pandp-author

[pandp-author]

Yes.

And it's not limited to visual novels.

genuine question: is the reason visual novels get such a bad rep just straight up xenophobia and racism because they’re associated with japan, because i can’t imagine why else there’s so much contempt towards a medium that logically should have extremely wide appeal😭😭😭

[pandp-author]

pov: you are a recruited student in FE16, returning to your territory after the war, and encountering the people of your territory

[pandp-author]

“The empire just sent a military force to Brigid to *dissuade* them from fighting against the empire!”

Edelgard writes Petra a letter telling her that if she doesn’t align herself with the empire, then Brigid is the Empire’s enemy. She literally dangles her occupied homeland in front of her and says “hey, if you don’t side with me, some baaaaaaad stuff might happen to your home should we win! Something to think about!” Stop downplaying the empire’s fucked up imperialist shit

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[pandp-author]

Rhea has Duma’s “warlike personality”? Uh… where? Her intentions were always peaceful (misguided or not), and literally the only time she actually takes a firm stance on anyone is when they’re actively trying to harm her, her family, or those under her care. I think some of you will just do literally anything to paint everything she does in a bad light

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[pandp-author]

Figured out another element of Pat’s localization, something else erased.

Remember how Hubert has that ending with Shamir where it’s revealed they’re putting down rebellions in the shadows? I’ve seen people try to justify this by saying they’re people rising up against Edelgard and threatening the peace, but the line was localized. The original line, that ties into the associated supports, is that Hubert puts down anyone who opposes the Empire.

Hubert’s endings are really bad for localizing. His solo reveals that people remember him as black-hearted matching his black clothing, while his ending with Ferdinand doesn’t say they were “fondly remembered.” They were called the Twin Peaks of the Empire and left a lasting legacy for generations to come.

The thing is, when you remember Shamir’s support Hubert will kill people even when ordered by Edelgard not to. If Edelgard says to spare someone, Hubert will not obey. And it kinda reminded me about how the Imperial army under Caspar is “often out of control.” But then I remembered Jeritza’s support where he talks about the Death Knight and how it’s implied in the original text that DK is a split personality and Jertiza has no idea what happens when DK comes out to play.

An out of control army that already kills anyone who does not submit, a mentally ill general who can’t control his bloodlust and a secret police force that won’t listen to orders it disagrees with while doing anything it deems necessary, not a good recipe. Then there’s Edelgard’s refusal to quit, making it clear the only way to stop her is to kill her.

Notice a pattern here? Owing to the Buddhist themes, Edelgard and her forces have all lost their humanity. These characters are unable stop themselves. Edelgard’s death scene, thinking about it, is her realizing this. She knows she needs to be stopped, but is unable to do it herself so she has Byleth do it. She knows she’s beaten, but she won’t allow the fighting to end while she draws breath. Byleth’s path, the one in opposition to the one she walked, has to pass over her grave and with Byleth being the one to kill her, they’ll walk that path together.

Pat threw this all away, trying to make it so the player can save Edelgard from herself and her regime ends up being positive. Forget striving to make the people self-reliant, she makes them independent and free! And all the bad things she does is because she followed TWSITD’s machinations, she was tricked into killing a bunch of good guys but don’t worry she’ll have TWSITD killed after the war and be a good ruler. Plus, her victims had it coming for opposing her.

[pandp-author]

During the battle against Judith-

Karen doesn't want children to be exposed to excessive violence, so lolcalised!Hubert only mentions the BESF "handling" Judith, like maybe beating her up and then putting her in a cardboard box, or sending her to a zumba dancefloor.

Og!Hubert though is much more explicit about the map's objective, Judith has to be killed.

Fun fact, when the map plays, Supreme Leader says she has to be killed but only after killing the back up Judith was expecting (Leonie and Ignatz) while she decides to run away to regroup with Claude, because killing her means the imperial army can stroll around Daphnel.

But, uh, if this was the objective, killing her would have been the top priority since the beginning of the map ? Why only explaining why she has to die when she runs away, and not at the beginning of the battle ?

Granted, since the objective of this map was always about killing the enemy commander, Supreme PR or not, Billy/the player knows the aim of this map was to kill Judith since the first second (which was also explicitely mentionned by og Hubert), even if Supreme Leader only voices said order when Judith tries to run away.

Pat'n'pals must have believed the plan changed mid fight, which is why Hubert doesn't explicitely calls for Judith's death at the beginning of the map, but imo it misses an important part of CF, aka how Supreme Leader leads her army ft Billy, it's not "I didn't intend to kill her but I had to because she started to run away", it's more "I always intended to kill her, but pretend we have to do so now when she tries to run away".

Oh well, this made me realise how fascinating CF is and how, taking this + the Uncle reveal, Hubert trusts Billy more than Supreme Leader does about the true aims and the shady stuff going on.

It's hilarious.

[pandp-author]

Edelgard in both Houses and Hopes unjustly invaded Leicester with the intent to kill and conquer.

In both games she's the cause of this war everyone suffers from and the obstacle to peace.

In Houses Claude knows this fact and rightfully killed Edelgard for the sake of peace and progress.

Hopes Claude ( the so called superior to Houses Claude ) idiotically believes that Edelgard will magically stop her war if Rhea is dead despite the fact she invaded Leicester when they had nothing to do with the central church and said himself that Adrestia uses Leicester until they can remount their conquest against them.

She exposed her lust for conquest the moment she invaded Leicester and exposed the fact that her war against the church is only used as a scapegoat to conquer Leicester and Faerghus.

On top of that he lets his emotions get ahead of logic by choosing to save Edelgard's life over ending her war and removing the threat of Adrestia.

He extends the war and keeps endangering Foslan cause he doesn't want to kill a classmate that wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire.

Hopes turned Claude into Edelgard's lapdog and the only people that are happy about Golden Wildfire are Edelgard fans.

[pandp-author]

"Byleth gets valid praise for their specific skillset"

"Oh they're just pandering"

"Byleth gets threatened by a student or students feel negatively towards them at first"

"They're being mean to me"

I swear projection and lack of paying attention goes a long way for bad takes.

Apparently the individual who grew up with no friends and was seen as less by others due to their behavior is not allowed to get away with having positive things said about them by other characters

[pandp-author]

Linhardt on WC :

Linhardt on Tru Piss

"I need more materials, let's vivisect the Archbishop"

Bro became Myson's unpaid intern, but he totally swears he thought a lot about the ethics of his experiments, Solon BaD bcs he experimented in humans, but it's okay to experiment on pointy ears because they're not humans ?

I fear for tru piss!Indech lol

[pandp-author]

cf Ashe...

is really funny to me.

Recruited or unrequited, he'll tell you how much you suck.

[pandp-author]

“We need more complex female characters!”

Y’ALL COULDN’T EVEN HANDLE RHEA

[pandp-author]

Hmm I hope I get my point across here because I’m having a lot of trouble trying to word it in a way that makes sense. Writing and arguing are my worst enemies. This isn’t a response to anyone’s ask, just my own ramblings because I love Dimitri.

Dimitri talks a lot about the tragedy but it’s less about him wanting to vent about his suffering and more about him being unable to get over the fact that the lives of the people he cared about were unjustly cut short. His desire for revenge is a selfish and self-serving one but he truly believes, in his twisted mental state, that his loved ones will finally be able to rest in peace if he avenges them. 

When it comes to his own suffering (as in, just his own, with nobody else involved), he doesn’t actually say much about it because of his lack of self-worth. We know that Dimitri nearly died from his injuries during Duscur but we only know that from Rodrigue. We learn in Hopes that Rufus was actually quite abusive towards Dimitri — verbal abuse, house arrest, forced isolation, assassination attempts. Again, none of this info comes from Dimitri. We only learn it through Dedue and a nameless NPC. This one is more of a stretch and not canon but we know that Dimitri was imprisoned by Cornelia and what do we know of Cornelia? That she’s cruel and kinda evil. Maybe she did bad things to Dimitri during his imprisonment or maybe she didn’t. We’ll never know because Dimitri never talks about it. Hopes actually has an Easter egg where Cornelia talks about gouging Dimitri’s eye out so maybe that’s the devs’ subtle way of saying that that’s how Dimitri lost his eye. Idk I guess it doesn’t matter in the end because Dimitri himself doesn’t even remember how he lost it. 

Anyway, I’m like super hesitant to post this because I don’t want people to use my ask as an opportunity to dunk on him further, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there. I hope I made some sense 😭

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[pandp-author]

For the longest time I always thought Caspar was out of line for telling Edelgard she was always trying to make everything about herself, given that she was trying to be empathetic to his plight.

But then it hit me: Caspar himself didn't see it as a plight.

As a second son, Caspar doesn't have anything coming his way, but he never appeared bothered by that, nor resentful of his situation. If anything, being as determined as he is, the fact that Caspar has his work cut out for him may actually entice him to work the extra mile.

We as the audience can see that Edelgard may have been trying to be helpful, but Caspar probably didn't appreciate that she assumed how he felt about his own situation. In her attempt to connect, it backfire and it came across as her projecting onto him.

It's probably one of my favorite support moments in general. I wish we had more of this across the board. I think the only similar one is the support between Marianne and Leonie.

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[pandp-author]

I can’t help but feel that changing Dimitri’s line there to say that Edelgard being stubborn and difficult is a facase is tied to another Patism. As I mentioned before, Edelgard’s rundown of herself when learning about the classes and picking which one to teach is quite different in the original text. In English, there’s no line about her being distant and arrogant. She simply presents herself as just a girl who happens to be the next emperor, and then goes on to say that she think’s you’ll get along with her. There is nothing about her and Byleth having similar personalities, you know, where they’re seen as distant and cold but really have a softer side to them both deep down.

In the original text, Edelgard makes it out that you’ll get along with her, but then she’s unmasked as the Flame Emperor who is working with the forces whose machinations you’ve been foiling throughout White Clouds. Edelgard’s death scene is titled “Death of the Flame Emperor,” and her ending title if she wins the war is “Flame Emperor.” She doesn’t get a new title representing her enlightened rule like Dimitri going from the “One-Eyed Demon” or “Tempest King” to “Savior King”, or Claude going from the “Master Tactician/Tabletop Demon” to “King of Unification”. Pat also made it so Byleth’s solo title in Snow went from “Flame That Seeks Their Own Destiny”, indicating that Byleth walks their own path, to “Wandering Flame”, saying that Byleth is lost without Edelgard or any other lord. The devs themselves has confirmed that the worldbuilding was done in support of Silver Snow, meaning that the Edelgard we see in Snow is how she’s meant to be seen.

In Snow, she’s revealed as an antagonistic force in complete contrast to how she described herself at the start of the game, while in Moon Dimitri reveals that she’s been stubborn and difficult to deal with since she was a child. The Japanese script makes it clear that she was trying to sway Byleth into joining her during White Clouds, but at the same time part of the theme of Verdant Wind is that by spending time with people and getting to know them you can clear up misconceptions. Edelgard appears innocent at first glance, but the more the player gets to know her the more they’re meant to see that it’s just a mask and she knows a lot more than she’s letting on. Even her ruder and arrogant lines in White Clouds, regardless of route, are meant to reflect this.

It is not meant to be the facade, it is her true face.

And then Pat tries to erase elements that make her look particularly bad from the script, such as her use of propaganda and pretty much everything regarding Caspar leading the Imperial army after the war, to try to make her victory look like a happy ending. That because of you joining her, she didn’t lose herself to her supposed facade of the Flame Emperor because you supported the girl underneath that. And on top of that, he tried to make Rhea out to be this rage monster and the Church look worse in order to justify Edelgard and make it look like she had a point. He’s championing someone meant to be a brutal dictator who says her own rule at the end of Flower was “hadou,” which Verdant Wind translated as “military rule,” by making them look like just a girl while damning a woman who survived a genocide.

There is something really fucked up about that, to put it lightly.

[pandp-author]

3 main reasons Dimidue is less popular than Dimiclaude.

Main character privileges, Claude is one but Dedue isn't.

2. Dedue is a big buff guy, which isn't as popular of a body type for fanwork. See also Raphael and Balthus. There are some gay men who are really into bears, but gay men are a minority in fandom so you don't see that too often.

3. And the one you see over and over on this blog, people claiming that Dimidue is always a white savior ship and that all their big romantic moments are racist. This spooks some people into not making Dimidue fanwork for fear of being controversial.

Feeding into all this is the Dimitri bashing which insists that he has to be a straight guy, none of his subtext with other men matters, and that Dimitri having a lot of gay ships and even gay fans is somehow a sign of misogyny or lesbophobia. But those things affect all mlm Dimitri ships equally, not just Dimidue.

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[pandp-author]

I have.

Have you ever seen a post that is making so many good and interesting points and then it shits the bed right at the last paragraph?

[pandp-author]

while it’s understandable because they’re the characters the audience knows… i think it’s a shame how much FE16 recruitment fanwork kind of completely ignores how the nobles going against their country would be perceived by the people of their territory. 🤔🤔

like okay so xyz noble is escaping their evil backwards country and awful societal role and responsibilities they never asked for, cool. meanwhile to the people of their territory, it’s that a member of their ruling class who’s literal job is to defend them, decided to either abandon them in a time of war, or actively engage in war against them.