#cant believe it took me this long to realize how Egg and Clob's routes fold in on each other

[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: