#validar

[evostrashbin]

local man shows up ~ 7 years too late to the party

[feaincorrectquotes]

[byuuli]

grandpa

[ro-botany]

Since I don't want it to be stuck in Debate Hour Jail forever, today I bring you a Hot Take(tm):

Validar would be a good-looking guy if IntSys stopped making him gray.

My evidence?

I UN-GRAYED HIM MY DAMN SELF, SINCE THEY WON'T.

In both Original Sinister Eyeshadow flavour and the ALL NEW Slightly More Chill Eyeliner flavour.

...Okay, okay, so I changed a few things aside from just the skin tone, but it genuinely does not take much to make him good looking. Here, Ana even made a side-by-side comparison! Do you see how little changed!!! And yet how much better he looks!!!

The philosophy with Validar's design, as far as I can tell, is to make him look genuinely inhuman to sell you on how irredeemably evil he is. To make him look dead, keeping in theme with his role as leader of the apocalypse cult and known controller of zombies.

That's where you get the gray skin tone. The lightless eyes, the vertical slit pupils. The lack of eyebrows that makes his expression harder to read. The way the sinister eyeshadow shapes his face. The weird ass impossible wrinkle on his forehead. It's to make him inhuman and hard to read. And beyond that; his long face and willowy proportions are a pretty far cry from most of the other characters in the game, the ones intended to be attractive.

HOWEVER. IF YOU JUST... MAKE HIM LOOK HUMAN, AND CHANGE NOTHING ELSE.

THIS IS WHAT YOU GET.

Literally all you have to do is:

Give him an actual human skin tone

Give him back his eyebrows

Tell him to stop squinting 24/7

Make the wrinkle on his forehead plausible instead of whatever the fuck it does in canon

Round out his pupils and put a little shine in his eyes

And very suddenly the man is, dare I say, handsome.

Willowy proportions, slim face, and high cheekbones are not inherently bad-looking traits. It's genuinely JUST the eyes and the skin tone that ruin his looks. Hell, even the eyeshadow can stay once you fix those things. Look at him. Look me in the eyes and tell me Edited Validar wouldn't be a niche but beloved tumblr sexyman if he were canon.

He's so close to being pretty. His personality and moral values are absolutely rancid. But his face ain't.

ALSO CAN YOU IMAGINE if the default Robins looked a little more like him? They would look GOOD. WE WERE DOUBLY ROBBED I TELL YOU.

[vilkalizer]

[grimcrumbz]

Old sad comic from Twitter

[the-priestess-of-dawn]

I just want to take a moment to appreciate that they made an effort to show off his little bone tail

[djtitus921]

DAW SHIT! Happy Birthday Chrom!

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

In celebration of Validar making it into FEH, here’s an AU where the Robins remained in contact with the Grimleal

Robin: Daaad! I don’t wanna!

Validar: Come on, Robin! Help your old man out! I can’t afford to hire bosses for all our maps. Not with your mother bleeding me dry from child support.

Robin: You always make us work whenever we spend the weekend with you and we always get beaten up by the Shepherds! Every time!

Validar: Hey now, you never told your mother about that, right? You “fell down some stairs”, remember?

Robin: Mom doesn’t make us do any chores!

Validar: Well your mom is turning you into little spoilt brats. I’m trying to teach you the value of an honest day’s work. Now take this levin sword and kill anyone who comes this way. Especially Chrom.

Robin: Urgh, I wish I was back at mom’s house, it’s way nicer than your dumpy two bedroom castle. Can’t you get some beds? I’m sick of sleeping in the stables!

Validar: I could if I wasn’t paying for your mother’s castle with my alimony gold! That I earn by kidnapping exalts! Like a mature adult.

Robin: Mom is so much more fun than you!

Validar: Hey, I-I can be fun too. Remember the Arcane dragonstone I gave you? Heh, that was fun, right?

Robin: You only gave that to Robyn!

Validar: Well Robyn doesn’t give her father so much lip! Sorry! Sorry! It’s the stress talking. Now I’ve gotta run, but you have fun here. I’ll check in on you… later.

[larkscribbles]

I JUST REALISED THIS IM SO DUMB

(They are wearing the same fit)

[fefuckability]

ROUND 1: Stahl vs. Validar

Feel free to post your justifications in the tags/comments!

[best-fe-parent-tournament]

Worst FE Parent Tournament: Semifinals - Match 1

[feaincorrectquotes]

[wofemblem]

Fun guys!

[ro-botany]

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far: What Heroes Tells us About Validar

I blame @the-priestess-of-dawn for this one. <3

One of Awakening’s worst dads has finally weaseled his way into the mobile game, and so, here we are. If I can make a serious analysis post about Groom!Robin of all units, then I suppose Validar deserves a post as well.

For the most part, Validar’s dialogue in Heroes is unsurprising. There’s a lot of gloating about his plans, a lot of mocking everyone else for being feeble. But there’s one very key place where that pattern falters, and when you really dig into that crack... what at first looks like a shallow villain turns instead into a hollow one.

---

I’ve talked before about how the sprites in Heroes can affect your read of a character’s tone and ultimately change the meaning of their words. Such is the case for Validar’s 5* level 40 conversation. It’s easy to read it in a snarkier tone with his sprite sneering at you, but I invite you to read it without the visuals and really take it for what it is:

Askr's future is none of my concern. I aid you only to gain power for myself. I care not for the people of Askr. The evils of this world are nothing to me. I am an agent of fate. Whatever pitiful bonds you share cannot stop the inevitable! But do go on... I will enjoy your struggling.

Notice anything?

What I immediately notice is that for 4/5 text boxes, a solid 80% of the conversation, all the condescension and insufferable confidence is gone. There’s not one linguistic flourish, not one jab at Kiran or anyone else, not even any punctuation beyond the humble period. The sentences are short and to the point. And you know what it sounds like to me?

Like he’s reassuring himself.

He’s calmly repeating things that he thinks ought to be fact, like mantras. Oh sure, he’s trying to convince Kiran that he’s an uncaring shithead who’s only here to further his nefarious plans, but it sure sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of it, too. He only switches back to his usual sneering and mockery with the very last text box, as though he suddenly remembered himself.

What’s also striking about that conversation is how similar it feels to dialogue from other Grima-adjacent characters, and hell, even Grima themselves.

If you told me those first four text boxes were dialogue from one of the fallen Morgans (Future Past edition OR Heroes edition), I would believe you. They’re in a very similar state of mind, with a lot of lines dedicated to calmly repeating they’re only tools of Grima’s will. That they help you only to further Grima’s plans.

And while the phrasing of it is different, the underlying feeling of those lines is eerily close to some of Risen King Chrom’s dialogue, too. “I am the king of corpses” vs “I am an agent of fate”; both of them characterizing themselves as little more than weapons for a god to wield or discard.

We only ever see Validar in a vacuum in Awakening, but we can’t forget that the cycles of abuse that are the story's core apply to him too. I’ve written a lot about how Grima’s agency is constantly stripped from him. I think that if we can acknowledge how much that fucked Grima up in his first life and again as Robin, and how much it fucks up Morgan and Chrom in the bad timelines... We would be hypocrites to deny that that fucked up Validar, too. It must have.

The Grimleal have been trying to resurrect Grima for a long, long time, and Validar is one of the last born of that fucked up lineage. Only unlike Robin, Validar didn’t have the luxury of being swept away from the cult at a young age. No, he grew up steeped in the knowledge that he was born for one singular purpose. The brand he bears is just barely too faint for him to be an empty shell to hold their god, and so like his parents before him, he becomes living weapon and breeding stock. Expected to lead the Grimleal, as the one with the purest fell blood. Expected to produce a warm body suitable for pouring their mad god into.

The course of his life was decided for him long before he was even conceived.

He doesn’t have a choice.

Everyone he cares about and everything he knows is relying on him.

He doesn’t have a choice.

The Exalt of Ylisse hacks and slashes and burns through their home in the name of his god, and the whole damned world must answer for this suffering.

He doesn’t have a choice.

He is an agent of fate.

Validar never got to be a person, not really. He has only ever been a tool of someone else’s will and I think that’s left him empty. He gloats and mocks and insults and laughs about how much he wants it all to burn, but the fact that it’s all he ever does doesn’t paint a very healthy picture. He has no sense of self outside of how he can be useful to the cult. By all accounts he doesn’t even really think of himself as a person.

Many of the parallels between Validar and Robin/Grima start to make a lot of sense this way. The way they both bluster and monologue at least half as a cover, the way they cling to the concept of unalterable destiny to soothe the injustice of having so many choices ripped from them, the way they view every relationship as a means of controlling or being controlled. “Agent of fate” vs “wings of despair”. And I would bet money that Validar’s father was similar, because he too would've been brought up similarly. Risen Kings, the lot of them.

[fayessketchbook]

The cursed ships continue, @iturbide this is all your fault for accidentally giving me the idea of Validar/Chrom's father😂