#like. fanfics have overall gotten better than their early 2000's roots. we have better choices than this

[butwhatifidothis]

What this fic wants me to feel about Sylvain, Ingrid, and Lysithea attacking Woobiegard in her SS vision: "Poor Woobiegard! To have her dear friends become such monstrous shells of their former selves and attack her so cruelly!" What I actually feel towards Sylvain, Ingrid, and Lysithea in that scene: "You're doing great, sweeties!" Also lol at Captain forcing Dimitri and Claude along for this map but only allowing them to be competent whenever it wouldn't make them outshine poor old Woobiegard.

The SS visions that put Ingrid and Sylvain in that light kinda like... shows off how little he thinks of Dimitri's relationships with his friends, in a way.

We're supposed to genuinely see Edelgard as the victim during her SS visions - it's obvious from the framing of the scenes, from the narration, from how "breaking destiny" is a """theme""" of this fic and SS is supposedly Edelgard and Byleth's "destinies" that need breaking, that we're supposed to feel sad for Edelgard. She's beaten to shit, her sadness and guilt and loneliness is put front and center, the ones beating the shit outta her are described as these horrible twisted versions of themselves, they are the ones the narration says betray Edelgard, etc. etc.. Ingrid and Sylvain can't be mad at Edelgard for, at that point, murdering Dimitri - and likely Felix as well - no, they are the bad guys for turning their backs on Edelgard. Oh, and also Lysithea should just be chill with Edelgard working with the people who tortured her and ruined her family. She's supposed to stay the cute, eternally loyal lil' sister for Edelgard to pat on the head and call a good girl.

Sylvain and Ingrid shouldn't be that close to Dimitri. They should want to kill Dimitri for Edelgard's sake. They should turn their back on their childhood friend, not Edelgard, because Edelgard is obviously better for them. Unintentional or not, that is the subtext Cap'n is laying down when he punishes them for daring to be mad at Edelgard for killing him.

And also, her thinking that they betrayed her means that, at minimum, Edelgard doesn't think she betrays them when she actively puts them in mortal danger by starting her war. For all her talk about how she "can't imagine anyone walking by her side" and how she "knows that her path must be a lonely one," the second people. Y'know. Leave her ass for her horrific, morally reprehensible actions, they become traitors. She "dared" to put her trust in them, and they threw it away. In the end, Edelgard thinks she's morally above everyone else, with anyone who doesn't blindly follow her down her path of bloodshed being deemed as a traitor. All her guilt and all her "recognition" for her actions gets promptly flushed down the shitter.

AND I KNOW like literally he only ham-fisted Dimitri and Claude in the chapel to make them look worse. Their presence changes literally nothing - they don't save more students than if they weren't there, they don't stop Jeralt from dying (since Claude sips on that Dumb Fuck Juice and shoots behind Myson instead of just fuckin' headshotting him, and then he gets sucked into the Void and just leaves the fight scene), they don't uncover any new information. Dimitri was just there to remind everyone that he's cRaZy, and Claude was just there to remind everyone that he's eViL. Just like the visions, just like most of Edelgard's "trauma," you take them out of the chapter entirely and literally nothing changes. We already knew the author hates Dimitri and Claude and we already know the reductive caricatures he sees them as, their presence here does nothing for anything.

They're not allowed to actually shine. Dimitri can't take on the Demonic Beasts and Claude can't try to investigate the cause for the transformation - y'know, letting them show off their strengths - because doing so means that Edelgard isn't the one doing those things.

Dimitri can't be better at taking down Demonic Beasts than Edelgard, shown by him consistently felling them in one strike, which is immensely helpful in saving the students by taking care of the problem quickly; he must reduced to something that's frankly barely better than the Beasts themselves, obviously off his rocker and obviously someone who's just soOoOoOOOo CRAZY GUYS.

Claude can't be better at tracking down what the cause of the students turning into Demonic Beasts is than Edelgard, shown by him noticing the Crest Stone fragments and being forward-thinking enough to try and grab one for research, which could potentially yield extremely vital information everyone can work with; he must be reduced to a morally bankrupt monster who'd loot from dead bodies of poor innocent students.

Cap'n has to reduce them into villainous archetypes to hide the fact that frankly, Edelgard did shit all in that chapter. She didn't fight the Demonic Beasts nearly as well as Dimitri, she doesn't do shit to figure out what's going on with the Crest Stones - or, at minimum, point Byleth in the right direction (since Edelgard would know already lmao) - like Claude, so Dimitri is a raving murder machine and Claude was only out for himself. Giving them an ounce more nuance than that would make it obvious how shit Edelgard is, so he hides that shittiness by overexaggerating certain traits of the other two lords.

And in that same vein, he has to make Sylvain and Ingrid and Lysithea look like horrible traitors to hide the fact that Edelgard is ruining their lives. She killed their best friend(s, if Felix is also dead), she ruined their countries, she threw their lives into nonstop fighting for five years - but she's so sad!!! And Ingrid and Sylvain and Lysithea are bullying her!!! We should feel bad for poor wittle wonewy Edelgard!!!

It takes a baseball bat to the head to any non-Edelstan reader of this fic, because Edelgard literally does nothing to deserve forgiveness, she never earns redemption, she never works for fuckin' anything. She just Sadges at all the """""undeserved""""" hatred flung at her and we're supposed to take that as enough of an arc for her to deserve sympathy from the reader, but no! I'm fuckin' cheerin' Sylvain and Ingrid and Lysithea on when they beat her ass into the dirt! Get rid of her! She's self-centered, she's selfish, she doesn't care about people if they don't grovel at her feet, she started a continent spanning war without even thinking she'll win it, literally throwing away the lives of countless innocent people on the chance that she might hypothetically win, and after all that she still blames everyone else when she faces the consequences of her actions! She's god-awful, and a threat to damn near everyone around her! But nope, she's the author's darling, so actually she's right and everyone else is wrong.

It's very clear that Cap'n will not let Edelgard truly be seen in any kind of negative light; people who fight against her for any reason are bad, people that can't join Edelgard's side but are better than Edelgard at something are bad, people who criticize Edelgard for the awful shit she does are bad. And that's... well. Something, for sure