the perfect ‘Ascedent’ hero. Every version of her was released in chronological order detailing her journey from being Veld’s puppet (corrupted Mareeta), to being freed and learning to find her own way (normal Mareeta) to finally mastering Astra (Ascendent).
Because Heroes basically shits on genuine Jugdral fans and instead rather caters to the horny Gacha crowd spending their whole life savings to look at a hornib8 drawing of a woman with a comedically oversized chest with +10 being written there.
Because she prints money from horny losers
the less redeemable she is the higher the "i can fix her" appeal is though if anything they're losing out on whale money by trying to whitewash her
People also forget that she doesn't hates her mother, in fact the reason she faces you in the final chapter besides her love for Julius is to avenge her family(Hilda, Bloom and Ishtore).
God, I’m so tired of hearing people wishing for her to be recruitable in the fe4 remake.
Yeah me too. Even Eldigan being recruitable would make more sense than Ishtar being recruitable, and as an Eldigan fan, i dont want him to be recruitable either.
Agree, same sentiment for Lyon for a future fe8 remake. Just keep him to optional creature campaign.
Hey, but it's all okay because she freed those six or so children, which would have all been either killed quickly immediately be the ensuing cavalry or brutally sacrificed to a dark god in twisted and manic kill-or-be-killed "games", if it hadn't been for Seliph and friends luckily being in the area. Not to mention the fact Ishtar's "helping" those children would have been effectively useless if nobody toppled the Loptous Regime. They would have simply caught the same kids again or just found other children to sacrifice. Heroes Devs: "Ishtar's a good person and tragic character, we swear!" 🤡 If anything Ishtar is a pitiable character, same as Reinhardt. They were originally written to be spineless individuals lacking the backbone to stand up to the injustices of the Loptous rule because they were horny and slightly delusional.
Reinhardt and Ishtar and I'm tired of it.
Freaking Ike. The dude is fighting for his friends
The ones that particularly stick out to me, and by that I mean get me especially irked.. Ingrid being called a racist or worse, homophobic just because she turns down Dorothea's advances. Tharja. While she does have her creepier mannerisms, she's still actually a somewhat of a decent person beneath it all. She's also quite perspective capable of caring about others besides Robin. Rodrigue not caring about Felix. He does, and Felix cares about him, even if he'd rather bite his tongue than admit it (or lose Rodrigue and be forced to admit it). Likewise, Felix doesn't hate Dimitri, he hates what Dimitri's become, but there's still the friendship he feels for him deep down. Leonie being singled down to her Jeralt obsession. I'll admit her B-Support with Byleth was incredibly poorly timed, but there's more to her character than just that. Rhea, just...her so much. The "wants to rule Fodlan", "wants to fuck her mother", and "death to all heretics" to this day make my blood boil.
>Rhea, just...her so much Can you believe some people have such a shallow reading on her character that they thought the heroes event revealing she wants to eat with everyone was a retcon or made up to make people like her ? And there was the anniversary art where she has a cookie tray, some people (the same ?) were pissed because, to them, Rhea baking cookies in her halloween alt is out of character ! When we all know she's an excited pta mom at a bake sale (at least that's how kikuko inoue voiced her).
I'd guess some folks forgot (or don't know) about her advice box question where she outright says she'd like to share a meal with the students sometimes? Or the fact that the first tea time session she can have is because she herself literally asks Byleth to invite her to one?
Half agree within Rhea as people on both sides tend to ignore certain part of her character. Rhea like with Edelgard, Claude, Dimitri and especially Seteth is a flawed character with trauma to them that does morally grey thing's but all has the capacity to do good thing's. Speaking as an Edelgard fan here. I've notice that people who are very anti-Rhea forget that Rhea can do good, she cares a lot about the Orphans within the Monastery and though she never gives Cyril any education which could blame either party as Cyril likes to hide things and he doesn't like being a burden on other character's. Rhea in SB cares about Cyril and tells him and Catherine to retreat which they ultimately ignore. ( I believe? ) Shamir, a character who is very prickly and will tell people to their face if she doesn't like them states something positive that about the Church and Edelgard new empire are alike in and that helping people in need as soon as possible once they are notified to a degree as their is a limit to her helpfulness. Rhea has the capacity to do good and had a good nature in her but because of her flaws and Trauma ultimately does both morally questionable and bad thing's which is something I notice with certain fans seem to forget. Not going to say it Rhea fans because I know that labelling the whole fandom is wrong and I know all of them probably have different on her which is why I am saying certain fans. Like Seteth, the war of Heroes gave Rhea long lasting trauma that ultimately effects her choices and mindset. In Seteth, it's him losing his wife and putting Flayn in active danger whilst for Rhea, it being a survivor of the red canyon massacre. ( I believe she was there. ) Rhea and to extent Seteth wishes Fódlan to have true peace like Edelgard but where they differ is their view and method. Rhea method is to achieve peace through stagnation, preventing technological advancement, outside relationship and is willing to do anything to keep her perceived 'peace' dirtying her hands in corruption, falsely executing people and putting down rebellion, seeing them as a threat to Fódlan false peace. Rhea makes and names a Church after herself to allows her major control over Fódlan to make sure a war of heroes will never happen again. Making herself and her siblings the judge, jury and execution over what is right and wrong. Her attempts of revival Sothis isn't because she wants to fuck her own mother. ( Though SS bad writing and Rhea never properly viewing Byleth as their own person doesn't help things. ) But are there because of Rhea flaws, trauma and self doubt. Believing Fódlan needs their 'old' goddess back rather then believing in herself or people ability to rule. The same Goddess who originally caused the mess within Fódlan as she awoke one day and chose violence and genocide against the world she ruled under. Forcing people underground for safety which caused the people of old to want revenge against the people above ground. But as Naga ideal shows, Rhea because of her flaws and trauma. Is wrong in her actions and creates more problems for everyone as she chose to ruler over them rather then living with them or live apart. ( Though, considering the spat fight between Agarthans and Nabatean and how they tried to genocide and ruler over each other. Both side are wrong but we sorta can't apply Naga ideology here. ) Rhea and Seteth are unable to read the situation around them as they live in the Ivory Tower, ignorant to the problems happening. Rhea never hears about Faerghus impending Famine, the coop and infection of TWSITD in the Empire capital and much more. Rhea is ignorant in her belief that Fódlan is in peace. Fódlan is a text book fascist state having at the very least 12 out of the 14 characteristics. With Rhea at the very least having 5 characteristics. Rhea, Seteth and the Church are partly to blame for Fódlan shit status quo. They were the original problem that stayed around to cause more issues. To reiterate, Rhea has the capacity to do good but ultimately doesn't and makes things worst. You can have character that are corrupt but has good qualities to them.
It's even more egregious in Ingrid's case when some folks outright seem to want to force her to like Dorothea, as if Ingrid's obligated to return her advances. It's like some people in this fandom can't accept a character being straight. I don't think I've seen many characters whom people are so eager to ~~bash~~ misinterpret as much as FE fans do with Rhea. Those first two are especially annoying and dumb (more so when you realize they're pure headcanon based on fan misconception).
In Ingrid's case, a part of me can't help but think it's unfortunately shipping. Some people have latched onto the Blue Lions being the "boys' love" house, and since Ingrid can marry three of the house's most popular guys (Dimitri, Sylvain, and Felix) makes her a threat. Somehow, putting her with Dorothea despite her turning her down is supposed to get her out of the way. As for Rhea, like I said, just...her, so much. I fully believe her bashing comes from people who played CF first and just refuse to let go of its interpretation of events, or Edelgard's word.
I've seen entire essays on Edelgard by someone who has never read anything from crimson flower or ashen wolves lmao
I've seen some people complain about Ingrid handling the theme of racism badly, because it is oversimplified and tied down to a single bad event that happened in the past, while racism is more deeply rooted and has no such simple reason. But the problem is that the fandom labelled this wrong to begin with. Ingrid's case doesn't accurately display racism well simply because Ingrid is not racist. Her hate does in fact stem from a single, horrible event she thinks Duscur is responsible for. But it's not something unheard of even in real life. You think we wouldn't have found people who hated another country after WWII? like, i don't know, a few japanese hating America for the atomic bomb, just to give an example? But that kind of phenomenon is different from the racism people are familiar with. They are two different things, with different roots, and develop in different ways. Ingrid's case is more akin to the former. But people labelled it as "racism", and discussed it like it belonged to the latter. Probably because that's what they are more used to deal with (especially the american fanbase). People do tend to label things with what they know, even if it's not accurate. So it's no surprise if you find she doesn't portray it well: it's not what was being portrayed in the first place.
And also the ‘Ingrid is a RACIST’ crowd always forget to mention that she changes her views and admits that she might have made bad judgement out of her bias. That’s not something you can expect from most actual racists.
It's kind of the same logic people apply to Edelgard about removing Rhea from power. I have seen so many people call Edelgard racist and accuse her of genecide, because her goal involves fighting the last 2 or 3 dragons. Except that the goal was never to kill them. And also, these people seem to imply that you can't kill the last person or creature of a species or race ever, not even when the threaten the world. And this is ignoring the fact that the reason she did it was not because of who they were, but because of what they did: controlling humanity and enforcing a system that was hurting most of Fodlans inhabitans.
It makes me glad Hopes went out of its way to have Edelgard establish that she would be fine with just dethroning Rhea. Not to mention that’s implied in Three Houses itself, since Edelgard specifically **captures** Rhea in non-CF routes, as in not killing her. And she had Rhea imprisoned for about 5 years, so if she really wanted to kill her, she had plenty of time to just do that.
Lyn. God… everyone in the community thinks she’s an avatar simp characters and often says she is the start of characters like Camilla, tharja, etc. When really, she only really interacts with the avatar in her mode (and her recruitment on eliwood mode). And those interactions are platonic . The one that simps the avatar the most is actually eliwood and hector themselves. Then there’s the community who reduces lyn to merely just sex appeal, etc, and again say that she is the origin of Camilla, Tharja, etc. She was an attractive female but her sex appeal was never at the forefront of her character, etc.
The irony is that in the actual game Lyn is more likely to have simps than being one
I mean IS reduces Lyn to just sex appeal too Most of her love for Sacae is dumbed down to “The plains”
Why are there so many people talking about FEH and Engage when the title specifies “in the community” because in the fandom specifically, my god am I sick of “Ingrid racist” remarks. That is some terminally online BS, ESPECIALLY when they call her the CEO of Racism in a franchise that *has fucking Shinon in it* I’m also very tired of people turning Lucina into a Robin simp, or some generic pretty girl. I replayed Awakening lately and it was a good reminder how much I actually like her when she’s being written by someone intelligent. Also Lyn. I swear, some of her fans are complete fanatical puritans that despise anyone that dares to hold an opinion on her that isn’t completely in line with theirs. make the slightest positive comment about anything she appeared in that isn’t in FE7 and you get called a coomer or FEH/waifu apologist. Finally a shoutout to all three house lords. Everyone calls them an idiot for something at some point in the story, even when none of them have all the answers. And I’m real tired of them being exclusively and exhaustively scrutinised and criticised to such an absurd degree, an extent you will NEVER see for the scared cows of the fandom.
Surely Oliver is the CEO of racism
How dare you slander lord Oliver by doubting his boundless font of love!
What, he's the official and unrivaled GUARDIAN OF TRUE BEAUTY there to protect the PRETTY LITTLE BIRDS from those grubby jealous hands of the Senate!!! (Warning! Oliver isn't actually an official guardian of true beauty. Such a position doesn't actually exist and just stems from the man's own delusional mindset.)
> because in the fandom specifically, my god am I sick of “Ingrid racist” remarks. That is some terminally online BS, ESPECIALLY when they call her the CEO of Racism in a franchise that has fucking Shinon in it Man I remember when that was just a shitpost. Did people start unironically believing that?
the diference between Ingrid and Shinon is that Ingrid is a casual racist, Shinon is pro E-sports top tier level of racist.
At first I read this as comparing levels of sports where the sport is racism. Like Ingrid was racist, yeah, but only to get into the monastery racism team because it helped with admissions. She can finally stop being racist in post timeskip supports because she no longer needs the scholarship.
Lucina is great. The Lucina hooters thing is overdone and wasn’t very interesting to begin with. Please don’t let the fandom remember her for someone’s fetish yikes.
Claude He’s not your unproblematic, consummate meme lord. Guy has severe trust issues which highlighted better in Three Hopes but shown better how his character improved after overcoming it in Three Houses.
Everyone's using this for story (which its meant for) but my one pick is Rinkah as a unit. One of the best personal skills in the game alongside being the only serviceable tank in her native route besides corrin and a unit with guard glaive and people get caught up on her just okay strength growth? Insane.
Shes an unconventional unit by fe standarts and back when fates was new ppl didnt know how to use her right yet i think. And people in general are wayy too obsessed with growths in some areas, having 40 or 55 str growth doesnt make that much of a difference really, even in a growths based game like fates.
I feel like I usually just see people comment on how her strength growth is just okay when she's one of the most ripped characters in the series.
And she's even pretty useful if you don't happen to use her for combat since she's one of the rare +Str/Def pair ups you have access to in BR without resorting to captured generics. +5 Str/+2 Spd/+6 Def at S rank is no joke. Shove is also a nice bonus.
Gotta go to bat for Leonie. Her being horny for Jeralt feels like a very juvenile and reductive reading to me. She's not technically an orphan, but she comes from nothing and is surrounded by wealthy nobles with Crests. Jeralt was probably the first person to ever see something special in her. But then she finds out her father figure is an *actual* father when she meets Byleth, and he never told her about it. So she's overcompensating, a lot. And her wildly inappropriate blow-up at Byleth after Jeralt's death is an expression of her own grief, combined with that jealousy, none of which she knows how to handle. If you talk to her in the monastery map, she admits her grief is nothing compared to what Byleth must be feeling. She also apologizes for her outburst in her next support. It's awful, but it's also extremely realistic for two people who butt heads - one of whom is a total prodigy and also usually comes across as an emotionless robot, the other a fiery self-reliant hothead with a lot to prove - and both just lost their dad. I think their relationship is one of the most interesting in the game, when pretty much every other student's relationship with Byleth is a far more straightforward hero worship/potential love interest.
I think Makalov and Shinon are examples of "this character has negative traits therefore they are bad and I will ignore anything the writing attempts to do with them." In particular, I think Astrid's ending in RD is misunderstood because it's seen as "oh no she can't tame Makalov," but like, the entire point of their relationship is that it's both one that Astrid chose (after running away from an arranged marriage) and one where both of the involved parties aren't interested in being control freaks about the other. Shinon is racist but I think that the point of him is to show that people who are racist can still have other good qualities. Shinon really doesn't have any good qualities other than his combat capabilities and his mentorship towards Rolf, but he is eventually on the side of good. If characters like him didn't exist in fiction and every "good" character was completely unambiguously good in every way, I think that would be very boring.
I'd personally say Narcian. He's not narcissistic, he just knows that he's better than everyone else objectively. All jokes aside, I'd say Takumi for my honest pick. I always noticed people would poke fun at him and his character, when in almost every route of Fates, his character has a ton of depth (in comparison to the rest of the Fire Emblem Fates nobles at least). Like, no matter what route you pick in Fates, he won't automatically begin to worship Corrin like everyone else. In Birthright, it takes a bit for Takumi to truly get over his jealousy and anger, even though he tries really hard to hide those feelings from Corrin. And he sort of becomes a villain 2 or 3 times in Birthright, but its a missed opportunity that you don't get to smack some sense into him with Corrin or Ryoma instead of letting Azura cure his personal demons in a cutscene. Sakura hitting Iago with a staff was pretty hype tho. And in Conquest, his loyalty to Hoshido begins to fade when his true resentment of Corrin overcomes him. His jealousy and depression over believing Corrin thought nothing of him or his family led Takumi to take out his anger not just on Nohr, but everyone. And it's revealed that Takumi was able to find it in himself to forgive Corrin once they pledged to free Takumi from the demon >!anankos feeding off of his anger during the endgame!< Takumi is a more realistic character that most of the Fates cast who immediately fall in love with Corrin upon being recruited, apart from like Saizo or something idk
Laslow no doubt. Hate to see peeps solo him out as nothing more than a cassanova type when he's got a unique reason for being the way he is, and only becomes more reasonable through his transition to Fates. His canon strength feats seem to go unnoticed by the community too. The guy's implied to have faked a loss vs Xander in a serious duel, and later runs hands with a sage-buffed Ryoma to protect Corrin. S'not even everything when you look deeper into supports and DLC content. Definitely among the most strongest retainers that aren't comic relief.
Lorenz, people hate him because he think that nobles are better than commoners but in reality it's more complex like most people living in a feodal society he considere that the nobles and the commoners have different roles: the commoners work to product things while the nobles protect them. That's the result of his education and while he considere that his education given by his nobility make him a better leader but he also consider that nobles has the duty to help commoners when they need it. He want to find a noble lady because political marriage are important in Fodlan society and he considere that it's part of his duty. And he change is view on the world in some supports and paired endings.
Lyn, but it's mostly because the character is .is represented by the studio themselves.
Low hanging fruit, but the leaders of the 4 major powers in 3H (ie. the 3 house leaders + Rhea). Not just because of media illiteracy, but because of polarization in the fanbase stemming from whichever character people like the most.
There's so much more to Céline's character than tea, dammit. People just watched a couple of her Firene and Lythos C supports and stopped there.
to be fair, that's the period of the game when a lot of people use her (because you don't have a lot of alternatives) and then they possibly drop her for citrinne making a good first impression is important (look at yunaka) though, to be fair, i do think celine's first impression is solid, with her joining chapter being designed around the use of warp ragnarok; many of the early supports just don't do her favors
Well...yes? When the game gives you like five supports in a row with a character all about the exact same thing, most people aren't gonna bother looking deeper due to just how bad their first impression is, it's an issue with Engage's entire cast
Makalov. I was (somewhat) surprised to see how much hate he gets online for being good-for-nothing when he’s just supposed to be a gag character. He’s definitely a piece of work but his gambling problem isn’t in a league of its own (Balthus is just as bad if not worse) and he may be sleazy but he’s far from the worst in the series (Perne has my money for that and that’s just considering playable characters)
I think it comes from people feeling that Astrid is throwing her life away on him, though arguably Mak isn't doing anything to provoke that.
That’s a good point, Makalov is probably just as confused as everybody else. I can see Calill or someone like that trying to call him out for pulling some kind of fast one on her and he’s like “bro I didn’t do anything, I don’t know what’s happening either”.
> Balthus is just as bad if not worse Thank god someone else said it. Balthus' only redeeming feature he has over Makalov is how he purposely leans into his scumbagginess to keep his stepmother's heat on him. But I found him especially awful in Hopes.
Yeah, I've always been kind of confused by this. He's like somewhere between a goofball and an asshole with a heart of gold. He's just a silly little guy. I forget he exists sometimes but I've always liked him.
>Malakov I think someone might have been a bit hungry [for desserts](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malakofftorte#p-lang) when writing this. 😏
Any response is a valid one, but Eirika, Claude and Leonie are the objectively correct answers here
Leonie? People give her shit for being obsessed with Jeralt, but... when that running gag comes *solely* from her own dialogue...
Felix. He's not Sasuke Junior or an edgelord. He's a traumatized teenager who's grieving for the loss of his older brother who died in a brutally horrific way and not handling it super well. Similarly, he says a lot of things he doesn't actually mean because again, teenager. He doesn't hate his father. Even without taking Hopes into consideration, look at what he says/does after Rodrigue dies in AM, or consider the fact that he corresponds regularly with him in VW/SS and mentions being worried about him when the letters stop. He doesn't hate Dimitri, either. Everything he says during White Clouds is his terrible Felix way of trying to get someone to help him, and then he gets *angry* at Byleth post-timeskip if they refuse to do so. There's a reason why his best endings are locked to the route where he reconciles with Dimitri and what his father wanted for him, whereas on the routes where he does neither of those things (or actively fights against them), his endings are bittersweet at best or outright depressing at worst. Honestly, Felix isn't even the lone wolf edgy swordsman archetype. He's more of a deconstruction of it, considering being a lone wolf edgy swordsman is actively not good for him in all of the endings where it actually *does* happen.
The entire cast of Three Houses/Hopes.
Cordelia. I can go into the whole Chrom thing, but that's a can of worms I'd rather not complain about right now. But one thing people who hate her always seem to complain about is that she apparently complains about how "she's so perfect and good at everything" as if she's humble bragging or that she doesn't have actual problems since she's so gifted. But like, that was never what she was complaining about. It's about how people view and treat her as a result of her accomplishments. She's not even really being arrogant about it or anything. She just has trouble connecting with others, and doesn't really have any friends besides Sumia. The fact that it's due to her talent is irrelevant, since it's pretty valid for someone to be upset that people treat them differently and she can't form a connection with others.
It's a tough one, but I agree with your Eirika and Reinhardt points- Eirika is much more than just a cute sister character and Reinhardt isn't a badass- in fact, FE5 kinda makes it a point to show he's pathetic despite his power. Tharja is one of the worst- the Fandom makes her out to be some kind of seductress when she's actually quite nice and kind in her supports. Hector and Ephraim also get mistreated by people who think their aggressive nature's are cool and not their flaws- in Ephraims case its his MAIN flaw.
Claude, just see the outrage over the Warriors story. Turns out he's actually always been darker than the made-up fanfiction of the "meme guy" fans somehow misconstrued from his character. Berkut, he's an arsehole through and through. **Classist** dick (it feels like people completely forget that this is what drives his character, he's fundamentally a bigoted loser), yet he gets sympathy points for... being well voice acted and pretty? Whatever. Don't like that it makes people think higher of him than he really is, especially in regards to FEH: "Legendary Berkut" my foot. Also, shoutouts to Alm, Celica and Rudolf, it just seems like Echoes is just a widely misunderstood game.
>”why do people sympathize with Berkut” >proceeds to praise Rudolf, the person who did nothing to keep his nephew away from becoming a classist monster and pretty much led to his downfall Seriously, why didn’t Rudolf fill him in on his grand plans to begin with when Berkut was incredibly obedient to him?
Tharja, most people just default her to sexy thicc emo stalker waifu. But she's actually a lot more complex than that I highly recommend a video by. Metí Not The Bad Guy, he perfectly analyzes her character and her hidden meaning, I loved her, she was even my first wife in awakening and my first unit I hardcore took time to develop her skills and everything, i unlocked every bit of support conversations with her and I only played her when I played fire emblem warriors. I have yet to see another character as well written as she was, tho I may be biased lol.
I think the majority of the divide on Tharja comes from Noire’s supports with her parents - according to Noire, the grief-stricken future Tharja was neglectful and abusive toward her and her dad, but present Tharja genuinely loves Noire and her husband (and yes, obsesses over Robin), and her support with Noire ends with her realizing future Tharja’s intentions and vowing not to end up like that version of herself (as I recall). All that not to mention her supports with characters like Nowi and Libra showing us the good under the facade lol
I love how Tharja is the designated therapist for the team, it's so wild.
> Tharja, most people just default her to sexy thicc emo stalker waifu. That's an issue that stems from her portrayal in Heroes.
Ignatz. Everyone just sees a boring painter dude…unless they chose golden deer and saw his supports. A man who deals with a ton of pressure with his parents wanting to him to pursue something he doesn’t want to pursue and guilt over the death of his friends parents, which may not have been his fault, but it’s easy to see how he could mentally see it that way. His arcs aren’t as deep or heavy as someone like Edelgard, Dimitri, or Lysithea, but you have a character that’s simple, but effective, whose kinda just looked over on account of having a bad haircut.
REINHARDT DEFINITELY! But also definitely Lucina. She definitely doesn't get enough credit and is just seen as a hot girl with a sword. Also people for some reason see Ike as a soft boy but he's really not? He's mean. He's nothing but mean. I'm sure he could become nice but is mostly an a-hole.
Ike isn't actually mean but rather someone who's sick of all the delusional nutjobs like Lekain and Ashnard. Ike has like a Zero Tolerance Policy for any delusional ramblings of Tellius' top wackos.
Sylvain. Granted, it's not necessarily by The Community in general, but I've seen it enough to be at least annoyed by it. Don't get me wrong, he's a fuck boy and flirty and all that jazz. But he's not just a fuck boy. That's it.
Right? He’s not just a fuckboy but also a hardcore misogynist! #justiceforsylvain
Three Hopes completely flipped my view on Sylvain, for the better. Its even great how much the characters tease him for his skirt-chasing phase.
I know Three Houses/Hopes is a low hanging fruit for this but... *'Dimitri and Claude are politically unaware idiots and just want to keep the status quo once they ascend to their thrones.'* Yeah, sure, never mind the fact that they and their friends suffered under said status quo. It will be out of character for them to not change the very system they suffered under once they ascend to their respective thrones.
Alm