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miyaio · 8 years

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peri+camilla !!

this is So Much, and i apologize in advance

peri

do i like this character?

- i was p ready to dislike or feel uncomfortable abt peri, just based on how she was described pre-release. then her laslow (and to a lesser extent, odin) supports beat me up, stole my lunch money, and actually managed to get me deeply emotionally invested in a het w/actual chemistry in Bland Het Emblem II: We Only Care About the MU This Time. since it’s the only support chain that bothers to treat peri like a person instead of a really gross, shallowly-thought-out gimmick, i suddenly found myself really intrigued by how she could’ve been handled so much better. it was also kind of a wakeup call regarding the divide between an unlikeable character and a character who gets treated poorly by the writing in a way that’s p clearly motivated by sexism.

five good qualities:

- okay honestly the fact that she can realize how fucked the moral climate in nohr is and try to do s/t abt it makes me so emotional....... she says in one of her odin supports that she wants to make nohr a brighter place, and i’ll choose to read into that as her trying as best she can to prevent other ppl from totally cutting off their sense of empathy b/c she now realizes what a mess it made her. tbh i kind of wish peri and elise had a support along those lines, since elise is so often touted as the light of nohr, and it’d be a nice way to home in a little more seriously on the fact that peri was out and out conditioned from childhood to see her entire worth as a human being in terms of her usefulness in killing ppl.

- she’s actually really self-sufficient! incredibly shallow and unfunny “lol she kills a bazillion servants offscreen” gimmick aside, if peri mistrusts servants so deeply, she’s doing p much everything for herself. given that her father completely shut down and left her to fend for herself from a young age, i think that dovetails p neatly w/the idea that peri does more than just cook for herself. fef doesn’t talk a whole lot abt it, but this is still Ye Olde land, and so that’s a lot more work than she’s given credit for.

- peri is honest to goodness such a good mom. i’m kind of ambivalent abt motherhood-as-redemption for female characters, particularly in a game that generally thinks abt parenthood in a very shallow way and relegates women to (narrative) support roles w/o considering the importance those roles can have. in peri’s specific case, tho, it reads more like motherhood-as-closure to me. my bias does come into play, here, but the peri-soleil mother-daughter convo from the matsuri dlc really does highlight how much peri wants her own mother-daughter relationship w/soleil to end better and last longer. i guess i’d say that peri reads like motherhood is sort of a second chance for her, which again ties into that notion of her coming to want a better nohr for the future than the one she grew up in.

- aside from her cluttered head (the big pigtails, the peek-a-bangs, the ribbon, and the weird cowl thing are just too much), her design is so on point. nice, smooth color scheme, no boobplate, PANTS, and customizations to the cava outfit that look cutesy without forcing her to ride a horse in her underwear. you can’t even tell that she uses the same body type model as camilla/charlotte/kagerou/orochi b/c her design isn’t chopped up to show as much. i think her outfit does a great job of establishing that she enjoys frills and frippery, but she is also a combatant, and is gonna come dressed to do her job. how they depict her doing said job is an entirely different story. ;; at any rate, tho, peri has some quality taste in armor, and i wish she’d gotten a custom gk design (W/PANTS), since it’s her “canon” promotion. a more streamlined version like gunter’s w/that cream/black contrast would be so cool.

- since this is fe, i do have to put a plug in abt her as a unit and say that i actually really like her personal skill. since the boosts last thru ep the way a rally would (the stat boosts actually count it as such), you get much more use out of it than i’d thought upon seeing the skill on paper. she’s not the best unit ever, but it’s still a pretty awesome skill, w/ or w/o an extra dance from azura. she can also be a great attack stance partner after getting her boosts, even in lategame situations where attack stance is safe to use.

three bad qualities:

- where do i even start w/how her writing handles mental illness/trauma for the sake of infantilizing her and trying to pass off the whole yandere subtrope schtick as cute........... it just cheeses me off so much how little the game thinks through the ramifications of her allegedly killing a bazillion servants, b/c it’s not even being considered an actual series of events that happened--it’s just s/t to reference over and over again as some sort of shitty recurring gag. this shit swallows up almost all her supports, even w/xander, and that impacts his characterization, too. if they’d even suggested that xander knows what happened to her and wanted to take her under his wing to help her recover/mature, that’d be one thing, but it reads like he’s a total hypocrite for letting peri go around and be bloodthirsty b/c it’s convenient for him. even that darker angle could’ve been explored, but it’s not, and peri’s character suffers for it a lot more.

- please fix this girl’s hairstyle......... it’s not even just my hatred of twintails as an incredibly lazy and unappealing shorthand to indicate s/t abt a character, there’s just too much going on up there. the alt hairstyle kozaki gives her in his doodles is so much better, and it could be paired w/the ribbon sans the weird cowl to give her a cleaner look that still communicates her character effectively.

- her skill and shaky defenses really do hold her back as a unit, esp when she’s got an awkward join time sandwiched between silas getting established as the early cava and xander coming in tho shitstomp everything w/siegfried. i do value her ability to double more than silas’ ability to tank, tho, so from a pure unit standpoint, peri is the first gen cava i use most. sophie is my go-to out of all the playable cavas, tho.

favorite episode/etc:

- i guess this can be a favorite support? you know i’m gonna say laslow, given that it’s like the only support that takes her seriously, and the c-s all feels like a very natural progression. i also like her bit role in cq 26--ngl, i find the potential deaths of xander’s retainers a lot more tragic than xander + elise, mostly b/c elise’s death reads like pointless shock, rather than poignant like her speech indicates it should be.

otp:

- L A S L O W--even as partners in scenes like cq 12, br 26, or some of the dlcs, the two of them have pretty evident cameraderie, and i think they both recognize on varying levels how similar they are. i keep babbling on and on abt how refreshing peri’s interactions w/laslow are, and i like how comfortable she is w/him and how much she clearly trusts him. even in the c support, she’s teasing him for not getting dates, but she’s also genuinely excited to spend time w/him. i think the whole “i like you b/c i know you’ve killed lots of people, too” thing does actually have some serious merit to it, especially when you consider that peri is, in part, what laslow fears becoming--she can’t grasp the concept of empathy towards the ppl she fights and kills, and so she feels no remorse. yet laslow’s willing to reach out to peri after she’s spent her entire life having doors closed in her face and being told (implicitly or explicitly) that killing and fighting are all she’s good for, so she might as well keep at it. as shitty as soleil’s generic mom support is, the peri-soleil matsuri dlc convo really reinforces how good for peri laslow is, and tbh i think she’s good for him, too. the fact that he’s just as vulnerable as she is in the a support speaks volumes, imo.

notp:

- p much anyone else/peri?? not all her supports are equally bad, but given that none of them outside laslow and odin (to a lesser extent) even really try to tackle her issues and let her begin to heal/mature, it’s just kind of uncomf.

brotp:

- while i think they could’ve spent a little less time on tea and a little more time on kagerou’s shame abt having to use brutal/lethal force vs peri’s delight in it/peri looking up to kagerou, i really liked peri’s supports w/kagerou. i think they’re some of my fav retainer counterpart interactions.

best quote:

- this bit of her matsuri convo w/soleil absolutely destroys me every time....... it really does drive home that peri can balance understanding that she was left to fend for herself in the wake of her mother’s murder w/taking responsibility for what she’s done in the past, and how fiercely she wants soleil’s life to be better than that.

headcanon:

- i actually have quite a lot of hcs abt peri, to fill in the gaps of tropey characterization for the sake of gross fetish pandering or hackneyed attempts at “comedy”. it’s canon that her family is one of the oldest noble houses in nohr, but no mention is ever made of peri being its heiress (possibly just b/c lazy worldbuilding), so my personal take on the matter is that she has an older sister. as children two or three years apart in age, her sister had shades of jealousy towards peri being their mother’s “favorite”, but most of that was swept aside by a more generalized resentment in the wake of their mother’s murder. since their father completely shut down, and peri had zero support to cope beyond being encouraged to leave home and cultivate her fighting skills, her sister was stuck fending off outside attempts to undercut the house’s power or absorb them into another noble family from a very young age. peri hasn’t even seen her sister in almost a decade (tho she was there at the tournament where xander took peri on as a retainer), and she’s frankly kind of scared of ever going back to see her. it starts as more of a “big sis will yell at me like she used to” fear that gradually evolves more into “my older sister probably hates me and thinks i’m a monster even though we’re each the only thing the other has left in the world” kind of fear. immediately postgame, peri feels like she should do something to try re-opening their relationship, but is at a frustrated loss as to how you’d even start doing s/t like that.

camilla

do i like this character?

- despite the game being hellbent on reducing her to the Token Fanservice Poster Girl, yes, i love camilla in all her messy, under-explored glory.

five good qualities:

- her role as half a parent, half a sibling to the younger nohrsibs is really fascinating, especially since camilla understands how toxic and warped her own perception of love is. despite that, tho, i think she really does care deeply and genuinely for leo and elise, and imo the fact that the four surviving norhsibs “chose” each other in the wake of the concubine carnage probably has the most significance to camilla. her relationship w/elise in particular absolutely destroys me, and i think her partnership w/xander makes for a v interesting contrast to the dynamic between hinoka and ryouma.

- piggybacking off of that, camilla is really self-aware, when she’s not being hit w/the “pander to presumed-male-player-as-kamui” bat. she totally acknowledges the seeming contradiction in her affection towards those she loves versus her brutality towards those she sees as some manner of threat. she’s suited to the warring world of the nohrian court and nohr at large, and despite knowing that there’s no real place for a person like her in a peaceful nohr, she still wants to see it happen. in that respect, i actually kind of liked her jp ending (minus the obligatory Muh Kamui bit) where she full-out disowns herself from the royal family and strikes out on her own. its an action w/consequences for her family and her retainers, relationships that will subsequently never be quite the same, but i think camilla weighs that against knowing she needs the solitude to sort herself out in and takes it. as absolute as her devotion to her family is, a lot of the life choices camilla makes for herself (now that she can make them for herself) are p messy, and she knows that.

- the fact that camilla’s immediate response to beruka trying to kill her is to immediately take beruka on as her retainer and trust her w/her life Destroys me. camilla specifically says she was nothing more than her mother’s pawn in the Concubine Wars (tm), and that almost certainly means she had to kill other children to secure her mother’s position and eliminate competition. again, it comes back to camilla being able to make her own choices, and choosing differently--she’s merciless to her enemies, yet she shows total mercy and sympathy towards beruka when she could have just killed her. while i do think some of this could be attributed to camilla projecting onto beruka, or her need to be needed, there’s genuine good in the act. i guess what i’m getting at is that it’s cool to see camilla stepping out of her mother’s shadow, act by act.

- one of the things that i do think the writing did well by camilla on is that she’s allowed to be angry and hurt, even if it is sometimes used to further the whole yandere for kamui thing. her outburst at niles in their supports is p refreshing, in that she’s not expected to be sweet and pliant and suffer in benevolent silence while nurturing others without complaint, given what she’s gone through. she’s allowed her pain and anger, at least when we get focus on her at all.

- i’ve actually only recently begun to use camilla as a unit, since i don’t like to use the royal sibs much, aside from the little sisters as healers. she’s definitely as astounding as her reputation, tho, w/bonus points for having one eye covered yet still having better skill than leo and elise www her personal is also s/t you can get a lot of mileage out of, so she can pull her own weight while helping other units pull theirs, too.

three bad qualities:

- on the flipside of her understanding of her own toxic perceptions of love, tho, camilla can be p damn manipulative in order to fuel her own need to be needed. you get the sense that she gives affection more for the sake of having the recipient “indebted” to her than she does out of love or a desire to nurture. the bit in her selena a support where she tells selena, “don’t forget, i’m the only home you have” is absolutely brutal in a way that’s really ugly, but also genuinely interesting. it’s a real shame that camilla’s moral greyness in this area gets eclipsed so much by her overwhelming, fanservice-geared love for kamui. if they’d at least spread out all the facets of her affection, from protective to smothering, to the rest of the family, it’d feel a lot less like flagrant player pandering and more like the intriguing character flaw it could be.

- idk, a lot of camilla’s qualities are things i’d say are character flaws that aren’t necessarily Bad Traits, just as her Good Traits are often wrapped up in her flaws. it’s a v interesting ambivalence, when it’s given textual space to shine. can i count the br cutscene that spends a solid minute chopping camilla up into her most sexualized parts for the viewing pleasure of the player as a bad quality, b/c that will never stop steaming my broccoli. the way camilla is treated, and often literally marketed, in relation to the presumed-male mu gets me so incensed.

- her hp growth is base 40, yet it’s so atrocious in practice? it impacts her kids, too--when azura!soleil grows hp better than camilla!soleil, w/her own notoriously low base, i’m Worried www i guess super dragon sister has to have a flaw as a unit somewhere.

favorite episode/etc:

- her elise and xander supports are definitely my favorites, followed closely by her beruka supports.

otp:

- selena, but heavily, heavily qualified. they’re an absolute disaster match in that selena craves someone to serve, someone who will validate her, while camilla craves someone to validate in order to validate herself. that’s not even getting into selena’s nasty habit of projecting people she’s known onto other people, and how her feelings towards lucina would map onto her feelings towards camilla. i do think camillena could be mutually healing for both of them, but not before a lot of soul-scouring and messiness.

notp:

- camilla/any kamui (tho especially mkamui) and camilla/leo...........

brotp:

- do xander and elise apply again here? as i said earlier, i like the partnership she and xander have, and her dynamic w/elise just makes me Tender www since camilla is the only surviving child of garon’s who isn’t blonde, she’d definitely stand out in comparison to her other half-sibs. elise dyeing her hair in a sort of solidarity w/camilla, even if she states admiration as her specific reason, is s/t that i think would touch camilla v deeply and personally. __(:3_/

best quote:

- the line she has towards the beginning abt elise being nohr’s light always gets me really emotional.

headcanon:

- okAY so camilla is the alpha lesbian of all nohr, tho i think she could take or leave guys every once in a blue moon w/no attachments made. she would marry a guy to secure a political alliance if xander (and only xander--she wouldn’t do this for garon) desperately needed her to, but there’s an unspoken understanding between the two of them as to what camilla really wants for herself, and that she would never love a guy. given her awful relationship w/her own mother, a younger camilla was surprised by the exclusivity of her attraction to other women, so it was s/t she definitely had to disentangle for herself. in the end, tho, i think camilla is aware of and vaguely uncomfortable abt the fact that men want her for her body, but the older she gets, the more security she has in the fact that she now has the power and the agency and the choice to steamroll over them and live for herself, at least in this regard. camilla seeing her past self as her mother’s pawn has real undercurrents of a sense of lacking bodily agency, at least imo? in combination w/the shitty way the game and marketing treat her wrt her body and shitty-ass outfit (as well as the leo Thing, which i’m not gonna touch), i’m really interested in how camilla would interface w/the male gaze in-universe as part of reclaiming her own physical and emotional autonomy from the specter of her mother.

#fe yiff #fe14--#i applaud anyone who slogs thru all of this lmao #princessbias #bounce that assk it's the roundest

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