Religious representation in Fire Emblem

[AnonymousSpeed]

I kinda like FE6 in that regard, personally. It's not really a developed part of most FE settings- Tellius has religion kind of, but it feels a lot more flat than in Binding Blade. The deities are more important to the plot, but I don't know, something about it feels a lot more...flat? Flavorless? Maybe it's because Ashera and Yune are so involved in the story, but I can't help but feel like the religious landscape of FE6 is more developed than the one in Tellius.

Naturally, FE7 doesn't talk about this sort of thing at all, neither does FE8 or Fates or, like...most of the games.

Which makes Binding Blade numba one babeeeeee

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 minute ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Naturally, FE7 doesn't talk about this sort of thing at all, neither does FE8 or Fates or, like...most of the games.

Actually, Lyn's Tale touches on the religious customs of Sacae. They practice a kind of animism, where places and things (i.e. the Mani Katti) have their own spirits. Kent refers to these as "the old customs", suggesting that the Church of St. Elimine rejects such views.

Also, there are probably plenty of religion references in the supports, but I'm too lazy to spam "End Turn" wantonly.

5 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The deities are more important to the plot, but I don't know, something about it feels a lot more...flat? Flavorless? Maybe it's because Ashera and Yune are so involved in the story, but I can't help but feel like the religious landscape of FE6 is more developed than the one in Tellius.

There's surprisingly little talk of actual religious customs in Tellius. We know there are Priests and churches/monasteries, but there's very little description of "how" the Goddess is worshipped. People pray and congregate, I guess. Making the Goddess Icon into an "Ahera Icon" was a nice touch, admittedly. Yet having Ashera and Yune actually show up may be seen as "lowering" or "demythologizing" them, relative to the more abstract "Goddess" worshipped in Elibe.

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Actually, Lyn's Tale touches on the religious customs of Sacae. They practice a kind of animism, where places and things (i.e. the Mani Katti) have their own spirits. Kent refers to these as "the old customs", suggesting that the Church of St. Elimine rejects such views.

Also, there are probably plenty of religion references in the supports, but I'm too lazy to spam "End Turn" wantonly.

There's surprisingly little talk of actual religious customs in Tellius. We know there are Priests and churches/monasteries, but there's very little description of "how" the Goddess is worshipped. People pray and congregate, I guess. Making the Goddess Icon into an "Ahera Icon" was a nice touch, admittedly. Yet having Ashera and Yune actually show up may be seen as "lowering" or "demythologizing" them, relative to the more abstract "Goddess" worshipped in Elibe.

Yeah, this is kind of a blemish on Tellius's otherwise excellent world building. Which is surprising given how important it ultimately ends up becoming. I think this is where full supports in Radiant Dawn could have been useful as we have Laura as an example of a seemingly devout playable character that has like, two lines in the game. A part 4 base conversation with her at the very least could have been nice. How does she feel about rebelling against the god she's been worshipping all her life? *shrug* Game doesn't seem to care, she even still talks about Ashera's will in her death quote in part 4  >.> Well she's not wrong that it's the will of the goddess for her to die when said goddess is the one actively murdering her,  but it sounds a tad hypocritical.

By far the game where religion is least developed is Archanea though. Again we know there's something there given Lena works at a monastery, but that's like literally it. They don't even seem to be worshipping Naga as that's treated like something in the past. Even Awakening gives us some insight to a religious structure by calling Ylisse a Haildom, not that Chrom comes across as all that religiously inclined a pope.

Ultimately religions in Fire Emblem tend to go the corrupt church or cult route. And there's a pretty obvious reason for this. Fire Emblem's stories, by their nature as a video game, require factions to fight against. So if you're going to world build a religion then you're also going to include them as someone for the player to fight against. This even happens in Elibe several times despite it having the most positive (that is to say, benign) depiction of religion. And beyond those few corrupt members, the very function of the church in the story is as a pretty obvious ploy to make Roy seem smart and capable by winning them to his side (this is not a bad thing, I'm just saying it's a thing and partly explains why religion is what it is in Fire Emblem). Three Houses is the only game in the series that really has much motivation to really depict religion as something fron and centre and important in the characters lives, but even that it kind of just doesn't do as it requires pretty much the entire cast as possible rebels against the church rushing headlong into the whole Laura thing again, only this game as supports and their approach is to just kind of ignore any crisis of faith, even with pretty explicitly devout characters.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Jotari

[Eltosian Kadath]

12 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I kinda like FE6 in that regard, personally.

I agree, but that information is difficult to find, as its only really touched upon in the supports of Saul, Yoder, and Ellen.

 

15 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

 

Naturally, FE7 doesn't talk about this sort of thing at all, neither does FE8 or Fates or, like...most of the games.

Oddly enough Fates does talk about religion a little, in that the people worship the First Dragons. There are prophets who hear the gods like Izana, places that are seen as blessed by certain gods (like the frozen lake of the Ice tribe), we even have Garon praying to the great Anankos. People tend not to notice because Fates's writing is rather dumb in general, and does a mindbogglingly bad job at explaining anything about its world.

 

[AnonymousSpeed]

20 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

They practice a kind of animism, where places and things (i.e. the Mani Katti) have their own spirits. Kent refers to these as "the old customs", suggesting that the Church of St. Elimine rejects such views.

How typically stereotypical and nobly savage, par for the course when it comes to FE7 Sacae.

If you're gonna do animism, at least do it right. "Yeah, demons inhabit this drug, and if you trip off of it they'll tell you the future".

20 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Making the Goddess Icon into an "Ahera Icon" was a nice touch, admittedly.

I'll agree to that. My Ruined World setting (RIP) was slated to have Nortia Icons.

20 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Yet having Ashera and Yune actually show up may be seen as "lowering" or "demythologizing" them, relative to the more abstract "Goddess" worshipped in Elibe.

Perhaps. It's like I said in the opening post, about how having them show up in the plot might weaken the setting's religious worldbuilding. There's also the fact that you don't get Saul or Yoder supports, but I recently read how Tolkien deliberately left religion out of Middle Earth, and I'm wondering if this is evidence in favor of his position.

5 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

People tend not to notice because Fates's writing is rather dumb in general, and does a mindbogglingly bad job at explaining anything about its world.

Yeah, and it's also kinda superficial. Sort of like the Fire and Ice Tribes.

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

Ultimately religions in Fire Emblem tend to go the corrupt church or cult route. And there's a pretty obvious reason for this. Fire Emblem's stories, by their nature as a video game, require factions to fight against.

Dude.

Protestant Reformation Emblem.

Who wants to side with Zwingli?

[Acacia Sgt]

I'm now reminded of the Yodel-Dayan supports, that are basically "We both acknowledge the affinity icons are a thing".

1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'll agree to that. My Ruined World setting (RIP) was slated to have Nortia Icons.

And I was so looking forward to make my character a devout Philotean, smh. lol

---

I find it a shame SoV was a bit skewed on the Mila side of things. Even Tatiana looked more like a Mila Faithful instead of the Duma Faithful she is meant to be... the original one, of course, not the direction Jedah took it.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Acacia Sgt

[AnonymousSpeed]

Just now, Acacia Sgt said:

And I was so looking forward to make my character a devout Philotean, smh. lol

Forbidden Lands homebrew. I'm working on it. Any suggestions for religion bonuses are appreciated.

[Jotari]

43 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I'm now reminded of the Yodel-Dayan supports, that are basically "We both acknowledge the affinity icons are a thing".

And I was so looking forward to make my character a devout Philotean, smh. lol

---

I find it a shame SoV was a bit skewed on the Mila side of things. Even Tatiana looked more like a Mila Faithful instead of the Duma Faithful she is meant to be... the original one, of course, not the direction Jedah took it.

I have actually scoured the text looking for any trace of evidence that Tatiana's Cleric status is actually of the Duma Faithful and found nothing. I've come to the conclusion that she is a terrible Cleric who only became one for the life style because she admired the nuns who raised her. In fact, she's so bad a cleric, that she doesn't even know which god she's meant to be worshipping, as her singular reference to religion is gods plural. She gets confused about the whole scenario because she knows Mila exists and assumes that puts her in the service of both gods. This is entirely in line with her personality whish she selfdescribes as scatterbrained.

[SnowFire]

On 7/7/2022 at 8:18 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

How typically stereotypical and nobly savage, par for the course when it comes to FE7 Sacae.

If you're gonna do animism, at least do it right. "Yeah, demons inhabit this drug, and if you trip off of it they'll tell you the future".

I doubt the Japanese consider themselves "noble savages", and Shintoism has some very similar animist beliefs about spirits residing in things / nature / etc. (maybe most famously seen in your average Miyazaki film).  Yeah, modern Japan is not very devout, but plenty are still nationalistic, and secular Japanese don't consider this bit of past religious history "embarrassing" in the way that, say, the Taliban think of Afghanistan's non-Muslim history.  So giving Lyn that kind of belief in a medieval setting gives her a pseudo-medieval-Japan aspect and thus more relatable, if anything.

--

Anyway, the big thing about fantasy settings is that magic actually works, and sometimes gods & demigods even hang out on Earth.  That's interesting, but it should result in fairly different dynamics than what we see in "real life" religions.  FE2 / Echoes gets the closest to exploring this, with how Witches are all directly tied to being mostly mindless husks solely channeling Duma's power, and this fate largely overriding whatever your original skill was.  That makes sense (it's Duma's power, not yours, after all, why can't any random 16-year old be a conduit for it?)  That's the exception, not the rule though: most FE settings, even ones with Dark magic or Divine magic, treat magic more like a skill that is dependent on the person, not any external force.  It doesn't matter that Riev is excommunicated, his Light magic still works fine (Nor Salem & Loptous dark magic?!  idk, I didn't play FE5), and different priests have markedly different skill with it.  You can kinda muddle through by saying it's a magic type deeply associated with the church and they maintain some sort of monopoly on only teaching it to would-be priests, and they keep incidents where a priest goes rogue after learning the magic hush-hush to keep the mystique it's associated with them...  but yeah, you'd think it'd have implications.  Either in-setting, everyone knows that Divine/Dark magic isn't really Divine/Dark but just a skill, or else your Riev / Salem traitor type characters could use the incorrect beliefs of the common people to "prove" that they're right.

Three Houses is mostly interesting, but it has some "have its cake and eat it too" moments due to not really wanting to flesh out the deep history too firmly.  It picks the Nietzschean compromise where God is real but also dead (Nietzsche didn't mean it this way, yes, I know) to explain some nonsense.  We learn precisely squat about the ABSOLUTE earliest era of the Nabateans and the Agarthans though aside from being a vague Great Flood analogy, and apparently Sothis didn't bother to give any ethical teaching to the humans afterward herself?  Or if she did it was entirely lost?  Same with any interest outside Fodlan?  But yeah, 3H is basically a setting where the religion that does exist is closer to the situation in real-life due to Sothis's seemingy non-intervention, and religions stand or fall on charisma, armies, governments, all the useful stuff.

Radiant Dawn is..  close..  to being very interesting sometimes, although doesn't quite pull it off.  It does have one of the best scenes though for sheer wish-fulfillment: the base dialogue between Stefan and Yune, where Stefan realizes that the goddesses screwed up, and neither one had specifically cursed the Branded, but it was just a standard prejudice (rather than a divinely-sanctioned one).  Now that's the kind of thing that would actually make sense (if the Tellius of Chapter 4 wasn't so screwed up anyway): the gods sternly laying down the law and clearing up any issues of doctrine.  Can you imagine how amazing-to-terrible that would be?  The god of a religion coming down to either confirm they screwed up, or you're horrible, or they're horrible, or all of the above.

[AnonymousSpeed]

20 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

So giving Lyn that kind of belief in a medieval setting gives her a pseudo-medieval-Japan aspect and thus more relatable, if anything.

I was under the impression Sacae was more Mongol-Turkic than anything else.

23 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

Anyway, the big thing about fantasy settings is that magic actually works

Miracles are, to be almost offensively broad, magic that actually works.

24 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

The god of a religion coming down to either confirm they screwed up, or you're horrible, or they're horrible, or all of the above

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarnation_(Christianity)

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, SnowFire said:

 

Radiant Dawn is..  close..  to being very interesting sometimes, although doesn't quite pull it off.  It does have one of the best scenes though for sheer wish-fulfillment: the base dialogue between Stefan and Yune, where Stefan realizes that the goddesses screwed up, and neither one had specifically cursed the Branded, but it was just a standard prejudice (rather than a divinely-sanctioned one).  Now that's the kind of thing that would actually make sense (if the Tellius of Chapter 4 wasn't so screwed up anyway): the gods sternly laying down the law and clearing up any issues of doctrine.  Can you imagine how amazing-to-terrible that would be?  The god of a religion coming down to either confirm they screwed up, or you're horrible, or they're horrible, or all of the above.

I agree it is a great idea, but for Radiant Dawn specifically if raises so many questions that the game has no interest in answering. Namely what is the brand and how does it manifest? Why is Ashunera unfamiliar with them, are we seriously expected to believe no human and Laguz got it on in the millenea before Lehran developed his human fetish? Why does the brand skip generations? And, probably most baffling, why does the Laguz parent lose their ability to transform? Fanexplantions about genetics and stds and stuff can come up with some kind of explanations to these questions, but they're clearly not something the game had considered at all. While divine punishment wasn't a great theory,  or would players really expect it to be the true explanation, it did nearly categorize the whole thing as "this is just the way it works and people blame gods", but by raking that away the game suddenly unintentionally starts asking why, yet doesn't actually know.

Does also make for a nest moment when Yune reveals it to Ashera to demonstrate their own limited knowledge as Gods (though did Ashera never wonder why Lehran couldn't transform? I guess it's not something that would necessarily come up in conversation. Oh great, now I'm wondering what the two of then actually talked about in the weeks to months it took the heroes to arrive).

[AnonymousSpeed]

13 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Why is Ashunera unfamiliar with them, are we seriously expected to believe no human and Laguz got it on in the millenea before Lehran developed his human fetish?

Well, there was no internet at the time.

14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Fanexplantions about genetics and stds

In the state of California, one does not have to inform a laguz partner that they are a beorc before engaging in copulative acts.

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Oh great, now I'm wondering what the two of then actually talked about in the weeks to months it took the heroes to arrive

"So Ashera. If you had a tiny Ashnard, would you torture it?"

[SnowFire]

26 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I was under the impression Sacae was more Mongol-Turkic than anything else.

 

Sacae is definitely Central Asian.  But the animist side of Sacae, specifically, is not necessarily meant as an other-izing "noble savage" note. 

28 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarnation_(Christianity)

I'm familiar with Christianity, yes.  Not the same idea I was talking about - a story that was drawing from Christian origins would still be different from what I described of that Yune-Stefan scene.

To go into it a bit more deeply...  which might be too long for a short off-the-cuff comment, but oh well...  during (human) Jesus's travels, it is pretty clear that Jesus was NOT constantly announcing he was actually God to everyone in the vicinity, if he even thought that.  Rather, he was going around as some sort of great teacher, arguing about the correct interpretation of Jewish law, and (allegedly) doing miracles - in an era where doing miracles wasn't that weird and could just mean being favored by God, not necessarily being God directly.  (Plenty of the Jewish prophets are said to do miracles too, as are holy people in other religious traditions of the era.)  This is maybe most obvious from the Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel.  Mark certainly thinks Jesus was the messiah and the "son of God", but Jesus also intentionally keeps this on the down low in Mark ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Secret ).  In other words, the fictional equivalent of living around a Jesus-figure is different.  It's more like a mysterious prophet with strange new teachings and mystical powers, some Level 20 Sage.  If it turns out they really are a god, that's a plot twist for later.  A character meeting this person could well think they're a fraud, or just wrong.  (Plenty of evil fictional examples here....  Zio from Phantasy Star IV for one?)

The closer example from Christianity is alleged appearances of Jesus after his death but before the Ascension (which is not the "incarnation").  At that point, the jig was up.  And indeed,  there is a whole genre of documents from the 2nd & 3rd century of the resurrected Jesus having a dialogue with the disciples and issuing "new" teachings that didn't come up during his life that happen to confirm that Your Favorite Early Christian sect / branch was exactly right about everything, and the others are heretics!  ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epistle_of_the_Apostles for one, various Gnostic works for others.)  They're largely "apocrypha" that aren't in the New Testament, nobody defends their authenticity, but I see the appeal: it's a chance for God to come down and clear up all those thorny problems of doctrine everyone disagreed on and tell you you're right and them that they're wrong.  You might still think a god is evil or not worth following, but there's no question that they're god and telling you the truth behind the big event.  Put things another way, right now Christianity in the United States is torn between two very different visions. It would be the absolute sweetest thing for adherents of one side for God to come back and say "yeah, you got it right" and tell the other side "you misinterpreted everything and got it wrong", and on the reverse side being declaimed, you'd get to either experience deep shame if you took it on the chin, or else decide that God is evil and it's time to become a JRPG protagonist and fight God.  (We sadly don't get to see much of Yune & Ashera, pro-Branded civil rights goddesses, talking to people who hate the Branded, because everyone is freaking turned to stone.)  It's a very dramatic moment that sadly reality hasn't seem to have handed out much - every time God shows themselves these days for direct doctrinal updates, it's subtly, like to the 15 chief apostles of the Mormon Church (according to them).  Fiction can fix this lack.

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I agree it is a great idea, but for Radiant Dawn specifically if raises so many questions that the game has no interest in answering. Namely what is the brand and how does it manifest? Why is Ashunera unfamiliar with them, are we seriously expected to believe no human and Laguz got it on in the millenea before Lehran developed his human fetish? Why does the brand skip generations? And, probably most baffling, why does the Laguz parent lose their ability to transform? Fanexplantions about genetics and stds and stuff can come up with some kind of explanations to these questions, but they're clearly not something the game had considered at all. While divine punishment wasn't a great theory,  or would players really expect it to be the true explanation, it did nearly categorize the whole thing as "this is just the way it works and people blame gods", but by raking that away the game suddenly unintentionally starts asking why, yet doesn't actually know.

Does also make for a nest moment when Yune reveals it to Ashera to demonstrate their own limited knowledge as Gods (though did Ashera never wonder why Lehran couldn't transform? I guess it's not something that would necessarily come up in conversation. Oh great, now I'm wondering what the two of then actually talked about in the weeks to months it took the heroes to arrive).

Yeah, the actual mechanics of how Branded work don't make a ton of sense (ESPECIALLY the Laguz parent losing their transformation thing), but I think their heart was in the right place on this one.  They wanted a story where a religion got off-track and needed a villain, which is a very real-to-life plot point to include, and got to also include the goddess saying it's messed up and we just didn't think about this scenario hundreds of years ago, which is also a very real-to-life plot point of people trying to make sense of 1000 year old religious documents from a different era.

This isn't even the worst "wait a second, that doesn't really work" in RD's story, sadly.  The one I always complain about that I am more of a nitpicker on is Micaiah's true heritage.  That's something that clearly was taking from real life as well - the classic tale of the king's hidden / bastard son that's a secret prince out there that people have written stories about for centuries - but it clashes horribly with the in-game setting in a way that's "cheating" and is not easily hand-waved as "it's magic / a curse".  The problem is that the Apostles are always women, and are the combination of Emperor and Pope.  They are a very, very big deal in other words - even common people can tell you who the king and the Pope are in some Renaissance-y setting, and anyone halfway educated can tell you about the extended royal family.  Now, males can go ahead and have bastard kids on the sly, but women can't without major shenanigans.  It's crazy for Micaiah's existence to be a secret when the Benignon equivalent of People magazine should have been blaring with news about William & Catherine's latest baby.  We're even directly told how greatly loved Sanaki's grandmother was.  Unless Micaiah's mother did the equivalent of sneaking off to Hatari after realizing what was up for an extended health vacation, this just isn't something you can credibly have be a secret in the backstory (and even then, find some excuse to mention the long suspicious two years spent abroad at a special boarding school in Crimea or whatever).  Oh well.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Sacae is definitely Central Asian.  But the animist side of Sacae, specifically, is not necessarily meant as an other-izing "noble savage" note. 

I'm familiar with Christianity, yes.  Not the same idea I was talking about - a story that was drawing from Christian origins would still be different from what I described of that Yune-Stefan scene.

To go into it a bit more deeply...  which might be too long for a short off-the-cuff comment, but oh well...  during (human) Jesus's travels, it is pretty clear that Jesus was NOT constantly announcing he was actually God to everyone in the vicinity, if he even thought that.  Rather, he was going around as some sort of great teacher, arguing about the correct interpretation of Jewish law, and (allegedly) doing miracles - in an era where doing miracles wasn't that weird and could just mean being favored by God, not necessarily being God directly.  (Plenty of the Jewish prophets are said to do miracles too, as are holy people in other religious traditions of the era.)  This is maybe most obvious from the Gospel of Mark, the oldest gospel.  Mark certainly thinks Jesus was the messiah and the "son of God", but Jesus also intentionally keeps this on the down low in Mark ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messianic_Secret ).  In other words, the fictional equivalent of living around a Jesus-figure is different.  It's more like a mysterious prophet with strange new teachings and mystical powers, some Level 20 Sage.  If it turns out they really are a god, that's a plot twist for later.  A character meeting this person could well think they're a fraud, or just wrong.  (Plenty of evil fictional examples here....  Zio from Phantasy Star IV for one?)

The closer example from Christianity is alleged appearances of Jesus after his death but before the Ascension (which is not the "incarnation").  At that point, the jig was up.  And indeed,  there is a whole genre of documents from the 2nd & 3rd century of the resurrected Jesus having a dialogue with the disciples and issuing "new" teachings that didn't come up during his life that happen to confirm that Your Favorite Early Christian sect / branch was exactly right about everything, and the others are heretics!  ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Epistle_of_the_Apostles for one, various Gnostic works for others.)  They're largely "apocrypha" that aren't in the New Testament, nobody defends their authenticity, but I see the appeal: it's a chance for God to come down and clear up all those thorny problems of doctrine everyone disagreed on and tell you you're right and them that they're wrong.  You might still think a god is evil or not worth following, but there's no question that they're god and telling you the truth behind the big event.  Put things another way, right now Christianity in the United States is torn between two very different visions. It would be the absolute sweetest thing for adherents of one side for God to come back and say "yeah, you got it right" and tell the other side "you misinterpreted everything and got it wrong", and on the reverse side being declaimed, you'd get to either experience deep shame if you took it on the chin, or else decide that God is evil and it's time to become a JRPG protagonist and fight God.  (We sadly don't get to see much of Yune & Ashera, pro-Branded civil rights goddesses, talking to people who hate the Branded, because everyone is freaking turned to stone.)  It's a very dramatic moment that sadly reality hasn't seem to have handed out much - every time God shows themselves these days for direct doctrinal updates, it's subtly, like to the 15 chief apostles of the Mormon Church (according to them).  Fiction can fix this lack.

Yeah, the actual mechanics of how Branded work don't make a ton of sense (ESPECIALLY the Laguz parent losing their transformation thing), but I think their heart was in the right place on this one.  They wanted a story where a religion got off-track and needed a villain, which is a very real-to-life plot point to include, and got to also include the goddess saying it's messed up and we just didn't think about this scenario hundreds of years ago, which is also a very real-to-life plot point of people trying to make sense of 1000 year old religious documents from a different era.

Oh yeah, I don't fault it too much because it comes with interesting developments. But I think they could have thought about the mechanics a bit more to reinforce some logic. The brand appearing only later in life is kind of random as is it appearing randomly throughout generation s of beorc families. Those details just don't really add anything and only serve to co fuse things further. The most difficult one to write around is also the most confusing, that being the Laguz parents. Ameldha needs to lose her powers to not be a game changer in the battles as even as a non combatant she would be powerful enough to influence things, just like kurthnaga. More importantly however is Lehran not being able to since the galdr, requiring the whole complex conspiracy that the story is.  You could come up with separate explanations for these two (women losing their power to explain as a result of pregnancy at least makes some amount of fridge logic), but it is convenient to pin them down to the same excuse even if said excuse is imperfect.

Quote

This isn't even the worst "wait a second, that doesn't really work" in RD's story, sadly.  The one I always complain about that I am more of a nitpicker on is Micaiah's true heritage.  That's something that clearly was taking from real life as well - the classic tale of the king's hidden / bastard son that's a secret prince out there that people have written stories about for centuries - but it clashes horribly with the in-game setting in a way that's "cheating" and is not easily hand-waved as "it's magic / a curse".  The problem is that the Apostles are always women, and are the combination of Emperor and Pope.  They are a very, very big deal in other words - even common people can tell you who the king and the Pope are in some Renaissance-y setting, and anyone halfway educated can tell you about the extended royal family.  Now, males can go ahead and have bastard kids on the sly, but women can't without major shenanigans.  It's crazy for Micaiah's existence to be a secret when the Benignon equivalent of People magazine should have been blaring with news about William & Catherine's latest baby.  We're even directly told how greatly loved Sanaki's grandmother was.  Unless Micaiah's mother did the equivalent of sneaking off to Hatari after realizing what was up for an extended health vacation, this just isn't something you can credibly have be a secret in the backstory (and even then, find some excuse to mention the long suspicious two years spent abroad at a special boarding school in Crimea or whatever).  Oh well.

If it helps, Micaiah is almost certainly the child if the apostles son, is Misaha had had a daughter then she would have been the apostle. So the whole bastards thing is a possibility.  In addition,  it seems like it's kind of the social norm in Tellius for royal families to have an oddly high amount of privacy as no one knew about Elincia or Pelleas existence either (yes I k ow Pelleas isn't Ashnard's son, but presumably Ashnard's son actually was called Pelleas and that it was Soren's original name with our Pelleas either having the same name because Izuka specifically found a blue haired boy with that name or he convinced Pelleas to abandon whatever name he might have had before).

Still it's a bit of an asspull to just say Micaiah "somehow" wound up in Daein without any of the people who brought her there as tangible presences in her life to inform her of her identity. Ditto for Soren. 

Edited July 10, 2022 by Jotari

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 7/9/2022 at 9:30 PM, SnowFire said:

Jesus's travels, it is pretty clear that Jesus was NOT constantly announcing he was actually God to everyone in the vicinity, if he even thought that. 

I don't know, man. Looking at John 8:58-59 as one example, Jesus pretty clearly claims to be God via direct reference to Exodus, and the Jewish leaders seemed to understand that pretty clearly, hence the taking up of stones.

On 7/10/2022 at 1:39 AM, Jotari said:

but there's no question that they're god and telling you the truth behind the big event.

To be honest, I think people would do a fantastic job of questioning that. There'd be a lot on the line, after all.

It doesn't take much thought to say "actually, that guy is a fake, possibly even the Antichrist".

On 7/10/2022 at 1:39 AM, Jotari said:

or else decide that God is evil and it's time to become a JRPG protagonist and fight God.

On 7/9/2022 at 9:30 PM, SnowFire said:

every time God shows themselves these days for direct doctrinal updates, it's subtly, like to the 15 chief apostles of the Mormon Church (according to them).  Fiction can fix this lack.

I'm not sure what the basis for either claim here is, to be honest. Is it that Mormons received their revelations through visions or personal visitations? I don't know the Joseph Smith lore that thoroughly. Furthermore, I think "fix" implies there's a problem where there really isn't.

I like to point at Luke 16:31 whenever this sort of thing comes up. I think it's pretty relevant.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 7/9/2022 at 5:36 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

Miracles are, to be almost offensively broad, magic that actually works.

Ah, but miracles are miracles because they break the established rules of the world in which they occur. Transmuting water into wine? Making a seafloor traversible? Splitting the moon in half? This stuff isn't supposed to happen!

Magic, in FE, is comparatively pedestrian. Being able to summon fireballs, or heal wounds, isn't a universal power, sure. But it's one that exists within the established rules of the world. Ergo, no more miraculous than owning a lighter or having a nursing degree. Micaiah's Sacrifice could be considered a sort of "miracle", given its exclusivity, even if it's far less useful than just "being able to use staves".

On 7/9/2022 at 9:30 PM, SnowFire said:

Yeah, the actual mechanics of how Branded work don't make a ton of sense (ESPECIALLY the Laguz parent losing their transformation thing), but I think their heart was in the right place on this one.

I could kinda-sorta imagine "a laguz mother who gets pregnant with a branded child loses her powers" working narratively. The pregnancy could take a serious toll that degrades her ability to transform. But the father suffering such a fate is just ???. Like, is it actually the act of sex that causes this loss? Because I don't see how the father's body could "know" that any prior act of sex caused a pregnancy (much less, one that leads to the birth of a Branded child). And I don't think it's ever specified whether this loss depends on the child being born, or could be similarly triggered by a pregnancy that ends in miscarriage or abortion. I... don't know which scenario would be less weird.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I don't know, man. Looking at John 8:58-59 as one example, Jesus pretty clearly claims to be God via direct reference to Exodus, and the Jewish leaders seemed to understand that pretty clearly, hence the taking up of stones.

To be honest, I think people would do a fantastic job of questioning that. There'd be a lot on the line, after all.

It doesn't take much thought to say "actually, that guy is a fake, possibly even the Antichrist".

I'm not sure what the basis for either claim here is, to be honest. Is it that Mormons received their revelations through visions or personal visitations? I don't know the Joseph Smith lore that thoroughly. Furthermore, I think "fix" implies there's a problem where there really isn't.

I like to point at Luke 16:31 whenever this sort of thing comes up. I think it's pretty relevant.

Yo, why am I being quoted there. I didn't say those things!

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Ah, but miracles are miracles because they break the established rules of the world in which they occur. Transmuting water into wine? Making a seafloor traversible? Splitting the moon in half? This stuff isn't supposed to happen!

Magic, in FE, is comparatively pedestrian. Being able to summon fireballs, or heal wounds, isn't a universal power, sure. But it's one that exists within the established rules of the world. Ergo, no more miraculous than owning a lighter or having a nursing degree. Micaiah's Sacrifice could be considered a sort of "miracle", given its exclusivity, even if it's far less useful than just "being able to use staves".

I could kinda-sorta imagine "a laguz mother who gets pregnant with a branded child loses her powers" working narratively. The pregnancy could take a serious toll that degrades her ability to transform. But the father suffering such a fate is just ???. Like, is it actually the act of sex that causes this loss? Because I don't see how the father's body could "know" that any prior act of sex caused a pregnancy (much less, one that leads to the birth of a Branded child). And I don't think it's ever specified whether this loss depends on the child being born, or could be similarly triggered by a pregnancy that ends in miscarriage or abortion. I... don't know which scenario would be less weird.

And now I'm imagining Beorc using rape as a psychological warefare tactic against Laguz to remove their power to transform...which is like super fucked up on multiple levels but is absolutely what would happen if such mechanics worked in real life. Goddamn humanity.

[Shoblongoo]

 

[Contemporary Shitlords]: "Games were better when they weren't so political."

 

[Tellius Saga]:

[SnowFire]

18 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I don't know, man. Looking at John 8:58-59 as one example, Jesus pretty clearly claims to be God via direct reference to Exodus, and the Jewish leaders seemed to understand that pretty clearly, hence the taking up of stones.

Yes, which is why I explicitly picked the Gospel of Mark.  You're correct that in John, Jesus *does* run around making it fairly obvious he's God, but there's reason to take this with suspicion.  One issue that's nice & simple to present: what the heck was Judas even reporting on?  In the synoptic three gospels, Judas's betrayal "makes sense" - he's telling the authorities that there's this guy out there claiming to be the King of the Jews = a rebel against the Roman-aligned Tetrarchy.  In John, if everyone already knew Jesus was claiming to be an even more exalted position - then what is there really to say that could possibly get Jesus in more trouble?  Anyway, the "traditional" Christian dating / story says that a very elderly Apostle John wrote it in 90 AD or so, possibly as a "corrective" to the too-human other versions as an excuse to get out his theological thoughts.  Even if we take this version to be true, this is somebody who became convinced of divinity afterward, and starts cranking up the volume really loud on stories from many decades ago to drive that point in, that this guy was really God.  Doesn't mean that it's all false, but it does suggest John's "slant" is to make the theological point of Jesus=God a lot blunter than it was in reality or in the synoptic gospels.  (In the secular, scholarly version, the gospel of John was possibly written even later in ~100-110 AD, and by some unknown community, so it's even less reliable a guide to the actual Jesus.)

18 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

To be honest, I think people would do a fantastic job of questioning that. There'd be a lot on the line, after all.

It doesn't take much thought to say "actually, that guy is a fake, possibly even the Antichrist".

This is exactly the difference I'm talking about, yep.  Claiming Yune is a fake in RD Chapter 4 would require being brain-damaged, but claiming mysterious powerful people who may or may not be avatars of gods are fakes is reasonable.

18 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I'm not sure what the basis for either claim here is, to be honest. Is it that Mormons received their revelations through visions or personal visitations? I don't know the Joseph Smith lore that thoroughly. Furthermore, I think "fix" implies there's a problem where there really isn't.

I wasn't actually ragging on the Mormons too heavily here.  Basically, there's an idea within much of Christianity that all there is to say was already revealed by the time of Jesus & the early apostles.  Which is not to say that doctrinal disputes don't happen, but they just like to say it all dates back to Proper Interpretation of 1900-2600 year old documents.  Mormonism explicitly says that God is still giving new revelations (makes sense, since their church dates back to the 1800s...), which generally takes the form of the Quorom of the Twelve Apostles praying and then saying hey, here's the new doctrine, God said it was okay.  Most notably, this is how the Mormon Church allowed non-whites into the Church - they prayed a lot in 1978 (!!!!) and God removed the curse that was on black people or something.  I'm not making this up ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormonism#End_of_the_temple_and_priesthood_bans ).  But hey, better late than never!  It allowed them to reframe this from "the Church made a big mistake" to "God revealed something new so get in line."  I actually kind of admire this, because it's an easier way to update Church doctrine for modern society since it doesn't involve having to admit an error.

Anyway, in SnowFire's fantasy scenario, rather than having the church leadership pray a lot then come up with the new doctrine, I'm thinking something more blatant, like God comes to the UN building and gives a big speech.

18 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I like to point at Luke 16:31 whenever this sort of thing comes up. I think it's pretty relevant.

Yeah, it's generally agreed that the gospel writer probably "improved" Jesus's parable of the rich man & Lazarus to stick in a cutting remark about difficulties early Christians had in recruitment.  Gotta say, though, I can't agree with the gospel writer here.  I would venture to guess that if dead people routinely returned from the afterlife to tell / warn their relatives about what it's like, this would indeed cause some pretty major changes in behavior, and cause some major updates to all world religions to explain what the heck was going on.  It might cause people to think that we're just being messed with by the Devil / Hades / the computer programmer running the simulation / whatever, of course, but there'd definitely be an impact - not just people shrugging.  (Heck, the later *success* of Christianity shows that there *was* a big societal impact in one famous case of a person coming back from the dead.)

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, SnowFire said:

I wasn't actually ragging on the Mormons too heavily here.  Basically, there's an idea within much of Christianity that all there is to say was already revealed by the time of Jesus & the early apostles.  Which is not to say that doctrinal disputes don't happen, but they just like to say it all dates back to Proper Interpretation of 1900-2600 year old documents.  Mormonism explicitly says that God is still giving new revelations (makes sense, since their church dates back to the 1800s...), which generally takes the form of the Quorom of the Twelve Apostles praying and then saying hey, here's the new doctrine, God said it was okay.  Most notably, this is how the Mormon Church allowed non-whites into the Church - they prayed a lot in 1978 (!!!!) and God removed the curse that was on black people or something.  I'm not making this up ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_Mormonism#End_of_the_temple_and_priesthood_bans ).  But hey, better late than never!  It allowed them to reframe this from "the Church made a big mistake" to "God revealed something new so get in line."  I actually kind of admire this, because it's an easier way to update Church doctrine for modern society since it doesn't involve having to admit an error.

"Alright, you can have black people, but in exchange you have to give up tea," - Mormon God...probably.

[whase]

Just here to defend the Laguz - Branded stuff. IIRC, it was said Lehran and Altina were the first Laguz-Beorc couple to conceive a child, not the first to share the bed. This would've been after Ashera went to sleep. Beorc and Laguz are seen as 2 different species, which means they shouldn't be able to conceive a child together.

If you ask me, though I admit this is purely speculation, the ability for a Laguz to transform is one that stems from magic. Perhaps Laguz evolved enough that they became able to, unknowingly, impart part of their magic onto otherwise inconceivable spawn? Doesn't seem too farfetched to me. 

 

I personally like that Fire Emblem doesn't go too far with religion. Being an atheist myself I find religion a bit too "floaty" most of the time. Having it be actual earthly beings that are being worshipped, to me that's the best depiction of religion I can follow. 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, whase said:

Just here to defend the Laguz - Branded stuff. IIRC, it was said Lehran and Altina were the first Laguz-Beorc couple to conceive a child, not the first to share the bed. This would've been after Ashera went to sleep. Beorc and Laguz are seen as 2 different species, which means they shouldn't be able to conceive a child together.

If you ask me, though I admit this is purely speculation, the ability for a Laguz to transform is one that stems from magic. Perhaps Laguz evolved enough that they became able to, unknowingly, impart part of their magic onto otherwise inconceivable spawn? Doesn't seem too farfetched to me. 

 

I personally like that Fire Emblem doesn't go too far with religion. Being an atheist myself I find religion a bit too "floaty" most of the time. Having it be actual earthly beings that are being worshipped, to me that's the best depiction of religion I can follow. 

Maybe the mere existence of Ashunera made conceiving branded some how impossible. Like she was unknowingly emitting some kind of low level energy wave when listening to the prayers of everyone that was inadvertently fatal to a branded fetus. And when she split apart and went to sleep this just stopped happening making branded pregnancies viable...it's an explanation that makes some sense *shrug*. Course the overall original point is that it shouldn't really be down to fans to justify the logic of the world building, even if we can come up with some pretty creative stuff.

[lenticular]

On 7/14/2022 at 11:48 AM, Jotari said:

Course the overall original point is that it shouldn't really be down to fans to justify the logic of the world building, even if we can come up with some pretty creative stuff.

I disagree with that. I think it's a bad idea for a writer to try to justify literally every element of their world. There's always going to be something left over that isn't explained, and if you do try to cover literally everything then you end up with a plodding and pedantic work that reads more like a treatise on the fictional universe's metaphysics than an actual story. (Or like the appendices to Lord of the Rings, which few people actually read.) I mean, I'd love to know how laguz change their weight when they transform and how that doesn't completely break all of physics, but it's not even a little bit necessary for the story. Sometimes you just have to say that it's magic and that's just the way the magic works. You even get things like the taris-like nature of the Tower of Guidance, where we are literally told not to think about it too much.

So long as the world building is internally consistent and so long as it supports the narrative and the characters, then that is typically going to be enough.

(And yes, there are a few authors like JRR Tolkien or Brandon Sanderson who specialise on elaborate and intricately crafted worlds but they are the exception rather than the rule, and what works in a long novel series isn't necessarily going to work in a video game setting.)

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

I disagree with that. I think it's a bad idea for a writer to try to justify literally every element of their world. There's always going to be something left over that isn't explained, and if you do try to cover literally everything then you end up with a plodding and pedantic work that reads more like a treatise on the fictional universe's metaphysics than an actual story. (Or like the appendices to Lord of the Rings, which few people actually read.) I mean, I'd love to know how laguz change their weight when they transform and how that doesn't completely break all of physics, but it's not even a little bit necessary for the story. Sometimes you just have to say that it's magic and that's just the way the magic works. You even get things like the taris-like nature of the Tower of Guidance, where we are literally told not to think about it too much.

So long as the world building is internally consistent and so long as it supports the narrative and the characters, then that is typically going to be enough.

(And yes, there are a few authors like JRR Tolkien or Brandon Sanderson who specialise on elaborate and intricately crafted worlds but they are the exception rather than the rule, and what works in a long novel series isn't necessarily going to work in a video game setting.)

Well like I said there isn't really an issue with any of the Laguz stuff when the story itself just blames it on the gods. The issue comes up when the game abandons that explanation and offers no substitute. It actively asks a question it has no idea what the answer is. Yeah, an author doesn't have to justify everything in their world, but it does kind of need to justify the things it specifically addresses.

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Well like I said there isn't really an issue with any of the Laguz stuff when the story itself just blames it on the gods. The issue comes up when the game abandons that explanation and offers no substitute. It actively asks a question it has no idea what the answer is. Yeah, an author doesn't have to justify everything in their world, but it does kind of need to justify the things it specifically addresses.

But let's say that we were going to include an explanation in the game. We've thought it through, we have a full explanation for what's really going on. It makes sense, it's consistent with everything else in the lore, it's just generally a good explanation. Where do we fit this into the game? Do we have Yune deliver a speech explaining the deep underlying workings of magic in the world? Do we have a base conversation where Soren tells us he's been doing some research and has figured out why laguz parents actually lose their power? I hope not. Either one would be jarring and out of place. But I don't have any better ideas. And ultimately, the fact that it doesn't matter is kind of the point. It was an accident, with no greater meaning behind it.