hello from hwa on company time!! I’ve been stewing on your comment for at least a week, because your reply mentioned heteropatriachy and classism and I went OH – we doing it like THAT (puts on gloves) (god I love social commentary)
(PLEASE do send/link me all your fe3hteen fanart on twitter when you can!!)
I will start with the game as a medium to deliver a story, which was at the end of your reply:
i really love how worldbuilding and characterization are communicated in game through characters’ skills/stat blocks too, like edelgard and hubert’s weaknesses in faith, ashe’s budding talent in lances (also associated with the chivalric ideal), sylvain’s budding talent in reason
scream I’ve noticed some characters growth stats but I’ve never done a sweep to check the themes. I absolutely agree with your sentiment -- the gradual uncovering of details through character interactions was one my favourite part of fe3h. It makes the story more real because it is constructed piece by piece in our heads by ourselves, rather than told to us. And the fragmentation of an idea through different characters like you mentioned! especially when they go through a similar experience like edelgard cf lysithia, or hubert cf ferdinand (the shadow of the father…).
also, each player notices different things, recruit different characters, or may skip interactions entirely, resulting in a different ‘narrative’. I recently pushed dimitri/marianne A support after reading a fic where marianne was queen because the fic explores how they just happen to be the two people who understand what it’s like to live with a monster within you.
you've really taken the thoughts out of my own head about the inextricable influence of crests on characters and customs. I loved how some of the support conversations unravel assumptions and recondition learnt behaviour (Some Other Supports shall not be mentioned) - meeting hanneman on my first run gave off the impression that crests = cool power and knights = noble (thanks ashe), but as we discussed re the crest system + felix's bitterness about ingrid/rodrigue's treatment of glenn, that cornflower glory became tainted and I wanted [kingmaker] to just cut a cross-section into that side of fe3h and tease out that arc.
on your question on jeonghan’s motivation for the revolution and whether it was fuelled by personal or external influences. I did think about this! He IS blond but that’s just for the aesthetics; I didn’t want to put him through the edelgard sausage maker because I think it’s a disservice to jeonghan’s character that he would only be motivated by personal trauma – that he only cared about the crest system because something happened to /him/. I read him as more selfless and omniscient (and nosy), so decided the history on that basis (haha in retrospect this is also another point of contrast to wonwoo, who understood the ethics in theory but only practically through mingyu).
jeonghan is also a victim of his circumstances, in all timelines I think jeonghan would eventually uncover the true history of crests and see the unfairness of the established power systems. however, because he was born into power, he recognised that he was in the singular position to effect change and thus, /had/ to do so. unlike mingyu, I see jeonghan as someone who is unwilling to step into authority, but conversely cannot /step away/ from it if was necessary for him to lead (like how in talk shows, he lets someone take the spotlight but is actually always observing and, if the topic needs to be changed or awkwardness alleviated, he steps in - exactly as you mentioned).
how the cards fell in [kingmaker] was only because jeonghan met mingyu and because mingyu was mingyu (commoner, charismatic, talented, 120% perfect man but still bullyable). with mingyu, jeonghan saw the path to a complete reconstruction of society. without mingyu, jeonghan would have taken softer path of politicking, power erosions, and commoner empowerment (also the path if jww was yjh’s knight), but there wouldn’t have been a total abolition of crests, only a less unfair society.
going through to your comment on mingyu as emperor: yes!! I love that for him too, he will certainly Get the Job Done. both jeonghan and wonwoo realises that the eradication of crests = the eradication of themselves. and there is poetic justice in a commoner king after a revolt.
yes edelgard the conqueror blind to her own weaknesses – “edelgard’s revolution still remains somewhat trapped in the social conventions of hierarchy and nobility“ – as much as VW feels like an add-on to pokemon blue / red, I think it does a good job to give us that third, slightly more neutral perspective to the war and see how edelgard has been manipulated by certain groups to enact change which benefit those groups under the guise of a false crusade (wait this is accidentally too topical)
Other short points:
I also felt the pacing issues in verdant wind and crimson flower ;___; as you mentioned, the inequity of the crest system was prevalent throughout but not gathered neatly into a theme with a resolution, alas the commercial pipeline must persist.
I think I saw a fic recently that went wonwoo hamlet and that has been BUZZING in my head, surely there is a 17hols shakespeare prompt out there…(if not next year)
yes horses!! haha I noticed that as well. maybe you were also a horse girl denied horses due to the exorbitantly high cost of entry and now relieve your dreams by writing characters riding horses…
omg thank you so much for sending through that tumblr post. it was my first time reading it and I am blown away by the fidelity to life. The relationship between colour tones and the cost of dyes!! HOW THE ONLY TRUE BLUE IS ON DIMITRI. The extravagance of the adresian empire… I didn’t fully appreciate the economic differences between the three countries – I knew about the harshness of the north and the fhargaen winter, but to see it play out in the design choices to tell a story in subtext, that is delicious, thank you for sharing
Re: [FILL] kingmaker
(PLEASE do send/link me all your fe3hteen fanart on twitter when you can!!)
I will start with the game as a medium to deliver a story, which was at the end of your reply:
scream I’ve noticed some characters growth stats but I’ve never done a sweep to check the themes. I absolutely agree with your sentiment -- the gradual uncovering of details through character interactions was one my favourite part of fe3h. It makes the story more real because it is constructed piece by piece in our heads by ourselves, rather than told to us. And the fragmentation of an idea through different characters like you mentioned! especially when they go through a similar experience like edelgard cf lysithia, or hubert cf ferdinand (the shadow of the father…).
also, each player notices different things, recruit different characters, or may skip interactions entirely, resulting in a different ‘narrative’. I recently pushed dimitri/marianne A support after reading a fic where marianne was queen because the fic explores how they just happen to be the two people who understand what it’s like to live with a monster within you.
you've really taken the thoughts out of my own head about the inextricable influence of crests on characters and customs. I loved how some of the support conversations unravel assumptions and recondition learnt behaviour (Some Other Supports shall not be mentioned) - meeting hanneman on my first run gave off the impression that crests = cool power and knights = noble (thanks ashe), but as we discussed re the crest system + felix's bitterness about ingrid/rodrigue's treatment of glenn, that cornflower glory became tainted and I wanted [kingmaker] to just cut a cross-section into that side of fe3h and tease out that arc.
on your question on jeonghan’s motivation for the revolution and whether it was fuelled by personal or external influences. I did think about this! He IS blond but that’s just for the aesthetics; I didn’t want to put him through the edelgard sausage maker because I think it’s a disservice to jeonghan’s character that he would only be motivated by personal trauma – that he only cared about the crest system because something happened to /him/. I read him as more selfless and omniscient (and nosy), so decided the history on that basis (haha in retrospect this is also another point of contrast to wonwoo, who understood the ethics in theory but only practically through mingyu).
jeonghan is also a victim of his circumstances, in all timelines I think jeonghan would eventually uncover the true history of crests and see the unfairness of the established power systems. however, because he was born into power, he recognised that he was in the singular position to effect change and thus, /had/ to do so. unlike mingyu, I see jeonghan as someone who is unwilling to step into authority, but conversely cannot /step away/ from it if was necessary for him to lead (like how in talk shows, he lets someone take the spotlight but is actually always observing and, if the topic needs to be changed or awkwardness alleviated, he steps in - exactly as you mentioned).
how the cards fell in [kingmaker] was only because jeonghan met mingyu and because mingyu was mingyu (commoner, charismatic, talented, 120% perfect man but still bullyable). with mingyu, jeonghan saw the path to a complete reconstruction of society. without mingyu, jeonghan would have taken softer path of politicking, power erosions, and commoner empowerment (also the path if jww was yjh’s knight), but there wouldn’t have been a total abolition of crests, only a less unfair society.
going through to your comment on mingyu as emperor: yes!! I love that for him too, he will certainly Get the Job Done. both jeonghan and wonwoo realises that the eradication of crests = the eradication of themselves. and there is poetic justice in a commoner king after a revolt.
yes edelgard the conqueror blind to her own weaknesses – “edelgard’s revolution still remains somewhat trapped in the social conventions of hierarchy and nobility“ – as much as VW feels like an add-on to pokemon blue / red, I think it does a good job to give us that third, slightly more neutral perspective to the war and see how edelgard has been manipulated by certain groups to enact change which benefit those groups under the guise of a false crusade (wait this is accidentally too topical)
Other short points: