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Why is Flayn x Byleth such an underrepresented/contested pairing?


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I am a massive Flayn fan and I love seeing romantic art or fanfics of her and Byleth together, but this is sadly a pairing that either goes ignored or is openly vilified by much of the FE fanbase*. Mind you, this same fanbase has no issues with romantic Flayn pairings in general (Flayn x Dimitri seems to be wildly popular for some reason) but only is it when Byleth is involved that people seem to get up in arms. Yes, there are people who hate characters like Edelgard and Rhea, but nonetheless there are tons of art and stories of Byleth with them. Flayn by herself doesn't attract nearly as much vitriol (that I'm aware of), yet she's one of the characters least represented in Byleth ships (and yes, I know there are others, no need to bring it up). Flayn fans are also routinely mocked and insulted, and whenever Flayn x Byleth content IS created, it's always met with the same derision and backlash, often couched as "memeing". This is grossly unfair to Flayn and her fans, and both deserve better treatment.

I know what many peoples' first objection is going to be to these points: "Flayn is a young child! Loving her or wanting her to be with Byleth is wrong and you are sick for it!" While this amounts to nothing but an empty and unwarranted personal attack, there are three reasons why it's completely invalid:

  • Flayn is not a child or "loli" as people often label her. She has a teenage physique and is literally coded as being of 17 years of age (I'm not going to bother going deeper on this point because detractors will accuse me of "fixating on her body")
  • Even disregarding the first point, no one is ever given hate for pairing Flayn with other characters as I've mentioned multiple times now. If Flayn is "too young" to be romantically involved at all, why is it still acceptable to pair her with Dimitri, Ferdinand, Linhardt, etc? Why is it ONLY with Byleth that it's a problem?
  • People say they don't like pairing her because she "looks too young", but that doesn't stop the plethora of Bernadetta or Lysithea x Byleth content being produced, as well as the majority positive reception it gets in contrast (and yes, I do mean pre-timeskip).

In summation, I am one among many passionate Flayn fans and we will continue to be her fans no matter how many insults and memes people bombard us with. Flayn is a kind, sweet and wonderful girl, and she deserves way more love and respect than this fanbase gives her, and so do we.

*To be clear, I'm not referring to NSFW content of any kind, so don't even try to throw that argument out. If you have to make this about sex, that's on you.

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Ah yes, finally a fellow Flayn-o-Fish fan and one of the best S-supports in game. Imo i think she has one of the best developments and chemistry with Byleth in the game (not to mention she is the only one aside from the lords to have Bond Support with Byleth), but it seems like i am in the minority with that.

From what i've seen, some people mention her 'young-ish' looks, other the complicated blood situation, and other people see her as Nowi for some reason. 

There's also the fact that alot of people don't play Silver Snow due to it being 'VW lite', where Flayn (and Seteth) has the most presence.

Also, if you want a Byleth x Flayn fic, be the change you want to see in the world 😉

Edited by Shrimperor
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I also like Flayn, but I guess people would rather go on a romantic date at a restraunt instead of fishing for hours on end? I don't find it that appalling, personally.

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14 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Also, if you want a Byleth x Flayn fic, be the change you want to see in the world 😉

Here's a Byleth x Flayn fic that was actually done for me as a gift (admittedly it could use more of them actually interacting but I still enjoyed it). Check it out and it's good to have some Flayn solidarity!

9 minutes ago, darkblade2814 said:

maybe due  to the fact they are related in a way, they are cousins, if you consider Sitri as a child  of rheia, I don't agree, as a fellow ByalthxFlyin shipper

You may not agree, but to the people that do that reasoning makes no sense. Flayn is in no way genetically related to Byleth, and if you want to say dragon blood makes them related, you'd have to say that she's then related to all crest bearers in some way. I'm really not interested in having a lore debate so I won't go into that further.

7 minutes ago, Benice said:

I also like Flayn, but I guess people would rather go on a romantic date at a restraunt instead of fishing for hours on end? I don't find it that appalling, personally.

I can't tell if this is a joke. You DO know there's way more to her character than enjoying fish, right? That's another problem the fanbase has: instead of seeing Flayn as a fleshed out, multi-dimensional character, people always reduce her to "that fish meme girl" so they can push her to the side and never take her seriously.

Edited by LelouchUzumaki
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3 minutes ago, LelouchUzumaki said:

Here's a Byleth x Flayn fic that was actually done for me as a gift (admittedly it could use more of them actually interacting but I still enjoyed it). Check it out and it's good to have some Flayn solidarity!

Oh i read this one!

There's also one that has some Flayn in it although no shipping. Warped time/A Jump to the left/right. Check it out 😉

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17 minutes ago, LelouchUzumaki said:

instead of seeing Flayn as a fleshed out, multi-dimensional character, people always reduce her to "that fish meme girl" so they can push her to the side and never take her seriously.

That was basically what I was trying to say; I was pointing out that people see her as the fish waman and nothing more. I geuess it fell through, though.

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I think part of it has to do with Flayn herself. She seems a character that's mostly liked but of who few people have any strong feelings on, so they overlook her for pairings. 

Flayn being a loli might turn people off and for fans into that she has some competition from Sothis who's a bit more fanservicy on that front. 

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4 minutes ago, Benice said:

That was basically what I was trying to say; I was pointing out that people see her as the fish waman and nothing more. I geuess it fell through, though.

Oh, my mistake, my stupid eyes read the last part of your post as "I don't find that appealing". If it'd read it over more carefully I would've seen your intent. Sorry.

4 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Flayn being a loli might turn people off and for fans into that she has some competition from Sothis who's a bit more fanservicy on that front. 

How are you defining Flayn as a loli? I hesitated to point this out but she has a larger bust size than Egelgard, and the latter is pretty short too. Does that then mean pre-timeskip Edelgard is a loli?

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1 minute ago, LelouchUzumaki said:

How are you defining Flayn as a loli? I hesitated to point this out but she has a larger bust size than Egelgard, and the latter is pretty short too. Does that then mean pre-timeskip Edelgard is a loli?

Their age I suppose. Petite as she is Edelgard is a young adult. Visually Flayn takes the form of a young girl. Visually at least Flayn seems younger than the other students her insistence its not the case when you bring it up only highlights it. 

Also you can technically appeal to those into loli's without being one. Lysithea isn't one after the timeskip but she still resembles one in a lot of ways. 

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Flayn physically being a loli doesn't make her more/less popular on aggregate because some people dig that and others don't - seeing as how Lys is a very popular Byleth partner. 

I don't think any of the church "ships" are particularly popular, in part because Byleth generally has a distant/formal relationship with them. And I don't think Flayn fits neatly in typical "imouto" tropes that JRPG players enjoy, for the lack of a better explanation she's what you'd expect someone else's sheltered younger sister to be in real life. She's kind of harmless and cleary orbits Seteth & co., so to me there aren't a lot of romantic or emotional angles to explore with Byleth. 

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I don't get why Lysi and Flayn should be lolis. 
I saw Flayn as interesting and foremost somehow of an odd way funny, she was something fresh, but not outstanding enough. I think three houses offers a lot of competition, three lords is rough and there are even more characters, that can eventually overshadow Flayn.
 

1 minute ago, Moltz23 said:

Does Flayn even count as a loli if datamine says she's biologically 17? (In dragon years?)

I wouldn't count her as a loli. In think the most loli like character in three houses is Bernadetta, but even she is not really fitting this.

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31 minutes ago, LelouchUzumaki said:

Oh, my mistake, my stupid eyes read the last part of your post as "I don't find that appealing". If it'd read it over more carefully I would've seen your intent. Sorry.

Ehh, it was more my bad. I'll try to be more straightforward in the future with my posts,

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1 hour ago, LelouchUzumaki said:

I can't tell if this is a joke. You DO know there's way more to her character than enjoying fish, right? That's another problem the fanbase has: instead of seeing Flayn as a fleshed out, multi-dimensional character, people always reduce her to "that fish meme girl" so they can push her to the side and never take her seriously.

This is honestly a problem the fanbase has with any character really. As a massive fan of awakening and fates's casts I can't tell you the amount of times I roll my eyes when someone boils Cordelia to just "she likes Chrom and never gets over it" when there's so much more to her character than that if you actually read her supports but that's besides the point.

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6 minutes ago, NolanBaumgartner said:

I think we're getting too hung up on the whole "loli" thing. Let's just agree that Flayn physically resembles a child. 

Why should we agree on that? What makes her resemble a child any moreso than any of the other short characters (female and male btw)?

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Just now, LelouchUzumaki said:

Why should we agree on that? What makes her resemble a child any moreso than any of the other short characters (female and male btw)?

I'd say her portrayal as very young, pure, inexperienced and the fact that she can't join the academy as a student yet all contribute to this.  She also has a very conservative outfit, whereas a lot of characters don't. Like, those dark mage outits are spicy. Characters like Bernadetta aren't portrayed as children very much at all, despite all of the students at the academy being children. One of her main plot points is how sheltered she is, thus resulting in very childlike behaviours. She's just written as a child, that's the fact of the matter.

Honestly, I think she's just mostly been scarred by Nowi's less-than-PG outfit, which has damaged every dragon/ancient creature in the series since.

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13 minutes ago, NolanBaumgartner said:

Let's just agree that Flayn physically resembles a child. 

...you must've seen some weird children then.

3 minutes ago, Benice said:

Honestly, I think she's just mostly been scarred by Nowi's less-than-PG outfit, which has damaged every dragon/ancient creature in the series since.

Nowi bad, updoots to the left.

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34 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Their age I suppose. Petite as she is Edelgard is a young adult. Visually Flayn takes the form of a young girl. Visually at least Flayn seems younger than the other students her insistence its not the case when you bring it up only highlights it. 

Also you can technically appeal to those into loli's without being one. Lysithea isn't one after the timeskip but she still resembles one in a lot of ways. 

 

42 minutes ago, LelouchUzumaki said:

How are you defining Flayn as a loli? I hesitated to point this out but she has a larger bust size than Egelgard, and the latter is pretty short too. Does that then mean pre-timeskip Edelgard is a loli?

Allow me to clear the air here a little bit. A loli is defined as a female character who looks and acts as kinda like a prepubescent child typically of ages 12 or younger. By the metric of age, Lysithea and Flayn are not Lolis. Lysithea is 15 and god knows how old flayn is. By appearence that's debatable. Flayn is certainly designed to look like one in a lot of ways. Lysithea I'm not entirely sure though. Personality wise yeah kind of. I can sort of see what the going for here at least in regards to Flayn, Lysithea not so much. The appeal of a Loli is the sort of child-like innocence they give off. It's supposed to be cute and wholesome like they're sort of a little sister you want to protect. That sort of deal. That's why a lot of little sisters are often times lolis in order to pander to that. It's not entirely fetishistic mind you though that is sometimes the case. It's more wholesome if anything. I dunno if I explained that well but this sort of thing is kinda hard to explain to those who aren't degenerate weeb trash like am and don't spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about/analyzing common anime tropes and otaku fetishes.

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