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Canon Byleth (or, which gender do you prefer?)


Jotari
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Which Bleyth?  

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  1. 1. Which Bleyth?



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So yeah, yeah, there's no canon  version to the Fire Emblem avatars. But at the same time, there kind of is. Male Robin gets more highlighted than female Robin while for Corrin (Smash Bros. aside) the opposite is true (and Kris wasn't considered popular enough to even deserve existence after their game). So which version of Byleth do you feel fits better? Personally I'm torn. I feel like the whole surgical reincarnation of a goddess seems to just fit better on female Bleyth (not that I object to gender bending on principal, I actively wish Naga maintained her Gender fluidity she was implied to have in the early games. It's just in this case with it being intentional done by Rea and all I feel a female baby would have been more suitable), but I definitely like the design of Male Byleth better, especially the alternate outfit that gives him a hat to hide his face slightly. And when it comes to these things, which design people find more appealing is basically the deciding factor. Anyway, which one do you find more appropriate for this story/which one looks cooler.

Edited by Jotari
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I think F!Byleth makes more sense as the vessel of a goddess/new goddess, and she's the one I use.

But I also think the few times M!Byleth openly emotes, it's more powerful because of how rare it is

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I like both. I can't really pick. Though I don't care for female Byleth's leggings or belly button window. I find it rather sexist, actually, that IS let male Byleth be covered up entirely but had to have female Byleth show some skin. 😕

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1 minute ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Male Byleth because Female Byleth feels like an afterthought. Her animations and expressions feel much more animatronic than his, as if she wasn't even originally supposed to be a thing.

That's probably down to different direction than being an after thought. We saw Female Byleth in the first trailer as far as I remember. And the time from the first trailer to release would be more than enough time to make decent animations for her.

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I don't consider either to be canon, but female Byleth does feel like she makes more sense with the Sothis vessel thing.

54 minutes ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Male Byleth because Female Byleth feels like an afterthought. Her animations and expressions feel much more animatronic than his, as if she wasn't even originally supposed to be a thing.

I'm not sure how serious you are, but female Byleth is most certainly not an afterthought. Not when every cutscene was animated for each gender and she has a unique outfit.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

But at the same time, there kind of is. Male Robin gets more highlighted than female Robin while for Corrin (Smash Bros. aside) the opposite is true (and Kris wasn't considered popular enough to even deserve existence after their game).

That's just marketing. They know (or assume) their audience is mostly straight men so they show the male player character more often. For the record, Fates' marketing was heavily biased toward male Corrin. It was only afterwards when female Corrin became way more popular that she started to get some spotlight.

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I guess female Byleth because of their spoilery background. Also because female Byleth can have paired endings with all 3 lords and Rhea, while male Byleth can't with Claude or Dimitri. And, as the central conflict is between two female rulers, it fits to have the third key player of the war also be a woman.

But female Byleth's design is awful.

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24 minutes ago, Florete said:

I don't consider either to be canon, but female Byleth does feel like she makes more sense with the Sothis vessel thing.

I'm not sure how serious you are, but female Byleth is most certainly not an afterthought. Not when every cutscene was animated for each gender and she has a unique outfit.

That's just marketing. They know (or assume) their audience is mostly straight men so they show the male player character more often. For the record, Fates' marketing was heavily biased toward male Corrin. It was only afterwards when female Corrin became way more popular that she started to get some spotlight.

That doesn't mean it's not a thing though.

Just now, Book Bro said:

I guess female Byleth because of their spoilery background. Also because female Byleth can have paired endings with all 3 lords and Rhea, while male Byleth can't with Claude or Dimitri. And, as the central conflict is between two female rulers, it fits to have the third key player of the war also be a woman.

But female Byleth's design is awful.

I like those points. But male Byleth being better designed will likely make them all irrelevant.

Edited by Jotari
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Male Byleth gets better marriage options IMO.  I refuse to marry the students on principle, which doesn't leave female Byleth with many choices (no I'm not touching Alois, he's married).

Edited by eclipse
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20 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Male Byleth gets better marriage options IMO.  I refuse to marry the students on principle, which doesn't leave female Byleth with many choices (no I'm not touching Alois, he's married).

I rather agree with this. I was uncomfortable marrying her to anyone at first because of not really liking teacher/student relationships and her other male options either being too old or off limits. Male Byleth can at least pick Shamir or Catherine or Manuela, I believe.

I wondered if Jeritza was a choice when I first played the game. Only to find he can't even be recruited for...certain reasons, let alone supported.

I intend to S support Sylvain any time I do a playthrough now because I ended up just completely falling in love with him as a character, but yeah, I still don't care for the kind of relationship it technically is otherwise. The thing is, despite my preferences, I am capable of making exceptions. I prefer guys who are a little older than me, but my first and only boyfriend was two years younger. My preferences are just the kinds of guys I'd become interested in first. I don't absolutely HAVE to abide by them.

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If you are really into the S supports for the game, then F!Byleth has it the best I'd argue

Since she can S Support all three lords, while M!Byleth can only S support Edelgard since IS said f**k mlm rights by not making Claude and Dimitri bi options. F!Byleth can also S support Dorothea and Mercedes. It's hard to count Rhea and Sothis, I mean, I highly doubt any players S support Rhea or Sothis as F!Byleth?

 mlm folks only get Linhardt. Not into Linhardt as an S support? then too bad for you mlm players(I S supported him as M!Byleth on my GD run). People like to joke that playing as F!Byleth in the BL route is like playing an otome game, and it's pretty true i'll admit. I'm doing my BL run as F!Byleth. Fans gush so much over how "canon" F!Byleth's relationship is with Dimitri. I'm still in pre-time skip mode, and can so far sorta understand why fans love their pairing. Will see how I feel about it once i'm done with this run.

I personally just have a mildly irrational distaste of F!Byleth's design. Yes, her outfit is awful. But it's also those huge, soulless eyes of hers. It's like staring into an abyss. Usually when characters that have big bright anime eyes, it allows them to be more emotive, but not with F!Byleth. She just looks dead inside.

I played as M!Byleth on my first run, GD route, and while M!Byleth didn't emote much, I wasn't as bothered by it? In some ways I'd say he was better at emoting that F!Byleth. It doesn't help when you are doing the supports with the other characters as F!Byleth, and when those characters start getting super emotional, you just have F!Byleth blankly staring back at them. It just really bothers me for some reason. I realize how petty that sounds, but it breaks the immersion for me idk. I did have this experience sometimes when playing as M!Byleth, but with F!Byleth it's so much worse.

Edited by xchickengirlx
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Male Byleth because there’s a whole thing about how emotionless Byleth is and I feel that Male Byleth captures that aspect a lot better with his unimpressed face. And I think the few times that he shows emotions, it’s a lot more powerful.

There’s a lot more female byleth fanart though (at least in the West) and it makes me sad because I can’t draw to save my life and I enjoy looking at fanarts. But on sites like Reddit, there’s 1 Male byleth art for every 10 female ones.

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I'd prefer male Byleth because the story seems to be written with a male Byleth in mind. I also like his design better. (Side note, I prefer female Robin and male Corrin, because of their children's names.)

Personally, I wish S support is available for everyone, as far as its use as a game mechanic is concerned. It can be used for overriding the paired endings of the character concerned, and non-romantic S supports are a thing anyway.

37 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Male Byleth gets better marriage options IMO.  I refuse to marry the students on principle, which doesn't leave female Byleth with many choices (no I'm not touching Alois, he's married).

Can you even marry Alois? He's already married, and he shows no sign of ever wanting to change that fact.

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2 hours ago, eclipse said:

Male Byleth gets better marriage options IMO.  I refuse to marry the students on principle, which doesn't leave female Byleth with many choices (no I'm not touching Alois, he's married).

I am a teacher (and I've professionally taught people close to my own age) so I found the whole marrying students thing especially uncomfortable too. Especially when you get, I believe, the forced dialogue option in the Black Eagle route where the characters say "We're going to treat you just like one of us," and you have to say "yeah, totally," when really I was like "No. Not at all. There are boundaries here. Manuela and Hanneman are the people I should be hanging out with."

But I have to say the five year time skip does make it significantly more palatable. Not only does the focus (and costume design) move away from the school aspect, but you can start getting lectures from the student characters too, making it feel much more like they're equals assisting each other in fighting a war rather than going through an education system.

2 hours ago, xchickengirlx said:

If you are really into the S supports for the game, then F!Byleth has it the best I'd argue

Since she can S Support all three lords, while M!Byleth can only S support Edelgard since IS said f**k mlm rights by not making Claude and Dimitri bi options. F!Byleth can also S support Dorothea and Mercedes. It's hard to count Rhea and Sothis, I mean, I highly doubt any players S support Rhea or Sothis as F!Byleth?

 mlm folks only get Linhardt. Not into Linhardt as an S support? then too bad for you mlm players(I S supported him as M!Byleth on my GD run). People like to joke that playing as F!Byleth in the BL route is like playing an otome game, and it's pretty true i'll admit. I'm doing my BL run as F!Byleth. Fans gush so much over how "canon" F!Byleth's relationship is with Dimitri. I'm still in pre-time skip mode, and can so far sorta understand why fans love their pairing. Will see how I feel about it once i'm done with this run.

I personally just have a mildly irrational distaste of F!Byleth's design. Yes, her outfit is awful. But it's also those huge, soulless eyes of hers. It's like staring into an abyss. Usually when characters that have big bright anime eyes, it allows them to be more emotive, but not with F!Byleth. She just looks dead inside.

I played as M!Byleth on my first run, GD route, and while M!Byleth didn't emote much, I wasn't as bothered by it? In some ways I'd say he was better at emoting that F!Byleth. It doesn't help when you are doing the supports with the other characters as F!Byleth, and when those characters start getting super emotional, you just have F!Byleth blankly staring back at them. It just really bothers me for some reason. I realize how petty that sounds, but it breaks the immersion for me idk. I did have this experience sometimes when playing as M!Byleth, but with F!Byleth it's so much worse.

I played Claude's route with female Byleth. And if the dialogue is largely unaltered as a male, then I totally would have bought Claude being bi. There's a lot of suggestion in things he says. Sure it's more of a "I want to use you for political gain, but we're cool, right?" rather than outright innuendo, but it's something. Plus his whole arc is about breaking down socially constructed boundaries. So it definitely wouldn't be off for him. Dimitri I only know second hand as I haven't played his route, but he comes across as a lot more straight laced so I'd buy him being bu less. Though I'd really have to play his route first.

What's mlm? I'm guessing it's not multi level marketing.

1 hour ago, nocturnal YL said:

I'd prefer male Byleth because the story seems to be written with a male Byleth in mind. I also like his design better. (Side note, I prefer female Robin and male Corrin, because of their children's names.)

Personally, I wish S support is available for everyone, as far as its use as a game mechanic is concerned. It can be used for overriding the paired endings of the character concerned, and non-romantic S supports are a thing anyway.

Can you even marry Alois? He's already married, and he shows no sign of ever wanting to change that fact.

I think it depends on how you look at the story for which one it's written for. The whole Goddess Reborn You are my Mother thing works better with a female Byleth. But on the other hand the whole Ike rip off aspect of the backstory works better with male Byleth. It's Fire Embelm, so a girl being raised as a mercenary isn't incredulous, but Jearlt's interactions with Byleth feel a lot more idk, bromantic?

Edited by Jotari
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To be honest, I think Bylass works better for the overall story? With their spoilery background in mind, it makes more sense for Byleth to be female for me. That, and all 4 routes are centered around Edelgard and Rhea, and it makes sense for the third main character to also be female. Although I prefer how Bylad acts in scenes over Bylass. Byleth is supposed to be someone who is very stoic and doesn't emote a lot, and I thought the male version fits that description more than the female one.

In terms of design, I'm not a big fan of either of their hairstyles. Their hair looks okay-ish from the front in their portraits, but from the back it doesn't look as good. In my opinion, Bylad should've had the sides of his head shaved down to look more like Jeralt's headstyle. Something more like this:

Spoiler

26d31633525e681e6e27eb9b37bd7043-e141601

Bylad's attire is fine. Bylass needs to be completely revamped though. What I would have done to improve her outfit is to make her top cover her stomach and change the stockings. The exposed midriff doesn't look too flattering and creates a bit of a disjoint in the overall look. The stockings are just plain weird, and a simple, black sheer stocking would've looked much better. Like Bylad, the front of her hair looks fine in the portrait, but the back of it on the model just looks bad. It's all uneven and choppy. I never liked it. For Bylass, I think a nice bob like this would be fitting given her past as a mercenary and needing hair to be functional:

Spoiler

A-nice-bob-hairstyle-for-women-straight-

But this would be boring by itself in anime standards so maybe add a bang and a braid along the side. The braid is supposed to be reminiscent of Sothis's braids.

And that's my TED Talk.

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I didn’t think either gender impacted the flow of the story much. 

One extremely small qualm I had was the fact that the Enlightened One’s outfit looks strikingly worse on Bylass imo. I suppose that isn’t saying much, though, considering that I think it looks like something Sothis put together if she had Dimitri’s sewing skills and about ten too many glasses of wine. 

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Male has one of the WORST designs in the whole game, he's down there with preskip Annette, Lorenz and Caspar. On the other hand female has one of the best. Also she at least reacts to things, the lad either does -_- or "surprised pikachu face".

She looks so good I'm hoping they add opposite gender Byleth as a playable unit, would be an interesting mechanic (kind of like pokemon, where the one you don't pick ends up as the rival, in this case it'd be maybe "Jeralt's assistant" or something like that).

tl;dr: just let me S rank Bylass ty. And redesign the guy, what the hell is he lol.

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3 minutes ago, timon said:

Male has one of the WORST designs in the whole game, he's down there with preskip Annette, Lorenz and Caspar. On the other hand female has one of the best. Also she at least reacts to things, the lad either does -_- or "surprised pikachu face".

She looks so good I'm hoping they add opposite gender Byleth as a playable unit, would be an interesting mechanic (kind of like pokemon, where the one you don't pick ends up as the rival, in this case it'd be maybe "Jeralt's assistant" or something like that).

tl;dr: just let me S rank Bylass ty. And redesign the guy, what the hell is he lol.

You want to S support Byleth, WITH Byleth!? Can you imagine the support?

Spoiler

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: *Option* Yes.

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: *walks away*

 

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mlm stands for men loving men. Any easy way to describe the lgbt options for romancing in this game. So if you play as M!Byleth, your only option is to romance Linhardt. Many fans argued that IS shoulda made all 3 Lords bi S support options to make it fair. 

 Claude definitely radiates that bi energy. Dimitri is so emotionally invested in Byleth, I feel like it wouldn’t have been hard at all to change his dialogue a little to make him a bi option.

but what’s done is done and I don’t see IS putting in a patch to make Claude and Dimitri bi S support options for Byleth 

I do wish the game found a way to not have to call Byleth professor anymore after the time skip, but because it is a little awkward and slightly skeevy if you were bothered by the student and teacher relationship concept to begin with

Edited by xchickengirlx
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3 hours ago, Jotari said:

You want to S support Byleth, WITH Byleth!? Can you imagine the support?

  Hide contents

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: *Option* Yes.

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: .....

F!Byleth:.....

M!Byleth: *walks away*

 

Or better yet, have them both have option choices so you're speaking for both characters.

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Well between the Cow and Male Byleth, I supposed I have no choice but to choose the Male Byleth. I suppose it could be fun to rub the space between her eyes but I shudder to think that any marketing team would look at that beside the other designs and say "this looks good or even decent, like she belongs with this cast!"

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