#it's just a lighthearted no risks (sometimes risks if they get attached) sort of game

[chickensoupleg]

It'd be fun if, just as a silly side job, Eddie and the older kids all just play a spinoff version of DND. Essentially it's just DND except there is NO plan involved. Zero. Everyone is allowed to craft the story's progression to whatever they want, within reason.

Pulling everyone off script is totally allowed though, as long as it's interesting. It's a break from having to have a storyline to be following specifically. If they want to fight a dragon, they can totally fight a dragon, but it's not a preplanned Big Bad, just a dragon that someone put into the story so now everyone has to go fight a dragon. There's no single DM. Everyone is in control. Everyone is the judge, jury, and executioner. They take turns guiding the story.

Also there's no math. Dice rolling, yes, but it's just purely a game of chance. The stats are less solid and more like... You have to simply understand your characters capabilities like it was just another person, un-amountable to numbers.

Like, for example, Robin plays a Bard character, and she's about to reveal something special about her Trumpet. But she makes.... Oh I don't know, Nancy roll a die. Any by choice of Robin. A certain number or certain range gives what her Trumpet has. Maybe it has ice powers. Maybe it is actually sentient and Robin's character did not know. Maybe it is just a random trumpet and it's actually contained years worth of spit and now everyone has to listen to her describe her emptying the spit valve.

By all accounts it still satisfies the general ideal of DND, it's just less pinned between a DM who knows the lore and the players who get to explore and knowing what math is. It's just general fun, go ham it's not like the world is watching. Nobody knows what plot could possibly sprout up next, what romances or deaths or anything will progress. There's a story to be found, but it's crafted by the hands of many.

(Plus, everyone can play several characters at a time. If Steve wants to play 3 separate guys who are named after him there is... nobody stopping him. It's not like they're all in play at all times, just when the story allows him to reintroduce Stevon, or Steve Jr., or Stebby the Evil Vacuum Cleaner Robot.)

[dreamsmp-megaritz]

chill out with debating character morals?

I like Dream SMP character analysis. That’s a big part of why I'm here. But I have some problems with how a lot of it seems to go. Many people are being way too hard on each other, raising the stakes artificially high, moralizing the discussion needlessly. It’d be good to chill out a bit.

I’ll explain what I mean, and why. In writing this, I risk coming across like I’m doing the very thing I dislike-- morally scolding other people. I hope it is clear enough that my message is not meant to scold anyone, but is meant as more of a more lighthearted exhortation to examine the discourse and see whether you can help improve it so as to make things better for everyone. My term “chill out” is meant more as a suggestion (if applicable), not as a finger-wagging.

As always, everything I say here is open to criticism and revision. Think for yourself, think about your own observations, and see how fair or unfair my analysis seems to be in light of your own experience. Let me know if you have comments, objections, rebuttals, and so on!

Character morality debates aren’t everything For one thing, a disproportionately large amount of the character analysis takes the form of disputing questions like (1) who is bad and who is good, (2) which characters are worse than which other characters, (3) who had good excuses for their bad actions (and who didn’t), and so on.

This is all fine. It’s not my favorite kind of discourse, but it’s totally fair game to argue about the morality of the characters and their actions. However, it seems like it often drowns out other kinds of character analysis. It’s worth remembering that morality debate is only one kind of character analysis, among many others. Still, this is the least of my concerns.

Reasons to avoid overconfidence Some people are VERY confident in their views, and are kind of harsh to each other on that basis.

It’s worth remembering the sheer size of the lore (hours upon hours of material), and it’s worth remembering how loose the canon is in this block-game role-play story. This there’s often a lot of plausible evidence on both sides of a debate. And this means that many conflicting interpretations of a character are often equally defensible, or at least are approximately equally reasonable. So this is often worth considering.

First, consider DSMP’s size: Unless you’re a super-expert (or even if you are!), there’s a good chance you’re unfamiliar with-- or you’ve simply forgotten-- at least some of the evidence relevant to your own analysis. Just because there’s so much of it! Moreover, even if you’re a super-expert, remember that lots of other people are not, and so they’ll make more errors than you, and sometimes that’s just kind of okay.

Second, consider DSMP’s looseness of canon: There will often be contradictory or deeply ambiguous evidence that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and there might not always be a deep fact about which interpretation is more objectively correct.

Moral scolding? But why tho?? Most distressingly, the debates often take the form of these weird moral allegations, like insinuations of hypocrisy and slander.

Here’s what I mean by insinuations of hypocrisy: In response to someone saying “Character-A is bad,” a lot of other people will reply “You shouldn’t say Character-A is bad-- because Character-B did something just as bad, and you sure aren’t complaining about Character-B!”

And by insinuations of slander, I mean the way people take the argument seriously to the point of acting like it’s immoral to wrongly criticize a character, as if this were similar to wrongly criticizing a real person.

Each side tends to engage in moral scolding against the other side. As if having the wrong view about a DSMP character is some kind of serious character flaw, indicating a like of moral fiber.

If I might help myself to some psychoanalyzing (against my better judgment, and against my own advice-- the hypocrite I am): I suspect this could be a manifestation of an unhealthy sort of attachment to the characters, such that an insult of the character feels like an insult of one’s own friends or something. (To be clear, I think there are also healthy forms of attachment to the characters, although this isn’t one of them.)

Even if someone gets their interpretation of a DSMP character objectively and blatantly wrong (though I suspect this is relatively rare), or even if they really are being hypocritical & guilty of double standards between different characters, or even if they forget or misunderstand some crucial evidence and perpetuate factual misconceptions... it’s not as if they’re slandering a real person! These are generally quite innocent mistakes.

So please, chill out a bit.

I’m not sure how many people intend to “moralize” the character-analysis disagreements in these ways, but I think it’s worth trying harder to avoid.

(Side-note: I actually think people are too hard on each other in debating the content-creators’ actions as well. However, I will not insist on this here, because the CCs are real people, so the exact same arguments will not apply.)

Caveat: Criticizing analysis vs. criticizing false presuppositions about other issues A big caveat to my argument: I concede there are sometimes real justifications for treating the matter seriously-- such as when someone’s character analysis rests on a misconception about mental illness. Some people have criticized each other’s analyses of c!Wilbur on such grounds, for instance.

But even here, it’s important to avoid confidently attributing problematic assumptions to people when there isn’t strong evidence that they’re making such assumptions. Often a misconception can be addressed and refuted in many ways without accusing someone of actually believing it. Finally, even when such criticism is legitimate, it’s important to clearly separate the actual target of criticism (the misconception) from the character analysis, and avoid conflating them together. This is a little shaky, so I can try to pry apart the distinction in more detail if people are interested.

Conclusion As I said at the start, I hope this comes across as a call to examine and improve things, and not as yet another moral scolding (and a hypocritical one at that). I’m not entirely certain how accurate my assessment of the discourse is. I encourage you to see whether it fits patterns that you have seen, at least to some interesting degree.

If it does, then see if you can improve it.

If not, then let me know what aspects of my analysis you disagree with.

[airlock]

oh, by the way! the other day I actually finished that affinity list for FE15 characters but I’ve been forgetting to post it so I hope you’re all ready for a whole shitton of “you know what this character is a lot like that one other character from a game that has canon affinities”

Alm - Light y'know, part of my exercises in attempting to make a regular FE cast out of a series-wide arrange of characters with the best FE Heroes poll results was in workshopping affinities for the characters that made the list. when I started attempting this, Echoes wasn't remotely out yet. I've since discarded the progress I've made on that front, due to the recent changes in the roster as per the link I've just shared and also because when that happened Echoes was much closer to being out. regardless, I'll probably end up bringing up the initial affinity impressions I've had at that point for the Gaiden characters who made it to the initial roster, even though I've (rather predictably) doubled back on most of them this side of Echoes being out. Alm is a big case of this happening. when his sparse characterisation in Gaiden coupled with his Awakening lines made it popular read him as the genocidal scourge of Rigel, I had a good time chucking him into the Ice affinity where not one other FE protagonist would fit. well, for better or for worse (and mostly for the better), those times are now over. Alm in Echoes is not without compassion for his enemies or with a very strong impetus towards revenge; he's just young, in over his head, and a little too eager to please, and that eagerness took him in a questionable (if not necessarily wrong, per se) direction when he felt that pushing back against Rigel is what people wanted. he actually hits many of the same notes as Seliph, although his discomforts with leadership seem to be less inherent (as with Seliph) than they're just naturally stemming from the fact that he's a young boy who just keeps suddenly ending up with more responsibility than he thought he was in for. and he ultimately grows into the roles he keeps being given with little further complaint, and it's all because he enjoys the upshot of it all: getting to help more people. and for someone who's always so inclined towards doing right by others, almost unidirectionally, I can't think of a better affinity than Light.

Celica - Thunder unlike her co-protagonist, Celica doesn't require any sort of analysis to be read as having a Light affinity; I'd expect that this is would be most of anyone's initial impulse. but she's, ah... not nearly enough of a pushover for that. when she talks about her mission, she does so with a kind of steely resolve that can only run much deeper than just a desire to do the right thing; each of her decisions mean something important to her, and for that, she's ever glad to take matters into her own hands, even those closest to her desperately wish she'd be more willing to let everyone else lift some of the load as well. and just like Alm sometimes risks everything out of his unwillingness to disappoint, so Celica's weakness is not listening to other people's thoughts when she's made up her mind, which is how she ends up handing her soul over to Jedah despite as many people as possible telling her not to do it. this principled, yet stubborn attitude is definitely the way of Thunder characters like Selena and Jill, and we can only be very relieved that Celica's tendencies mostly pointed her in directions unlike the sorts those two have ended up in.

Gray - Fire this guy has so much in common with Sain, I was this close to calling it a Wind, but there's an all-important difference: where that affinity's crowd tends to be more dreamy and detached, Gray is actually pretty down-to-earth in spite of his rather humorous openness. his flirty side strikes me as more a social butterfly thing than Sain's floweriness, for one (at least, well, in any context but his supports with Clair). overall, he's more than anything else friendly and easygoing, the way of a Guy or a Ross.

Tobin - Anima/Earth painfully awkward, but level-headed, observant, and clear in his ways of thinking -- this one's pretty straightforward, the way Anima characters can often be.

Kliff - Wind OR Ice so this one is also one where I had a pre-Echoes assignment for Poll Heroes. at that point, whatever little character he had seemed pointedly Wind, being the right amount of free-spiritedness and, as per his ending, dreamy wanderlust. this side of Echoes, those traits were kept and driven in further, but at the same time, he also gained a new and very marked personality trait: a mean, haughty streak that would really not land him out of place with the likes of Raigh and Raven. and I kind of wanted to think that this isn't entirely out of left field for a Wind character either, but there isn't anyone quite that mean on the canon listings; at worst you get some lighthearted snarkers like Haar and Bastian. still, it's not as if pushing the frontier is enough reason to demand a change in affinity... so it's honestly easy to argue either way for him. and to make matters worse -- he's very withdrawn and his ch3 base convo implies he has something of a history with secrets, so he wouldn't be out of place as a Darkness character either, although at this point I'm still feeling Wind and Ice more strongly for him.

Faye - the shit writing affinity it speaks vollumes that I feel like I can only possibly ground her primary characterization on anything that makes sense if I review her lines from the prologue and/or in battle situations. this is also something I don't feel like doing.

Lukas - Anima/Earth with his whole "cold observer" thing, Ice is a mighty tempting affinity for him, but Anima/Earth fits that bill just as well and also works for Lukas in a number of ways that Ice doesn't. he's not quite mean, aloof, or detached enough to really seem like an Ice; his quiet is more poise than lack of concern or dismissal. all in all, Anima/Earth is a solid affinity for the character who silently yet gladly takes on the role of Team Babysitter, the way Oswin, Oscar, and Nolan are all known to. that said, there's also that whole other way to read his character: for those whom Lukas strikes as being much more stirred than he ever lets on -- between Clive/Lukas B and the way he's deadpan about his awful backstory -- the obvious affinity would be Darkness.

Silque - Ice I'll freely admit she's a hard one to read whatsoever -- and maybe I'd have more material to work with if Faye hadn't fucked this one up for us all -- so the most I can seem to observe in her character is this aloof elegance. and maybe it's just par for the setting, but there are some precious few moments when she shows something of a lowkey judgemental side... but really, this is not one of the assessments I'd be very attached to; if you've got a better idea, you can probably argue it better

Clair - Thunder proud and stubborn and- you know what, I could just copypaste my rationale for making Lachesis this affinity when I was analyzing FE4. in fact, I'm gonna do that. I’m kind of tempted to put her down for Thunder just because she’d match Clarine that way, tbh (sic)

Forsyth - Thunder being as square as he is, Forsyth could've easily ended up on the Anima/Earth bin, where he can be in the company of such spoilsports as Kent and Oswin -- but it's actually not that simple. for all his veneer of orderliness and properness, this is still a guy who gave up on a quiet and safe life to run after a goose chase of a dream that never had a chance to come true, and only got anything remotely close to that as a result of plentiful fortunate circumstances. besides, when he's trying to whip Python into shape, he doesn't resemble, say, Kent trying to whip Sain into shape -- whereas the former pair's dynamic sounds more "ugh, please stop being an idiot and do this properly", Forsyth's beef with Python is over a lack of commitment. because that's what's really Forsyth's primary characteristic: the kind of commitment that can only stem from a Thunder-affinity character, even if he's basically committed to becoming what an Anima/Earth character might just naturally be.

Python - Wind in his own words, he lives carefree, which is exactly the way Wind characters are when they're left to their own devices. he's certainly got a combination of Ranulf's sense of humour (or even Wil's loose tongue) and Haar's boldfaced laziness.

Clive - Light he's idealistic enough for the part -- to the point that what keeps bending him and bringing out some of the worst in him over the course of the story is that not all things play out like the pretty design he had in his head. to name one, he's fine with putting some farmboy climbing the social ladders as the leader of his resistance band so as long as it makes him feel good for being so nice to peasants and giving the common soldier a leader they can identify with, but it’s rougher on him when Alm starts talking back to him and making decisions he doesn't agree with.

Boey - Anima/Earth there's something that keeps showing up in his lines, that I kind of get but can't seem to describe... but in any case, he's pretty much the Tobin of Team Celica, as someone who tries to keep it real but tends to come off more as the short-sighed comic relief than the shrewd realist.

Mae - Thunder I can just say it's Serra's affinity and leave it at that, that should explain everything

Genny - Wind OR Light we're not offered much in actual characterization for her other than shyness, a dreamy, story-loving nature and a dash of helplessness... it's hard to make anything deeper, least of all considering she's pretty young. Wind works with her detached, "this would make such a cool saga" ways, and also with the fact that her ending will show she's willing to troll people about her choice in romantic partners; Light would reinterpret her love of stories as a sort of idealism, and also focus on her helpless but earnest side, where she's similar to characters like Florina.

Saber - Ice aloof, gruff, and with a bad reputation to boot -- even if we know that Saber gets to be much more attentive and supportive than he seems to be, or frankly wishes he were, his nurturing side still tends to be more like "that sounds stupid but I'm here for it" than anything warmer and more earnest.

Valbar - Fire this is another one I had a pre-Echoes take on, and that one was Thunder -- it made perfect sense, since Gaiden doesn't give you anything more on the guy than the fact that he's willing to all but suicide attack a whole bunch of pirates in the name of revenge. this side of Echoes, though, that part of his characterization now seems to be more of an understandably extreme reaction to grief, while his natural disposition is just friendly and charmingly boisterous in a way that strikes me much more as Fire.

Leon - Light deep down under all his quirks, there seems to be something idealistic, even childish at times. if he can fall in love with someone just because that person was nice to him at a difficult time, that's -- at least, by his own admission -- because he appreciates the beauty of the world; and if he can spend half his dialogue talking about Valbar -- I swear, sometimes he almost annoys me as much as Faye does -- that's because he's sporting this mental checklist of things that make someone The Ideal Man and Valbar has yet to fail any of it. plus, well, for better or for worse, this is also Kyza's affinity.

Kamui - Wind aloof, but dreamy, more than anything else helplessly driven by his wanderlust; and on top of all that, just slightly snarky. Kamui is a very straightforward Wind character.

Luthier - Ice also a pretty straightforward assessment: haughty, but awkward; aloof and a little too focused on something that interests him; Luthier is pretty much a living checklist of Ice traits, although he doesn't quite cover the stricter and meaner end of that spectrum (except in that he's almost strict enough when it comes to Delthea -- definitely "almost", though, he's nonwhere near Marcus-level strict). one amusing way to think of it is that Luthier is the exact kind of guy who Pent only barely avoided becoming.

Mathilda - Light time and again she's regarded as being the voice of reason -- and I think that's less in the whole Lukas-esque "cold observer" sense and more in the sense that she's sensible and doesn't lose sight of what's important. it's also worth noting that, unlike Celica above, she's prone to giving others a little too much credit and yielding to particularly persistent characters; from the third Rise of the Deliverance map, plus some of the base game, Clair in particular can play her like a piano just by being very stubborn. maybe that's also how she ends up with that awful ending... (can I go this long without drawing parallels to characters with canon affinities? naaaah. sometimes she's kind of like a Lucius who actually enjoys fighting.)

Delthea - Fire it's rather clear that when Delthea thinks of her dreamy city life, she's thinking of a place where she can go be a social butterfly -- or, as it were, fall in love with someone suavacious. I've also considered Wind as a strong possibility for her but ultimately I get the sense that she's less lashing out against restrictions or being expected to work hard and more against being judged for not really wanting to be a mage. I'm very probably splitting hairs there, but we'd have more established character to build upon if folks would just let Delthea say "fuck" every once in a while.

Palla - Anima/Earth I'll have to admit that Akaneia characterization isn't fresh in my head at the present moment -- however sparse it can be -- but most of what I remember about Palla is her just incorporating that whole The Big Sister (TM) Archetype without a complaint, which is just another way of being the Team Babysitter as Lukas above is.

Catria - Ice this one's also gonna have to work off her FE15 characterization primarily, but anyways! as affecionate as she is deep down, she's pretty aloof and she'll be curt and critical sometimes; this bill probably suits her fine.

Atlas - Fire a big-hearted guy of very simple ways, to the point that even directly befriending a queen-to-be won't draw him away from going back to his village and becoming a simple lumberjack. he's really like a bar-brawling, trash-talking version of Dorcas.

Jesse - Light he just loves playing the hero, right to the point that he'll bog himself down doing it (like, say, by trying to take on a horde of desert bandits alone and ending up captured by them). he's also got the idealism to boot, what with this whole idea for a mercenary's country. and I mean, really, I shouldn't need to argue very much to say that Jesse would have the same affinity as Gatrie.

Deen - Darkness full disclosure: I did not pick him on my first and so far only Echoes run, so there's every chance I haven't seen the full picture yet. still, as far as I can see, this guy just drips with Darkness, hitting much of the same edgelord tunes as Rutger does. that said, for all I know he could be more of a Jaffar-type Ice affinity, so maybe I'll really have to see yet.

Sonya - Darkness full of secrets and unwilling to let anyone in for real, but she can't help but let off a glimpse of her truths if it might just help someone she can see herself in -- yeah, she's right at home with Calill and Micaiah, to say the least.

Est - Fire lively and straightforward -- to the point that, at least here in FE15, her sisters seem to enjoy just completely reading her -- she's not very difficult to regard as a Fire. although, between the way she does her unreliable sales pitches (in her support with Catria) and certain Akaneia things that hint at some severe commitment issues, it's tempting to keep Wind in consideration, too...

Nomah - Wind if Bastian should live to see old age, then he'll become the exact person that Nomah is. ... well, a more long-winded version of him, at least.

Tatiana - Fire I've dithered a fair bit here, because for all her ostensible cheeriness, she's got a lot of insecurity and fright in her. as soon as you rescue her, the first thought in her head is "oh god they're going to kill me", and the second thought is "oh god they're going to kill my boyfriend". there's also how she's terrified of her beloved's memories returning, and how she wastes no time in beating herself up over it, and she's even got a base conversation where she expresses her self-doubts about being a good cleric. I couldn't help but wonder whether all this wouldn't make her a surprising Darkness character, really. but it seems like the precedent for having a Fire-like personality and a crushing load of insecurities is still remaining in the Fire affinity (cfr. Nino, Neimi), so dredging all of that up may not have been the best use of my analytical energy after all. harrumph, I say!

Zeke - Thunder OR Darkness between his characterization here and in other games that he totally isn't in, we know exactly two things about our amnesiac knight: that for better or for tragically worse he's loyal to the bitter end, and that he's definitely not a big fan of solving things through normal people communication.

Conrad - Thunder frankly a very tentative assessment since, seriously, for a new character who's meant to be central to the plot, this guy seriously got awful little development, probably being that IS decided to save up all of his big reveal quality for the most obvious detail about him and decided to leave us in the dark about all his other secrets. he's not even really hiding them himself -- no moreso than the plot demands at least -- so I can't just blame it on a Darkness affinity. all I really have on this guy is that, for all that he's ostensibly soft and sensitive, he's mighty stubborn, enough so that 50% of his interactions with Celica, especially as his masked knight self, are just him and her being very stubborn at each other. he's pretty much the only one that won't shut down and back off when Celica pushes back -- kind of gives me the awful impression that maybe he just doesn't listen to her very much, on review. maybe. but yeah, on the one hand he honestly doesn't /really/ sound like a Thunder type, but on the other hand, there are two different people he sounds like, and he won't drop the masked knight persona entirely even after he's stopped hiding his true identity, so I can't think of anything ostensible enough to draw my analysis from. but here's an amusing thought: a couple lines back there I did a typo and noticing I'd written "when Celice pushes back" was freaking hilarious l m a o

Mycen - Ice it's hard to pin down Mycen's true personality, since he's always so busy doing as the plot demands. at least, Clive (in one of the DLC memories) implies that he was already a notorious stoic even before he ended up in a situation where he's always having to put his own feelings aside, but it's hard not to think that he must've already had some façade going on by the time he turned into a Rigel-born Zofia knight. that said, even if it's what the plot (or, as it were, the bizarro alternate reality that a tutorial tends to sound like) demanded, this is a guy who yelled at a bunch of children because they were crying about having to fight a bunch of actual knights. so yeah, I'm not too hesitant to pin him down as, at the very least, the hard taskmaster who still gets his pupils' adoration -- you know, the Marcus way. that said, what wouldn't I give for some additional DLC that delves more into his actual character, and specially into that sweet, sweet Mycen and Nomah backstory...

Totals

Fire(6): Gray, Delthea, Tatiana | Valbar, Atlas, Est Ice(5~6): Silque, Luthier, Mycen, [Kliff?] | Saber, Catria Anima/Earth(4): Tobin, Lukas | Boey, Palla Wind(3~5): Python, [Kliff?] | Kamui, Nomah, [Genny?] Thunder(5~6): Clair, Forsyth, [Zeke?] | Celica, Mae, Conrad Light(5~6): Alm, Clive, Mathilda | Leon, Jesse, [Genny?] Darkness(2~3): [Zeke?] | Deen, Sonya shit writing(1): you know who | N/A