Canon Pairings or Your Choice?

[Lau]

Like the title suggests...do you prefer canon pairings chosen by the developers, such as Marth x Caeda and Alm x Celica, or do you prefer to mix and match, like in Awakening, Fates, and even in the Elibe games? What would you prefer for future games in the series?

 

I'm rather indifferent to both, as some games don't have canon pairings, such as Fates, leading to gems such as Kaze x Selena. However, I love Marth x Caeda, Alm x Celica and the notably pushed forward Eliwood x Ninian and Roy x Lilina.

I'd like a mixture of both for future installments.

What about you?

[In-Sain Arcane Birdbrain]

I'm quite fond of most of the canonical pairings in the series. In repeat playthroughs of a game however, I have a tendency to try new pairings for the new conversations or try "optimal" pairings in the games with a second generation (FE4, FE13, FE14).

[Elincia]

I prefer canon pairs. They're much easier to write for, and are generally far more develop and satisfying to me. I mean, having choices is nice and all, but it's far more interesting to see pairs develop and interact outside of just supports, and canon pairs generally have that going for them.

[Etrurian emperor]

I tend to stick as closely to canon as possible. If Blazing sword insist that Eliwood and Ninian are the most canon I'll just take their word for it. 

Main characters especially should just have one canon choice. One lord having to juggle between multiple love interests can make their scenes come off as less defined. I know Eliwood and Ninian or Marth and Caeda have a strong relation but aside from Lucina's stats it really doesn't matter who Chrom's wife is. The story certainly doesn't pretend its important. 

[Von Ithipathachai]

Simple.  Canon pairings for main characters, my choice for anyone else.

[saisymbolic]

Depends. I like choosing if I have the choice, but I'm not adverse to canon pairings - I just generally don't like them.

Most canon pairings, I'm not fond of. I either don't use them if possible or just deal with it if they are mandatory.

 

[SoulWeaver]

3 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

it really doesn't matter who Chrom's wife is. The story certainly doesn't pretend its important. 

Pfft, please, obviously Maiden is Chrom's canon wife.

[DragonLord]

If canon is made obvious, I go with that. After that I try to go with what would make most realistic sense in terms of character relations. I never just make up pairings if they don't have a plausible relationship to go off of.

[Ertrick36]

I don't rightly give a damn.

What makes me choose which characters go together is their chemistry.  I think Clair has better chemistry with Alm than Celica does in Echoes, and that Alm has better chemistry with Clair than Gray does, yet here we are.

Though as much as I love Catria, Marth and Caeda isn't a bad pairing.  Chrom x Sumia is... well, it's obvious that at least Sumia has feelings for Chrom very early on, so there's that.  That Village Maiden can fuck off; she ruined my first playthrough's Chrom and Lucina.

Takumi x Oboro definitely works well.  Abel x Est is alright as well.  I never explored Azura x Corrin, and I don't think I care to ever explore it.  Don't really know about any other canon pairs besides these... or at least I can't think of them at the moment.

[YingofDarkness]

I'd prefer a canon pairing for the main lord (much as I love Chrobin), with some other ones mixed in, but have the rest be our choice to an extent. They really need to scale back on the amount of marriage candidates for everyone because it screws up the overall quality of all the supports.

[SullyMcGully]

I'd like a combination of the two. I liked how in Echoes, certain characters developed romantically early on in their supports, making pairs like Clair and Gray seem a lot more natural. For that reason, I'd be fine if some characters had only one S-support, but others had a variety.

[LucarioGamer812]

I don't mind canon, as however terrible it may be, it is heavily implied that characters marry other characters (Chrom and Sumia, Robin and Lucina, and Corrin and Azura) which is fine for me lore-wise, I still want my own choices in an non-canon playthrough however (ie I prefer Robin and Cordelia for example)

 

[Skyla]

Canon pairing, especially pairings like Eliwood and Ninian, Hector/Lyn (and potentially Ike/Elincia and Ike/Soren but let's not start a war). I prefer pairing that develop outside a single support conversation. The interaction between Eliwood/Ninian outside their support conversation is a so beautifully done. Unlike Fates and Awakening who just fell in love out of no where. Plus most of the S-Ranked supports were cringy as hell.

[Zangetsu]

On 12/27/2017 at 6:23 PM, Ertrick36 said:

Takumi x Oboro definitely works well.  Abel x Est is alright as well.  I never explored Azura x Corrin, and I don't think I care to ever explore it.  Don't really know about any other canon pairs besides these... or at least I can't think of them at the moment.

But is it really canon just because Oboro has crush on him? They're very endearing couple, but that doesn't stop people from hooking her up with Corrin. Granted a lot of that has to do with shameless bias but still.

23 hours ago, LucarioGamer812 said:

I don't mind canon, as however terrible it may be, it is heavily implied that characters marry other characters (Chrom and Sumia, Robin and Lucina, and Corrin and Azura) which is fine for me lore-wise, I still want my own choices in an non-canon playthrough however (ie I prefer Robin and Cordelia for example)

But you just said it is terrible if it is canon? I'm confuse.

There's nothing to suggest that M!Robin/Avatar & Lucina hooks up. That 1 cutscene is just developer foresight.

22 hours ago, Skylorella Con said:

Canon pairing, especially pairings like Eliwood and Ninian, Hector/Lyn (and potentially Ike/Elincia and Ike/Soren but let's not start a war). I prefer pairing that develop outside a single support conversation. The interaction between Eliwood/Ninian outside their support conversation is a so beautifully done. Unlike Fates and Awakening who just fell in love out of no where. Plus most of the S-Ranked supports were cringy as hell.

Was there evidence on that pairing? I had Hector hook up with Farina, so I don't know any exclusive scene regarding the Hector & Lyn.

[Ertrick36]

8 minutes ago, Zangetsu said:

But is it really canon just because Oboro has crush on him? They're very endearing couple, but that doesn't stop people from hooking her up with Corrin. Granted a lot of that has to do with shameless bias but still.

Ssshhhh....

I don't have shameless bias.  Nope.  Definitely not.

Also, when people say a pairing is "canon" in a game like Fates, it isn't a matter of how many people ship which characters with which.  Those are simply popular OTPs, which are very different from "canon" pairings.  When they say it's "canon", they mean it's either implied or heavily pushed in-game.  Oboro x Takumi is a pairing that is pushed harder than any other pairing for either of the characters (mostly because Takumi isn't really pushed to be with anyone else).  Much in the way that Sumia x Chrom is pushed.  Chrom has options, yes, but most fans agree that the canon pairing is him with Sumia because it's so forced.

That being said, Robin isn't really pushed with anyone, though Tharja certainly has feelings for Robin... yet I don't know if you'd consider that "canon" by the before-explained connotation of the term.

28 minutes ago, Zangetsu said:

There's nothing to suggest that M!Robin/Avatar & Lucina hooks up. That 1 cutscene is just developer foresight.

You mean that confrontation scene that gives you yet another meaningless "choice"?  Because yes, it was developer foresight since it's also different if your avatar is her mother instead.  In fact, I think a couple or a few more scenes are changed if your avatar marries Chrom than if they marry Lucina.

[Zangetsu]

7 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

Ssshhhh....

I don't have shameless bias.  Nope.  Definitely not.

Also, when people say a pairing is "canon" in a game like Fates, it isn't a matter of how many people ship which characters with which.  Those are simply popular OTPs, which are very different from "canon" pairings.  When they say it's "canon", they mean it's either implied or heavily pushed in-game.  Oboro x Takumi is a pairing that is pushed harder than any other pairing for either of the characters (mostly because Takumi isn't really pushed to be with anyone else).  Much in the way that Sumia x Chrom is pushed.  Chrom has options, yes, but most fans agree that the canon pairing is him with Sumia because it's so forced.

That being said, Robin isn't really pushed with anyone, though Tharja certainly has feelings for Robin... yet I don't know if you'd consider that "canon" by the before-explained connotation of the term.

It's ok, we all go through same issues.

What you just describe doesn't sound canon, but more along the lines "Fan-Prefer-Couples".

I know her final moments in Conquest has her somewhat regretting not confessing to Takumi.

If we're going off crushes than characters like Palla & Catria might as well have been hook up with Abel & Marth which is impossible to do in-game. Not that I know jack squat about Archanea  so feel free to correct me on that.

Honestly I can interpret Tharja's stalker behavior to the Avatar being something else. It's not like has to be "Bang me now", but I be lying if I didn't say I got kind of vibe.

36 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

You mean that confrontation scene that gives you yet another meaningless "choice"?  Because yes, it was developer foresight since it's also different if your avatar is her mother instead.  In fact, I think a couple or a few more scenes are changed if your avatar marries Chrom than if they marry Lucina.

Yes, I'm very much aware of this, but that doesn't change that's the only scene that changes when they hook up. There still no virtually no evidence that M!Avatar & Lucy hooks up other than that scene. Granted, I personally feel like it just makes the story more enticing, but that's really not hard to do for Awakening's storyline. Plus you get the same results/vibe with Tiki.

[Ertrick36]

16 hours ago, Zangetsu said:

Yes, I'm very much aware of this, but that doesn't change that's the only scene that changes when they hook up. There still no virtually no evidence that M!Avatar & Lucy hooks up other than that scene. Granted, I personally feel like it just makes the story more enticing, but that's really not hard to do for Awakening's storyline. Plus you get the same results/vibe with Tiki.

I wasn't trying to argue against this point, btw.  If anything, I was supporting your side on this.

16 hours ago, Zangetsu said:

What you just describe doesn't sound canon, but more along the lines "Fan-Prefer-Couples".

  Reveal hidden contents

I know her final moments in Conquest has her somewhat regretting not confessing to Takumi.

If we're going off crushes than characters like Palla & Catria might as well have been hook up with Abel & Marth which is impossible to do in-game. Not that I know jack squat about Archanea  so feel free to correct me on that.

Honestly I can interpret Tharja's stalker behavior to the Avatar being something else. It's not like has to be "Bang me now", but I be lying if I didn't say I got kind of vibe.

I'd call it "speculative canon" more than anything because it's mostly about trying to figure out what pairings are or aren't canon based on content outside of supports/synergy between characters when there's a lack of actual, established pairings.  It obviously isn't hard canon, which is why I kept putting "canon" in quotation marks when referring to this kind of content.

On that note, I think you might have missed the point I was trying to make if you think that Palla x Abel or Catria x Marth would be "canon" by those standards.

It's more a lack of anything indicating otherwise outside of supports that people would consider Oboro x Takumi to be canon; also the fact that they get along so well would only further indicate that they were meant to be (yeah, I know guys and girls could simply be good platonic friends, but this is a game for teenagers made in Japan that just so happens to have romance in it).  In the cases of Marth and Abel, they have actual established partners, so there's no need for speculation.

The simple answer is that in Fates and Awakening, any pairing you want is canon.  And really, that's what it all comes down to; your OTPs are as canon as anything else out there.

[Zangetsu]

2 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

I wasn't trying to argue against this point, btw.  If anything, I was supporting your side on this.

I know, I just repeat myself to make myself clear on where I stand on the matter.

 

2 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

I'd call it "speculative canon" more than anything because it's mostly about trying to figure out what pairings are or aren't canon based on content outside of supports/synergy between characters when there's a lack of actual, established pairings.  It obviously isn't hard canon, which is why I kept putting "canon" in quotation marks when referring to this kind of content.

That sounds like "fanon" to me, which isn't exactly a bad thing as some people would describe it.

 

2 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

On that note, I think you might have missed the point I was trying to make if you think that Palla x Abel or Catria x Marth would be "canon" by those standards.

It's more a lack of anything indicating otherwise outside of supports that people would consider Oboro x Takumi to be canon; also the fact that they get along so well would only further indicate that they were meant to be (yeah, I know guys and girls could simply be good platonic friends, but this is a game for teenagers made in Japan that just so happens to have romance in it).  In the cases of Marth and Abel, they have actual established partners, so there's no need for speculation.

Ok, that was clearly a god-awful example on my part. I meant to say something more along the lines like Nino & Jaffar.

 

3 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

The simple answer is that in Fates and Awakening, any pairing you want is canon.  And really, that's what it all comes down to; your OTPs are as canon as anything else out there.

I mean, isn't that kind of the point in those games since it's actually a defining mechanic? Also, why shouldn't that apply to Blazing Sword?

[SoulWeaver]

On December 27, 2017 at 7:23 PM, Ertrick36 said:

she ruined my first playthrough's Chrom and Lucina.

Don't disrespect the true canon!

BTW, you got Warriors yet? Oboro's Support with Leo is frankly the second-best one I've found in the DLC so far, behind only Niles-Caeda. Not to mention the 'Boro is most useful, though Counter remains about as useful as it is in the main games.

[Wuzzy]

for FE14 (not so much in FE13) I pair units so the child would have a good hair color .-. (Red-haired Rhajat, Seigbert is too weird for me to look at), so I'll always have the same pairings such as Xander/Charlotte or Hayato/Orochi or Nyx. Though for older FE's I usually just go with canon pairs

[Luis Liberato]

I prefer canon pairings by far mainly because most canon pairings feel better thought out and are usually written better. Most non canon pairings feel like they are there for the sake of just feeling they have to be put in the game mostly in awakening and in fates. For example there are a lot of supports in those games where someone will annoy another character AND THEN THEY GET MARRIED LIKE WHAT. Then we have a support like Nino and Jaffar that feels sweet and makes sense, Nino is who helped Jaffar feel emotions for the first time and he was there for her after *cough some spoilers so when we here what happens to them after the game it feels real so ya I really like canon supports

[Ertrick36]

5 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

Don't disrespect the true canon!

BTW, you got Warriors yet? Oboro's Support with Leo is frankly the second-best one I've found in the DLC so far, behind only Niles-Caeda. Not to mention the 'Boro is most useful, though Counter remains about as useful as it is in the main games.

I'll throw all the shade in the world at it and blame all my problems from my first playthrough on Village Maiden.

I have acquisitioned the game of FEW, as well as the Pass of the Season, and of course have drafted the good Captain of the Battleship 'Boro into my frontline forces.

I've only gotten a couple of her supports.  I have her supports with original Caeldori and Amy the Hedgehog (Hinoka).  I think I just generally like the supports in the game.

[Etrurian emperor]

On 28-12-2017 at 5:31 AM, Skylorella Con said:

Canon pairing, especially pairings like Eliwood and Ninian, Hector/Lyn

While Hector and Lyn do have a lot of chemistry that can be interpreted as ''Will they or won't they?'' I feel there's much more pointing against the pairing then in favor of it. Lyn wanting to return to the plains and Hector going to become the leader of Lycia just don't really go well together. There's also nothing pointing to Liliana having a strong mother figure which is what Lyn would have been for her. 

Lastly if Lyn just stayed in Lycia then Caelin wouldn't have disappeared. A marriage between the houses would lead to exactly that, a marriage rather than Caelin getting completely absorbed into Ostia. 

[Arthur97]

6 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

While Hector and Lyn do have a lot of chemistry that can be interpreted as ''Will they or won't they?'' I feel there's much more pointing against the pairing then in favor of it. Lyn wanting to return to the plains and Hector going to become the leader of Lycia just don't really go well together. There's also nothing pointing to Liliana having a strong mother figure which is what Lyn would have been for her. 

Lastly if Lyn just stayed in Lycia then Caelin wouldn't have disappeared. A marriage between the houses would lead to exactly that, a marriage rather than Caelin getting completely absorbed into Ostia. 

Let's be fair, Blazing Blade has no canon pairings anyways. Edit: Okay, it has one.

I could see her seceding Caelin making more sense if she marries Eliwood though to appease people worried that Pharea would get too strong. Not that Hector would care.

Edited December 31, 2017 by Arthur97

[Slumber]

10 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

While Hector and Lyn do have a lot of chemistry that can be interpreted as ''Will they or won't they?'' I feel there's much more pointing against the pairing then in favor of it. Lyn wanting to return to the plains and Hector going to become the leader of Lycia just don't really go well together. There's also nothing pointing to Liliana having a strong mother figure which is what Lyn would have been for her. 

Lastly if Lyn just stayed in Lycia then Caelin wouldn't have disappeared. A marriage between the houses would lead to exactly that, a marriage rather than Caelin getting completely absorbed into Ostia. 

I always point to Sue when I try to think of who gets pushed as "Lyn's canon partner". Really, nobody's canon, since Lyn doesn't exist in FE6. But her ending with Rath is the only ending that mentions Sue, and it's the only support exclusive to Lyn that mentions her having a child(Hector has Lilina no matter who he ends up with, Eliwood has Roy no matter who he ends up with, Rath only has Sue if he pairs up with Lyn).

And it makes the most sense to me. While I have no doubt that Kent would give up his knightly duties to go out to the plains and live with Lyn, it does seem a little off, since Kent's main schtick is being a strict knight figure. All endings with Lyn going off and living in a big castle and being a quiet queen just scream "No" to me with her character.

Which, together with the Sue thing, just leaves Rath as being an ending that makes sense with her character.

She does get a few more scenes with Hector in Hector Mode, but so many things about that pairing just seem off. I generally don't see it as being pushed NEARLY as hard as Eliwood and Ninian.

Back to the topic at hand, canon pairings. Despite what I just wrote, I really don't like trying to force a romance of my own in my head. As far as I'm concerned, if two people don't get put together in the story, 90% of the time I'll imagine they die alone.

Edited December 31, 2017 by Slumber