#eli essay

[queenbananly]

Nina Fire Emblem Essay

It's long and I'm putting it under the cut. It's projection time baby. My credentials are I have one of the largest collections of Nina merch (mostly fan made, but I do have all official merch as well) and have been collecting it for at least the last six years.

Fire Emblem’s success in its iconic characters is in large part due to the artistry in not finishing a majority of the characters. By giving each character one or two ‘tropes’ or traditional story lines, and then adding in two to five smaller characteristic decisions or facts, it is a skeleton on which fans can theorize missing backstory pieces, the threads that connect different parts of the character together, what a fully developed version of the character may look like, and most importantly: give plenty of room for head canons or projection. 

We start here because it is important to be up front in this character essay that while I will be citing quotes and scripts of the game, a lot of the connecting threads are my personal projections and interpretations on Nina from Fire Emblem: Fates. I aim to focus on what exists in canon to fully capture everything I see in her, but a Fire Emblem character becomes very little without a personal interpretation. 

The two tropes that cover Nina’s character are very different, but fit together in some unfortunate ways. The first is a strong moral compass that has her chasing after the ideals of a Robinhood. Ideals that lead to learning how to steal, spy, and memorize information. Which when connected with her second characteristic, creates a lot of uncomfortable feelings in fans. Nina is a teenager who has fujoshi tendencies, that the game tends to focus on to keep a light hearted and comedic air about itself. If those jokes sour the taste of a player, and some of them are pretty bland or tasteless, it’s easy to miss the other snippets of personality present. 

Loneliness reaches around Nina’s character deeply, in a way that can only really be discussed by pointing out a lot of support conversations and threading them together with generally accepted human reactions, projections, and assumptions. She clings to others relationships and stories but often ruins her own or becomes afraid of connecting deeply with others. Her childhood in the Deeprealms made her resent her father, and though she mostly talks about hating him, anyone who’s been a teen or knows teens can see those comments as a surface level veil to hide pain. In that way Nina is someone who talks about the pain of the Deeprealms the most, while also talking about her own personal feelings on the matter the least. 

In her paralogue, when she calls her father a villain and tells him to ‘do what he must’, she’s playing a part. Honestly, despite her insistence on assuming her father’s stance, a majority of her paralogue is spent with her head in idealistic clouds, like she’s inside of a story or play. It could be argued that this is because it’s her first big heist, considering she tells Niles:

Nina: I've dreamed about this, Father. Draining the coffers of the wealthy! Vindicating the poor! We're getting what we need, and then getting out.

That said, it wasn’t all delusion and play when she assumes her father will punish her severely. She says multiple times he’s only visited her a few times, that she feels she doesn't know him. When he asks why she would throw her life away, why she acts like he has never cared for her, she shouts back:

Nina: Because I wasn't worth your time!

A thought that is very clearly felt by a lot of the second generation kids in Fates- but Nina is one of the few to say it loudly and directly into her parents face especially repeatedly. He argues that his world is unsafe and he wouldn’t survive if something had happened to her. So as punishment, she must now join the war effort. The game pushes to convince us that this is the answer- because how else will she become playable? If Niles can keep an eye on his daughter, plus the second parent the player chose for her, and all the other characters in this game, well… that’s safer than her wandering the countryside as a thief. Which she really is! Her paralogue takes place in a part of Nohr we do not visit at any other point in the game. The closest map point to it is the Dragon’s Gate (aka the portal to your DLC). So it seems reasonable to say that in her efforts to steal she knew what she was doing- she’d been avoiding the war effort. If this game took her efforts more seriously it’d be worth digging into the fact that the paralogue’s plot revolves around the Lord she’s stealing from calling in a favor and this army main force coming in to help, despite being so out of their way. (Link to Serenes Forest’s map of Fates in my citations for easy viewing).

Once she’s joined the army it’s time for her to largely be a gag character, talking mostly about men and their potential relationships. However, it’s still hard to break away from the fact that at her core, Nina is a very basic teenage girl. She has a short fuse and thinks she understands the world but struggles to actually say what she means often. Instead of facing that struggle she’d rather focus on daydreaming about relationships- rarely her own though, because that would be too personal and uncomfortable. From my personal interpretation and reaching, that loneliness is part of the reason her Robin Hood beliefs don’t come up very often post-recruitment.

Being open about something you believe in so strongly is hard, especially when it’s with people you feel you don’t belong with. Nina actively struggles especially in her friendships with men, and in large part that’s due to her hobby of ‘people watching’, or shipping people who surround her. Her supports with Percy and Ignatius are the clearest examples of her struggles to communicate, where in one she fumbles to apologize after lashing out defensively and in the other she gets caught in her fantasies and is constantly scrambling to cover herself. In the Ignatius A Support he even calls her out on exactly that, leading to this exchange:

Ignatius: I think I understand you better now. I was wondering why you were always so rude to me. But it's starting to make sense. You're just really, really bad at talking to people, aren't you?

Nina: Er, ah, well, maaaybe with SOME people... Like...men people, mostly.

If her struggles stem from her hobbies, which evidence suggests they do since that’s when she gets the most upset and lashes out, then it makes sense men are especially a problem for her. When you spend all day sexualizing a body type with the gusto of puberty, anyone with said body type will immediately be harder to deal with. In her Mother support she will even link these two together herself:

Nina: Well, I suppose things can't get any worse... I...I have a hard time talking to guys. But I think about them all the time! I feel like such a freak. Like they know that I'm thinking about them... And I just clam up and turn red. It's so awful! 

Considering that, it does make sense she’s never comfortable with Shiro, Siegbert, or anyone like them when it comes to discussing her morals and values and how they relate to thievery. In her Siegbert support she spends most of her time playing a very passive role, humoring Siegbert and letting him stumble his way through misunderstanding her intentions because she feels unable to intervene or get a word in quickly enough. It’s a support where she is on all accounts fully successful at hiding her hobby from the other person. Meanwhile with Shiro, her hobby comes out into the open from the start due to his stubbornness at being left out of a good time (seeing a play in the town plaza). By catching her fully in her element he sees her at what she considers her worst, and because of that their support remains very far away from their roles as a prince and a thief. She even calls him “Mr. Loud-Snorting- Hooting-Guffaw-Man” before turning tail and running at the first sign of him taking her interests seriously. She struggles to believe there’s anything of value in her perspective of the story, but the support ends with one of those friendships that you as a player can actually believe lasts beyond the support line. Honestly the difference between these two crown prince supports stems from the biggest issue Shiro has- he just found out he was a prince upon recruitment and thus doesn’t expect anyone else to treat him like one or really want that.

That’s enough about men who are not Nina though. To turn to her two supports that most heavily talk about her morals instead, we find two very different characters. Her father, Niles, and tiny baby bean Kana. The first part of her Niles support unlocks with her recruitment, meaning it is what most players will read first and it can be assumed that this support is meant to be the stepping stones into what to expect from her characterization. They fight almost the entire support line, starting with Nina pointing out again to him his hypocrisy in telling her not to steal when his class is also a Thief and matches his backstory, and how it feels like he only cares about what she does now that it's convenient for him. How she hates that now that she’s close he bothers to tease her with “I love you’s” and innuendo’s, and comment on her stealing. Though not said aloud, there’s an implied question in her accusation that asks if this is all so important to you, if I’m important to you, why couldn’t you visit more? Why did I have to suffer in my loneliness? To which ends the B support, suggesting Niles needs at least the timespan of two support conversations to wrap his head around his next words to her. When he finally approaches, serious this time, he opens up about his actual backstory. Yes his class is thief, and he’s good at what he does, but wants better for her. As he puts it:

Niles: You say you only steal for the greater good—that you're doing the right thing. But whatever your reasons, I don't want you doing the things I had to. Rather than the dark road I was set down... I want your path to be clear and bright. That's all any parent wants for their child. 

Nina struggles with this and takes it in, biting down her tongue on fighting about the why’s. Really, she gets what she needs from this support- her father apologizing to her, recognizing how poorly he messed up, and agreeing to treat her like an adult from henceforth. In subtext they’ve agreed to leave the moral debates to the side and try to act a bit more like a father and daughter.

Which is great! For a girl who’s loneliness can be seen a mile away, she needs this. It’s sad in the realm of exploring her stealing though. Niles is a retainer for a Prince, so he probably has better articulated arguments against what she’s doing than the game allows due to story and mood constraints. However she does get another support to talk about it with a bit more of a level head, less on the defensive overall. In her support with a non-sibling Kana, he asks about her stealing and she encourages him to not copy her behavior when he asks why she steals if his parents say it’s bad to do. Some of the thoughts she presents are a bit too big for the small boy, but give the player insight to what she might be thinking on a more day-to-day clear headed basis:

Nina: No, no, it's OK. You're right—stealing is wrong. But the world's a complex place. Some things are less wrong than others. Sometimes just doing things that look right will make the world worse. You know? 

She emphasizes this again and again in this support- the idea that doing nothing is sometimes the wrong answer. Even then she’s always encouraging Kana to stick up for what he believes in and to listen to his parents. The support eventually shifts away to talking about her and her dads relationship- but not without first hitting on a beat of her loneliness oh so briefly. Kana asks her about the pile of letters she’s holding, and this is one of the only times we ever learn that she gets letters with updates from people she’s personally helped. While earlier I suggested her paralogue was her first big heist, it’s plainly clear that she’s been following this path for awhile. The connections she’s made from helping people and the care she shows in wanting to make sure they’re still well speaks of her character and her ability to be kind and thoughtful. Which makes sense- because her morals align with thinking of others. While she’s thinking of others, she’s also looking at this small child that is Kana and telling him to never copy what she does. It is kind, but it builds a lonely path for her alone.

That loneliness is exactly what enables Kana to so bluntly call her out in the A support- because while I can argue that Nina struggles intensely with loneliness, Kana’s whole character is built on loneliness. The only difference between them is Nina is older and has already built up systems she feels protects her, while he’s younger and just an incredibly anxious child. This is when we move more into talking about Nina and her dad. Having come up previously, Kana confronts her and says he’s sad she doesn’t have a good relationship with him. They seem to have a lot in common even if they don’t see eye to eye. He even suggests to her his hypothesis- that she wasn’t born a thief, she became one to be more like her dad. That she respects him and wants his approval, and that’s the core of her arguments with him. After being presented with this all Nina can do is sigh and call him perceptive.

Kana is the only one who can see this. Not even Niles can. That’s because Kana himself feels the need to be perceptive. Anxious about being left alone, he needs to know how others might be feeling. Not only for his own needs, but because Kana truly does not want any of his friends to feel alone either. Though I’ve largely been skimming S-Supports for convenience- because only one can exist in each universe and some feel more of a stretch than others- it’s important for me to point out in the S-Support with Kana, Nina finally let’s herself share some of her anxieties with him. She admits to thinking about him growing up, and wonders out loud if they’ll be friends forever or if he’ll change. With that, Kana makes a very serious Kana-promise that even if he does change their friendship will remain.

The feeling of loneliness continues to permeate looking into her other conversations and looking at how badly she reacts when her guy friends are forced to witness what she considers the worst part of herself. With this I turn our direction to her support with Forrest, where it’s easy to argue she shows her worst self. Part of this I will blame on the writing staff- because a lot of people are their worst selves to him specifically. However, instead of always blaming the writing staff for it, it’s also more productive to do character analysis to see what can be pulled from the support. Finding herself far more comfortable talking to Forrest than the average guy, she doesn’t hold herself to any of her usual barriers and lets herself over fantasize in front of him. She’s so deep in her dreams that she ignores that the C Support ends with him gently calling her out, and saying she’s being creepy. Instead she continues on her march, singing about him aloud and when confronted, giving a half shrug of an explanation. Normally she’d be hyper defensive, but here her excuse is so uncreative Forrest finds himself saying “Really. Really?” at her nonsense.

In the A Support we reach the height of her fantasies, and she directly asks him about his taste in men. She struggles to say things bluntly when it comes to asking if he’s gay but has no problem she sees him more as a ‘girl friend’ than a guy friend. When Forrest apologizes that he’s not and doesn’t seem to be who Nina wants him to be, she immediately breaks. Realizing she’s been not present for most of this support line, dancing in her own head of fantasies, her reaction is to start sobbing. To be honest the support itself is emotional whiplash, to which I give credit again to the writers as an A Support is supposed to end on a good note to prepare for the S Support so despite sobbing and having this breaking moment they end up better friends within the span of 10 dialogue lines. Anywhere else this might’ve been more drawn out or a longer conversation. Her sobbing speaks to many aspects of her-  her kindness, her loneliness, and her anxiety. She truly cares for Forrest and considers him a friend, but she’s also incredibly scared of her interests and hobbies being the reason someone wouldn’t want to be her friend. Realizing that she’s had the situation wrong this entire time, she shatters at the horror that she’s let herself go this far. Even when Forrest forgives her she starts to fantasize again immediately- but this time she’s more present and aware, and snaps herself out of it. 

Nina’s character tropes might be a robin hood and a fujoshi, but the deeprealms colors the rest of her in with the loneliness and trauma. As a character she is filled with passion that she doesn’t know what to do with, and kindness that extends past each robbery she commits. However, outside the game it should be noted that the WAY she engages with the fujoshi trope is uncomfortable to many, and that it is especially uncomfortable as a character born only when one of the two canon bisexual characters in the game marries a woman. This essay can express my love but it cannot undo real harm gay men have gone through in being sexualized by people in their life. Nor should it ever undo harm. If you leave this essay seeing the other aspects of Nina’s character, yet unable to disconnect yourself from the discomfort of how she acts around men in her actual life and the way she seems obsessed with them, that’s completely understandable.

If one might lend me their ear one last time. I’d argue that when I look at all of these characteristics of her and pull them together, she’s not just a cisgender straight girl looking at men who she’d secretly rather have interested in her than each other. Earlier, I mentioned that by focusing on the relationship between two men she can deflect from herself and her own relationships and feelings because she is not a man herself. However, I’d push that line further and say she has no sexual or romantic interest in men herself. Even if she does not realize it, even if she fights with Soleil about if women are attractive, what I see in her is someone who wants so badly to be normal in at least one aspect of her life. Being straight is seen as normal, and oversexualizing a man’s body to a comedic aspect (at least to an outsider's perspective) often be a coping habit to someone who has yet to realize they don’t actually like men. The overperformance often comes only from observations and not reality. By which I mean, if advertisements and books and casual chatter suggest to you a man is most handsome when his muscles are bulking and sweaty you may just take that notion and run with it. Force yourself to like it in an attempt to be normal. By doing this, but at the same time turning away from heterosexual relationships in her fantasies, she’s able to do multiple things subconsciously. Force herself into liking these aspects of a man, and play out scenarios of gay love constantly. The way she hunts for clandestine romances speaks to me personally of a subconscious anxiety that lays next to her anxiety stemming from loneliness. If she were to be gay, does she see it as something that must be kept secret for her to still be accepted? This part is one that may change depending on my readers' views on Nohr and Hoshido. While the game gives us a bisexual option from each country, it’s not heavily talked about anywhere if it’s readily accepted. In fact it’s easy to take Forrest’s paralogue, where Leo gets a Bad Dad award, as a sign that maybe the answer is no. 

Nina could feel incredibly lonely in a world where maybe it would not be accepted for her to be gay. Alternatively she may feel like she doesn’t deserve that kind of love and happiness. As much as I’m adding my own perspective by bringing both points up it’s hard to ignore that when writing the game they seemed to heavily side step the issue that gay marriage is still a very political issue and just did not speak on it. I personally lean towards her residing in a homophobic culture, or at least one where she can’t imagine herself being accepted for being gay. 

I end the essay here on the part where I push my own life onto Nina because while I could pick apart each support, this is already 6 pages of Google Docs. Perhaps in the future I can come back and write more- like her support with Caeldori or Asugi- but to leave people with what I’ve come with today is enough for me. Whether her being a lesbian (although seemingly in denial) is something you the reader can see or whether you think it’s over projection, I hope you can recognize the merit in the rest as a means to pick at her character beyond the surface level gag.

*

This Isn’t How Citations Work But This Is A Fire Emblem Essay Fuck You

Note: All supports can be found at https://wiki.serenesforest.net/index.php/Fates_Supports/Nina and the script for her paralogue can be found at https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/Abrupt_Clash/Script 

Map of Fates shown here. Nina’s Paralogue is the location listed as “Fancy Estate”: https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/fates-map-revelation.jpg

[rooolt]

and if I said for the first three seasons of cobra kai Eli Moskowitz harbors a devastating, almost hero-worshippy crush on Miguel Diaz that he refuses to admit to himself and it impacts a series of his motivations, especially regarding the way he treats Sam in s2&3

[bookquotesfrombooks]

“Disability may stem from injustice, but it is not itself injustice. To equate disability with suffering is to ignore the value of disability, disabled people, and disability culture.”

Rebecca-Eli Long

“An Appalachian Crip/Queer Environmental Engagement”

Published in Y’all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia

[elijah-loyal]

okay everyone. i'm finally starting it: my big long essay about the existence of trans people. i'm writing this for my parents, but will eventually be uploading all of my research, statistics, and the final paper here to tumblr for anyone who wants it. this will absolutely take me months, and if anyone wants to help beta read it and peer review it eventually, please let me know <33

this is something i've been meaning to do for around three years now. my goal is to put forth ironclad evidence that i (a trans man, btw) am not something to be mourned, nor shunned, nor cast out. it may work; it may not. but i'll be damned if i don't try.

[angelwiththeblue-box]

you ever just cry about jatp

[i-needserotonin]

imagine being so jealous of a man that you kill yourself

[rustyelias]

Is anyone else overcome with the fear that your writing is too formal and that people will assume that you're trying to be a pretentious ass and that your work is actually just a bunch of fancy words that have no deeper meaning whatsoever

[whenfatecollides]

Xena Warrior Princess 5x01 Fallen Angel

[tianhai03]

[personal art] ❤️💙

me and my partner eli have been together for 6 months now so i wanted to draw something for us bc i love them and they mean so much to me and im so happy we got to spend half a year together and

@dmc5se my silly baby who has the username of one of my favorite games of all time i love you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

[corvidcrowned]

Ermm :3 speedpaint of that massacre ending art from nao’s bday..

[kim-ruzek]

I just watched the finale of S6 of NCIS for the first time in years and my god it once again has hit me just how much I bloody love that episode

[blusandbirds]

trying to figure out colleges for the cobra kai kids for a fic and it’s so hard. like on one hand i’m like “oh they’re smart kids" on the other hand i’m like "well their grades definitely took a hit during the karate war." "their extracurriculars are fantastic" "they were all involved in a brawl on school grounds." "so their essays have got to be fascinating”

[sassycordy]

eli & chloe are sickeningly adorable 🫶🏽

audio credits: amourauds

[moskowins]

miguel remains the one character that hawk has never had any serious problems or fights with and if that doesn't say everything

[elijah-loyal]

eli's big long essay update 2:

uploaded the scanned detransition notes; please let me know if you have any other points or info that I missed (please provide link to source or cite as MLA 8 if in a book)

[angelwiththeblue-box]

whos gonna stop me from writing a lords in black fic that has no plot and is just vibes? nobody thats who