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Do you gravitate toward a male or a female Byleth?


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I had this discussion years ago about why people were likely to choose a male Robin or a female Corrin. It all boiled down to fitting certain archetypes and expectations. With Robin, it was the "brother betraying brother" narrative. With Corrin, it was a woman making a choice that torn herself apart.

 

So I wonder if the same thing apply to Byleth? Do you like a male Byleth over a female one, or the opposite? I choose female Byleth, not just because she was meant to be an artificial reincarnation of Sothis, but also because of how she acts to her students--she is more mother than teacher to them. She (the player) controls so much of their lives, as well as providing comfort to these mentally-troubled young men and women.

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In any game with a custom protagonist, I usually end up choosing male. I'm a guy, and these characters are player-insert characters, so I usually pick male. I don't really put any thought into it. Byleth is no exception, despite the extremely limited customization. 

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I've played AM/VW as female Byleth and CF/SS as male Byleth, and I intend to flip it around when I go through AM/CF/SS on Maddening. 

Gameplay and storywise I gravitate more towards female Byleth but there are certain cutscenes where I prefer the male Byleth version and it seems like he goldfishes less during dialogue (less of a wide blank stare?), so...

 

 

Edited by Crysta
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43 minutes ago, Perkilator said:

Male. Because I’m not a creepy 40-year-old man living out in the woods with only his computer.

. . .really?

---

I flip a coin.  Female if I want to easily recruit Sylvain, male if I want a paired ending with one of the faculty.

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I pretty much always go female when the choice is offered. Byleth is no exception.

Thematically, it doesn't make much difference; save I guess you could argue it's subversive for a female protagonist's main weakness to be that she isn't that good at nurturing, that she doesn't get people, that her sense of emotional intelligence is... fumbling, at best.

I love Byleth a lot, okay.

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I always go female. I did it the first time, solidified her character in my brain, and now that's just how it do really be like

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I tried playing female in one route, but I reset my save file & just went back to using male Byleth. Even though female Byleth is significantly more popular in fanart, I like using Male Byleth more purely since his eyes give him a more serious & somber expression by default, which fits 3 Houses' narrative better imo.

Female Byleth is still better for general gameplay due to being able to auto-recruit Sylvain, while Male Byleth gets nothing. I think her class-set is a bit better too. At the very least, it isn't as one sided as it was in Fates, where Jakob was noticeably better than Felica in the prologue chapters, and practically swept the early game if you reclassed him to Paladin & paired him with Corrin.

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Male Byleth.

Mostly because the default and enlightened one outfits just look bad on female in my opinion

Plus the male voice actor is so much better in my opinion.

Edited by Faellin
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It's *generally* harder for me to play as the opposite gender in games. An exception being Fates, simply because I was less annoyed at Female!Corrin doing dumb, naive stuff than I was at Male!Corrin doing it. Probably because when I play as a male, I do naturally self-insert a bit, so it's easier with someone of my same gender.

So Byleth has always been male for me, though I do think thematically and for the game it probably works better as a female, because then I think it *partially* makes Rhea a lot less creepy and that line where she's like, "You are my...." I can at least understand in a female why Rhea would be so devoted, but in a male, it seems weird she associates you like that.  

Though I did want to play as Female!Byleth once just to get darting blow, but idk. I also just really am not a fan of her design. At least Female!Corrin I thought had a very attractive design.

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I just swap between the two each playthrough. Doesn't really make a difference, both are Corrin level bad, characterless slobs somehow loved by everyone in game 😅

but avatar characters in general are not my jam, I don't get that "self-insert thing" at all. 

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Male, which is typical for me when picking a gender for custom characters.

In this case, it has the added benefit of (imo) a better design and voice. 

The biggest downside is that I'm not particularly attached to any of the female characters, so I kind of just pick whoever as my S-support, unless I recruited Linhardt or picked Crimson Flower for Jeritza.

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Male simply because I’m a guy. I always pick male in other games that requires me to pick a gender for the protagonist.

I never put much thought into this because there’s no reason to.

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Depends on the route for me really. On some routes I feel that a female Byleth would fit much better with the story than a male Byleth.

Overall though, I like both of them. 

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Female Byleth because I get annoyed by Male Byleth’s hairstyle and face expression. I also prefer female as the reincarnation of Sothis.

Plus, I get this weird feeling of needing to protect my students’ (girls’) freedom of marriage so there isn’t any reason for me to use male Byleth. Guess I am not the immersive type.

Edited by Wishblade
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i picked guyleth but this is a weird one where i don't have a real association with one of the byleths and a 'canon' pick like i do robin and corrin

EDIT: i picked guyleth entirely to bang ingrid, not because it felt like the better call, is what i'm saying

Edited by Integrity
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