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Sidereal Wraith

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Posts posted by Sidereal Wraith

    The Last To Post Wins!

    in Forum Games

    Posted

    15 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

    And of course, the game ain't over yet!

    Today, it might be considered cliché or expected; but I can only imagine how unexpected of a twist it must've been back thirty years ago when this was a novelty, I'd think. Hmm, to think, this game is over thirty years old...

    (Continues snoring) 

    The Last To Post Wins!

    in Forum Games

    Posted

    You know...(takes another drink) everyone keeps saying that it all of a sudden started to hail outside because I pissed on a Welsh Neolithic burial mound. I didn't so I don't know why the gods were so pissy today. Next rounds on me! 

    The True Tragedy of Three Houses

    in Fire Emblem: Three Houses

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    On 2/15/2020 at 1:04 AM, omegaxis1 said:

    After working on trying to de-toxify myself fro the reddit BS, I began to think about the state of the characters in 3H, how they operate, what they believe in, and why things happened the way it did. After a while, it finally hit me. 

    It's something that Itachi says in Naruto:

    unknown.png

    And that's basically it. 

    Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude, and Rhea. They are all bound by their own beliefs and ideals, which became their reality, that they simply could not see what the others saw or felt. To them, the reality of each other was nothing more than an illusion.

    Consider how each character acted.

    • Rhea:

    Suffering from a trauma of genocide, Rhea simply could not trust humanity. She couldn't believe in opening up to people and confiding her secrets. Because of that, she simply doesn't accept anyone that would dare to oppose the Church or her way of using her power. She cannot accept the choices that Edelgard makes, and especially the idea that Byleth would join her. Her trauma made her unable to accept it and to her reality, this was Nemsis 2.0. She even censors and hides information, constantly keeping secrets, and it took five years of imprisonment in the non-CF routes for Rhea to finally change and start confessing her secrets, but for someone that's lied for so long, it's hard to tell how much actually true. 

    • Dimitri:

    He's been consumed by his desire for vengeance because of the trauma he suffered from the Tragedy of Duscur. He was so traumatized that his own mind kept thinking about the events and manifested into "ghosts" that told him to seek revenge. It's a delusion, yes, but it's Dimitri's reality. Not only that, but despite Byleth telling Dimitri to try and reconnect with Edelgard, Dimitri refuses to, believing that they both changed too much. And though misguided and false, he believed that Edelgard was responsible for the Tragedy of Duscur. The truth is not so, but the truth is what Dimitri made of it. He saw and ultimately believed what he thought was the truth. And because of that, he refused to listen to anything Edelgard had to say, whether it was the truth or not. Even in CF, Dimitri wasn't going to listen to reason, cause it's still the same insane Dimitri as Part 1, that cannot believe in anything else and refuses to listen to any explanations. 

    • Claude:

    Claude might not be as traumatized emotionally like the other three, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't bear his own trauma. Being persecuted by Almyrans for being half-Fódlan, then going to Fódlan and learning that they view Almyrans as beasts. It made Claude unable to trust people with his true heritage and instead kept trying to use and scheme his way to getting what he desired. Edelgard tried to talk to Claude and even offered to exchange secrets, but Claude basically made an unreasonable demand, making Edelgard drop the matter. In fact, despite how they hold similar ideals, whether it's VW or even CF, Claude refused to ally with her, with VW cause Edelgard went off more on the deep end and made too much violence, and in CF cause he wanted to rule Fódlan himself, as he admitted. He only backs off when he has no way of winning anymore. 

    • Edelgard:

    Poor Edelgard, there is so much about her reality that makes it hard for her to really open up. For one thing, she's the ONLY one that learns that Rhea is a dragon and the alternate history of Fódlan from her father. Just HOW does she tell this to people? No one would believe her. And she's of a family who's political power was stripped by the corrupt nobles. And the Agarthans experimented her thanks to Duke Aegir and his cohorts locking her and her siblings up. She can't tell others. Not to mention, the trauma and environment during it made her forget some memories, so she doesn't remember Dimitri. And going to war against the Church of Seiros is something that none of her friends would have agreed with. And because of that, in the non-CF routes, because her reality was something she was not able to share with others that believed in, so she just became closed off. Regardless of whether Dimitri or Claude tried to talk to her or how badly she was being beaten, she was too set on her path by that point. She lost and sacrificed so much that there was no way that she could give up, else she had wasted lives for nothing. She needed to make the sacrifices mean something or die trying. 

    -

    Had they all been able to believe in other people, and not be trapped under their own reality due to their personal emotional issues, and actually be able to talk to one another, thus being able to see each other's reality and become more understanding and accepting, then maybe, just maybe, they could have made the war be against the Agarthans, and not each other before the Agarthans. It'd have been a war where Edelgard fought with the others to free the Empire from the Agarthan's control. 

    But that's not how reality works.

    People can't let go of their issues easily, because their reality is something that shaped them into what they are. Changing oneself is to break yourself and rebuild into something different, and that's not only scary, but even painful for the person. Rhea needed to spend five years imprisoned to finally change. Dimitri needed to have Rodrigue take a blow for him from someone that sought revenge like Dimitri had, and then be told that he doesn't have to listen to what others want and instead do what he wants. And Edelgard and Claude both learn to trust others more often, but for the former, only at the most critical moment when she needed someone to believe in her, while Claude simply had someone that was fighting with him the entire way. 

    Ultimately, this conflict was inevitable.

    And that is the true tragedy of 3H.

    Which makes the story that much more beautiful. 

    Indeed, it is a tragedy. At night, under a gibbous moon, I can still sometimes see the ashes from Battle of Belhalla being spread on the four winds.

    What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

    in General Fire Emblem

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    5 hours ago, Slumber said:

    You deliberately downplay that there's anything different about the tone of Awakening and Fates, as those are the two games @Wraith singled out. Those are the two games I've singled out. You've just chalked it up as silly(Or just straight up called @Wraith delusional) that anybody would suggest that there was something different about those two games. You've acknowledged that yes, the execution of these games are different, with Fates and Awakening pushing character quirks/traits more than previous games. You've also acknowledged that yes, the focus of the character writing is different.

    I thank you for remaining civil @Slumberdespite our differences of opinions on FE. Lord knows in the past I haven’t been to chivalrous when discussing some of the...spinoff games I dislike in the series. Anyway I’m in Wales with my family and girlfriend, enjoying the witch-haunted vistas of this antique land, replete with Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’, Glen Cook’s ‘Dreams of Steal’, and Thomas Ligotti’s ‘Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe’ so I cannot complain. You guys have a nice rest of your weekend while I kiss my liver goodbye.

    What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

    in General Fire Emblem

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    10 hours ago, Ottservia said:

    Oh no anime tropes in a Japanese fantasy video game series?! Who would’ve ever guessed?! I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself but if you think Fire Emblem has never been anime you my good sir are deluding yourself.   

    Of course FE has always had anime tropes within all the games. My issue is that in the newer games (Awakening onwards) many of the more pernicious tropes of modern anime have been more present and on the nose then ever before. Things such as revealing female clothing, one-note villains, fan service characters, inconsistency in tone, the power of friendship will save the day and over the top melodrama have really been more in your face then the earlier games. Don't get me wrong, all the games in the past have had these tropes to a certain level , but not to such a cartoonish degree that the 3DS games had them, specifically Awakening and Fates along with Heroes. When a series like Langrisser gets a mobile game and has many sexualized female characters I' m okay with it because the series has always had that kind of aesthetic design since its inception. However, for FE, I think that in the older games this trope was more toned down compared to the more recent games were you have characters such as Tharja and Camilla who exist solely for eye candy with little depth to their character. This cheapens and degrades the series as a result by dumbing it down and adding in popular tropes for a wider audience appeal instead of relying on its past strength and improving on them in modern iterations. Past FE games are not supposed to feel like the Tales of Series or a Hyperdimensional Neptunia games, because it had its own unique identity. Change in a series as old as FE is inevitable and not always a bad thing, but many of these recent changes have in my opinion been detrimental rather than positive. Thankfully 3 Houses seems to be curtailing these recent developments to come across as a more classic FE game instead of a modern one. 

    What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

    in General Fire Emblem

    Posted · Edited by Wraith

    I feel the that the series really lost its mojo during the 3DS era. It feels like the core identity of the series was sacrificed for juvenile fan service and anime tropes. A lot of people to me seem to misinterpreted the series as a "dating simulator" when really only three, maybe four games include an Avatar that can marry other characters. Games like TMS # FE and some of the character designs in Heroes help to muddy the waters of the series' identity for neophytes. Fire Emblem at its core is a War Epic which focuses on the twin themes of fellowship and tragedy forged in the crucible of war. The series shows how the conditions of battle can not only create powerful relationships between soldiers but also how it can just as easily rip them apart via death. There was also a stronger sense of grey morality with more interesting villains that the 3DS games lacked, especially Awakening and Fates. 3 Houses has done an admiral job getting the series back on track, however I've been more reluctant to play it then any other game in the series. Having spent the last two years and some change reading both classic literature and fantasy fiction, I feel as if I have inadvertently desensitised myself to this series. While 3 Houses looks to be an excellent game, it still has the same anime tropes that turned me off from this genre to begin with. I'd rather spend my free time reading the works of Clark Aston Smith, Glen Cook, Lord Dunsany, and Thomas Ligotti among many others because their works seem to contain a special ineffable quality which I find lacking in the FE series and many JRPGs in general. There is a kind of sophistication in these author's works that seems to elevate them to being what I would consider art that I no longer find in the FE series. Maybe it's just that as I get older I want the entertainment I consume to be more then just cliché tropes and cute anime girls. Maybe I'm just being unfair to FE and anime in general by comparing it to the works of some of the greatest fantasists who ever lived. Either way I still want to take a genuine crack at 3H and see if it can deliver some of that old Fire Emblem magic. 

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