Discussion YMMV / FireEmblemThreeHouses

I'll speak on my edits, but first I would say that regarding future-proofing changes that Dimitri creating a form of government that gave the common people power/a say (something mentioned in his ending) seems like it would do quite a bit to make the changes last. In contrast, note how Edelgard's reforms in Three Hopes Azure Gleam route fell apart as soon as she was no longer in her right mind, in part due to how a lot of powerful people did not actually believe in or support the reforms and felt like they had been discarded (Thales could not have succeeded if there were not still a lot of people willing to go along with changing the Empire back). Dimitri's methods seem more likely to avoid this problem. At the very least his methods seem equally viable in terms of long term change (acknowledging that in Three Hopes perhaps Edelgard has simply not had enough time to make her changes hard to undo).

Also, Faerghus in general regards Crests as a heavy responsibility rather than mostly a mark of prestige as the Empire tends to see them, given how reliant they are on them to protect their borders. There are certainly still abuses of the Crest system, but to my recollection we don't hear of things like women being forced to bear many children outside of the Empire (so it shouldn't be seen as widespread in Fodlan), and as for poor people starving, that to my memory is never stated to be a result of the Crest system (rather when a cause is mentioned, it's due to bandit depredations or poor environmental conditions).

Finally, before moving onto my actual edits, where does it even say Dimitri wants to keep Fodlan as it was? He wants change (and in both Three Houses and Hopes he makes changes), just not for it to happen the way Edelgard is making it happen.

Now then, what do you mean by "brutal ways" and how is this any worse than what other characters do in the war? That Dimitri has the strength to kill someone by ripping them apart doesn't make that death any worse than another character who kills by bashing a knight to death with a hammer, it's just gorier visually. The original entry also spoke as if Dimitri's killing was a problem even before he went mad, and this was the biggest thing I thought was not supported by the story. As for what he did when he wasn't in his right mind, that is another issue that the story repeatedly draws attention to and Dimitri condemns himself over.

Dimitri and Edelgard both talk past and over each other, but make it clear they do understand each other to a degree. Dimitri knows she wishes to improve the way Fodlan is ran, and only takes issue with the methods, namely why Edelgard was not content to change her own country instead of instituting a continent-wide war of conquest, that he believes there are better ways that can work. Edelgard recognizes that Dimitri sees the war as costing more lives than it is worth, but believes that in the long run it will mean fewer deaths. Neither is a viewpoint the other can be talked out of, nor can either view be proven as that would require knowing the future.

Dimitri's "torture" of Randolph to me always seemed very vague and open to interpretation. He engages him in a talk that certainly distresses Randolph but I don't see how it can qualify as torture, and then threatens to inflict violence but it's unclear if he actually did anything as nothing is seen or described, and regardless we are given no information on if he had done it before. I don't see how he showed "cold skill" at it, as all we see is a pretty standard verbal attack. Cruel certainly, but not unforgivable. And again, even if all that in the scene is as you described it, he was not in his right mind and thus his actions there don't apply to the original entry's focus on calling Dimitri a Designated Hero even when he is in his right mind (or closer to it as the case may be).

Of course I recognize this is YMMV and that the standard of evidence/proof for a given entry is lower, but some of the entry as it was just didn't seem supported at all by the actual game.

I think the first part needs a bit of rewording to be more objective (for one, remove the mention of Edelgard) unless someone's willing to write a DH entry for all of the lords.

Sorry for not replying immediately, I was at work.

But I don't know what to say. I have seen critisisms towards Dimitri as a character first-hand that I thought made sense (and that I let affect my own opinions way to easily because he's my favorite of the three lords), and also that since Edelgard and Rhea gets a lot of divisiveness written about them, I thought to do the same with Dimitri.

But honestly, despite writing that entry, I'm not much of a debater. I wrote it mostly out of spite for how bitter I get from the discourse because I feel like I made the wrong choice. I thought what I wrote was okay because it took a few days for any changes to come to it. But I did try to add in what I've seen other people not like about Dimitri.

@Ruderuby Gotcha. In the future, probably don't make edits while upset to vent, but some of your points were decent.

@Zekes When you said the part about Edelgard, do you mean, "because the cataclyst for it is him believing Edelgard caused the Tragedy of Duscur through small steps that come across as illogical, and that it happened when she was only 13 years old which is something he never thinks twice about until Cornelia drops some hints that leads him off from suspecting Edelgard"?

If so, I agree. Designated Hero is about the hero being morally wrong, not 'wrong'.

@Perentie I'll just ignore the first two paragraphs so we don't get into the weeds.

> Finally, before moving onto my actual edits, where does it even say Dimitri wants to keep Fodlan as it was? He wants change (and in both Three Houses and Hopes he makes changes), just not for it to happen the way Edelgard is making it happen.

It's definitely true that he wants some change, but he's the only lord who explicitly has no intentions of doing away with Fodlan's aristocracy, and he's the only one who argues for upholding Crests as something to value despite also being aware that their power is fading from bloodlines (https://hopes.fedatamine.com/en-us/supports/dimitri/sylvain/b/#event-35).

> Now then, what do you mean by "brutal ways" and how is this any worse than what other characters do in the war? That Dimitri has the strength to kill someone by ripping them apart doesn't make that death any worse than another character who kills by bashing a knight to death with a hammer, it's just gorier visually.

I'm talking about when he's in Boar mode. It's shown repeatedly that he kills people with unnecessary brutality when he's like that.

> The original entry also spoke as if Dimitri's killing was a problem even before he went mad, and this was the biggest thing I thought was not supported by the story. As for what he did when he wasn't in his right mind, that is another issue that the story repeatedly draws attention to and Dimitri condemns himself over.

No, the wording implies it was talking about while Dimitri was in Boar mode.

"and that someone close to him such as Rodrigue had to die for it to happen after the countless number of people Dimitri has killed."

Though I agree the original wording was sloppy across the entire example and needs to be cleaned up.

> Dimitri's "torture" of Randolph to me always seemed very vague and open to interpretation. He engages him in a talk that certainly distresses Randolph but I don't see how it can qualify as torture, and then threatens to inflict violence but it's unclear if he actually did anything as nothing is seen or described, and regardless we are given no information on if he had done it before. I don't see how he showed "cold skill" at it, as all we see is a pretty standard verbal attack. Cruel certainly, but not unforgivable.

Informing a person you're about to torture them or cause them pain is recognized as a form of torture in and of itself. There's a reason Byleth mercy killed Randolph even before Dimitri started hurting him.

> And again, even if all that in the scene is as you described it, he was not in his right mind and thus his actions there don't apply to the original entry's focus on calling Dimitri a Designated Hero even when he is in his right mind (or closer to it as the case may be).

I disagree. When the Death Knight is in control of Jeritza's body, that's Jeritza not being in his right mind. What Dimitri is when he's in Boar mode is giving into his darker impulses. He's still perfectly capable of rational action, he's just more or less in Then Let Me Be Evil mode, he even more or less implies the same as he's talking with Randolph. He's simply dropping his attempt to rein himself in.

@Raxis that's correct.

Just weighing a few brief things:

-I don't think Designated Hero can apply to any of the 3 house leaders, as none of them are presented as unambiguously good by the story. Designated Hero is for characters the writer/narrative presents as 100% heroic and fans don't agree. Even on their own routes, the Lords are still meant as morally grey characters.

-The brief Ron the Death Eater and Draco in Leather Pants entries, noting that all the house leaders and Rhea get both treatments, already covers the discourse enough.

-I'm afraid I might've started this by adding the Broken Base entry on Dimitri. I did observe a legitimate divide in the fanbase on whether or not Dimitri is a reformist, with where people fall lining up with where they fall on Edelgard. But if it's bringing discourse-related edit wars again, please get rid of it. The entry in Alternate Character Interpretation was a better way to handle it.

Mostly from the outside looking in, I concur.

I also don't think that Designated Hero can be applied here.

Yes, unless there's an overt confirmation of a romantic relationship it should remain as ambiguous. Strongly implied is still not the same as canon, especially when it comes to Japanese media.

Since my post got ignored in the character discussion, I want to address something else here.

How come characters with bi the way end up with heterosexual life partners despite the fact that isn't the case. I'm not all that happy how Sylvain has that under his character page despite the fact he's bisexual. The Japanese version is either ambiguous or outright confirms the relationship. It annoys me how Dorothea and Petra don't need to have life partners because it says Petra loves Dorothea the most of all or how in the JP version they explicitly marry. Meanwhile Sylvain and Felix have their promise that is very close to a marriage vow, the fact they die together and how their relationship is explicit in the Japanese version makes me want to delete heterosexual life partners entirely since it just doesn't apply to them.

Even people without shipping goggles can see Sylvain and Felix are more than friends in their Azure Moon paired ending.

And correct me if I'm wrong, didn't the Japanese version also mention that they merged their territories in their paired ending?

Proof about the Japanese text making them explicit? I don't disbelieve you, but even in the cases where I ship these kinds of couples, I'm used to Japanese media and its downright notorious history of producing such ambiguously gay/bi relationships that come a hair's width from being canon but are often handwaved with a "interpret it however you want" when they don't just outright dash them with heterosexual romances at the last minute, because it simultaneously appeases the Yaoi Fangirls and Yuri Fans who generally tend to enjoy such relationships for their sexual tension and subtext more than any confirmation/consummation itself (many will admit to losing interest if it ever gets confirmed due to a subcultural form of Shipping Bed Death), as well as the Moral Guardians who may not necessarily believe in the complete elimination of all positive depictions of homosexuality from the media like their Western equivalents but do disapprove of anything other than heterosexual marriage with leads to the production of offspring as the endgame.

Blame it on cynicism more than Anti Shipping Goggles, but explicit confirmation aside, everything you mention just sounds like more of the same old Japanese media pattern of heavy homoeroticism that they're afraid of committing to outright text. Not that I'm going to pretend Western media is much better since the difference in values means it tends to be all-or-nothing trending towards nothing at all, not even deliberate subtext.

Doesn't having Ship Tease contradict Heterosexual Life Partners though? I want to remove the Heterosexual Life Partners with Felix and Sylvain because if the Japanese version is explicit about their relationship, then they're not "super close best friends" like the English version would imply even though dying together because they couldn't stand the idea of not being with the other is more romantic in nature given that is the Together in Death troupe.

The thing is the Japanese version still isn't explicit, it's just more heavily implied than in English. It might come closer to the edge but doesn't commit, so it's ambiguous.

The English version adds a few more utterances of "best friends" that weren't in Japanese, but those weren't in place of romantic dialogue. And it goes both ways, Felix expresses wanting to give Sylvain a hug in his English supports that isn't in the Japanese version. So in the end, still ambiguous.

Compare the other endings that specifically say they got married or were a couple, like Dorothea and F!Byleth. If it's supposed to be explicit then why not say that?

I mean there are a lot of popular hetero ships that don't end with them getting married on specific routes. Felix doesn't marry Annette in the BL route but people interpret it as such simply because its a paired ending and its super popular.

Ingrid isn't explicit with her marriage in Ashe and Dedue's paired ending even if its obvious that they do.

A lot of Felix's non BL endings don't mention marriage but people assume he ends up with them (Dorothea, Annette, Mercedes, Flayn). Leonie is the only explicit girl he doesn't marry. Marriage is specifically mentioned with Byleth, Ingrid and Bernadetta.

That's why I think there's a double standard specifically concerning Felix since marriage isn't a high priority on his list for half of his endings. So the one that is more implied than explicit, why must Heterosexual Life Partners be there when most of the girls aren't under Platonic Life Partners?

I've only been focusing on Felix/Sylvain since it was the current topic, but if you want to expand that I feel most of the supposed "LGBT pairings" besides with Byleth are more ambiguous than explicit except maybe Dorothea and Petra. Heck, I even feel the new Jeritza S-support is bare bones.

As for double standards between explicit homosexuality versus heterosexuality getting a pass because it's the "default", it's a big messy conversation that isn't for TV Tropes. Short version is it sucks but that's life (asexuals have it worst, you practically have to scream the label to make an asexual character explicit. Nobody is suggesting that every unpaired ending is asexual after all).

For Felix and Slyvain what we have is an English no-homo "best friends" paired ending, and a Japanese ambiguous ending that confirms neither. To me that adds up to ambiguously gay with a side of heterosexual life partners. And to give English localizers some credit, I really really really doubt they'd commit bisexual erasure in 2019 if the Japanese version had been explicitly romantic. Again, they added a line about Felix wanting a hug from Sylvain that wasn't in the Japanese one.

I get where you're coming from, I really want more LGBT characters too (I was the one that wrote the Unfortunate Implications entry). But I've been burned by Japan way too many times to say this bare-bones Ho Yay is explicit confirmation of bisexuality. I do not want to support what isn't there.

And as someone with a lot of ex-military friends, from experience having two men pledge to die for each other and can't live without each other isn't automatically romantic.

Ingrid's paired ending with Dedue is NOT romantic; it's explicit about them being friends.

Her paired ending with Ashe is different because they do get married in other routes, and the Blue Lions one says marriage might have been a thing but nobody is sure.

As others have said, a lot of the ho-yay here isn't automatically romantic; if you ever read or watched Lord of the Rings, you see lots of ho-yay there.

Byleth is under broken base due to them being the Heroic Mime. If they don't have a character, its hard for them to be a Base Breaker (but at least they ain't Corrin LOL).

The Blue Lions house is the most popular house because its the most completed route of all of them when compared to Black Eagles that had the shortest most undeveloped route or Golden Deer that got shafted because of the church route. There are less issues with this route which can't ignore the quality of it.

I think the logic is that this is a game demanding the player pick a side, so differing opinions on characters and plots is expected. But rather than just call the whole plot broken base, we limited it to the most egregious cases.

Like Byleth and Dimitri are cinders compared to the inferno that was the Rhea vs. Edelgard debates.

I've added Dimitri under Base-Breaking character, actually. Thought it was overdue, but at least some of the fandom are scrutinizing his character a bit more. Even some of his fans are starting to acknowledge his and his route's flaws. Also, a good part of the Edelgard debate is also by Edelgard vs Dimitri fans, so Dimitri also counts as a valid example.

One trouble with calling it a scam religion is that Sothis is at least seemingly a real goddess and is many of the things the church claims (the English text that describes her seen in the magic circle when she first uses her powers certainly wasn't a product of the church). Plus given Seteth met his wife in a church suggests worship of Sothis existed well before Rhea and her allies added/changed certain things about it.

I question too that the church institutionalizes racism. The Western branch does, but they are blatantly against the main church (indeed part of their hatred being due to the main branch accepting different races), and the teachings we see of the religion never reference race to my knowledge. The closest is a vague remark by Lorenz that opening up to foreigners (not the same as other races) goes against otherwise unstated "church tenets" (spelling may be off), but Claude replies that he's not so sure, implying it's open to interpretation.

Our laconic description for Scam Religion reads: "A religion that only exists to trick the believers into "donating" their possessions and to enrich their leadership."

The Church of Seiros does not exist to make Rhea financially wealthy, so no. It is not a Scam Religion.

Admittedly, my knowledge of the game as a whole is deeply incomplete. I didn’t see the evidence that it existed in some form before the dragons took it over for instance. That said, I’m also not sure if I’m comfortable calling her a god.

Also, I feel the need to now defend other parts of my edit, because I do feel the situation is a bit more nuanced than “the west likes freedom while Japan like social harmony and is therefore A-OK with all the bad things the church does,“ which is what I was trying to get at with a lot of the material that was dismissed and then cut as natter.

It's still a significant difference between the dub and a direct translation that goes beyond localization, so it qualifies for the trope in my book even if some individual lines are not so different.

Like in her Japanese introduction with a female Beylth, Petra calls her fat when she means "big hearted" due to word puns.

In the English dub Petra instead says the professor has a gut, intending to say they have guts and are brave.

It's small, but it's still an intention change from calling Beylth kind to calling them brave all due to a word pun that doesn't translate into English. That's textbook Woolseyism already, the fact that the dub also took out the pauses is icing on the cake.

I'd be curious to read a transcript, is there one posted somewhere? I tried a wiki for Heroes and while it has a bunch of conversations from this event it doesn't seem to have what you're referring to.

I don't have the text handy, but Edelgard doesn't stop Claude and Dimitri. She merely says that she feels the war is inevitable and that a visit from their future selves would only harden her resolve (especially a visit from herself as Empress). Basically that they can do what they want because it won't change anything.

In the final group Bonds conversation, the rest agree not to talk with their past selves in hopes that their time together in Askr will open a new possibility for Fodlan, which Edelgard even reluctantly agrees.

It's basically the same empty fluff Forging Bonds always has been, nothing to cause a controversy over. The only weird one to me is Claude's, where he learns about the schemes of various villains. Mostly because Claude the schemer was always an informed attribute to me, given how he's the nicest and level-headed of the lords.

The problem with the forging bonds is the fact that only Edelgard benefits from not telling Byleth or the past selves of other characters about the war that is going to transpire because of Edelgard. Edelgard says that she refuses to change her mind about finding another situation and that war is a must, yet talking to others is just something she refuses to do. When she does talk to Lisa, Alm and Celica, she just talks down on them for not having the same views of their brands as she does with her Crest.

Edelgard is enforcing "You can't fight fate" yet if Byleth learns what Edelgard does, there is a chance that they will leave her for Rhea hence Silver Snow route. Lysithea though still shows that she didn't agree and was just made to agree. Claude who is always going out of his way to find the most peaceful scenario (he tries to spare Edelgard even) won't even try to talk to Byleth about what might happen. You would think that warning Byleth about Jeralt being killed by Kronya and Edelgard's indirect involvement will actually do something.

And Dimitri is willing to subject himself and his kingdom to 5 years of hell under Cornelia and the Empire. That makes no sense given how much was lost on the kingdom side. To me, this is a case of the cast being forced to agree with Edelgard yet again at the expense of being OOC.

Rescued from the Scrappy Heap is a fairly flexible term since she would've been a Tier Induced Scrappy of some kind.

I'm still wondering when the entire section is going to get its own page.

That indeed might be a good compromise, since it seems trimming the entries is only a temporary fix.

Fates had its own page, although granted it had a multitude of entries as opposed to two long ones. I feel like it's not impossible to trim down, just that the most passionate wonkers have a lot to say about it.

It should have been added here first and then the trope page but reading it over I think it should just be cut.

I thought it was going to be about her racism, but the entry is more just a fan complaint on how much they hate her as a character. It's really badly written (crimes include Claude never calling Ingrid out on her behavior despite being in entirely separate houses and saying that Ingrid is way too harsh to Sylvain the skirt-chaser that rubs everyone the wrong way until you get to know him better). They barely even touch on Duscur!

Cut it. Ingrid's support with Claude is overall bad and Sylvain has issues. But if its not going to even talk about Dedue and Duscur, there's no point putting it there.

I took it to the cleanup forum and they agreed, so it's gone.

Sure he's sympathetic, the problem is the "unintentional" part.

With this Dimitri being more sane and rational in Crimson Flower he was clearly fulfilling the "noble enemy with good points that must die to make you feel bad" archetype for Fire Emblem games. They want you to be sympathetic towards him.

As for Strawman has a point, wasn't that covered already? I thought somewhere we discussed how lame Edelgard's response to Dimitri is about conquering and reconquering.

He's still supposed to be someone, who has "lost his way as a king", so he's more supposed to be someone you pity and not someone who has a point. And since many fans don't think he's done anything in CF, that would make him someone, who has lost his way, I thought he'd count for the "unintentional" part.

You literally just said "he's supposed to be someone you pity." That pretty much disqualifies him from the trope.

I don't know if it would, the focus seems to be on how it goes against Claude's cultural ideology rather than on how it hurts him personally. I mean sure it hurts him, but it doesn't seem to impair him going forward. He just has trouble understanding why someone would die what he sees as a pointless way if they could instead escape to fight another day or simply survive.

I'm adding it back since that's not a Broken Base.

Unintentionally Sympathetic is about a scene that is supposed to put the person in a good light but due to executation, makes them look like a jerk. A person's feelings about the character and popularity doesn't matter. The game will never allow you to call Leonie out on being heartless in that moment and in non GD routes, Hilda is like "You should talk to Leonie. She really cared about Jeralt and isn't taking it well." Despite the fact Byleth is Jeralt's child who is grieving but apparently it isn't as import ant as Leonie's obsession with him.

So yeah. It's hard to feel for her grieving for Jeralt when all she does is lash out at Byleth, says they never appreciated Jeralt and demanding that she is the one to avenge Jeralt despite the fact Byleth should take priority.

As someone who took the time to S support her, it's still hard to appreciate someone as entitled as her.

“A person’s feelings about the character and popularity don’t matter.”

Uh...,yes they do. This is a subjective trope. The question of whether or not a character is sympathetic is ENTIRELY based on the audience’s feelings. Sympathy is a FEELING.

So you're saying that if your dad dies and the reaction you give the child is "Oh, you never appreciated your dad when he was alive" is supposed to give you sympathy for Leonie.

It doesn't matter if Leonie gives a half-ass apology in her A support. In that moment, she comes off as entitled jerk. That's why she's also in Never Live it Down because no sane person would actually tell someone that you don't appreciate your parent who just died just because you fangirl him.

Its like how we're supposed to feel bad for Morgana for Ryuji standing up for himself but the reality was that no logical person would be siding with Morgana but the writer makes you against Ryuji.

You have a point, though I would think that Leonie's previous experience with Byleth seeming to be so detached when it came to Jeralt has as much to do with her reaction as any fangirling. That's neither here nor there though I suppose.

Byleth is detached in the C support. However, everyone in the academy except that one NPC near the garden knows that Byleth is grieving and visibly upset over Jeralt's death. Leonie is feeling sorry for herself despite knowing Byleth is hurting more. She only met Jeralt once and she's bawling her eyes out saying "And we just finally reunited" as if she didn't spend the majority of the time in the monastery nagging Jeralt or asking where he is so she can nag him.

Leonie's B support comes immediately after Jeralt's death. If you miss her C support, you can't support Leonie at all. Given this context, she has no right to make the situation worse for Byleth and the fact you can't call her out on it is made worse with how Hilda sympathizes with Leonie in non GD routes instead of the person actually suffering in front of her. The fact you can call Edelgard out on being heartless on her route rubs salt in the wounds (Edelgard is allowed to talk about her pain and grieve for her siblings but she tells Byleth to get over it because the world continues without them.)

"So you're saying that if your dad dies and the reaction you give the child is "Oh, you never appreciated your dad when he was alive" is supposed to give you sympathy for Leonie."

Are you asking me for my subjective opinion? Because, again, this trope is about a subjective opinion.

Strictly speaking, just because someone is blunt doesn't make them unsympathetic. You're trying to present this as being an objective trope, which it isn't. I repeat, if other people's feelings vary on the matter or they still feel sympathetic towards Leonie, that is NOT what this trope is. YMMV tropes are called Audience Reaction for a reason.

Leonie isn't sympathetic. I will bring up again how in Persona 5, Morgana is written as being in the right when he was in the wrong. Ryuji had every right to stand up for himself but was treated as the villain.

Byleth is made out to be the bad person in the B support chain despite the fact he's grieving. We are supposed to sympathize with what Leonie is going through which is absolutely nothing as I mentioned in my other posts how she spends most of the game following Jeralt around and acting like she was more important than Byleth is.

Leonie isn't just blunt. She's downright heartless in her B support with Byleth. And this is not the only support where she's a jerk. She treats Marianne poorly in the C support by making an assumption before letting Marianne explain what was going on.

It also doesn't help that in game, you always have to make Byleth look like an idiot to get support points with Leonie. Or agree with her on something that is downright hypocritical (Leonie insults Byleth for participating in the fishing tournament and how he's not taking the teaching drop seriously like Jeralt would).

Being a fan of Leonie and turning the other cheek like Byleth is forced to do doesn't give them the right to delete the reaction because "opinions changed" which it hasn't. It would imply getting rid of all the other tropes with Leonie on the YMMV.

And deleting that post anyway without talking about it is already in bad faith.

What happened in Persona is irrelevant to this game. Let me repeat: this is an Audience Reaction. The trope requires that an audience as a whole (not simply yourself or a small contingent) reacts the way the trope states.

Your first sentence is making it blatantly obvious that you have made up your mind personally and simply do not like the character. You are entitled to your own opinion, but that is not enough to trope an Audience Reaction.

If that isn't enough to dissuade you, then I'll bring up the matter to Ask The Tropers and let them decide.

I already brought it up on the clean-up page for Unintentionally Unsympathetic. It didn't generate much conversation but the one that responded said they were cool with the entry being added back with some minor edits (explaining why Leonie was supposed to be sympathetic in that scene).

As for what started all of this, Leonie's entry was removed citing because "the hate isn't as intense anymore" but that's not because people's opinions have changed (polls show she's the least popular female classmate) it's that this game is over 6 months old and the discussion has died down. We discussed this at length when the topic was relevant in August/September and many responded saying Leonie rubbed people the wrong way in these supports (scroll down this very thread and you'll find them).

So lack of talk about Leonie does not equate to a change of opinion about her. And this isn't creating a new entry but restoring one that was unfairly cut.

It would have been easier to just read what the trope is about then letting the bias decide.

7-4, We still have this guy is constantly reminding us that Leonie never shuts up about Jeralt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNIUt88pfl8&t=239s and this isn't even without the supports and battle dialogue. Most of the memers on Youtuber will never stop bringing it up either.

Because if people's opinion changed within six months, you would think Bernadetta would be removed from the Base Breaker list with how she scored 3rd on the Choose Your Legends poll in FE Heroes. -shrug-

You're going to have to link us to the interview first, I'm not finding anything.

https://yks160519.tumblr.com/post/613155373448396800/some-qa-answers-i-thought-were-interesting-from Its this post.

Hmm...not to be super suspicious but I really don't want to start suggesting "canon" on a game with multiple routes on a independent translation on a tumblr post (the writer even admits not to take this too seriously). If we can get an official translation of the Nintendo Dream article I'd be less skeptical.

So for now I say we invoke death of the author, and only use the game itself (which never reveals Claude's name nor his fate in some routes). Maybe later we can add a "word of god" sub-bullet on info revealed after the fact.

It is notable that in-game Claude's personal battalion is called "immortal corps" and "immortal/eternal" is apparently what "Khalid" means.

I've started seeing the interview pop up elsewhere, so I think there's no doubt to its validity anymore. And it does seem to suggest there is a canon path, and throws shade on the Crimson Flower route being actually a secret ending (with Silver Snow being the normal one).

So in light of all that, I don't see a problem with adding stuff like Claude's true name and his survival in. Maybe add a note that this is coming from outside the game and with spoiler tags.

Hate when developers do this though. They couldn't fit Claude's true name in anywhere in the actual game?! How hard could that have been!?

Does anyone have the original Japanese text of this thing? Curious about how that name was supposed to be written in katakana...

(Also, honestly, I can kinda see the "couldn't fit it in" issue. It's not the sort of info you can just squeeze into a random scene.)

Claude's real name was supposed to be dropped after you take the Great Bridge and Nader would have outed Claude. They changed it to where he refers to Claude as "kiddo" instead to show familiarity.

And ignoring the author would mean having to get rid of all the YMMV pointing out that "Edelgard was right" about the censorship. Which the interview confirms that is true as well (while ignoring the fact that Seteth is justified removing the erotica of his daughter.)

But there's still no canon path. Church route is still the worst route that misses so many details despite the fact they made the Church route first. Edelgard's route being last explains why its so rushed and so poorly written and just unfinished in general. Claude's route was probably made second with all of this information because of how Claude has most of the cutscences in his route.

But somehow, Dimitri's route is the most finished despite the cut content.

I think it's trope misuse, because it's not really people hate Felix it's more a fan debate on if Felix ever hated Dimitri or not. The entry is more a take that at certain fans that do believe Felix hated Dimitri at some point, claiming they are twisting Felix's character.

Which I think is unfair, because what both sides miss is that several characters act differently depending on which route they're on so it's possible for "hates Dimitri" and "tsundere" Felix to be two valid interpretations of his character.

Personally I see it as Felix has a grudge against Dimitri that festers into hatred on Crimson Flower, becomes regretful of in Verdant Wind and Silver snow, or eventually repairs in Azure Moon.

Just more issues caused by not having one "canon" route, so people fight over which is the real character.

Indeed, after all we're talking about a game where, depending on choices, various characters can view you as their greatest enemy, or become your life long soulmate. Every route, and every playthrough of every route, being its own separate universe with separate versions of the characters can indeed be a hard thing for some fans to grasp.

Guess it all boils down to "when you discover that your side is wrong/the other side did something right, yet you don't want to turn back because it is too late, and that is the route you have chosen based on the info you have".

Shoot I just described Camus characters in a nutshell.

Thing is, I'm not even sure it's a route-dependent interpretation. Imagine starting with the Blue Lions and watching their C-rank support (where Felix outright calls Dimitri a bloodthirsty beast), then never bothering with the rest of their support chain or Felix's monastery conversations. (Although, you'd think the fact they HAVE an A-rank - and thus a paired ending - would clue people into something...)

One issue with this game is that, on top of having four routes with exclusive revelations and character development directions, it hides a ton of details behind optional content - supports, specific dialogue choices, advice box notes, etc. Which is all fun and interesting IF you have the patience to explore every choice and probably do 2-3 playthroughs of each route as a result.

Not all A supports have paired endings though unfortunately. Flayn and Manuela and Bernie and Alois don't have a paired ending despite reaching A support.

Felix having an A support despite claiming to hate Dimitri should make it obvious how he really feels because most supports end at B due to not trusting the person or not wanting to continue a support in the long run.

But Felix can only have an A support with Dimitri if you chose the Azure Moon route. Otherwise the pair will never support with each other.

We can't consider the possibility of an A-support proof that Felix never ever hates Dimitri in a game with multiple routes. Because we have to recognize that there's a route where Felix can leave the Blue Lions to join the Black Eagles and eventually kill not only his own father but Dimitri too and not have a remorse scene afterwards like in Verdant Wind.

I'm tempted to say that this is becoming a broken base issue, as fans have been debating this since the game came out.

That's... kinda what I'm trying to bring up here: supports being optional content means Azure Moon is NOT safe from this interpretation, either. Like, forget about other routes for a moment. Does Felix hate Dimitri on their own route? I've seen arguments that he does, and THIS is why I'm saying it's not a route thing. ANYWAY, the reason I even brought up optional content in the first place is because we've had a few bits of info edited out before that was based on some of the more obscure lines from the game. Given the massive amount of text in it, we might end up requiring citations.

There's no remorse scene in Black Eagles because it just ends before anyone can actually do anything. Game ends and we're told that Black Eagles defeated Slithers and everyone lived happily ever happy despite all the flaws and contradictions.

I would never use Black Eagle route for anything when most characters are OOC for joining Edelgard. Example being Ingrid. The epiphany of Ingrid not being true to her character and might as well be a different person entirely. We have Annette too who is OOC. And we have Balthus now as another character who would never logically join Edelgard.

So we have 3 of the 4 routes where Felix doesn't hate Dimitri. 2 of them has Felix living with the regret of not being there to help Dimitri and one where they fix their friendship.

I wouldn't go as far as to use terms like OOC in reference to a branching narrative, and this is coming from someone whose overall impression of Crimson Flower was "weird AU fanfiction" (interesting premise, wasted potential, which I HATE in works of this level). In the end, if you think about it, it's really more of a Gameplay and Story Segregation issue that the devs TRIED to avoid, but in ways that didn't always turn out to be believable, and even then it's very much a YMMV thing. The idea of the entire class just going with whatever choice Byleth makes was bound to be awkward in the first place.

While routes being alternate timelines is about as canon as it can get without it being acknowledged outright (given Sothis's powers), the very fact that both El and Dimitri admit on their respective routes that their fate would've been very different without Byleth, to me, indicates that they're meant to be very much the same characters with the same flaws, and they're aware that they would've succumbed to these flaws under different circumstances. Dimitri isn't even that much better on Azure Moon until the rain scene, especially given the heavy implications that he was about to go and get himself killed anyway. Apply the same to Felix, and one interpretation of his character is that he NEEDS to be around Dimitri and witness his downfall in order to not become a "boar" himself.

...Anyway, since we've established that the entry isn't even about players hating Felix, is it safe to remove it? Or edit it down, at least? Because, unless there exists a massive camp of "Dimitri Did Nothing Wrong" fans who missed the whole point of Azure Moon, I don't see why anyone would disagree with Felix apart maybe from the "I see what you mean but you could've phrased it in a less hostile way" angle.

I'm for deleting the entry ez

A second vote for deleting the entry.

A third vote for deleting the entry.

I went ahead and removed the entry.

Edit: nevermind. Forgot that Claude's parents aren't Judith and Nader, it's been a while since I did that route.

I still say you're overanalyzing the line though, I'd take it as Balthus was a mercenary until Claude was coronated. Then Claude picked him for his personal cabinet for public relations with Fodlan.

Except Nader isn't related to Claude, he's simply his combat instructor and a famous warrior. Both of Claude's parents are alive too, so it seems unlikely Nader was even a parental substitute for Claude. So becoming Nader's son-in-law only makes sense if Balthus married a child of Nader's.

Claude and Bathus' support makes it clear that if Bathus were to meet Claude's parents, they might attack him because Bathus is going to be an idiot confessing to a married woman in front of her husband.

That's why when the ending says how he didn't do anything to help Claude until after he takes the throne makes it seem like something needed to happen for Bathus to change from being a slacker to being competent.

We also know Claude has a good relationship with his parents despite the incident he got tied to a horse because he did something really bad that would piss his parents off (and he never did it again). Nader is his teacher but I wouldn't be surprised if Nader was the king's retainer but then Claude leaves and the king is like "Go follow my son."

I'd hardly say that the support line "makes it clear" that Claude's parents are going to attack Balthus. Honestly it read more as Claude ribbing Balthus for being so open about crushing on his mom, something he'd get justifiably salty about. Similar to the "threats" various characters make to Sylvain when he gets too flirty.

Seriously, I think you're reading way too much into this.

I just got past that mission (and the follow up Paralogue) and there's no mention of that being part of his disowning. Closest is "if he had a Crest, he probably wouldn't have done this stuff" but that's conflating cause and effect.

It seems it comes mainly from implication, or people trying to make it clear he wasn't kicked out on the street for not having a Crest (as the term "disowned" may imply). That is, he still grew up with Sylvain and lived with him as a noble long enough to make attempts on his life (i.e. well after Sylvain was discovered to have a Crest and named heir). Plus we know of plenty of Kingdom nobles that don't get kicked out of their households for lacking a Crest. Dimitri also is explicit about how Sylvain's family requires the heir to have a Crest, but not that those without Crests are disowned. So logically something else must have happened for him to end up ostracized and living as a wandering bandit. Still, it seems at present we are lacking in explicit references.

The Wiki states that Miklan was disowned in 1177 (when Sylvain was 17). Sylvain had a crest already as a child so Miklan wasn't kicked out until something happened which goes with Sylvain bringing up in his B support with Mercedes how Miklan tried to kill him multiple times. Not just the time where he was pushed down the well. After all, if it happened when Sylvain got pushed down the well, Miklan would have been disowned sooner.

The DLC adds that Miklan is in fact a terrible human being. Even if Sylvain tries to act like Miklan is justified in his anger, he goes out of his way to be a horrible human being. Destroying villages, burning them to the ground, kidnapping women (and the implication that goes with that), the list goes on. Miklan pushed his brother down a well so that's sibling abuse. It's not hard to think he made multiple attempts on Sylvain's life and verbally/sexually abused him either with all the red flags pointing toward it (Sylvain's obsession with sex at a very young age. Sylvain already thinking he's a waste of space at an early age. Sylvain already thinking he's objectified to the point he can't form any relationships. Sylvain's lack of friends that are around his age etc.)

Yeah Miklan is a horrible person, but honestly the evidence suggests Miklan left to become a bandit himself, rather than being kicked out outright. If anything, if Miklan was truly caught trying to kill Sylvain, wouldn't his parents have him killed or arrested?

Miklan leaving willingly honestly puts a whole different spin on things itself. I mean it means he put himself into such a desperate lifestyle, and we aren't told just what made staying in his house as not an heir so horrible. After all he was still living the life of a noble as far as we know. Makes me wish that it was explained, like he was reduced to servant status or something, but I think all we get is Sylvain referring to Miklan being ignored, not deliberately mistreated.

The Gautier family drama is quite ambiguous. I'll give it a few days before I do the edits over the wiki.

If Miklan left to become a bandit, Margrave Gautier would have done something about his disowned son sooner because Miklan ended up becoming a leader and then messing up the towns wherever he went. The Kingdom has bandit problems so it would make sense why nothing is done about it but Sylvain's father makes it clear that he values his reputation above all else.

Multiple times Sylvain brings up how his dad is trying to save face. Even in the Blue Lions route near the end, he captures someone who was involved in the Tragedy of Duscur just to get in Dimitri's good graces instead of trying to find out the truth of the incident. Miklan's bandits were still causing problems even after Miklan is killed 3 months in. It seems to be a common theme for him to wait at a time where his reputation wouldn't suffer.

I do think they wouldn't have killed Miklan solely because it would look bad to kill their child. Even if the reason was "He tried to kill Sylvain multiple times" people like Edelgard literally would paint it as "he was killed because he didn't have a Crest".

Saving face may have been part of it, but the game goes to some lengths to show that lack of ability to do much about it was also a factor. That is a number of characters note that asking the church to deal with Miklan is basically an admission of incompetence/weakness on the part of the Kingdom, that they can't handle things themselves. Recall that in the wake of the king's murder much of the nation became unstable and Dimitri's uncle ended up not being able to fix much. Some characters outright fear that if such things continue the Kingdom will lose all legitimacy. Similarly in Sylvain's paralogue it's explained that his father feared the church wouldn't return the Lance of Ruin (a fear that ended up unfounded as Rhea does return it if it doesn't go directly to Sylvain), that they would judge them as not responsible/capable enough thanks to how poorly they'd handled the chaos in their territory.

Which is worse in terms of rep? Arresting and/or executing your murderous son for trying to off your true heir, or somehow letting your murderous son go and becoming a murderous bandit who rapes, pillages, and burns villages, stole the relic and kept it for who knows how long, and contributes to the mass bandit problem?

Legit question. Either way, Sr. Gautier looks incompetent and a terrible parent.

Margrave Gautier: I'm going to show mercy to you son. I kick you out and never want to see you again. Do me a favor and don't make things worse for me.

Miklan proceeds to become the leader of the bandits and rapes, pillages and burns villages in his wake and then steals the Lance of Ruin.

Margrave Gautier: Insert shocked Pikachu face here.

Sylvain in his solo ending be like "He's a man you can trust with your life but not with your daughters."

I get what you're saying, but I hesitate to offer suggestions. That is the debates regarding Edelgard and Rhea are so involved and detailed that it seems a disservice to trim them down too much when summarizing them. It seems fair to me to let all the main arguments and counter arguments get a line or two.

Strongly disagree. TV Tropes is not an essay contest, so there is no justification for an entry that long.

Similar to Fates I suspect broken base will become it's own page eventually, but even then I still question the sheer length of the entries.

If you want to summarize them both very plainly, it all comes down to something along the lines of saying that they are both scarred by tragedies in their lives, which leads to them both acting morally questionable throughout the game, even if their reasons are understandable, and while they also do good (especially with Byleth's influence), they also do still have a ton of glaring flaws. And however much you're willing to overlook really depends on you and how you feel about them. Whose tragic backstory speaks to you more, whose actions speak to you more, and whose morally questionable choices repulse you more, that kinda thing.

Append: Edelgard's entry just got even longer last time I checked now; it's starting to look like an essay, and it's got all sorts of notes.

Yeah, these entries are downright comical and absolutely need succinct rewrites to capture the essentials. Anything more detailed than that is cruft and belongs in the domain of meta Fan Wank.

I tried tidying it up a little - From 1838 words down to 389. I'm gonna save the original bit on my com just in case there's something tht's glaringly missing.

It is looking more like the Edelgard Draco in Leather Pants squad trying to strike Rhea with as much Ron the Death Eater stuffs as possible and painting every of her actions to be inexcusable because how dare she strike on their valued tenets (freedom and mankind progress), there is no excuse that can allow it. (Didn't help that Rhea is on a same position like YHVH from SMT, these pro-freedom people's favorite punching bag). You may want to be wary of Moral Event Horizon as well, it's getting like a ground for Edit War and Justifying Edit especially when a certain people want to throw Rhea into the grinder and paint her as unsympathetic, which goes more in-line with Edelgard (I mean, GOD help Rhea if she tried to pet a cat, she might be accused for trying to poison the cat for trying to go against her rules!).

With the Fire Emblem fandom now about to go on a wildfire defending what they believe to be their right side, might as well prepare 3 Houses' Broken Base page.

I think points of contention people have with this have to do with a number of things. Namely while it can be inferred the war and Sylvain's status among the victors helped, it's not actually stated. It could be that simply being the new head of a famous and powerful house alone would have granted Sylvain enough influence. And of course, we shouldn't simplify the continent-wide reforms too much, as its noted in some endings that actually changing the whole continent took quite some time/years. Depending on what happened first it could be argued that Sylvain's success bolstered the reforms of Fodlan's leader as much as the other way around. Indeed, none of the endings even mention Sylvain's war accomplishments or change in leadership as mattering at all (after all, in Silver Snow Rhea can potentially return to being archbishop, albeit with a reformed view of things), instead focusing on how it was lots of hard work, diplomacy and his position as the new Margrave Gautier that enabled the changes in relations with Sreng and local views on Crests.

Still, YMMV is for tropes with a bit of speculation to them. I'm not sure what, if any, edits should be made regarding this.

Personally, i think we should just leave it as is, like leave both the fact that Sylvain did diplomatic actions, and that his status as a war hero may have helped. Besides, i think it being inferred that Sylvain's war hero status is a fair point to make, it's not out of left field.

But one thing i noticed is that the winner gets control over Fodlan, and thus can enact their vision on a grander scale.

Fodlan being less Xenophobic isn't going to happen if Claude is killed. Edelgard talks about how Fodlan and Almyra should one day get along but under the assumption Claude is killed, it's impossible for this to happen. It's the same if Sylvain is killed because relationship with Sreng is never going to improve. (And before bringing up that Almyra wouldn't care about Claude, remember that you can kill Hilda and Holst who adores his little sister to death is apparently okay with asking the Empire for help against Almyra? A huge case of "You're killing Claude and Hilda with 0 reciprocation that is hand waved by the game.")

And it also ignores how Edelgard isn't going to put the dragons in a positive light given how Rhea is. It doesn't matter if Seteth and Flayn are innocent in comparison because history is going to remember Rhea as this evil dictating dragon thus the assumption all dragons can't be trusted.

Recall that according to VW, it is the Church that keeps Fodlan in isolation and preaches against contact against outside nations, so Edelgard most likely also opposes that part of doctrine. Besides, Claude isn't the only lord who wants to eliminate xenophobia, Dimitri and Edelgard also have relations with non Fodlan nations which would encourage more interactions with other nations, like Edelgard in particular gives Brigid it's independence back, so it stands equal to Fodlan in terms of sovereignty, and Petra talks about ending racism so either way, under Dimitri or Edelgard Fodlan is going to be a less xenophobic territory. In fact, Shamir can earn a high ranking position in the Empire in her ending with Hubert despite being from Dagda. So even if Claude is killed, it is shown that the Empire has other nations to interact with who aren't Almyra.

We're going off on a tangent now, but I find it odd that no route really clarified these supposed teachings from the church regarding isolation. We see plenty in Fodlan who are distrustful of outsiders, in no small part perhaps due to the frequent invasions Fodlan has suffered, but beyond that single remark from Lorenz we don't get any specific info. Indeed his remark is followed immediately by Claude claiming he thinks that the church doesn't really preach against closer relationships with other nations, and if I recall right if you talk to Lorenz afterward all he says is how he never thought to question if the tenets he was taught were true or not. What's more, Rhea takes in foreigners despite criticism from both within and outside the church, making one wonder if Claude is right and its more that many in the church are xenophobic (just as much of Fodlan in general is) rather than the church's teachings being xenophobic (a book in the library for all to read is likewise quite neutral to even positive in its descriptions of foreign lands). One point of Claude's supports with Cyril even seems to be him coming to realize that Rhea may not be the obstacle he thought she would be, in which case one wonders what the real source of the isolationists teachings were and whether Rhea ignored them because they benefited her own plans or if she was unable to oppose them.

To prevent a flood, we'd better stop this, but i'd chalk it up to Writer's not thinking things through.

I think the bottom line is because in every path the war happens, it's impossible to know if revolution would have happened without the war.

I was bored, so in case anyone still wants that ending, here. (This is from Azure Moon.)

シルヴァンは新たなゴーティエ辺境伯としてその生涯をスレン族との関係改善に捧げた。遺産と紋章を必要としない貴族の在り方を、その弁舌のみで築いた彼は、稀代の名領主として名を残す。一方で、浮気者を“ゴーティエの放蕩息子” と呼ぶ慣習も後世に残した。

The english translation (apologies for poor quality as it's Google translate):

Sylvain dedicated his life as a new Martyr Gautier in improving relations with the Suren people. He built a way of aristocratic, who does not need heritage and heraldry, only with his tongue, and remains a rare master lord. On the other hand, the custom of calling the flirt "the prodigal son of Gautier" has also been retained for posterity.

Most people I've seen consider him an interesting character who is supposed to be flawed/messed up. The game presents him as someone you're not supposed to like/agree with entirely as far as his behavior goes before his character development. Has there been divisiveness among fans that he gets away with too much, or that the game makes him out to be more sympathetic than he should be?

Considering how highly he ranked in CYL and how loved he seems, I say no.

Short answer: No.

Most of Sylvain's fanbase acknowledges how much of a jerk he can be. He's self-destructive to himself but it also reflects in his supports how if he can't change himself, he's stuck with all the B supports.

I've also only seen this, that is, if people dislike Bernie it's mostly because of gameplay (being a Fragile Speedster and all). But, maybe it's her personality, like you're either gonna find her shut in tendencies and awkwardness endearing, or you'll find it annoying.

Also, I'm not sure about Gilbert being Base-Breaking Character either, especially if Americans Hate Tingle already covers him. He's certainly not liked, as far as I've seen and heard, especially since he's also not too great gameplay wise (being a sort of Crutch Character and all). Do we know if he's even liked in Japan anyway?

I think I have read some criticism of Bernadetta on places like gamefaqs, but a lot of characters have at least a few people there who really hate them. Might be a case of vocal minority. There are also those who criticize her mostly as a response to those who perhaps overly adore her.

Gilbert is the worst unit in the game. He cannot function at all in maddening mode. He joins that chapter with one of the lowest hitting weapons on a map with mostly assassins and units with axebreaker. His charisma is low so his battlion isn't going to hit anyone either. He can't protect Ashe at all and fails at being a tank. You get forced to use him twice (this chapter and his paralogue) and never again.

Anyone who says he's good has not played maddening. Otherwise, he's usable in normal/hard like every other unit.

IDK what it's even called. We know for a fact Nintendo pushed the Black Eagles the most during promotion but then it ended up the shortest and most definitely not finished route.

Hmm...in that case, would it count as a downplayed example of Obvious Beta? The route does have a clear beggining and end, but at the same time it's easy to tell they had to cut a lot of corners and doesn't have the same level of polish compared to the other routes.

I'm fairly certain that's misuse of Obvious Beta.

Honestly, almost everyone. Which I know isn't helpful, so I'll nominate Flayn as just a regular Woobie. Lost almost her entire family including her mom, had to fight strong opponents despite being a child and slept for most of the next millennium because of her injuries, and has to be really careful about not revealing who she is, to the point she's spent most of her time isolated from society. She just wants to be a normal girl. Oh, and then she gets swept up in another war. Maybe Dedue as a stoic woobie, for the tragedy of Duscur and the awful treatment he got from most citizens of Faerghus, plus watching the person he cares about most getting lost in his own darkness. (And potentially dying, poor dude)

Also, Flayn admits at one point five years later that she is still traumatized by what the Death Knight did to her (i.e. kidnapping her and draining her blood).

None of the healers are Tier Induced Scrappies. They're main role is locked to healing.

Mercedes is seen as the best healer but can't go into other classes due to her bad affinities.

Marianne is a mix between attacking and healing making it hard to decide what to do.

Linhardt can't be a Gregmory but he heals the most of all the healers. He's also the healer with Warp. Manuela's growths are all over the place in comparison so its hard to justify using her. Lysithea is an attacker with warp.

So no, Linhardt wouldn't be a Tier Induced Scrappy.

Linhardt only learns two healing spells and while his Crest helps, the fact he has to rely on it (a random chance mind you) to out heal the others means he on average heals less then the others who either have Recover or have better growths. His growths are very bad as well, and his spell list is very generic save Warp.

His only redeeming trait seems to be Warp, which doesn't really make him that good then since another unit who has Warp in Lysithea has better spells and utility.

Just because Lindhardt has warp doesn't make him automatically great. If you don't have Flayn or Ana, your only hope of Rescue is Bernie, and it takes too long to even get Rescue for that to be worth doing for her. Warp + Rescue is a good combo but one spell doesn't make him good enough to be a amazing unit, especially since his growths are terrible. Plus, if Linhardt isn't TIS, then neither is Manuela cause she has Warp.

He has Physic. That puts him a touch above any healer that doesn't have physic. Looking at you Flayn, you might get better later but I want my healer miles away from the fight!

That and this is a hard game to create a tier list for, since on a cold non-new-game+ run you're kinda stuck with the house you picked and they'll still end up with more class-time than most recruits you can steal from other houses.

So if you picked Black Eagles, he's probably your best healer unless you just shoved flowers into Mercedes face until she choked on them. But on any other route he's not a top pick to steal from another house like Felix or Lysithea.

Using Lysithea as a base to all mages is also bad because Lysithea's one goal is to even nuke or warp. Because by that logic, it doesn't matter if Hubert is a good mage for the Black Eagles because Lysithea exists. Who would want to use Dorothea and Annette when you can just recruit Lysithea. Why bother with Flayn outside of making her an auto dancer when Lysithea exists.

Linhardt is not an attacking unit. He just heals and warps. You will never have to think twice about what Linhardt should be doing unlike Lysithea where you'll be like "Should I one shot this fool or should I warp someone to deal with this fool or help out on the other side of the map?"

I think the main point they're trying to make is that it's a good sign that the female designs in general seem to be fanservice free (so far). How about something like:

Author's Saving Throw: The female characters shown in the first trailer are all dress modestly, which was met with much relief after Fates' Fanservice-y costume designs.

As for So V, I agree it's being glossed over, but Fates was still the latest non-remake in the series, and is still being promoted heavily in games like Heroes and Warriors, moreso than So V.

That does sound a bit better, though I'm now calling into question the use of the trope

Wouldn't that only apply if the devs heard the outcry to the designs of Fates and then were like "alright, well, these designs are going to be more modest", like as a response to said outcry? Or does the trope come into effect even if it's implicit like "well the devs haven't said anything about it but the fact that they're showing more modest designs count as this"?

Actually, I thought of what could fit.

• Win Back the Crowd: Fans who weren't to thrilled about the Fanservice laden designs of Fates appreciated that the first trailer showed characters with pretty modest designs.

How about this?

I think the issue is that we've not seen enough of the overall cast designs to know if this is an example of anything really. Once we get more information, than maybe it would have grounds. We've only seen a few characters, not enough to really go off of.

I'm not sure Win Back the Crowd and Author's Saving Throw fit at all, since those imply that the issue was causing major issues with a majority of the fanbase, and it's really, really difficult to tell what the majority of this particular fanbase thinks.

Using sites like Serenes Forest don't even give you a good representation of what the majority thinks; I did some calculations once and found out that even if the Serenes forum members had an unanimous opinion, their numbers still meant they barely make up 1% of the fanbase, and that's assuming the fanbase only consists of a million people.

I'd just remove it at this point.

If there isn't any disagreements, it can be removed.

Gotta love how perception of certain crowd gives the impression that EVERY single design from Fates is fanservicey and bad, while implying that SOV and Three Houses designs are rigid and boring, but this is not the place to discuss this without going off-the-rails.

Ignore this

I dunno, is it really an ensemble when the lords are pitted against each other and some just get ignored depending on the house you choose? That and which personalities are you trying to slot the lords into? Byleth might be universally quiet but his/her personality varies a bit depending on the player, and Dimitri's dynamic character arc puts him into a few different categories depending on the status of the plot.

On the other hand, apparently you can use this trope on the Angry Birds and Donkey Kong so if the trope is that fast and loose I don't see why you can't use it.

I guess post-timeskip, Claude would be the Sanguine, Dimitri the Choleric, Edelgard the Melancholic and Byleth the Phlegmatic.

Though in CF, you can make a case for it being the other way round for Edelgard and Dimitri.

I lean on the side of that if it's not at least referencing things that happened directly within the game, it probably shouldn't go. So nothing done by the fandom, sales/character poll results, or things like that. Speculation on unspoken past actions of characters which would be awesome if true are a thorny issue due to all the debate over what is and isn't true, but if you can make a strong case for it being unspoken canon, why not.

The consensus is that the students and standard recruits cannot be ensemble dark horses because they are main playable characters, so any fan appreciation would be the author's intention.

Even if your playthrough didn't see much of Marianne, this isn't true for Golden Deer players. Choosing not to recruit her is a personal decision in a game loaded with them.

Therefore the Gatekeeper is the only real ensemble darkhorse at this time. I don't know who added Bernadetta but she should be removed.

Even less important characters are generally designed to be liked or at least not disliked, though. If the character is found to be disproportionately popular with respect to their importance or where creators noticed that they were an unusual hit with audiences I think it could still count, such as in Oboro's case from Fates. Although I'm not sure any of them have commented on this set of characters yet.

Its still funny how despite Oboro being popular, she has no alt in Heroes and every other character has gotten an alt before her. :')

But I think Bernie is fine because she has little importance in the grand scheme of things but still finds herself on the top of every official list above Edelgard.

To play devil's advocate it's possible Bernadetta was a developers' darling during creation, and the character focused content is spread a little more evenly throughout this game due to the paralogues making any favoritism a little easier to cover up. Whereas Oboro was clearly not a staff priority based on her presence within that game and within Heroes.

Oboro did get into Fire Emblem Warriors though, or did we all forget that game? Because I certainly did.

As for Bernie and Marianne, while I get that they're popular they still get as much story significance as anyone else in their story-level tier (below actual main characters like the Lord, Byleth, some teachers, and right hands like Hubert and Dedue). They're all about even with any other house member that isn't a lord or right hand.

Mostly I see if we open the gates for Bernadetta and Marianne then we should also add back in Lysithea and Felix, who were cut earlier.

You could make arguments for how Marianne and Lysithea are somewhat more plot-relevant due to their backstories involving the Crests and the Empire's experimentation, while Felix is tied to the plot through his brother and father as well as his friendship with Dimitri. It's true that of these four Bernadetta's issues are the most isolated from the overarching story and lore, although she receives a similar level of content. It depends on how we're judging it.

In that case, this just got a whole lot trickier. The fandom is divided by (among other things) whether someone even counts as an Ensemble Dark Horse.

You're better off posting the actual poll for everyone to judge.

EDIT: I'm snickering at how Leonie is the lowest female student. As she should be.

Here we go:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/dis8eo/recent_famitsu_character_poll_results_for_three/

Granted I trend a little towards leniency when it comes to this trope because not all characters are plot-equal, but I think Shamir's relative lack of plot relevance makes her a good fit for the trope, especially since she was a hit out the gate even before anyone had an idea of how important she'd be.

I don't know if lack of popularity would make Ignatz the scrappy though, as he's more forgettable than hated.

(Also Apocrypha, I think your link is broken fyi).

It's stretching it, but relatively speaking perhaps. You could also perhaps argue that he's a Memetic Loser if his lack of popularity relative to others is itself a talking point.

Caspar, Linhardt and Raphael are also not on the list. Linhardt is still there on the support list because he's the only gay option (which is still stupid).

Its just the character of people who tend to be forgettable.

It also doesn't really help Ignatz how he views himself as the generic guy in a setting with nobles that need therapy.

Gameplay wise too. Ignatz exists in the same house as Claude and Leonie. Support wise, he doesn't stand out like Ashe. And then the joke about how he looks like a generic unit in BE route and then people not realizing they just killed him.

bleh, I have no idea why links never work in the Discussion page. I've been a member for years, so the anti-spammer protections shouldn't be active for my account... uuuh try this? If it's still not working, you can find it on the Fire Emblem reddit

I can see Ignatz fitting Memetic Loser, since he seems to be unpopular in a kind of funny way? Sort of like how people joke about forgetting Kellam all the time. Ignatz is in the same vein of "generic forgettable guy" in the fanbases eyes.

Blame it on the Discussion pages constantly forcing in backslashes where they don't belong.

Popularity polls aren't good at telling who's a Scrappy, but they are good at telling who isn't one, due to only asking who a person's #1 favorite character is. I wouldn't use popularity polls as evidence of Scrappydom or being a Memetic loser.

Why do so many ppl (though not everyone) hate Leonie? I understand that her B-Support isn't well liked, but her A-Support makes up for it.

@227someguy Oh, boi I get a chance to complain about everything wrong with Leonie. This is gonna be long.

1. Leonie constantly talks down on Byleth even before the B support. When you pick the GD, she's quick to insult you. She's always associating your accomplishments with Jeralt and then proceeds to act like she knows Jeralt better than you. Many NPC interactions with her like in chapter 5 forces Byleth to pick answers where it makes it seem like they don't know Jeralt well for Leonie's affection to go up (it strokes her ego). So once Jeralt dies, you get Leonie's B support where she tells Byleth they never appreciated Jeralt (when he was alive).

2. A support doesn't mean much at all. Supposed Byleth died in the Battle of Garreg Mach. There would be no apology. Even when she "apologizes" in the A support, she's mainly sorry for losing her temper but not the fact that she told Byleth that they didn't care about their father despite the fact he just died and they're shown grieving. While every other character is giving their condolences to you (minus Hubert and Linhardt), Leonie feels more sorry for herself than Byleth. This is assuming that her B support happens before you're allowed to walk around the monastery. And even if you get the B support afterwards, it makes her come off as fake.

3. Her S support doesn't seem genuine in the slightest. She seems more interested in getting the ring that Jeralt had and/or being with the son of the man she admired more than she loves Byleth himself. It's not convincing people in the slightest when that's all of her NPC dialogue is.

4. She also treats Marianne poorly and made everything about her.

5. Other characters bring up how Jeralt isn't perfect and she's completely fine with justifying Jeralt's bad behavior (Jeralt's drinking habits). Its why Leonie ending up in debt is satisfying because she didn't care to listen to someone who actually knew Jeralt (Alois).

I think the worst thing is her support with Raphael confirms she has a father who is alive and contributed to her attending the academy. And she ends up privileged as a result as she's quick to complain about Lorenz and how the nobles tax them high but then she gets into the academy and spends more time chasing Jeralt around instead of actually attending for what she told her village she'd do. She's a hypocrite who talks about how Byleth can't appreciate their father while pretending her father doesn't exist.

So there's a whole lot of reasons to not like Leonie. To me personally, she's a badly written character and her other supports with other characters aren't amazing. She only has "ehh" supports (that prop up the other characters instead of her) or go into full blown "yikes" territory (Byleth, Marianne)

Edit: Despite all of this complaining, she's still a good unit to use and I have not touched the YMMV page to complain about Leonie.

Doesn't she apologize to Marianne?

Leonie apologizes in the B support unlike Lysithea who apologizes after snapping at her. Leonie got on Marianne's case before Marianne could even get a word in versus Lysithea who needed Marianne's help, got frustrated how Marianne was looking for an excuse to not help and then snapped.

She could have done it in the C support but Leonie's too prideful to do that.

Better late than never, right?

I agree, but that's a symptom of this page in general, due to its popularity and the myriad of different opinions about it that people feel the need to enumerate on due to Fandom Myopia.

Plus some of them don't seem to exist, Byleth being in charge of all three houses is something i can't find.

Or Byleth meeting any of the lords as kids.

Byleth being in charge of all three houses is one thing I can't find in sites like AO 3. Byleth meeting the lords as kids are found on AO 3 but they're mostly Dimitri and Claude from what I have seen.

Ok, so we can clear out the "all three houses" option. For others, should we try merging them? Pretty much all the lords have an entry about "fight TWSITD while romancing Byleth", which could easily be compiled into one.

Yeah I think we should compile them.

I don't think it's worth an entry. Games or heck even stories in general having happy endings without fully exploring the implications or means to get there isn't anything unique to Fire Emblem.

Plus this sounds more like a stealth broken base trope to get around the 6-month waiting period.

Yeah that's valid. I feel sorry for the absolute hell that January will be here, lol.

If you want a happy ending to turn sour just make a sequel (Mystery and Radiant Dawn) but if not let's assume they will turn up okay

Since when has Fire Emblem ever have a tragic ending? Even if the sequel confirms that things didn't get better, that game will still have a happy ending.

Specifically, January 26

I should clarify a bit, from what I see, while most people picked either the Black Eagles or Azure Moon first, they mostly played Golden Deer last but the third wheel route argument comes from some of them thinking that neutral= third wheel hence unimportant. Ignoring how the Verdant Wind route itself has a lot of the game's lore packed in it.

Well, for one this ignores the Silver Snow route which is only slightly different from Verdant Wind (and offers very little unique to the route, besides getting to date Rhea and maybe more screentime for Seteth).

But on the other hand does it really deserve a misaimed fandom entry? In a title that encourages you to pick a side, fans uplifting their faves and downplaying the ones they don't like is nothing new. I've seen plenty of Golden Deer supporters that find them "the only sane path" (calling any other route supporting a tyrant).

As someone who did Azure Moon first, I don't think the third wheel = unimportant argument holds merit, because the revelations on Verdant Wind are very important.

However, I *do* find it a "third wheel" in terms of being detached from Edelgard's war (as it lacks Dimitri's personal connection with her, and Edelgard herself obviously) while also having some dissonance with its cutscenes (which Silver Snow fits better).

I don't think it qualifies as Misaimed Fandom, really. Like Stage 74 said, the game makes it easy to adore your favorite route, and first-route bias is pretty strong. The criticisms of VW feeling detached are just as valid as the criticisms of, say, CF being too short.

Ah, I see. Thanks!

Maybe people call it a third wheel route, because Claude is a third wheel in a failing date between Edelgard and Dimitri, and just wants to do his own thing and not get sucked into arguments?

It's not really Edelgard's character that's being interpreted in that line, it's how the players take it. So I don't *think* it's Alternative Character Interpretation, maybe Unintentionally Unsympathetic? My gut guess would have been Broken Base, but it hasn't been long enough yet.

I think its funny how Edelgard does give her regards in the BL and GD route but then in the BE route, she comes off as uncaring despite doing it to cheer you up.

Then again, Claude gives his regards in all routes and then in his own, he asks for the journal and won't take no for an answer.

@raguel: Even if you can't say no to Claude, he did at least asked for permission to read the journal and he doesn't say anything that comes off as rude. Though, to be frank I haven't seen much of how people reacted with Claude's version but I see a few analysis post saying that the Golden Deer version of chapter 10 is where Claude's Character Development is put in play where he asked if Byleth can trust him with the journal and his character development involves trust as a theme.

@apocrypha: Hmm, so Broken Base is more likely then? There are varying opinions about the Black Eagles version of the talk with the house leaders and while some may not see it as unsympathetic, others may find it as one.

That's gotta wait till January due to the "6 month policy" thing (I assume it is to prevent knee jerk reactions being added and then they are either disproven or the reaction is outdated in the long run)

Sure thing.

Thanks.

OK, I've split the page off.

None of the Fire Emblem titles have entries in "That One Level/Boss" due to challenge difficulties (Lunatic, Lunatic+, Maddening, etc) and the trope cleaning forum has made it pretty clear we shouldn't add chapters that only become hard when you're choosing a challenge setting added after the game came out as free DLC.

Depends. Generally speaking, if it's only hard because you deliberately selected an advanced challenge it doesn't count. But if it's exceptionally hard even by the standards of the other higher-difficulty levels because they overdid it or because everything else is titered more reasonably then it might qualify.

I personally didn't find chapter 2 hard for maddening. Most players have this bad habit of running into the middle of the map and the character using the forest to their advantage (Claude or Edelgard) will comment on how its stupid to take both houses at once thus every unit charges you. If you focus on the house that is in the forest first, then the other house won't charge you.

Chapter 5 however feels punishing due to the reinforcement spawn.

I'm okay with keeping chapter 5 (with a revision), as the reinforcements and introduction of beasts did make it somewhat more difficult even on Hard. And while Chapter 2 does take a very unique strategy on Maddening (for me it was Curved Shot spam) it's only a hard chapter on that difficulty.

I'd say no and that's still up to debate within the fandom. The reason Leonie gets to keep her entry is because the gulf between writer intent and fan reaction over something that isn't meant to be seen as gray is so egregious.

Why not, though?

The game doesn't really try to paint Claude that darkly honestly. Sure he has his low points, like threatening to steal Jeralt's journal from you just after he died, for example, but the game does treat him as if he's intended to be more heroic than the other lords, for example compare his reunion scene to the others.

Unlike the other two, Claude lacks any major Kick the Dog moments on his route, he's not an enemy on Azure Moon or Silver Snow, and attacking him on Crimson Flower is shown as pretty questionable on Edelgard's part. I don't think he's meant to be unsympathetic.

Claude has his stupid moment in Azure Moon during the Blood of Eagle and Lion but he already assists Dimitri earlier on (and he does the same thing in Silver Snow).

Killing Claude is not only messed up when he already surrendered but if you recruit characters from the Alliance, they aren't too happy that you killed him (in general. Everyone but Hubert and Shamir are happy if you spare him.)

As with all of the other entries, the point of contention is "unintentional." Because while the fandom in pre-release got shifty eyed about Claude, nothing in the game itself suggests he's supposed to be unsympathetic. So he can't be unintentionally sympathetic, it's straight up intended for Claude to be the most morally safe option of the three lords.

I'd suggest reworking Rhea's entry, since it's mostly about Rhea not living down things that didn't even happen. (Should we make a Ron the Death Eater entry for her?) The entries for the other characters look more or less alright.

I'd feel a Ron The Death Eater and Draco in leather pants would be a great addition to the YMMV now that you mention it. But we should wait till January. Speaking of, yeah the Rhea parts are about bits i never even heard of. And it really doesn't fit her, the trope laconic reads defined by one past action or mistake. Leonie is defined by her obsession to Jeralt, and Alois and Gilbert are remembered mostly for the S support fake out. Rhea is judged for her actions in the entire CF route.

We do get glimpses of "Rhea is slippery slope evil" pre timeskip.

This is a game meant to have complex characters that are at times difficult to categorize morally, so to me that invalidates a lot of the "unintentional" part on the unintentionally unsympathetic entries.

As it stands right now, the only one I'd keep is Leonie.

Likewise I feel like the Misaimed Fandom entry is attempting to shame people for supporting the characters listed by bringing up their various crimes and accusing their fans of Draco in Leather Pants, which doesn't seem kosher. Again these characters are supposed to be complex enough that people can still find them worth supporting despite their darker actions.

https://twitter.com/GaleShirogane/status/1175887718137700353?s=20

This twitter thread sums up the misaimed fandom in general, i love all the lords, but it's apparent that most people are more likely to white wash Dimitri and Claude, while demonizing Edelgard. I have talked with fans who feel that Dimitri was totally justified killing Imperials, that he didn't need to be redeemed, and that they use Dimitri's hatred of Edelgard that he gets over in the route, as an excuse to excessively hate on her. But of course, we only notice if Edelgard fans white wash her. Is it fair to only point out Edelgard fans who white wash her and ignore Claude and Dimitri fans who white wash their favorite lord?

I say we keep the general paragraph about the lords in general and not single one out.

I don't care who it's about, I just don't think it should be happening regardless. Since the Misaimed Fandom entry is currently anti-Edelgard and you're her most vociferous fan in the threads, I'm guessing you'll be fine if I just take as much of the whole thing out as possible and leave a general comment in its place?

Edit: Never mind, it's already been cleaned up. Although I might still suggest trimming people's specific complaints about Rhea and Edelgard.

I say the general paragraph is the best option for now.

I say the general paragraph is the best option for now.

And it's back. vociferous fan am i? HA.

Since I was the one who wrote the Misaimed Fandom entry in the first place, I feel like I ought to contribute to this. The point wasn't to cast aspersions on Edelgard fans, but to address the Ron the Death Eater treatment Rhea gets. Here are some of the things that have been claimed in regards to Rhea: she suppresses technology, she destroyed Agartha in an unprovoked attack because they had technology, she was plotting to kill Byleth during Chapter 11 if they didn't become Sothis, Rhea brutally murdered her test subjects, Catherine is only loyal to Rhea because Rhea brainwashed her, Rhea used her absolute power over Fódlan society to deliberately engineer every social problem, especially The Crest System™ because she hates humans and just wants them all to suffer...

And Red Hunter 543, if you are not a vociferous Edelgard fan, then you do not show it here. I've checked your edits in the history for these pages, and the new content you add here tends to be either talking positively about Edelgard, or negatively about Rhea or other characters who are fighting against Edelgard.

Wow, i'm touched, i made enough edits to incite discussion. Sure, i talk negatively, about Rhea, but not all the time, i was the one who wrote the entry on humans are bastards in Rhea's section, writing that her nuance towards humans for example, which points out Rhea has done charitable acts, and does care about Catherine and Cyril from what little we see, and have argued against her being a for the evulz character, being a misanthrope, her establishing the crest system purely to torture humans or her brainwashing Catherine. In fact, i was planning on deleting that part until you did. In regards to Edelgard, i have written parts against her as i recall, i wrote the parts comparing her to such charming people like Walhart, Arvis, and Mad King Ashnard. I have even used tropes calling her a villain, but those got deleted. However, i admit, i'm not fond of Rhea as a person, but enjoy her as a Character. The Crests were made by humans, but Rhea did propagate the crest system after all. And while i won't edit it in trope pages, i do genuinely believe that Rhea would have killed Byleth if they weren't Sothis by taking their heart.

Hell, i even wrote how Claude brilliantly played Edelgard like a fiddle in the Crimson Flower route, i don't portray everyone who fights against Edelgard as bad, i haven't made any edits over that silly idea that Dimitri is killing children in cold blood, or that he's somehow misogynist for fighting against the tyrant that Edelgard became. I even pointed out that the Church of Seiros units could have argued Rhea was good for Fodlan and that Edelgard is causing more harm by inciting a war, in that YMMV i posted in the interest of making CF more morally grey.

For the record, I like all the lords, i see Edelgard as the darkest of all the lords, and make no excuses for her actions i'm not defending her Azure Moon incarnation for example, Dimitri's right calling her out on the flaws of her system, that her CF fixes. It's just that, the certain trope pages make her worse than she actually is. Like calling Claude an outsider, deliberately burning Bernie ( which is game play story segragation as her lines don't mention her deliberately aiming to kill her in her trap and you don't see me editing that part) acting like overthrowing Rhea is purely racism or because she was a pawn of Those Who Slither. I would love to write more about Claude or Dimitri, but they aren't in much need of it, they have great trope pages.

I think that entry needs to be cut, as the Common Knowledge trope is when false facts persist years later in the popular consciousness. People getting a few details wrong in the first two months after a game was released is hardly anything worth an entry about it. I'm going to cut it.

For that matter we should probably cut the Urban Legend of Zelda entry as well, it's basically guilty of the same thing.

It does seem a bit too soon to claim anything's an Urban Legend of Zelda. Cut.

What would be the ideal time for urban legend of zelda?

I thought that trope refers to "Mew under the truck" kinda rumors, not whatever misconceptions we are having while playing the game. Would be interesting to include those misconceptions somewhere, but it doesn't apply to this trope or Common Knowledge, so...Do We Have This One?

I have a question concerning Urban Legend. So many of the examples listed were speculations and from Thani Leaks. However, there are things that weren't actually confirmed in the game.

Like the thing with Dimitri's eye. The game never tells us how he lost his eye. Wouldn't it be a headcanon that he gorged his eye himself instead of it being deconfirmed?

The same thing with Claude's parents (or lack of). The idea that Judith and Nadar were his parents came from them being too informal toward him, having similar skin and overall having similar personalities to shape Claude. Claude is secretive about his past in general so I don't see how hiding the fact who his parents are would be another thing.

For Judith, the only thing that deconfirms in story is how she has the same crest as Ingrid. But Ingrid also said that her family branched off the Daphael family so Blayyid and Reigan were also related by blood even though that's over 100 years.

And then with Nadar, he's only stated to be an Almayran general but there's nothing that says the king of Almayra couldn't also be a general. I'm probably overthinking this but given that there was nothing deconfirming anything from Urban Legend, I would suspect it would be moved to the WMG section???

Definitely.

Yes, thieves and assassins are unhindered by forest tiles, and yes, all thieves and assassins in Maddening have Pass.

There's an entry in his section that mention his use as a supportive character through Rally Speed and Break Shot, but I'm personally not sure just how disliked as a unit he is. He was a step below a lot of my units in my first playthrough (recruited him to Blue Lions), but I classed him into Assassin and gave him a Killing Edge to remedy his low strength, and he's got speed and high avoid to help his survivability as well as Rally Speed and Break Shot. I personally think he's an alright unit. Not fantastic, but not terrible.

I'd say being inferior to Claude isn't enough of a reason, as in 3 of the 4 routes you won't even have Claude. If anything he would have to come up short in comparison to the other characters that trend on the archery/assassin path like Bernadetta, Ashe, Leonie, Petra, and Shamir of which people will have their opinions on but it's hard to say he's significantly outclassed.

On his positives, like Felix he tends to join other routes with very little investment because he favors Authority, and his personal skill makes Deadeye abuse easier. He isn't amazing, but in practice he seemed on par with Shamir, Bernadetta, and Ashe.

Personally he was a little underwhelming as a combatant, struggling to one round units on his own, but that may also be because of the class path I took him down (namely to Bow Knight). Even then, I feel like that could be fixed by putting him in classes that can boost his Str growth. Given the flexibility and time for students to grow, it's probably a little difficult for a student to count as a Tier Induced Scrappy unlike say, Gilbert, who's far, far more limited and behind your students.

I'd argue Ignatz isn't because he has good stats for a Archer, and can be a good Assassin.

Lindhardt is a more fitting candidate as a bad unit for his horrible growths and being unable to be a Gremory.

Linhardt’s growths aren’t bad. He’s well-rounded and is middle of the road in comparison to hyper-nuke mages, but that doesn’t make him bad. He does just fine as a Bishop, and even if he can’t go Gremory, he has one of the most diverse Reason and Faith spell lists in the game, with Warp, Restore and Physic, and since he’s available in a scenario where Flayn isn’t, he has a valuable niche.

I personally think the Marianne example is a bit unfair, since the whole point of that support is that Leonie thinks Marianne is insulting her/doesn't like her, and the very next support is her apologizing for jumping to conclusions. Though I guess that is neither here nor there as to whether she still qualifies as a Scrappy.

I highly doubt that a Reddit poll is going to be enough to conclusively prove that a massive hatedom for the character exists. You're also going to have to prove that Leonie is hated in Japan, because Americans Hate Tingle and The Scrappy are mutually exclusive.

No, I think this is what the discussion page is for—so we can clear up misunderstandings/disagreements about contested entries. Seeing it all laid it, it certainly doesn't sound like Seteth and Rhea thought Sothis merging with Byleth would cause a Death of Personality. Indeed, it seems like Rhea sees Byleth as Sothis sans her memories, and only later learns to differentiate the two. What she did is still morally questionable, of course, but I think it's more accurate to say her actions in the Holy Tomb were a misguided and false attempt to bring "Sothis's" memories back, rather than erase Byleth themselves.

And yeah, I'd say Sothis just went to chill out in the afterlife, rather than 'dying'/'vanishing', as she said. She can still talk to Byleth, after all!

Thanks for the support, though I suppose it would be good to wait a day or so before I make those changes (already fixed the medieval stasis comments), just to give others a chance to give their input here if they want.

Yes, Death of Personality revolving around Byleth and Sothis is quite tricky, like her dialogue can go either way. Her line in the golden deer :Rhea: "I suspected that your body housed the consciousness of Sothis. Those suspicions were correct, and yet she merely gave you her power and vanished. My dearest wish did not come true, but you did inherit the power of the progenitor god." suggests that she knows that Byleth and Sothis are separate beings. Seeing their dialogue, it's hard to tell if even Rhea and Seteth are fully 100% aware of what the process is, but for my money the line : I took up the challenge of reviving the progenitor god... "I wished for you to become the progenitor god..." I wished desperately to be held in my mother's arms once more. But that has changed. Now, I wish only for you to be yourself... and to have you by my side." specifically the become the progenitor god, does imply she knows the process is Sothis overtaking Byleth, but perhaps until we have better understanding, i suggest we go with your idea. Either Rhea and Seteth truly believe Byleth is Sothis, or Rhea is trying to rationalize the take-over, and Seteth who still doesn't fully understand is going along with it. I personally think Rhea knows full well what the process will entail, but is sugarcoating it and giving out half truths, divine revelation indeed.

Okay, if i may, i feel like your interpretation of Rhea's view of Byleth and Sothis, should be added to the Alternative character interpretation, it kinda looks awkward when added to old entries, where it feels like it's justifying Rhea. That's just my opinion though.

I feel it is likely simply how the routes themes influences the conclusions she comes to.

Golden Deer, which is about the truth, has her come to a proper conclusion in the end and likely realize they are separate sooner, much like the truth of Those Who Slither isn't revealed on Silver Snow even when Seteth wants to reveal the truth, the idea appearing to be she still hasn't reached a full conclusion on who Those that Slither in the Dark are, despite realizing they want to hurt Sothis.

The fact she's also dying on Golden Deer likely serves as an incentive to reach a proper conclusion with the time she has left, instead of clinging to her hope that Byleth is her mother. Unlike the Church of Seiros, where it's going berserk afrer that can result in her death when revealing Byleths origins.

I see what you're saying Red Hunter, but given that the game never has anyone actually refer to Sothis taking over or erasing Byleth, can't it also be argued that leaving the entries as they were would be misleading and implying malice where there wasn't necessarily any?

Maybe this can be filed under Ambiguous Situation?

Well Perentie, Rhea's dialogue can go either way, like when she says Byleth will become the progenitor god, some see it as her thinking Byleth is Sothis, while others like me, see it as her wanting Sothis to take over. While overtake or override are never used, it is a reasonable guess that the process will erase Byleth, Rhea is quite a hard character to pin down, i agree that posts like the fridge horror while having a point, made her look worse than she actually is. Sugary Malice and Terms of endangerment are not what i would use with Rhea at all. I say, keep it in alternative character interpretation, we also must consider the Crimson flower route, where she much more sees Byleth and Sothis as separate people, one of her first lines after the route split is " I will not allow one who would side with our enemies to wield the power of Sothis " We should clean up some posts though, that i agree with. The whole situation with Byleth and Sothis is confusing, there are still people who think Byleth is a reincarnation.

One wonders if the eventual DLC story will clear anything up, albeit I recall someone saying the game makers said that the DLC will not alter the existing story, which if true is vague as there are already several existing stories in the game (it could well mean it will be a whole new route). The fact that Sothis and Rhea exist in the game data as playable characters with level up quotes and all is notable.

Anyway, I've made my stance clear, and if I seriously disagree with further edits then I guess we can discuss them here. I realize some of my alterations may be too much, but I am trying to cover both sides of things that, as you said, can be taken in more than one way. I just rather Rhea not be vilified except in places where she was clearly intended to be doing antagonistic things. After all, intentionally erasing an innocent mind is a pretty serious thing, and the game seems to deliberately avoid addressing whether it was a factor or not (beyond the quotes I gave earlier).

I've been saying that Rhea needs her own story to show her Sympathetic POV, i'm thinking the new DLC will be a prequel, showing why Rhea did the things she did, and showing her perspective, which she seriously needed in Silver Snow instead of being kidnapped.

Edelgard's probably more a Stoic Woobie than an Iron Woobie (she hides what she feels, Dimitri doesn't). Rhea's a possible candidate as well, imo. Other than that, all those look good!

I double-checked the woobie clean-up thread, and it looks like they've decided to nix the waiting time or needing to submit entries, so I think we can start adding them now. Though, of course, the entries should all be well-written, concise, and not shoehorned.

Done. I've decided to condense it to the three points: The support, recruitment, and Master class mechanics. They can all be a bit frustrating and I understand and even share that frustration at times.

Everything else felt very nitpicky or even non complaints. Does anyone really care that Edelgard and Dimitri can't use a lesser proficiency in their personal classes?

Thanks!

Agreed. The whole thing started with that exchange between her and Dimitri, but now that there's an entry that's just "Edelgard in general", it makes more sense to just compile them all into one.

Agreed +1. Many of these details are unnecessary, and honestly just asking for Edit Wars. I'll be condensing them, but feel free to discuss further.

I don't consider him The Scrappy if only because I don't see anyone talk about him in a non-meme context. Compare to, as you said, Cyril or Kronya, who actively get hate. The Death Knight as a character seems to just be ignored by the fanbase.

While I do hear talk of how he's inferior to the Dark Knight, that doesn't make him a scrappy character.

Despite Lysithea, most seem happy that he injects an optional challenge into the early maps, and consider his presence underutilized at worst.

Cyril is about the closest to a scrappy character I'd say, and even that's dubious. Even Kronya gets some love (mostly from Fire Emblem Heroes fans).

I've seen quite a number of people who say that they don't like the Death Knight, and I can definitely see why. Compared to the Black Knight, he isn't nearly as cool, doesn't have as much depth, isn't nowhere near as story relevant, he's a nothing character compared to the Black knight.

Nothing supports the Death Knight being a scrappy. He may not have a lot of fans, but that doesn't make ahim a scrappy.

At the time of writing this I'd say the Annette entry could be cleaned up (as her Hero Relic is a bit silly looking but the entry has some names wrong and should focus more on the weapon itself). And the Chapter 6 Flayn entry could be removed, as it's more a fridge horror scenario or a "take your time" trope than narm (where you are stressed to hurry when there's no consequence for taking your time).

The rest seem valid to me, but I agree it's getting a bit bloated.

That is right. No Broken Base or Base-Breaking Character entries until six months have passed.

I agree, the only reason I haven't added an Unfortunate Implications entry myself yet is because I haven't found a good-enough article on the matter as opposed to various collections of social media soundbites, forum discussions, or op-eds where the news site is little more than a glorified blog for a handful of people. But the reaction is absolutely there even if I don't have a good citeworthy source for it yet.

There was an article on August 8th by Vice Media, and another on July 29th by pastemagazine.com, both discussing how the lack of gay options and handling of the female options suggest LGBT romance was handled only in a way that was acceptable to a heteronormative audience. Do you think with two reputable articles we could qualify for Unfortunate Implications?

Since the Unfortunate Implications has been added, do you still want to remove the LGBT+ point from Author's Saving Throw (but keep the ace/aro point)? I don't want to step on any toes by removing it without clearing it here first.

The Paste article is fine but while Vice is certainly a high profile magazine I'm not sure if that article is the best. It certainly comes off as not the most accurate and the author admits to not having finished the game and relied on Youtube clips of the endings which may neglect full context of the game story.

Sorry, I've been camping and unable to respond.

I think others (hopefully other lesbian or bi women) should decide if we should keep the saving throw entry or not, as I'm satisfied as long as the controversy is mentioned somewhere in YMMV. On one hand they did progress in some areas, and that does deserve some recognition. It's a shame they didn't in others though.

Regardless what happens to it, I agree that the aromantic/asexual point needs to stay.

As for the articles, I like having Vice there as a higher profile response but agree that the Paste article is better written. Either alone doesn't seem compelling enough to me, but together they sell that this is not an isolated issue with a select few.

But if you find better citations I'd love to see them.

Too bad any talk about playing with tropes is not allowed on YMMV, as I'd argue the Author's Saving Throw with regard to LGBT representation is zigzagged. Yes it's much better for queer women but at the expense of queer men, and while it's not really a controversy at this point it's been pointed out that the same-sex female options all lean heavily femme aside from Edelgard, whereas Shamir and Catherine (who have heavy Les Yay together but can only be romanced by a male Byleth) are very popular with queer women who prefer something more butch.

It certainly looks like it's heading that way.

Alternatively we could try condensing the existing entries, as the Lords and Gambits could be summed up as just two points instead of five. And the Wyvern Lord and flying entries have some overlap.

We could also cut the new game plus entries, as is it really a game breaker if you have to beat the game without them just to use it? Feels like that's some other trope.

But I feel this is trying to save a sinking ship. On one hand I don't see many more entries added to it (if any at all) but it is bloated enough to get it's own page.

Yeah, that sounds like trying to put in Base-Breaking Character without actually using the trope itself to me.

Agreed. The whole point of the game is horrible misunderstandings, secrets kept, and miscommunications causing a war. They aren't particularly unique in this regard, and just because Jeralt had lost faith in Rhea, there's no reason to be convinced he would be fine with killing her.

Agreed with this as well. They feel betrayed on Jeralt's behalf and don't understand everything that's going on—that makes it even more tragic imo.

I agree that characters acting out based on information the player knows but they don't is more poor communication kills than unintentionally unsympathetic.

But should we keep Leonie on there for her behavior in her C and B supports? She attacks Byleth over taking Jeralt for granted, and when she goes to apologize the first time she backpedals into the same rant. It takes her until the A support to truly apologize for her behavior, and even then she takes a more "this is who I am" stance about it (although sincerely sorry).

Point of contention is how "unintentional" it is, as you could make the argument that she's not supposed to be taken as in the right (hence apologizing twice). But the B support tries to contextualize her hero worship, on a guy she knew for maybe a few weeks and never saw again until the game begins.

For me the sticking point is you're never allowed to call her out on it, as in both B and A supports your two response options are always basically the same thing: "it's all right" and "I wasn't offended."

Thoughts?

A lot of what irritates people about Leonie's supports is the horrific timing of the B-support: you can't actually get it until after Jeralt's death. If you have her in your house, you've probably built up enough support points to have it. So it unlocks right after he dies, and you see Leonie scold you for not appreciating him enough, and it's just horrible and tasteless. Compare it to her Explore dialogue after Jeralt's death, which is genuinely being heartbroken about it, and... I don't know what IntSys was thinking when they did that.

So yeah, that would definitely mark her under Unintentionally Unsympathetic.

I went ahead and removed Alois and replaced Lenoie's entry to talk about her support chain instead.