#but that doesn't suddenly mean that it's part of Batman lore that he caught and arrested Jack the Ripper

[butwhatifidothis]

???? Who the fuck says that its a must read to understand edelgard????? What the hell are you talking about. Its called a fanFICTION for a reason, of course its not going to be 100% accurate to the game, it's made by some edelgard hyperfan apologist. What did you expect? what did you REASONABLY expect?

Here is a link to a document made by those of r/Edelgard. In it you will find in this document - which has the purpose of collecting the most valuable pieces of 3H meta that the fandom has created throughout the years - this:

You will find this fanfiction - one of the only fanfiction on this doc, mind - lumped in with all of the meta pieces, with it being described as "long-term analysis of Edelgard's character." And within the actual fic itself, you will find Cap'n saying this in one of his author's notes:

That in fact, he does believe that fanfiction is meta. He claims to have done an immense amount of research about the game - going over paralogues, supports, explore dialogues, with that showing up in how he'll oftentimes incorporate canonical dialogue into his work. With him viewing fanfiction as, "by its very nature," having merit in being considered meta, it then reasonably means that he considers TEatG to be part of his meta too. His meta, the collective of which is described like this in the aforementioned doc:

With all the main conclusions this doc writer said his meta amounted to - C-PTSD, Edelgard being once being deeply devout, and wearing a mask - all being crucial parts of the fanfiction itself. And with some of said meta being described as, wouldn't you guess it, required reading to understand characters, like Edelgard as shown in the screenshot and Dimitri as shown here:

And with people - different from this doc, mind - who outright uses dialogue that is a invention of the fanfiction to make a point about the canon game 3H:

"It's called fanFICTION of course it's not going to be 100% accurate to the game" and you're right. Fanfiction shouldn't be expected to be held to such a strict degree of accuracy to any source material its based on. TEatG, however, is not considered just fanfiction. Talking points that are specific to this fic are used as genuine meta, by both the author and others. It is said by both the author and others to be meta. People say that the meta that this fic is filled with is crucial in trying to understand the characters.

So what do I expect from that? I expect there to not be glaringly obvious mistakes that a base reading of the game would debunk. I expect Byleth not having the actual ability to rain down actual javelins of light onto her enemies after merging with Sothis, or to commune with the dead and have them give her an advantage in battle by changing the weather (Chapter 58). I expect Jeralt to not be act like Alois. I expect the basic, bare-bones numbers to be correct, like it being correctly stated that the Southern Church attempted its insurrection 120 years ago and not 160. I expect to not have an extremely poor understanding of a completely different language merge with the genuine, actual opinions and meta of the author and for said bad interpretations to appear in the fanfiction. I'm literally asking for the bare minimum, and oftentimes I'm just not seeing it in this piece of fanfiction that both the author and others are claiming is a meta piece, that people keep saying is needed in order to understand characters.

This sort of fanfiction is about what I might would expect from Baby's First Woobie Fanfiction, and if it was taken as that by the fandom then I literally wouldn't care about it; I'd just blacklist it, But it is seen as meta, it is accepted as meta, and people use its talking points to form their genuine opinions about the game. So yes, I am going to be expecting a bit more from it than I would pretty much any other fic