#blooth eisner

[themoomoorn]

Scarlet Blaze Salt Mine Highlights, Part 2 (Because I hit the image limit last time)

It's kind of a sad day when you're transitioning hyperfixations (Chainsaw Man and Tactics Ogre, in this case), because I'm tired of this game and I haven't even begun to cleanse by entire body with Azure Gleam. But I must!

Also I just wanted to finish this slog of a route so badly that I forgot to give away Shez's Merc Whistle. Oops.

Previous post is here.

He isn't wrong. If anything, between this and Egg reassuring Shez that no, betrayal totes wasn't gonna happen, this just reinforces the fact that Egg doesn't respect Claude at all.

Still, big oomph on Claude because his dreams don't even exist/make sense in this game.

Here lies the Tabletop Demon.

Kind of poetic/ironic that he's the only one who can truly die, while poor Dimitri, who gets dragged around like a wet cat in Houses, will always survive in this game. Egg mostly does, if you count her getting subjugated to the director's fantasies lobotomized in Azure Gleam as "surviving."

"Now what that ambition is, I simply do not know, but I will boldly assume it had to do with using bibles as toilet paper."

No Lies Detected(tm)

Sothis attempts to salvage this trainwreck with a quick and miserable death, but by plot dictation, she sadly fails.

Byleth's death here is on par with Dimitri's on Verdant Wind in how unceremonious and cruel it is. Devs, are you sure you're not actually mad at how popular Byleth is? Especially the one with the 200% Bustline Modifier?

We Stan a megalomaniac /s

The Agarthans never got to the Holy Tomb or the Holy Mausoleum in this game, and here we get the idea of the kind of crap Houses!Edelgard condoned.

Really, the one thing Rhea did wrong was not using the Aurora Breath on Edelgard during her coronation.

Like

Even now, Rhea knows Agartha is the true enemy here?????? Like back in Chapter...4?????

But no, per the Edelgard/Balthus Support, Edelgard started the war anyway, she knows that she's benefitting from the same megalomaniacs that have their hands in the Empire's politics, and she had farfetched history spoon-fed to her. She doesn't care. She still wants total power.

Bruh

Monica is talking about killing Thales, btw. Peak wlw representation, everyone /s

Linhardt is abhorrent.

Shez DGAF about anything, least of all on this route. But I suppose it's fine because they're not a weird nepotism teacher, or whatever.

So here's something I've noticed: Scarlet Blaze and Golden Wildfire share several near-identical scenarios (the most obvious being the Chapter where Ordelia needs to be pacified), CGs (the still of Egg and Clyde shaking hands), and even video cutscenes (Rhea transforming into the Immaculate one; only the background is changed). GW!Claude knocks of a number of Edelgard's rhetoric and dialogue ("My hands are covered in blood and will never be clean again, feel bad for me uwu") and now we have a hollow knockoff of something poignant Claude says to Byleth on Verdant Wind.

There's also the general fact that because the Houses version of Claude ultimately became more heroic than intended, and because they had already delayed the game three times, they had Verdant Wind knock off most of Silver Snow...which is the default route for the Black Eagles.

There is a quasi-tumbleweedy-incestual bond between these two characters/routes. They fold into one another like brain proteins tangling on each other. This is not the case for Azure Moon (bar maps being shared, and even then the context differs drastically) and even more so for Azure Gleam.

Point is, I'm a Claude stan, but at this point, I feel like the Blue Lions route should be the canon one.

Local vampire simp and local masochistic noble boldly state their totally normal relationship with one another. I think I liked the Houses/Ending Card version more, because their bond made Edelgard jealous.

I did this strategy over the other two and it did absolutely nothing, by the way.

"ShE dOeSnT cArE aBoUt HiM" blah blah blah, we get it, you refuse to read the text and can't get over that Cyril and Claude are mostly incompatible when it comes to bonding.

I found a Khaloonie discover the flavor text for Seiros Tea (it's tea from southern Almyra and it got slapped with an in-universe localized name) and flipping out over it recently, funnily enough. Houses has been out for three years (as of this post) now, and you've only read that text recently???

"My daddy had stake over ruling the whole continent single-handedly first, you cut the line!"

Sothis please take the wheel -

Can confirm, they literally do almost nothing while Thales and Rhea tumble over that bridge. Very "Wormy Episode of Spongebob" energy right here.

"BUT SHE ENDED THE WAR FASTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" /s

Good job Shez, you broke it.

The ending animation of the Crests rotating like planets changes depending on which route you picked, as that land's "native" Crests are what's displayed. Since the Empire's "native" Crests are that of the Four Saints (plus the Apostles Noa and Timotheos if you want to get technical), you get to bask in a kiddie pool of irony.

In the end, the standom's support of the Empire is akin to how many fans, from its inception in 1979, support the Empire of Zeon and factions similar to it across the Gundam franchise, I feel. Shame that Adrestia isn't as well-crafted as Zeon.

Speaking of worldbuilding, I suspect that there's a weird sort of hatred at how Faerghus is the most well-built (in a worldbuilding sense) of the three lands. This is pretty much proven by its first four chapters alone (having played the demo), and I can already tell I'm gonna be in for at least a decent time once I get to Gleam.

To cap off this shit-cake, here's what I find to be a pretty apt representation of how Edelgard is viewed/turned into during Azure Gleam's ending:

[burr-ell]

So while Byleth as a character pretty clearly found that she took to leadership like a duck to water and she wants to help and guide people, the players don't really feel that.

After all, if I was in her shoes, I'd feel like I had all this responsibility thrust on me that I never asked for. So Rhea made me a teacher even though I have no experience, and Claude is just using me, and I think Rhea's crazy and Edelgard has a point and I want to side against the church but the game won't let me, and Rhea made me her successor even though I don't like her/the church/religion in general, and Claude ran off to Almyra and made me the ruler even though I never said I wanted to.

Kinda nailed it on the head the disconnect between the playerbase and Byleth...The amount of VW/AM fics that are like "i GUESS Byleth cares to run after Rhea during the Battle of Garreg Mach for SOME REASON even tho I hate her" can attest to that attitude lol

You're right in that they should've just ditched Byleth being a self-insert since they didn't even know how to write a self-insert to begin with. So little of the dialogue branches actually matter that it got to the point where I wanted to yell "tf is the difference here!?" Case in point when Claude confronts Byleth after Ch4 the dialogue is either "I don't know" or "I don't understand" and like! what!!

Also chalk it up to personal preference, I've never really enjoyed self-inserts the same way I do avatar chars (which are different). Like, I don't wanna be "me! but in a video game!" I wanna play/rp a cool character where I interact with the world through their lenses & experiences.

It really is a bummer cause the concept behind Byleth- a character learning how to feel & realizing that they can be more than just some lonesome sell-sword- as well as their few in-game traits are parts that I really liked, it's just that there's so little of that because they're meant to be a self-insert instead rip

Also chalk it up to personal preference, I've never really enjoyed self-inserts the same way I do avatar chars (which are different). Like, I don't wanna be "me! but in a video game!" I wanna play/rp a cool character where I interact with the world through their lenses & experiences.

S A M E. I think for me, part of the issue is that no matter what I do with the self-insert, that's not me. I'm not really in the game. I don't really look like that or act like that. None of it is real. Same with [Y/N] fanfics. I'd rather experience a world vicariously through someone else who has an established personality and character arc; I want the storyteller to just sort of take me along for the ride while I get to watch a good yarn gettin spun, because at the end of the day, that's what's happening. (Sort of lessens that "I wish they were REAL" feeling if you haven't inserted yourself into the story, too. Keeps you grounded, y'know?)

"i GUESS Byleth cares to run after Rhea during the Battle of Garreg Mach for SOME REASON even tho I hate her" can attest to that attitude lol

ok but LITERALLY miss blooth eisner went tearing leeroy jenkins style after rhea to protect her, after rhea put everything on the line to protect the students and stop the empire from destroying the monastery. rhea's a good person and byleth cares about her, antis stay mad about it lol

Yeah, generally speaking Byleth represents a lot of missed opportunities. And I love her, 100%, it's just that her character writing needed to be stronger—because like you said, her story could have had so much meat to it if they'd pushed themselves further! Truth be told, it makes me concerned about the direction of the next FE game (either the inevitable Jugdral remake or the next original one) if they keep waffling like this.

[themoomoorn]

Blooth Eisner Engage Paralogue Stupidity

Great: Byleth is truly the Silver Snow Monarch and is definitely not an anti-theist edgelord throwing up in Rhea and the church's presence like fandom begs them to be (they repeat the legend of Seiros word for word as the trial is at a mimicry of the Holy Tomb)

Also they deadass invoke 3H's non-HDRI backgrounds by having it be static (thank you to my bestie Pani on d*scord for explaining 3H's weird microwave backgrounds - she studied animation at university)

Not Great: I still can't stand male Byleth, his stoner looks, or the vocal direction in either language; also they deadass didn't do this in their CANON GAME because of one fake-ass Red Emperor

[themoomoorn]

Unfortunate Implications

I am on my work-mandated summer vacation (whoot) and after browsing some fics for fun, I have found yet another story where it's suggested that Byleth (female) - battle wise yet socially hapless Byleth - takes a position of power, with sexual implications, over socially savvy and highly protective-of-himself Claude.

One of the absolute strangest and borderline gross takes I've seen on Claudeleth (and note that Byleth here is exclusively the female 99% of the time, as in canon Claude actually alludes to her gender and appearance; he doesn't do this with the male Byleth at all) is that she has him absolutely whipped, all with the snark, quips, and sassiness on par with a Whedon show. And much like with Edeleth and CF being wholly changed, any actual aspects of Claude and Byleth's relationship in the canon game - both positive and negative - gets glossed over.

I'm one of the weirdly few Claudeleth fans who absolutely despises the bizarre insistence that there's this domme-sub dynamic between them. Projection is on par with any number of Edeleth stories and anti-church pieces, with Byleth even being warped extremely out of character (at least well out of what the game does give us). And there's absolutely no shame to be had with female domme-male sub preferences (Skewing submissive myself, I naturally prefer the opposite dynamic), a sizable chunk of these stories don't portray it properly to begin with. Claude also really, really doesn't come off as someone who'd desire complete submission, even with power exchange in place - not with his background.

Plus. Uh.

Let's just say that I never see this with Edeleth, Rhealeth, or almost any other -leth. Maybe there's some Dimileths with this dynamic, but they're few and far between and often relegated to straightforward smut.

With how many people take note of Claude and his heritage, I'm a bit shocked that those who like this take don't realize just how bad the whole look is, both from a racial perspective as well as a gender based one.