Differences between male and female units in Fire Emblem

[mangasdeouf]

Hello again,

Tonight I want to highlight a really annoying part of my gaming and especially Fire Emblem experience: gender deifferences in gameplay.

1) Constitution: this can't be remedied, only males with negative modifiers are gonna have female level constitution, that's totally realistic.

2) Rescue/Aid: this is the most stupid thing where gender differences are completely unrealistic: I don't see how the same horse that carries a 12 con Kyle and has room for 13 more con couldn't carry the 9 con Amelia and 16 con Garcia/Gilliam, it's exactly the same total weight and the horse shows no difference in the animation sprite. That's why the only females who can rescue a 16 con unit are like FE6 first pegasus with garbage offence due to having this trash con, meaning she looses mountains of speed by equipping anything other than a thin lance. Female rescue is complete game design atrocity in my book. Meanwhile any normal weight cavalier can rescue these generals and heavy axers.

3) Str/def/spd: I agree that most women have lower caps in real life to their possible physical performance: less muscle means less raw strength, less heart power to inject oxygene in their limbs, meanwhile bigger bones and harder muscles mean men have more tolerance to physical hits. Then why are female units generally faster than male units? Either you say screw it it's a video game, reality doesn't matter (in this case every point in my post is invalidated and I can delete it, but then make every female and have male have the same base caps in every game), or you go all the way into realistic gameplay, meaning you take 10% away from EVERY PHYSICAL STAT from male units to make your base for female units. At this point, you might as well make female only games since it's the same as the Olympics, girls are disadvantaged in any power/speed/punching ball performance contest against men. But FE has like 90% of the generic units that are male, which means you throw your weak ass female units into the roller coaster of very high damage ennemies with higher def than what these female units' strength/def/hp can chew.

All this while being hindered more often by the stronger weapons they NEED to use just to make up for the difference in base strength and growth with male units, thus having less speed from higher base than these males with more strength, which only means that females of the same gender-free classes get completely benched in terms of usability comapred with men since men have more +1/+3/+4 in con than females even when they already have a +2 base compared with females, allowing some males to take 0 penalty from a weapon that would give -3 to the generic units of the same class/gender (typically Hero Gerik with tomahawk/steel axe compared with the 11 con generic heroes who take -4 speed) and -5 to the females (not even talking of armored females with straight -3 base con compared with male armors, 10 vs 13, 12 vs 15, Amelia's neutral con vs Gilliam's +1 meaning Gilliam can wield weapons with 16 weight without loosing speed, while Amelia who shouldn't even be able to become a knight with a 20+ kg armor with a pre-teen girl body would loose 4 speed by doing so, might as well use FE4's weapon rank locks at this point, since females should be strictly unable to wield steel lances of 5-7 real life kg seeing the difference of 70-80% weight with the normal iron lance of 8 that would weigh around 3-4 kg with a high weight pike at its end)

What do you think of this? What is justified, to what extent and is there a point in using females when they're hindered by every weapon closing the gap between them and equivalent male units (not even talking of the fact that most females already have -4 str/def between class and personal bases/growths compared with males)? Did Awakening and Fates solve this problem?

[Edrey]

Well I do believe you are sort of right on the part that in some games the girls get punished just for being girls with the con and all, and also on average that boys to tend have higher Str and Hp growth.

I would not call it justified, but I can see a bit of balance in the way things are, women throughout the series have been more geared towards mag,spd,lck and resistance whereas men are inclined more towards str,hp and def.

A reasoning I could find for why girls tend to be faster would be that the way they train is focus more on nimbleness forsaking their endurance and overall strength, girls also are most of the time portrayed using lighter armor than man and maybe that can added to the reasoning of speed vz resilience.

 

And about awakening: 

The highest first generation caps and growth for magic belong to girls : Tharja and miriel, their male equivalents have higher hp and defense in exchange. 

The highest str growth belongs to boys but there is a tie in the cap. Vaike and Cherche are tied for the highest first gem str cap but he wins over her by a 10% growth in the stat, though, Cherche is no the one with the highest str base,mind you, those would be cordelia,nowi and panne and they lose by 5%

the highest spd growth goes to girls but the cap is a tied between 2 girls and a boy, Lon'qu , Sumia and Panne, though if you take Panne out of the equation saying that the reason behind her nimbleness is because she is a tanguel than the highest spd growth goes to Lon'qu , but at the end of the day on average the girls are still faster comparing the cast as a whole.

 

 

[mangasdeouf]

4 minutes ago, Edrey said:

Well I do believe you are sort of right on the part that in some games the girls get punished just for being girls with the con and all, and also on average that boys to tend have higher Str and Hp growth.

I would not call it justified, but I can see a bit of balance in the way things are, women throughout the series have been more geared towards mag,spd,lck and resistance whereas men are inclined more towards str,hp and def.

A reasoning I could find for why girls tend to be faster would be that the way they train is focus more on nimbleness forsaking their endurance and overall strength, girls also are most of the time portrayed using lighter armor than man and maybe that can added to the reasoning of speed vz resilience.

 

And about awakening: 

The highest first generation caps and growth for magic belong to girls : Tharja and miriel, their male equivalents have higher hp and defense in exchange. 

The highest str growth belongs to boys but there is a tie in the cap. Vaike and Cherche are tied for the highest first gem str cap but he wins over her by a 10% growth in the stat, though, Cherche is no the one with the highest str base,mind you, those would be cordelia,nowi and panne and they lose by 5%

the highest spd growth goes to girls but the cap is a tied between 2 girls and a boy, Lon'qu , Sumia and Panne, though if you take Panne out of the equation saying that the reason behind her nimbleness is because she is a tanguel than the highest spd growth goes to Lon'qu , but at the end of the day on average the girls are still faster comparing the cast as a whole.

 

 

The numbers you bring in are interesting, I didn't study much of Awakening, especially caps since different caps for each unit mean you have to remember differences between each unit and I played Awakening much less than Fates in the 4 past years, while I barely ever played for caps since in that game they're completely absurd and unneeded for a hard playthrough and only allow lunatic to be how braindead it is with ennemies having higher caps to hit before they stop their overgrowth to hit for 60% of the HP of any of your units that didn't grind through 3 reclasses.

Another completely misogyne element that we can find in the vision of women in society, notably in jobs more tradionnaly masculine than feminine, is the Luck stat. Males (except kids) tend to have much lower luck compared with kids and women, which tends to make you guess that men don't need luck because they're competent, while kids and women have to rely on luck to make up for adult/teenager males' superiority in these functions. That's exactly how people think of female/kids who succeed in male-oriented jobs/tasks, either they're a rare element that is out of the box, or they're simply lucky to have succeeded. Meanwhile a male who achieves female-oriented tasks/jobs is often seen as having succeeded because of sheer competence. Of course when I genderize tasks/jobs, it's only under the sight of the society, like how classical dance tends to be seen more as a female practice than a male one, while weight lifting tends to be seen as a male practice, or taking care of kids vs being a soldier/cop.

Moulder starts with 2 luck and has 20 or 25% growth, yet he is more used than his beautiful, elegant, shy counterpart (I'm using these adjectives on purpose to show how genderized the characteristics of units are, men leaning more towards ability while women tend to be used because of looks or personnality/gimmick), simply because this old man with mediocre growths compared with Natasha has enough with just his base stats, having a constitution that allows him to wield C tomes as a sage without suffering any speed penalty while evryone else would take -3-4 speed (men) or -6-7 (girls except mage knights), while his effective speed largely compensates his lack of power, and he has more HP/def than females with a growth of 25%, similar to Kyle's who is the tankiest of the 3 original cavaliers of FE8.

Same can be said in FE6, I've seen many comments telling that Echidna wasn't worth the trouble since she lacks bulk, power and constitution (thus loosing massive speed to her preferred weapon type, axes) while even Dieck at least had hp to take hits (and at base he has 10 def just from promoting, while Echidna at base has only 8 while she's pre-promoted, her 6 speed advantage being easily solved by Dieck's bare constitution, and her def at level 20 being his lv 5/1 def, while his lv 20/1 def  is 3 points higher than her lv 20 def and his lv 20/20 is 6 points higher than hers in the same class). Typical example of male gameplay superiority, or of females being locked to E ranks or silver in order to loose as little speed as possible, since it's their best stat for tanking purposes, since it allows them to dodge, not being doubled and also their best damage stat because doubling is more important when you deal 30 per hit with silver than when you deal 30 with iron and are able to use steel weapons without speed penalty to bust 33 damage per hit at minimal cost.

[Icelerate]

I don't get why female mounts have less aid because the mount itself is not necessarily female or male. 

[Acacia Sgt]

14 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

I don't get why female mounts have less aid because the mount itself is not necessarily female or male. 

I would think it's for game balance reasons? If their max aid was 25 like the males, then they'd be able to rescue a whole bunch more people that male rescuers wouldn't be able to due to the con difference on average. If you want to prevent certain units from being able to be rescued, but your aid formula means a number of units can still rescue them, then better implement some penalty on those who can. In this case, the 5 less Aid.

Edited April 5, 2020 by Acacia Sgt

[Icelerate]

3 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I would think it's for game balance reasons? If their max aid was 25 like the males, then they'd be able to rescue a whole bunch more people that male rescuers wouldn't be able to due to the con difference on average. If you want to prevent certain units from being able to be rescued, but your aid formula means a number of units can still rescue them, then better implement some penalty on those who can. In this case, the 5 less Aid.

Having less con is already detrimental to unit AS so I disagree you necessarily need to punish female riders more. But I agree with you that IS simply didn't want you to rescue heavier units even though most of the heaviest units are armours and it'd be hardly game breaking if you were allowed to carry them around the battlefield. 

[Acacia Sgt]

5 minutes ago, Icelerate said:

Having less con is already detrimental to unit AS so I disagree you necessarily need to punish female riders more. But I agree with you that IS simply didn't want you to rescue heavier units even though most of the heaviest units are armours and it'd be hardly game breaking if you were allowed to carry them around the battlefield. 

Well, I don't agree either. Perhaps not so per se with the armored units; but there are others units, which would be where IS thought it shouldn't happen. Though again, it's just conjecture of mine.

[eclipse]

Yeah, this is getting moved.  This isn't a serious discussion.  Full stop.

EDIT: I like how you conveniently leave out the facts that women get an exclusive flying class in most games (some form of Pegasus), and that they have slightly better stats as a mage.  If you're going to discuss something like gender differences, at least try to research the topic fully.

Edited April 5, 2020 by eclipse

[Fates-Blade]

7 hours ago, mangasdeouf said:

What do you think of this? What is justified, to what extent and is there a point in using females when they're hindered by every weapon closing the gap between them and equivalent male units (not even talking of the fact that most females already have -4 str/def between class and personal bases/growths compared with males)? Did Awakening and Fates solve this problem?

Females having lower con, str, and def and having much higher magic and res then males makes sense,

as for if there's a point to using female units, it depends on if the game has skills and/or if there's the magic stats and weapons, if so then yes, females are very powerful in FE with magic like Celica and Lute.

Edited April 5, 2020 by Fates-Blade

[Alastor15243]

Here's my take on it. I have absolutely no issue whatsoever with creating a fantasy universe where this:

Is pretty much on the same strength level as this:

However, I feel that if the developer chooses to make a world like this (which they absolutely should, since it's just flat-out more fun gameplaywise and allows for a more varied cast), then these ladies here:

Should not have had to deal with huge numbers of men telling them that women aren't suited for warfare. Because how the hell would that idea even begin to exist in a universe where since the dawn of time, cavewomen beating potential mates over the head and dragging them back to their cave happened just as often as the opposite?

Granted, even if women were just as strong as men, evolution would still reward societies that had their men do everything dangerous, since women are the limiting factor on reproduction and a society with 100 women and 1 man will rebuild 100 times faster than the opposite, but that doesn't mean that the idea that women are weaker than men could be allowed to spread in this universe without facing continuous blatant contradiction, and I think it's incredibly lazy and kind of obnoxiously preachy to try to apply real-world aesops to a world that doesn't even follow real-world gender rules.

Also, to be fair, the characters of Fire Emblem decidedly do not have medieval beliefs about women, and most of the sexism these women complain about happens offscreen (though honestly that just makes me headcanon that Sully just has a complex over her low strength growth and she's lashing out by complaining to her coworkers about men in the army who don't actually exist), so clearly sexism here is different from sexism in medieval times, but that's more just applying modern values to medieval fantasy to avoid creeping out and alienating modern viewers.

My main point is that creating a world where women are just as strong as men on average, and then making this world still apparently have loads of men convinced that they aren't, is nonsensical and actually kind of sexist in and of itself, as if to insinuate that the obstacles women face in the military have everything to do with men and nothing to do with the limitations of their own body.

[DragonFlames]

20 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

and I think it's incredibly lazy and kind of obnoxiously preachy to try to apply real-world aesops to a world that doesn't even follow real-world gender rules.

This beautifully sums up all of my problems with Kjelle and Sully's characters.

On everything else, I'm fully with @Alastor15243 here, as well.

Here's another aspcet to the whole thing that I personally feel is pretty important: Fire Emblem, especially older games where Con is a thing, actually gets this whole "women are weaker than men in battle" deal wrong: A weapon is supposed to be a power equalizer, that's the entire point of even using them. Sure, biologically speaking, men are built for more muscle mass, since that is how nature intended it to be, but as soon as weapons come into play, pure muscular strength kind of loses its importance.

[mangasdeouf]

Thank you, everything here is interesting.

On the topic of rescue, cavaliers can rescue general Gilliam, Barth and such if they have neutral con modifier, I'm okay with pegasi not being able to rescue generals (and even great knights or any mounted unit) as it makes no sense to rescue a heavy armored unit with a flying horse (meanwhile it would be more realistic if wyvern riders/lords could rescue generals with 16 con since a dragon has much bigger and powerful wings than a little pegasus) and if they rescue mounted units, then these should dismount to be rescued (there's no sense in carrying a horse on horseback...). But why do female paladins and especially female GREAT KNIGHTS have only 20 total aid? hell, a great knight should have even more aid than a paladin since they already suffer the movement penalty for being armored, might as well be able to carry more weight...

On the topic of gender-locked classes, I agree with you, like why is grandmaster male-locked in Fates when it's gender-free in Awakening? Why are pegasi female only? This has been discussed already in another topic, I don't remember if it was on Serenesforest, they said that Hercule was riding a pegasus (well, in the Disney version, not in the actual myth, at least not in the 12 works of Hercule), which is a good point on having more males riding pegasi. I'm happy that sky knight has finally allowed male pegasi, athoughI'mdisappointed by the main one, Subaki, who doesn't really follow any category, since he has high skill but low speed, middling def but low strength, middling HP that don't allow him to facetank like he should by being one of the sturdier units in his game, in the end Azama is the one who should have been the sky knight and Subaki should have been the mountain priest, seeing how the growths of their respective classes are more fit to each other.

Also, it's disgusting that we had to wait for the 14th! game of the series (12th original game) to finally break the exclusivity of axe wielding classes to male units, and the 13th for wyverns to be completely gender-free (well, technically New Mistery of the Emblem also lets you promote into wyvern as a female, but that's only as a 2nd tier class and 1st tier is pegasus-only for flying classes). Charlotte and Rinkah are quite refreshing as the first female units in axe-locked infantry classes in the whole series, correct me if I'm wrong, and even then, these girls are sadly designed to be only meatbag (Rinkah) or stat bag (both) for dual guard. Their stat spread isn't even worth actually playing them in their original class if we consider their competition, Subaki as a spear master does everything Rinkah does better and as a pegasus he compensates less def with more HP/res, Azama strictly outclasses every physical unit except Ryoma in any physical/hybrid tanky class, Scarlet has more offense than Rinkah forever (even though after trying oni chieftain bolt axe Rinkah, I can tell she hits like a truck while being a brick wall), and another offense is that Rinkah's caps are completely opposite to her growths which is quite annoying.

Meanwhile Charlotte has a personal skill that barely serves any purpose in a male-exclusive fighting generics game, while the other crit boost she has access to only kills her accuracy even more. She has traditional axe wielder def/res with high HP in a game where not being able to take 2x 37+damage hits by chapter 20 is really bad, and the only way to fix her def is to send her to the wyvern/great knight lines, even then it has to be used for more than 10 levels to make up for her awful bases when you put her back into berserker (especially since eating a crit means she dies instantly). Effie should have been the fighter and Charlotte something better fit for her, while Arhtur could have started in cavalier to be better from the get-go.

So even when females have access to traditional male classes, they still don't follow the strengths of their class (Rinkah's strength, literally), or follow the old style units of these classes so much that they become nearly as bad as these (Charlotte who ends up being a replica of FE6 or 7 units with access to berserker, since her speed is too high to be a replica of fighters/warriors).

6 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Here's another aspcet to the whole thing that I personally feel is pretty important: Fire Emblem, especially older games where Con is a thing, actually gets this whole "women are weaker than men in battle" deal wrong: A weapon is supposed to be a power equalizer, that's the entire point of even using them. Sure, biologically speaking, men are built for more muscle mass, since that is how nature intended it to be, but as soon as weapons come into play, pure muscular strength kind of loses its importance.

Like you just wrote, what makes women good is skill and adaptability, using technical weapons that we men would not have thought of to make up for genetical differences. That's why it would be amazing to see crossbows again, since they basically negate any strength difference between genders, while allowing women to stay out of the ennemy's hitting range. I would add that crossbows should deal fix ignore def damage, since the main goal of crossbows is...to pierce armor/mail. other things could be added the same way, like replacing daggers/shuriken with blowpipes and stings, that would inflict paralysis, poison, sleep etc. This way they would have access to support classes that help the army without being in danger of strong physical hits, and without needing Effie-level strength to fight these stronger genes males.

Effie is like the female Olympic athletes who got their medals taken from them because they have narly as much testostherone as men, while Rinkah has apparent muscles but her strength growth is mediocre and mostly because her class has the 2nd best strengt growth after berserker, if you reclass her into any other Hoshidan class it only goes down.

So I think that if IS wants to keep on making gender inequalities, they should add more options for female units to be useful than just ferry units or magic classes. And their step back in 3H where pegasus is female-only again makes me want to burn them to ashes. Seriously, they went forward for 1 game and now their revert back to misogyny, not letting men ride flying horses as if it was not worthy of their strength or as if only women could ride a flying horse, when everyone can ride a normal horse.

[Lightcosmo]

I personally don't mind the characters having differences, but I can understand why a lot of others don't like it. I don't expect them to fix/balance it, since everyone knows they can't be expected to actually balance something out, but I agree with what people have mentioned so far.

[ResilientFighter]

In the real world only a tiny percentage of females are as physically strong as males... so I can see why the devs have gone that route for the most part but in recent games there are a few extremely strong and resistant female characters so at least they are working hard on your complaint

[Sir Gerwald of Vallora]

I think many of the so called "mysoginistic" choices made in relation to class and growths can be majority based off the cultures which FE has pulled from, mostly Medieval/Renaissance Europe and Japan, which both featured primarily male centric cultures, though not to the same degree as later 17-18 hundreds eras of both cultures. I feel this is mostly an issue with the earlier games, which were more grounded in the setting than later games. I actually feel like the more recent games have made good strides at presenting a fantasy universe where men and women are viewed more equally, especially with Three Houses allowing both male and female units to become dancers, as well as having a interesting and well developed Matriarchal Religion.

[anikom15]

I think it's okay for there to be a clear trend in differences between men and women. I think game mechanics should be reflective of the secondary world, not detached. This is what makes Fire Emblem feel more real than other RPGs like Final Fantasy, where the stats are pretty much now completely divorced from the character and mostly only serve as a gameplay mechanic. So far in the series, there has been little explanation for where stats come from. In Three Houses we do know that skills come from studying, at least in that world, but even things like the nature of stat boosters is unknown. For that reason, we naturally assume that stats are based on physical attributes, and in real life women are generally physically weaker than men.

I wouldn't mind female characters with comparable strength and HP to a male, but I'd expect them to be really buff, not skinny or curvy. Look at a picture of a female bodybuilder and cover the head. The torso could easily pass for a male body's. Stats need to play to the appearance and personality of the characters in order to marry the game mechanics to the story and characterization (Nintendo has always been pretty good about this). Doing so creates a more believable secondary world.

Now some people might say, 'It's all fantasy. There are wizards and dragons and supernatural powers. The designers can do anything they want.' That argument is tired and meaningless, and the consequence of its design philosophy is the Disney Star Wars trilogy which I find to be lacking in depth. Anyone who doesn't believe world-building is important or that fantasy is accepted by 'suspension of disbelief' should read Tolkien's 'On Fairy-Stories'.

[nepheknee]

I honestly feel like differences between females and males in Fire Emblem is entirely unnecessary and not needed. Gender should not come into play at all for units.

Sure, you can argue that in real life most women are generally weaker than most men, and realistically there would be differences between female and male soldiers.
But here's the thing. Fire Emblem has never been realistic. It's a fantasy game, realism isn't it's main appeal. There's magic, dragons, crests, and all sorts of things that make no scientific sense but that doesn't matter because it's a fantasy game.

So why on earth should there be realistic differences between men and women? The main offender in my opinion is gender locked classes. Like in Three Houses, why can't women be Heroes or War Masters? Why can't men be Gremories or Pegasus Knights? There's literally no reason except to limit people from doing things they want to, which makes no sense in a fantasy game. What if I want to be a Pegasus Knight, but also want to be a male? Well then, guess I've gotta choose one. Linhardt would work really well as a Gremory, but wait, he can't be one, because it's gender locked for no reason! Hey, Petra looks like she could be a good Hero! Oh wait, it's gender locked. When has anyone noticed the fact that classes were gender locked and thought "Wow! That's such a cool feature! I love having my creative freedom limited for reasons which shouldn't influence it at all!"

Anyways, point being, gender locked classes are dumb and no one likes them.

[Sir Gerwald of Vallora]

19 hours ago, Evalko said:

Why can't men be Gremories or Pegasus Knights?

There's actually an in universe reason behind this. Apparently, Pegasi are naturally skittish creatures, and men are generally much to loud and, well, masculine to gain one's trust. While I wouldn't change the lore, I do feel a cool way to work around this would be to either have a somewhat femenin or quite man as a Pegasus Knight, or introduce a Male version of the tree with, say, Hippogriphs as the mount instead.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Sir Wolfram of Vallora said:

There's actually an in universe reason behind this. Apparently, Pegasi are naturally skittish creatures, and men are generally much to loud and, well, masculine to gain one's trust. While I wouldn't change the lore, I do feel a cool way to work around this would be to either have a somewhat femenin or quite man as a Pegasus Knight, or introduce a Male version of the tree with, say, Hippogriphs as the mount instead.

BRING👏BACK👏SWORD👏FLIERS👏

[Sir Gerwald of Vallora]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

BRING👏BACK👏SWORD👏FLIERS👏

By Naga and Sothis yes please. That's a fantastic idea. Sword Wielding Hipppgriph riding armored warriors ala-Charlemange's Paladins of legend. 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Eh, stats don't make a ton of sense when we remember that an increase in stats is almost never associated with a change in portrait. Like, a level 20 Lyn will have much less musulature than a level 5 Bartre, but more strength (unless she's totally stat-screwed). The few sorta-exceptions are certain promotions (Vanguard Ike) and the Three Houses students post-skip, but even those portrait changes are event-related, and technically independent of one's stats.

There's sort of the questions of "realism" and "believability" in play here. We can accept thousand-year-old dragons, and books that shoot fire, as part of the fantasy landscape. But when we see humans, we assume their physical abilities to correlate with the humanity we know. Ergo, female soldiers being weaker (in some areas, on average) than their male counterparts. My own take is, preferring stat groeths, bases, and caps that vary between units on factors other than physical sex. But I get those who prefer the way things have been, from a "believability" angle.

Anyway, this take is likely as hot Fhirdiad in the Wyvern Moon, but here goes - mounted Aid in GBA should be calculated as (20 - Con) for first tier units, and (25 - Con) for promoted units. Losing Aid upon promotion is asinine, especially when, in a lot of cases, the mount itself changes. Doing so would also decouple the inexplicable gendered aspect of this one mechanoc.

[MagicCanonBalls]

It's all fantasy. There are wizards and dragons and supernatural powers. The designers can do anything they want.

so what if they have lore or world-building to back up the gameplay and stats. It still sucks that male unit can't get pegasus, it still sucks that female unit can't get Hero even though some of them would appreciate the class growth. And for Naga sake, let Lindhardt be Valkyrie and Gremory already. All this just makes the so called "lore" and "realism in fantasy world" seems like petty excuses to keep us from having less frustrating gameplay.

With that being said, I think FE has done well so far in terms of breaking gender norm in designing unit. Almost every game has quite a few male and female that isn't traditionally masculine/feminine, and their stats/growth reflects that.

[nepheknee]

On 5/22/2020 at 2:42 PM, Sir Wolfram of Vallora said:

There's actually an in universe reason behind this. Apparently, Pegasi are naturally skittish creatures, and men are generally much to loud and, well, masculine to gain one's trust. While I wouldn't change the lore, I do feel a cool way to work around this would be to either have a somewhat femenin or quite man as a Pegasus Knight, or introduce a Male version of the tree with, say, Hippogriphs as the mount instead.

I mean that's great I guess, though that reasoning promotes harmful gender norms that shouldn't be promoted. And if that is the reason, shouldn't it be just personality locked or something?  I mean there are plenty of loud, masculine women in Fire Emblem. Why should they be allowed to ride pegasi while people like Yuri can't?

Either way, that's the only gender locked class they have an explanation for. There's still no explanation why men can't wear fur around their neck or ride horses while they cast magic. It makes no sense, it's just there to limit creative freedom for no reason.

[Sir Gerwald of Vallora]

11 minutes ago, Evalko said:

I mean that's great I guess, though that reasoning promotes harmful gender norms that shouldn't be promoted. And if that is the reason, shouldn't it be just personality locked or something?  I mean there are plenty of loud, masculine women in Fire Emblem. Why should they be allowed to ride pegasi while people like Yuri can't?

Either way, that's the only gender locked class they have an explanation for. There's still no explanation why men can't wear fur around their neck or ride horses while they cast magic. It makes no sense, it's just there to limit creative freedom for no reason.

You have to remember the game that introduced that explanation released in 1980s Japan. Progressive mindsets were only just starting to become mainstream. They were also taking inspiration from ancient European legends, many of which had the same requirements to take mythical creatures. Although, I'd agrue it is more just gender stereotyps, versus them directly trying to enforce gernder norms. I think the reason they haven't changed it is that they don't want to violate canon, which doesn't make sense when they've played free and wild with many other aspects of canon. And as I said, I do agree someone like Effie shouldn't become a Sky knight, and someone like Forrest has every right to be one. I wholeheartedly agree with the 3H DLC classes and Gremories. I was quite angry when I discovered men couldn't be troubadors. On top of that, Dark Flyer is one of my favorite classes in any FE game. I would have really liked to reclass my male Byleth into one.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Sir Wolfram of Vallora

[nepheknee]

2 minutes ago, Sir Wolfram of Vallora said:

You have to remember the game that introduced that explanation released in 1980s Japan. Progressive mindsets were only just starting to become mainstream. They were also taking inspiration from an ient European legends, many of which had the same requirements to take mythical creatures. Although, I'd agrue it is more just gender stereotyps, versus them directly trying to enforce gernder norms.  And as I said, I do agree someone like Effie shouldn't become a Sky knight, and someone like Forrest has every right to be one. I wholeheartedly agree with the 3H DLC classes and Gremories. I was quite angry when I discovered men couldn't be troubadors. On top of that, Dark Flyer is one of my favorite classes in any FE game. I would have really liked to reclass my male Byleth into one.

Yes, it's understandable that they would say that way back then, but I see no point in continuing to do this when it benefits no one and tons of people clearly dislike it.

And whatever thing you call it, whether it's stereotypes or norms, it's still an issue of preventing people from expressing themselves due to their gender.

Anyways, we clearly both agree on this topic lol. I have no clue why they made it so anyone could be anything in Fates and then went right back to gender locks in 3H.