#counterfanon

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

Layers of Canon

"Is Ikesoren canon" is a much more complicated question than a lot of people will give it credit for, namely because of all of the different layers of canon.

Layer 1: Obvious Canon. These are the things that anyone playing the game could see from standard cutscenes and base conversations including but not limited to:

Ike prioritizes making Soren happy over doing his job (PoR 13), doing his job over looking at flowers (PoR 17), and looking at flowers over looking at women (PoR 14)

Ike finds Aimee off-putting (PoR 13 and 23, RD 3-2 and 4-1)

Soren and Ike worry about each other constantly and protecting each other, including but not limited to Ike placing himself in front of Soren to protect him from a tiger attack (PoR 8) and Soren lashing out when he can't follow Ike to fight the Black Knight (PoR 27) as well as the bond bonus.

Soren knows how to woo Ike (PoR 23)

Ike, in no uncertain terms, does not want to marry Elincia (PoR epilogue and RD)

Micaiah and Yune both refer to Soren as the boy who is always beside Ike (RD 4E)... Confirmed when fighting Ike as an enemy (RD 3-13).

Ike is not (just) oblivious to love (RD 4-1)

Layer 2: Esoteric Canon. These are things that require extra effort to see but are either implied to always happen or have no long term consequences. This includes the entirety of Ike and Soren's PoR support path as well as Soren's battle quotes with Shinon and Micaiah and escape quotes. Here we also add...

Soren being able to recognize tiredness on Ike's face through a small tic Ike doesn't notice and Ike compliments him afterwards (PoR C)

Soren expressing that Ike is the only person he can rely on and Ike assuring him he will always stand by him (PoR A)

"There's only one place for me to be, Ike, and it's by your side" (PoR epilogue, if A supported)

A warm core is melting Soren's freezing heart according to Micaiah (RD 3-7)

Layer 3: Uncertain Canon. These are things that most likely happened according to game preferences, but can be avoided. This would include Ike and Soren's Radiant Dawn supports and paired ending as well as any new game+ exclusive material. Most of the nature of Ike and Soren's relationship is here, including:

"I vow to remain by your side as long as I draw the breath of life" (RD A)

"My only wish was to see you again" (RD 4-E)

The support ending where Soren sets off with Ike and Ike was never seen again

Layer 4: Implicit Canon: Sometimes things that should be obvious are not spelled out, so a lot of the disagreement happens between these two levels. Here are some good examples:

When Micaiah talks about warm feelings, she means romantic ones because both her and Sothe, and Naesala and Leanne, whom she also uses the terms for, explicitly get married. Soren saying "do not presume to understand me" is a dodge, not a denial.

When Ike says Aimee "has issues with reality", that is in direct reference to her theory that he's (just) not ready to settle down.

All of the Aimee, Elincia, and temple handmaiden evidence suggests that Ike, at the very least, does not prefer women.

Because Ike and Soren are emotionally closed-off, them sharing a tender hug (technically also an inference but not a controversial one) says more than it would for the average characters.

Ike and Soren leaving alone together forever heavily suggests a romantic relationship.

Layer 5: Word of God: At this point, canonicity starts becoming more nebulous. This could include anything from side materials such as the art book, which says that "Ike's sense of how dear Soren is to him is renewed" and that "Ike doesn't care for the affections of women." Both are already present in implicit canon. But this makes them explicit, if only outside of the work.

Layer 6: Improbable Canon: These are things that are present in the game, but require you to make choices counter to the best narrative. This will include any of the death quotes, for which all of Soren's and two of Ike's reinforce how much they care about each other. The one-sided reading could potentially fit here as well, as so much of Ike returning Soren's affections requires them to have a paired ending (and special scene if possible), so the two less-encouraged Ike endings (and by extension, one DIScouraged Soren ending) could come across this way.

Layer 7: Soft Canon: Anything that is supported not by PoR and RD or their teams, but is supported by FE crossovers such as Heroes, Engage, and the Awakening DLC. And yes, this does mean that Priam is more nebulously canon than Ike and Soren's support ending. Sorry not sorry.

Layer 8: Non-Canon: Headcanons that do not contradict any official evidence but aren't supported by it either. While some people will have these to connect Ike/Soren to Priam and/or Soren's relatives, to speculate on their future, or to further characterize either, this is NOT necessary to think Ike and Soren are a couple in general. This would also include more general crossovers such as Smash Bros.

Layer 9: Counter to Canon: finally we have this set. These are definitively untrue based on level 1 evidence and the aggregation of levels 2-6, but people will use them for a variety of reasons from trying to relate better to the characters to write a what-if scenario to... My entire "straight Ike arguments" and "straight Soren nonsense" tags.

Conclusion: Ike and Soren having their primary relationship is layer 3 at worst, it being romantic is layer 5 at worst, and being adamantly opposed to it is level 6 at best and 9 at worst.

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

The twin of mistaking Ike's humility and naivety for outright stupidity is mistaking Soren's triggered behavior for his baseline.

The only times Soren ever gets downright cruel are when he is:

-Back in the country of his horrible childhood where laguz who reminded him of the ones who wished he didn't exist started insulting his Guardian Angel.

-Reminded of the cruelty and negligence of beorc civilians, like the ones who abused him and/or left him for dead.

-Actively being blackmailed using the secret he recently discovered and is absolutely certain will make him lose his favorite person forever if it becomes known, and also grappling with actively making the "wrong" decision to prevent that from happening.

-To a lesser extent, when his favorite person is leaving him behind in a fight to the death.

Ike can tell the difference. Can you?

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

Tall Soren discourse is whatever when it's comparing him to other characters in Engage (which in addition to making Ike and Soren taller than they were historically, also made Camilla and Male Robin shorter), but if it requires deciding the consistent height differences actually present in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are less accurate... that gets eerily close to when people claim the Radiant Dawn endings are too rushed or pandering to count and then insist Priam is canon.

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

Knives vs. Staves: Soren's Personality

It's a no brainer that giving Soren staves is better for game utility, but when people want to base the choice off of his personality, they often go for knives.

I'm going to argue that choosing staves actually fits Soren's personality better in multiple parts:

What would go into Soren's choice of tool would be his motivations and priorities.

The way I see it, Soren's #1 priority in terms of motivation is: "Will this course of action help Ike survive?" And here we can see two outcomes:

Outcome A: Soren gets staves. In addition to the skilled combat he is still capable of due to his magic, he now has the ability to heal Ike if he gets hurt.

Outcome B: If Ike gets hurt, Soren can't do anything. But on the bright side, he can choose to get himself hurt instead. Or just continue to do magic, pretending he never got the knives.

Outcome A significantly improves the success of priority #1.

Now onto priority #2. Assuming Ike will not be in any danger, Soren's next motivation would be "what is the smartest course of action, regardless of people's feelings on the matter?"

Now the interesting thing about priority #2 is that by its very nature it matches with the better option for gameplay. Why are staves better for gameplay?

Soren is too weak to do any notable damage with knives

Soren puts himself in more immediate danger while trying to

As with #1, Soren can't do anything if Ike is hurt (or anyone else)

Soren would no doubt consider all of these factors himself, making staves better for priority #2 as well.

Ok, so assuming both of those priorities are fulfilled, Soren will now move onto priority #3: "what can limit my contact with untrustworthy people?"

Well, if Soren uses knives, he will have to face enemies 100% of the time. If Soren has staves, he can spend a good portion of his time with allies, or even just the core Greil Mercenaries, or even just Ike if it suits him. So staves win for priority #3.

Now, deep down, we might run into priority #4: "is this useful for getting back at those who hurt me?" But something I've noticed is that there's a tendency in the fandom to make Soren more vengeful than he is, similar to how they make Ike dumber or more obsessed with training. This priority is so low on the list, I'm not even certain it really exists.

I'll get back to that in a bit, but for now, let's assume priority #4 is in place. Knives will definitely be better than staves here, but with a massive caveat. Who hurt Soren the most? Dead people, civilians, laguz, enemies with absurdly high defenses and physical offensive power. Dead people are obviously not someone he will face, nor civilians. There are very logical reasons to use magic against laguz instead of knives even if his strength wasn't negligible, namely their race-related elemental weaknesses. And as for enemies with absurdly high defenses and physical offensive power? Soren shouldn't fight them at all if they can counterattack, and definitely not with a knife. More pertinently, Soren doesn't even recognize them (and vice versa), making the vengeance motive less relevant.

But then the other question is, just how vengeful is Soren anyway? He doesn't like people, especially laguz. He shows this by avoiding them, acting standoffish around them, and if he's really upset, insulting them. But even if it sparks a physical fight (which happens once), he's never the one to escalate it to violence.

Take the infamous fight between Soren and Lethe and Mordecai. Yes, Soren's comments were uncalled for, though as far as Soren was concerned, so were Lethe's, which is what caused the conflict in the first place. But it was Lethe who escalated the fight to violence by commanding Mordecai to kill Soren. Which Ike was clearly not ok with, jumping in front of the attack to protect him. Then, and only then, does Soren resort to violence. If anything, Soren seems surprisingly un-vengeful given everything he went through.

But there is a character who fills this niche people are looking for with Soren, and his name is Reyson. Reyson would absolutely choose to wield a knife if he could (or even if he couldn't).

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

Tellius height (and "tall Soren") discourse

Recently, someone calculated several Tellius heights based on Ike appearing to be 6'4" in Engage. As a result of this, it appears that over half the cast of Tellius is over 6 feet tall and that Soren himself is 5'11". Which then led to a smaller subset of concern that Soren was always "tall" in spite of everyone thinking he was short, both in-game and out.

Now, honestly, the most likely explanation is that whoever was calibrating heights in Engage forgot that Ike WASN'T supposed to be extremely tall. Maybe taller than average for a man, but not half a foot taller. If we assume that, Soren being 4-5 inches shorter WOULD make him short.

But let's assume that Ike actually was intended to be 6'4" and all of the resulting calculations were correct. Soren would still be short in-universe if over half of the people (and an even higher proportion of the men) were over 6 feet. Soren isn't suddenly taller than characters he wasn't earlier because EVERYONE is taller than expected by the same amount.

But don't worry. Even if Soren is taller than expected (again, absolutely, NOT comparatively), there is a clear other dimension or two that still make him "tiny"... He is not just one of the shorter characters, but also one of the skinniest.

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

Fanon Ike: His Emblem form says he can't hold a pen because he doesn't know his own strength like Dimitri lol

Canon Ike: Hugs a guy less than half his weight without hurting him at all

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

To reconcile Priam with Ike/Soren, you need ONE of the following, in order from least to most plausible: 1. Them having a biological child together. There are two ways this can pan out: trans headcanons and magic. Unfortunately, the more popular/plausible out of context trans headcanon for this pairing is contradicted by in-game dialogue and the less popular one, while not technically contradicted, is less plausible out of context. As for magic, there's no evidence it can be used for such in-universe. 2. Priam being wrong or lying: While this is likely in-universe, unlike the last one, it's unlikely from a writing perspective to include a character who lies or is wrong without even the audience finding out. That said, there is some precedent for this with Danved, and hints toward this include his suspiciously different Ragnell and skill list, and the lack of any family discussion in his battle conversations with Ike. 3. Bisexual Ike going out with Soren and a girl at different points in time: While this seems to be an easy out, it fails to explain why Ike was hinted to be disinterested in women in general at least twice (not counting specific ones), and implies a tragedy if we assume that Ike broke up with Soren for the girl rather than the other way around, given him apparently being childless in Radiant Dawn. 4. Priam being a direct descendent of Boyd and Mist: Given that Ike canonically has a little sister who ends up in a heterosexual marriage, and that they are both less famous in-universe than he is, it would make sense their children would ride his coattails. There's even Sol inheritance (instead of Aether) and the precedent with Anri to Marth to back it up. However, the collateral descendent argument does fail to account for Priam's appearance and apparent hand-me-downs, especially if you imagine he was born within Ike's lifetime (which I don't, but maybe Soren's?). 5. Ike fathering a kid under duress: Technically, there's nothing inherently implausible about that, it's just not something I think any of us want to be the case. 6. Ike having a kid out of duty to his family line, or to help Soren, with a surrogate or similar: No issue with this one AFAIK, aside perhaps from lack of foreshadowing/explanation 7. Priam just straight up not existing in Tellius lore: While it can absolutely be fun to try to reconcile this, and this non-answer won't satisfy anti-shippers (though tbh nothing does), a lot of evidence points towards this being the most accurate: from Awakening being based on a completely different lore, to him appearing from an Outrealm Gate that was never hinted at before Awakening (or for that matter, in Echoes: Shadows of Valentia or Three Houses), to him arriving through SpotPass free DLC that otherwise apparently brings characters back from the dead for fanservice, not in service of the story, to him apparently not being referenced in Heroes (I asked, as I don't play that game, but could be wrong). That said, it's perfectly fine to prefer one of the answers further up the list. I know I'm partial to #6, and some others love #4 and #1.

Now, in order to reconcile the "Ike settled down with a random village girl" theory with the events of Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, you must answer ALL of these questions. Even one you miss and you fail:

1. WHY is Ike hinted not to like girls in general at least twice (flowers scene and Rexcalibur scene) if he does? 2. WHY would the writers include a scene where Ike denies being oblivious (is enough) and not ready to settle down if that's what they were implying? 3. WHY would the writers give Ike two paired endings with men and not a single one with a woman if he was supposed to be straight? Even if Elincia can't leave since she is the queen, that still leaves Lethe as a plausible choice, maybe even Titania or Mia. 4. WHY, if they were trying to sink Ike/Soren, would they give Ike a distant descendant instead of an actual female love interest? 5. Furthermore, if they didn't intend Ike/Soren to become so popular, WHY did they give it more bonding time than any other pairing in the entire duology? 6. And WHY didn't they give Ike a girl love interest to begin with if he was just going to end up with one offscreen? 7. Most importantly, WHY have they only been giving the shippers MORE, unmitigated ammo since Awakening's release, if the ship was meant to be sunk?

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

I saw an Ike/Soren anti-shipper who claimed shippers misunderstood the characters and then proceeded to call Ike a "total bro". Which is... A frustratingly common misunderstanding of his character.

Along with the typical "Soren has a really good reason to be in love with Ike, therefore he isn't" "logic". (Helga Pataki would like a word.)

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

If Ike was truly as oblivious as 75% of the fandom seems to believe, he would never have learned that Soren was Branded or about his tragic past and that is a fact.

Limited education and memory block =/= obliviousness.

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

Ike and Raphael Kirsten are not the same character but a lot of people seem to get them confused.

It's an easy enough mistake, right? They're both commoners, they both have little sisters whom they want to protect, they both know how wrong it is to blame people for things their parents did even if their insecure friends believe they deserve to be blamed, they're both buff and nice, and they both like training and meat.

If the character is:

* Dumb

* Heterosexual

* Extraverted

* Obsessed with training and/or meat rather than just mentioning it in passing

Then that is Raphael Kirsten. Ike is the one who is not those things.

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

Even if Ike is the worst messenger in the universe and is not attracted to Soren (or Ranulf) but is attracted to one or more women in his life, it is still out of character for him to be mad at someone for thinking he was in love with Soren. If anything, it'd be like:

Person: can you believe some people think you're in love with Soren?

Ike: Sure I can. Soren's great. Are you saying that no one should be in love with Soren? Because if you are, GTFO of my face.

Person: no, it's just that he's a boy and so are you.

Ike: oh. So?

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

i have never understood why soren x anyone who isnt ike is even a thing tbh not trying to be a meanie but i dont get it

No, it’s completely canon that Soren is only interested in attention from Ike. Some people though assume that both a) he and Ike can’t be a couple because stereotypes/double standards/flimsy counterevidence from tenuously connected sources and b) that Soren must have a love interest anyway. Even though him having a love interest who is not Ike is repeatedly established as out of character (albeit only using other male characters, so maybe they don’t notice).

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

Other people like the idea of Ike being oblivious to love, but I prefer the idea of Soren being oblivious to love, and Ike being oblivious to his obliviousness. So, Ike just casually refers to Soren as his boyfriend one day and Soren is surprised because he had no idea Ike liked him that way, and then Ike is confused because he thought it was so obvious they were already together.

[thelogicofikeandsoren]

I could go on forever with reasons why Ike is very good at understanding people. My favorite scene is where he speaks to Elincia before she goes off to speak to her people after being crowned queen. I loved that interaction because Ike pretty much had gone through the same thing and he understood that. I’ll let head cannons slide, I get it, but Ike is such a likable character because of his empathetic nature so I wish it was brought to light more.

Yes, this!