Dark Magic and Understated Misogyny in Three Houses and Three Hopes
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- Опубліковано 9 вер 2024
- The most lore-heavy of Fire Emblem's tome types comes with some questionable implications in the world of Three Houses...and I don't just means being the product of an evil underground cult.
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The comments are not passing the vibe check at all. The video is about agency and the male lens in which these games operate.
It's really telling when one of the highest voted comments here is that those who use in-universe explanations for a fundamentally non-diegetic issue and thus missed the entire point of the video. Apparently, the creative decisions of using women as victims for commodity reasons flew over their heads. Folding Idea's Thermian Argument video continues to be more relevant.
@@chococats2337 People are disagreeing because we don't believe that the correlation between the characters actions and the mechanics of the game are both used in-tandem to purposely negatively impact woman but that rather the video's writer and others possibly including you, tend to look for the fight for woman's right's where it is objectively unfounded. See one can't just open a discussion about a mechanic and imply it's sexist, then when debated say "well the issue exists outside the sphere of Fire Emblem 3 Houses" when the game in question is in fact used primarily as the point of contention.
The male gaze has a counterpart, the female gaze, and given how many woman I know both personally and online fetishize Dimitri, or Hector, and Ike, or if we want to step out of the sphere of Fire Emblem, Muscular perfect looking men from all across fiction like Wolverine and the "Prince Charming" archetype as a whole, I'd say most media "operates" under the gaze they seek the audience of. In the case of Fire Emblem, IMO I believe it tends to both sides of this. Nearly every man is gorgeous, witty, rich royalty, or extremely masculine and heroic, and nearly all the woman are models filling stereotypes such as "goth girl" and "princess to be rescued".
And that's fine, unless it's not and you'd like characters to all not be desirable?
Which is fine too, as long as it's equalized to everyone.
But we don't talk about how so called "Chic Flick's" objectify men very often. Instead how a video game franchise objectifies woman? (And I do not believe Fire Emblem does in the case of this video). It's either all fine or it's not. Make it make sense.
@roberto730, you essentially admitted that you have no idea what you're talking about as you seem to think the female gaze works the same as the male gaze when that is never the case. Those commenting like yours do not understand the concept that characters are NOT real. They're constructs made from the creator/author’s own ideas & thoughts much like the programmers coding gameplay mechanics. And surprise, the creative team for this game mostly consists of men. The reason why that comment is pinned is because too many people like you do not understand the main thesis of this video: the way dark magic is conceptualized between male and female characters in this game said a lot about the creative teams' biases for how they designed said characters and how those factors play a role in their portrayal in Heroes.
@@chococats2337no, to assume that the writers have bias because the written characters are acting a way is bigoted and foolish. If I write a story and the characters hate let’s say Asians. Does that make me racist? No. It makes me someone who crafted a story that said something. To attach creators to creations is the folly of post-modern ideals in that people cannot seperate story from writer. This video’s thesis is literally assuming that the creative direction of the author is because of a systematic bias towards woman when in reality by my estimation he is wrong. It’s just a game mechanic you’ve attached deeper meaning to
And yes pinning a comment that agrees with your opinion, is a good way to keep people from seeing that not everyone shares your opinion. A thesis statement is still objectively an opinion and people can voice their discontent with it. Hence the like ratio.
Writing off the majority as “uneducated” or “they just don’t understand” only proves you are inept at hearing your word isn’t fact.
Just to bring this up: In Lysithea and Linhardt’s pair ending, Linhardt found a way to get rid of Lysithea’s extra crest so she can actually live a full life, thus making him able to save her in a way the Byleth can’t do so.
I think Hanneman's paired ending does something similar. And that's not a romantic paired ending (thankfully).
Also in her paired ending with Edelgard
I think dark mage being male exclusive is just from their obsession with making pegasus classes being female exlcusive and by extension needing to find something to make male exclusive to justify it
they did that with brawlers tho
@@glue5334 yeah and females got other stuff as well. Its expaned in 3 houses compared to other games but pegasus knights are the most consistently gender locked class for whatever reason other classes arent really restricted in that way
It was weird seeing them make the dancer, with it's feminine costume and animations, free for all while keeping Pegasus Knights and Gremories female only for no discernable reason.
It does mean that, gameplay wise, the women are better off than the men. The male locked classes are worse and easily replacable.
Wouldn't the wyvern classes make more sense to be male exclusive if we needed more male exclusive classes to offset peg knight being gender locked?
@@KantaCrowe yeah that would make morse sense. The restrictions are always pretty arbitrary though
for Hubert at least, while it's never stated, it could be viewed as a sort of "know thy enemy" kind of thing for him. Sure, dark magic is evil and all, but he's primarily characterized as a tactician and schemer. He would gladly go to hell if it meant he took his enemies with him. Or, Edelgard's enemies, at least. Also, while I don't recall if it was romantic, Edelgard and Lysithea actually do have a paired ending where they actually do solve their problems without Byleth intervening. They work together to undo the curses laid upon them after the war.
As a bisexual man who enjoys non conforming characters, I feel Fire Emblem has gone too long without a character like Lucius. The last one we had was Libra back in Awakening, maaaybe male Corrin according to some people. As much as I would enjoy actual characters and good storytelling, I also wouldn't complain if the same male gaze styles and objectification was applied to men, particularly androgynous or crossdressing men. Like if FE is just going to be horny bait from now on, just go all out on it. Give us a crossdressing guy and let the camera man perv out on him the same way you did for Camilla and Edelgard. Give us a ripped guy and sensually scroll over ever definition of his muscles and his well toned ass. Either dial it back or start sexualizing more than women. Please. We have already done it all by now, and you've retreaded Camilla at least 20 times in Heroes.
As another bisexual man who enjoys femboys, I can't believe you would forget about Forrest and Rosado! Subaki, Leon, Linhardt, Yuri and Elm are also very fine...
@@greendemon905 Ashe I think at least approaches femboy territory, not in dress, but in other ways.
I mean, they kind of do that with Balthus. The Guy is literally running around shirtless for the first half of the Game and for the Entirety of the Ashen Wolves Story. That's basicly his Thing, and both him as well as Characters in the Game aknowledge it.
I also don't think that the Heroes Females in the Summer Side Quests are a fair Comparision. When going through these, there is a definite Change in how Males are portrayed, they used to chose primarily slim and/or young Guys (mostly one or two Token Guys and like 5 Girls) and the few that were muscular would wear Jackets or hold something to cover up their Abs, the noteable Exception being Xander, while in recent Years, they do portray Males sexually attractive (Dedue, Sylvain, Dimitri f.e.) and bring as many Males as Females.
It's just that it's very difficult to have male Characters be overly sexual in their Design without going too far. Basicly aside from being handsome, which applies to most Fire Emblem Blokes anyway, there is only them being muscular which many Characters are inherently in their Base Design (think Barst, Hawkeye, Balthus, Dieck, Shiro, Hinata, Ike) or them having certain big Assets which would probably be too explicit and would have to get a Rating. Everything else I can think of would probably be kink-related and only apply to a very small Portion of the Fandom.
@@greendemon905 ew...
I think the why Hubert knows Dark Magic becomes obvious when you realize Hubert has spent years studying the Agarthans methods, technology, and tactics so he and Edelgard can ultimately strike back against them or defend themselves against them as needs demand, likely a similarish situation with Jeritza.
As for the rest Hubert comes from a family that are the empires spymasters, assassins, and general “we do bad things so other people don’t have to” group. Really I think on Scarlet Blaze of Crimson Flower he actually reminds me of Tharja most of all which is probably its own can of worms and part of me hopes we some day do get the two of them talking shop just for giggles I feel like they would completely understand each other much like Tharja does with Camilla in warriors. Tharja is broody hot goth chick, Hubert is creepy handsome goth guy; both have a potentially romantic attachment to someone with White hair, both are bisexual, both delight in being hammy evil on the job, and both can actually be surprisingly sweet when you dig deeper into their supports.
I never really cared about dark mage as a class in three houses because of how pointless the class is, because giving a chip damage skill to a magic unit is most of the time, not that useful compared to mage mastery skill which is basically just free magic damage , so l just didn't notice the female units can't get the class, so thank for pointing it out.
Yeah Hubert's class is fun on non serious runs...but it's utter trash compared to the female only gremory which is why I prefer lysibeth...or annette as mages (Dorthea...is ok). But to call the class mysoginist is...well just stupid in my opinion.
i remember getting a dark seal and wanting to use it on dorothea and being like “wait, so i got this thing for nothing?”
i wasted uses on the lance of ruin for this thing.
15:20 "I don't want a waifu, I want an actual character" is such a mood, my dude.
Basically my feelings on TotK Zelda. Because so many people complained about BotW Zelda being "whiny" and a "b*tch", Nintendo got rid of all of her flaws for the sequel, which made her boring.
Ya
I’m not a fan with the idea of Cornelia being a male Argarthain, like not only would that be kinda disappointing since the only other female in the TWSITD group that has presence is Kronya and I hate her, and that’s not even getting into the ‘other’ discussion of is essentially a man wearing the skin of a woman to disguise themselves, I want to believe it’s a translation error since the translation has done this before (Sylvain flirting with a guy in Ingrid’s support and Edlegard being more bloodthirsty to kill the Nabathaians) but I kinda doubt it
Alternatively maybe Thales doesn’t give enough of a shit about his subordinates to properly gender them
I like to headcanon Cornelia as transfemme, and Thales deadnames and misgenders her because his sole personality trait is “evil”.
I mean Cornelia’s real name is Cleobulus and that is a Greek male name, with no room for interpretation. Greek grammar dictates that this can only be a man’s name. I actually like the idea. It makes the character more interesting and twisted. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Would it have be weird if a female Agathan had impersonated a man?
You can't apply the argument of "would it be weird if it was genderflipped?" because this is specifically a transmisogynist trope. The problem is that going by canon Cleobolus specifically became a woman to deceive men into sexual relations, and the reveal that she was a "man" is supposed to shock the reader into disgust. There's plenty of examples of "male impersonation" in fiction, but it usually specifically happens as a way to justify a woman-assigned character's place in a patriarchal and / or misogynist setting, and not every example of that is gracefully handled either.
@@thelemstar If I may cut in here as I did in another comment, IS has a history with playing fast and loose with its references. Micaiah for example is the name of a male prophet in the Bible, yet she's a female lord in FE. It's unclear whether Cleobolus was meant to be male or female based on the Japanese script, but I'd like to hope that this wasn't a deliberate invocation of some very transphobic tropes.
This was SUCH a fascinating look at an aspect of 3H that I never considered before! Thank you for this!
You know, I’ve never thought about the specific reasons for the characters possessing dark magic. The 2 guys develop it as a way to protect women in their life, in order to be more powerful than they were without the dark magic. And all the girls developing dark magic bc of being experimented on is certainly interesting. I never really made those connections! It’s certainly sus that those male/female distinctions are made in-canon. Moreover, the point being made about the men having access to the dark mage classes and NOT Gremory, with the female classes being the opposite, do REALLY make me suspicious of whether that’s rooted in misogyny, intended or not. Like, only the men can naturally use dark magic, while the girls have to appear more ~delicate~, only able to use elemental and light magic? Very *interesting*. There’s also the fact of the dark mage classes being absolute dogshit in actual gameplay lol, so whatever that means. They’re pretty good in Hopes though. I really really hate gender-locking in general, it makes you wanna not use the male characters in magic classes at all. And the brawler line being unusable by fem chars is really annoying. You can’t tell me Hilda wouldn’t go crazy in those classes 🤌🏼
Anyway, super cool video idea, this definitely isn’t talked about enough in the community!
I’m gay and I don’t think their vulnerability takes away from characters like Edelgard and Rhea it makes them more sympathetic if anything. And while I agree that the mind control of Edelgard was dumb in Three Hopes I very much felt Edelgard was not controlled in Three Houses she acted on her own agency even to become the hegemon felt like her own decision to me. She wanted to use this power of her own free will in Three Houses. And I feel that the men are actually falling flat more often than the women. A lot of the male characters felt far more shallow than the female characters. And these games portray a feudalistic medieval society in which women have traditionally less agency. We know that a lot of succession his based on predominantly agnatic inheritance, meaning sons inherit titles over daughters and women are used to strike alliances. The crest system and how it feeds into the structure of nobility underlines that. So in a world that through its feudal system is strongly patriarchal would naturally cause for women to have less agency and that is a problem you will face with medieval fantasy. Fire Emblem is a Game based on the medieval world and its values. The protection and courtship of women is a central theme of knighthood and chivalry. But I think this disadvantaged position of woman makes characters like Edelgard and Dorothea much more heroic and compelling. They overcome the disadvantages they face in their society and take charge. That wouldn’t feel as impressive if they lived in an egalitarian society.
really an amazing take, thank you for sharing
Exactly this. Fire Emblem Three Houses/Hopes leans heavier into the Kaga era of medieval fantasy where it takes an approach to the handling of its characters that is grounded in how our real world history has treated women. It's ugly, and shameful, and it props up the most flawed ideas of chivalry while simultaneously victimizing women. In the Kaga games, a lot of the treatment of women was much more blatant for what the allegory attempts to be compared to Three Houses. Exceptions exist of course, like the cut line in Bernadetta's support conversation where she mentions the abuse she faced in graphic detail. Stuff like this is meant to be unfair, and display blatant misogyny in the world these characters inhabit. A huge part of what makes a lot of these characters good is their resolve in dismantling these systems of oppression. That's Edelgard's whole character arc. While you can certainly question her methods, and constraints in developing a game with 3 distinct story paths often leads to Edelgard being flanderized as a hypocritical tyrannical fascist by the game itself, you can hardly deny that much of the game is establishing the idea that everything in Fodlan's social structure is built to be deeply flawed on purpose.
It's an interesting discussion because it was something I had never considered the wider implications of, there's a lot of cases of weird gender presentation in fodlan such as the whole brawling thing but these little details really show how internal these biases can get when writing or worldbuilding. I don't agree that the writers didn't care about worldbuilding but I definitely think it's worth making a lesson of for writers
The thing about dark magic based classes in both games is that it’s hard to give a shit that it’s genderlocked because it’s so bad. There’s no reason to ever go dark mage or dark bishop in Houses, and in Hopes I way prefer Gremory as a play style, to the point where I kept Rodrigue in Bishop in AG instead of promoting him to dark bishop.
The gender locking is a problem for other classes, though. Catherine not being able to go Grappler or Ferdinand not having Falcon Knight really sucks
Linhardt getting locked out of Gremory seriously sucks too.
@@bificommander7472 Make him a Holy Knight. The extra movement and Canto really help with his healing duties!
@@greendemon905 It takes a lot to get his skills up for that class. And he would be better in Gremory I sometimes made him my dancer.
A really interesting analysis, thanks for uploading!
That said, you raise some really interesting points. I do wonder how much of this pattern is due to the happenstance of Monica being the victim of the Agarthans we were allowed to rescue in Hopes. If we were able to save Tomas or Arundel, they would have dark magic for the same reason, and while they could go into dark bishop, it would be weird to put them there.
And for what it’s worth, Gremory is just as good if not better at using Dark Magic as Dark Bishop in both games.
Having Monica be the rescued victim at the start of Hopes was certainly a deliberate choice. She does make more sense in that role than Tomas or Arundel on account of how her supposed rescue goes down in Houses...but she's also another yet another victimized young woman, and an easy pick for FEH (where she found herself only a few months after Hopes's release). It's not remotely surprising.
@@gascon-en-exil I think it was also by process of elimination, right? Rescuing Tomas or Arundel would require Hopes be set years before the Academy phase of Houses, rendering the entire playable student cast unusable except maybe like, Balthus.
@@Blackacre438 The writers could have just come up with a handwave for the Agarthans to have kept Tomas or Arundel alive all that time. They're so underdeveloped as an organization that it wouldn't be hard to buy, for example, the Agarthans keeping the real Arundel alive as a bargaining chip against Edelgard, or something. It's never confirmed anywhere that they *need* to kill someone to body-snatch them, and even if it were - it still could have been made to work if IS/KT had really wanted it.
@@gascon-en-exil that’s very true! An Arundel vs Thales battle would have been sick as hell, for instance. That said, I wouldn’t be endorsing that if Hopes did anything interesting with Monica as a character, and I doubt even an Arundel would have been handled any better than, say, Holst.
Regarding the misogyny of Echoes, there's also the fact that nearly every friggin woman is a damsel in distress. I noticed it partway through my first playthrough and laughed every time it happened because it just. keeps. happening! You gotta rescue Silque, then you gotta free Clair, be quick or else Mathilda dies, then go save Est, Irma, Delthea, that random village girl, Tatiana, and even Celica herself! And if you play the DLC, then Shade too (and Randal but he's cool like that). SoV is definitely a remake of a game made in the 90s
And they finally added a female character on Alm's path that is not a damsel in distress and she is obssessed with Alm in a toxic way...
I like Faye I think she a good deconstruction of the devoted love interest and finally show a character traumatized by the violence in a fire emblem game but the fact that she is in a game where almost all the other female characters are first here has an objectif to be rescued by mainly male characters is really unfortunate. The remake also added a character whose main role is to rescue the female lead where in the original game she could take care of herself (at least Conrad is an adult unlike Nils who also protect his adult sister).
@@eleonorepb4565 Faye's funny but I agree that it sucks that they characterized her like that. Especially because Alm already has two other women pining for him.
The scene where Conrad rescues Celica (from rocks lol) is made worse because it comes right after she got pissy with Alm about being mean to her deadbeat king dad. It really makes Celica look like an idiot. The portrayal of class is another aspect that fire emblem games are just awful with, Echoes included. (class doesn't matter... but also class is everything so thank god Alm is The Chosen One and not a country bumpkin like we first thought)
@@guy-sl3kr I mean, class really didn't matter in Echoes. Alm already conquered Rigel, him secretly being the prince only makes things easier, but he would've likely ruled over the land anyway. Heck, the only thing he actually got that made a significant difference in his journey that came from being royalty was personal training from Mycen, for which what Fernand said about Mycen adopting the kid to not be lonely could've been perfectly plausible. And also the lord swords, but those are more of a consistent main character thing which doesn't really always have to do with class.
9:37 It's confirmed at some point that Cornelia IS Cleobulus. Cleobulus was supposed to appear as an enemy in Three Houses but was cut for unknown reasons, and, in a doc containing scrapped plot points and scrapped decision-based stories of Three Houses, it was implied Cornelia's ''true identity was to be revealed in the game proper''.
14:43 Byleth ruined pretty much every character's agency because of this. In every support, Byleth is some sort of savior to the characters, and every character confess to Byleth lots of stuff (mostly their traumatic pasts which end up in monologues and then ''thanks for listening to me'') but Byleth mildly or barely replies or brings anything to the table during supports. Three Hopes fixed Byleth's characterization a bit with supports with Jeralt and Shez, but that's because they work better as a Navarre type character than an Avatar. In Lysithea's case, she can end up with Linhardt and, in their A support, he promises her to find a cure for her, but he also does that with Hapi, and, in general, his Crest research is for everyone's benefit.
16:17 I'd say that for every character in the Fodlan games, though. The male characters are also affected by the bad writing, just to a lesser degree than every female character. In general, it's clear the devs had a problem with show don't tell mainly because they wanted to pander to the player as much as possible, so every writing decision is based on that alone.
I'm still going to hold out hope that that one line of dialogue that refers to Cleobulus* with male pronouns is a mistranslation, because if it isn't then the implications are pretty unpleasant, to say the least. (To be clear, not in terms of Cleobulus being transfeminine in-universe, but rather that the developers would be fine with a male character taking on a female identity and acting like Cornelia does, and how that would play into harmful transphobic stereotypes.)
*Yes, the historical Cleobulus, one of the Seven Sages of Greece after whom most of the Agarthans were named, was male. However, that doesn't necessarily have to translate to the character. After all, Micaiah is the name of a male prophet in the Bible...and of course we all know what IS did with that name.
honestly i hadnt even noticed dark mage was male-exclusive |D
ive been planning/writing a three houses fankid sequel which is half-centred on the agarthans, and this video has given me more stuff to think about re my story and character choices, which im very grateful for! so thank you for making this ^^
this is a great video on such an interesting topic. as a woman and a lesbian I'm constantly aware of my gender and the way the world views people like me, i think this is a very valuable conversation to have
I think you strike a point that I haven't really thought about before and that's really interesting. Whether it was an intended touch by the writers and developers, the way the story is consructed seems to naturally produce this sort of dilemma of where dark magic comes from and what that means for its male and female practicioners. It's especially strange that in the playable roster there are more cannonical female dark (or black magic?) users when they don't even have access to the appropriate class for their spell list. The point that I'm not so sure on is that dark (or black magic, whatever it's called) is directly related to the kind of unsavory attention that is drawn to the female characters of the game. It certainly runs parallel to an extent, but that doesn't mean that the two are related neccesarily.
Huh. You know for all the complaining I do about 3H's blatant misogyny I don't think I ever connected the dots with the dark magic stuff. Very interesting video!
I think one of the dividing factors between old FE misogyny and new FE misogyny is that old FE misogyny (up through about Awakening I'd say) feels more... unintentional. Like it's a product of the devs not understanding their biases and loading the games up with them unintentionally. New FE (especially FEH) feels like it was crafted by a marketing team specifically to be misogynistic because they know it'll sell.
I always read Hubert as having been taught his demeanor and spells by his father, who I don't doubt was complicit with TWSITD
Yeah his father is referred to as a kind man who basically feared for the results of edelgard fathers power hungriness and Huberts life so I doubt he would associate with the agarthans
@pedroribeirodesousa9152 i don't recall him ever being described as kind specifically
@@LukasKnife hanneman does so ,he considered him to be a good friend of his with a great sense of responsibility that didn’t act rashly or without pondering .
I liked this video! One of the only things I would disagree with is that the victimization of Edelgard at the hands of dark magic doesn't play into the main story in a relevant way. Crimson Flower is explicitly locked behind having seen the C Support where she discusses her trauma, through which Edelgard becomes the heroine of her own story and reclaims her bodily autonomy in the Crimson Flower route and abolishes crests in a way that won't victimize future women in her position. Fodlan society is explicitly misogynistic outside of Dark Magic, and I would say the game does a great job of talking about the implications of the Crest system that predicates status on birth. Mercedes/Jeritza support chain talks about her being targeted by her father in order to produce him a Crest-bearing heir, Dorothea's characterization is in finding a Crest-bearing husband at the academy because of the lack of class mobility for women, the reliance on Crests victimized Lysithea and Edelgard as you mentioned, Ingrid is forced to commodify her own body and love for the sake of saving her territory - the ramifications of the patriarchy are, from my perspective, a central theme in Three Houses that the game never shies away from contending with. And dark magic, used by Edelgard and Lysithea in a war against Crests, can be argued as a feminist reclamation of what the patriarchy took from them. Lysithea literally has to fight to reclaim the life that she has been robbed of against the Agarthans, but the Agarthans are a face for Crest System which is largely faceless and heavily embedded in Fodlan society. I mean, what is the Academy in the first place? A central hub for education that all three major territories send their future nobles to for education, which presumably reifies at length that Crests are "actually a good thing" and should be continually maintained. This is definitely off the path from Dark Magic now, but my point is mainly that Fodlans ritualistic patriarchy is represented both through the dark magic cult and the church who they stand at odds with, and the war commenced by Edelgard can be viewed as a radical rejection of both and a carving out of her own uniquely anti-patriarchal future using the bodily autonomy she has been denied from her entire life.
These are some interesting points! While I think the Fodlan games do a much better job when it comes to giving its female characters depth beyond “damsel in distress uwu,” there are still some underlying things abt them that point out how they’re still subjected to appealing to certain demographics. I don’t think the points you made were deliberate on the writers’ part, but it still means that this kind of stuff gets regulated to a normalized subconscious of sorts. I love Edwlgard a lot, and I think that having glimpses of her being a silly young woman from time to time add to her depth; she’s a young woman who has to grow up fast if she wants to see her ideals come to be. The cold emperor contrasted with the kind hearted girl that used to be is part of why I really love Edelgard. And the fact that she is a woman lends itself to breaking from oppression/societal norms that Edelgsrd strives to dismantle, esp given that Fodlan is a very patriarchal continent. This is some of why I like Edelgard and overall why I think she’s very compellingly written. That said…
When it comes to stuff like FEH esp, then there’s a any% speed run to make her into uwu waifu material in some way. Brave Edelgard is regal and is the cold emperor we know, but then we get hit in the face with those badonkers for no reason besides fanservice. In general when it comes to when IS really wants to sell this character, then they find ways to “soften” her or make her much more sympathetic and cute. There’s nothing inherently wrong with exploring that side of Edelgard; it’s not bad to see a side of Edelgard where she expresses more of her well, youth and lingering childhood sentiments. An Edelgard who, at least for a moment, can let go of the walls she had to built up and just…enjoy herself and live a little. But the thing is that tends to be what gets focused on, rather than be seen as a part of the bigger whole of Edelgard; and so, even when Edelgard is getting explored in other ways, it always feels like they want to fallback on the vulnerable side of Edelgard, if that makes sense??? Idk, so often it feels like to me that yes, Edelgard is the cold emperor, but then they find some sort of way to immediately soften the impact of it? Like she HAS to always be that vulnerable, silly woman, rather than that merely be a small part of her character. When it comes to characters like Edelgard, those vulnerable parts of them have to be used smartly; they can’t be at the forefront, they should be regulated to a small section to add another layer to them. And while I think Three Houses largely succeeds on that front (unsure abt Hopes, haven’t played it), when we get into FEH, her more “marketable” traits start to get pushed more, start to be emphasized to make it easier to make waifu material out of her or objectify her.
This problem isn’t limited to Edelgard, ofc; morally gray female characters often have to face the kind of weirdo BS she does; and lots of female characters get objectified the moment they need to sell regardless of any additional depth to their characters. Sorry for the long and incoherent ramble lol, but this vid just gave me a lil more stuff to ponder lol
sadly, "sex sells" is a huge business practice that not just IS uses to rake in money. cool characters just get demoted to sexualization. Fire Emblem isn't exempt.
Why would you call FE shadows of valentia FE15 instead of FE2 remake? Why inflate the numbers like that for fire emblem?
the numbers have always been unofficial shorthand (as far as i'm aware) and there's precedent with the DS remakes being numbered in the community as well
personally i think using numbers for these games is the real inflation issue and not an SOV problem, unless you're deeply familiar with the series you're not gonna know the 15th one is SOV just like you wouldn't know the 9th one is POR
the numbers probably made more sense back in the gba days when most of the games had unofficial titles in english at best and the game called "fire emblem" for western audiences was actually the 7th game in the series later translated as "the blazing blade" so there was no standardized shorthand at the time for these games that only had japanese titles
@@noelemblem nah I can easily remember PoR as 9, its right after the gbas, but SoV is 2 remade
male mages in 3h needed something after not having access to gremory, dark flier, and valk.
Correct, and even then dar mage and dark bishop are shit
"Misogyny!"
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Great perspective on Flodan game, you're bringing topics I wished were talked about more often in the community.
Really great video! Though I do disagree with a few readings and/or conclusions made about some characters, a lot of other comments were able to address them in a far better way than I ever could. I'm just glad we're having this discussion in the community. Misogyny is a massive problem in fire emblem stories, and it really needs to be called out more. I also really appreciate the heroes slander, we need to be far more critical of a gatcha game that has a predatory monetisation system and that consistently objectifies and infantilises women.
It's not a problem
Interesting points, on a meta level I do think it’s funny that most of the best characters in the game are women though lol, like there’s soooo many mediocre male units
Caspar, Lorenz, Raphael, Ashe, Alois, Gilbert… meanwhile there’s not as many flops on the female side
Dark Mage class line is pretty shite, I’m not a fan of gendered classes in general if there’s no counterpart on the other side. Some people disagree, that’s fine, but I think it’s lame as fuck I can’t put Hubert on a dark Pegasus. Let him fly dammit
Why did they bring back gender locked classes for this game. Gimme my War Master Mercedes and Gremory Lindhart
War master Mercedes gonna be blursed
But yes stupid gender lock won't let my goth boi Hubert fly with a dark pegasus
Amazing video sir. This is exactly the type of deeper discussion I love having around games. Will be watching more form you
Wouldn't it be misandry, since it implies only men would, willingly, delve into the dark arts and eat babies?
I feel Dark magic should be anathema in Fodlan, punishable by death. It would give actual reason for Lysithea and Hapi to be uncomfortable around Rhea and the COS. Continuing from that idea Dark magic and that class line should only be available post time skip, on the CF route. Hubert should be the only unit to use Dark magic openly during White Clouds but, he gets away with it because of his status and his utter contempt for Church doctrine. Dark Bishop should also have a female counterpart, the Witch class from Fates.
That's ignoring the intended cool factor of dark magic, or of designs like the Death Knight, Arval-possessed Shez, or I suppose Hubert.
This definitely falls into the realm of misogyny where the female dark magic users are concerned. They all need to be written as trauma victims to rationalize their dark magic use, when male dark mages can simply *be* - as evil as they please. The limited range of expression allowed for female characters is the real disappointment.
@@gascon-en-exil I get what you mean. When I hear dark magic, I immediately think of the Dark side or Blood magic, the easy route to power that takes a toll on the body and soul. The cool factor never occurred to me. The fact that they need to be test subjects to delve into it rather than it being a choice, like the male units, is kinda disappointing.
misandry doesnt exist
@@gascon-en-exil "intended cool factor of dark magic"........I'm going to be simple on that one it's not exactly supposed to be "cool" for a normal person,._
if I say it like this if you actually saw someone dressed up like that it would probably be more horrifying then anything else (as long as the person in question isn't just a cosplayer)
And sorry but can't really see how it's in the realm of misogyny could you please clarify for me?
And for why female dark magic users mostly need to go through some trauma to get it I'd say there are two ways to answer the real world reason which I don't know and the in universe reason that I don't know either but which I can simply guess and reason my way to a good enough theory...........that I came with in under 10min anyway I'll try to explain it the best way I can.
I would say learning dark magic is extremely hard to begin with.
Trauma and dark magic seems to be a pair that goes hand in hand so I say trauma just makes you better and or makes it easier to learn.
In that I say the reason why male gets it as an exclusive class is that males are simply born differently whether the difference is mental or physical idk.
or if it goes down to a soul level after all the dark magic does seem to tear away at your soul.
Maybe something like this. a female soul has less resistance against dark magic to start with and it gets better with trauma?(I would assume the same applies for males but idk)
Anyway like I said idk that's just some theory I came up with in 10min so it's not exactly that polished and I'm tired.
@@kersoa6426 Some people enjoy the fantasy of playing the villain, or of using dark or morally questionable abilities in fiction. It's often *because* that would be disturbing or off-putting in real life that it's a fantasy for some people. FE's dark magic in particular is appealing to some because 1) it's rare among the playable cast, so there's a novelty factor, 2) it usually has secondary effects, so it has more tactically complicated applications than most other offensive magic, and 3) sheer aesthetic value, something the developers do seem to occasionally take into account as with my examples with Jeritza learning Death and Hubert's use of Mire.
And to roll this in with a few other comments, there are certainly plenty of headcanon opportunities for why Hubert and Jeritza use dark magic...but the problem is that the games never bother to provide any explanation themselves while also tying every single female dark magic user to the Agarthan via past victimization. *That's* where the misogyny comes in; like the men of the Duma Faithful, the male characters can simply be as they like, but their female counterparts needed to be traumatized to rationalize their dark magic use. Various attempts I've seen to justify that in the comments section, ex. that women have less resistance to dark magic or that women are easier to write as abuse victims, are themselves misogynistic explanation not so different from the one I posed in the video: that IS wants to keep them as marketable as possible for Heroes alts along with the other ways that they commodify all of their attractive female characters. (Granted that they also commodify their major male characters, but they're never given the same exploitative designs and framing - see my point about Lyon and Takumi vs. Hopes Edelgard.)
I really don’t understand sex specific classes in general… like, does anyone actually like those? Does allowing or barring a character’s access to a class based on what’s between their legs really add anything to the experience? It just seems so silly and unnecessary to me, and I’m baffled by the fact that it has stuck around for this long.
thank you for your pro women allyship!
I'll start by pointing out that if you'd like to have a discussion video, then pinning a comment that agrees with your stance when there's multiple others with well over 3 times as many likes that don't share your opinion is actually petty. It's a step removed from silencing people that disagree with you. If you want to have an open discourse you should let the people's opinions speak for themselves.
As for my opinion (and you can disagree) you have an interesting take; though I think you're digging too deep into what is effectively a mechanic that if I recall, the player base hated in that only male units could be dark magic users in 3 Houses.
The game is still a medieval fantasy with some focus on the philosophy of chivalry and saving the maiden or being the heroic knight. This theming makes sense for the timeline being portrayed in the games. In fact Woman in Fire Emblem tend to do far better than actual woman in the actual medieval period. Well actually in the real medieval period you could argue life was horror for EVERYONE except the nobility but the point stands. The notion that a video game franchise that wrote who is in my opinion one of the strongest female leads (Edelgard, who is not a weak victim who get's controlled, she makes her choices and stands by them to the end at least in 3 Houses) is hurting woman just blatantly incorrect IMO. She has trauma and she's stronger for her past, Dimitri and Claude do to, and none of the class leaders get past their ghosts without Byleth picking their route.
This extends to the student's as well.
Ignatz is pretty much a sniveling mess when you meet him,
Caspar has an inferiority complex to his brother,
Felix lost his brother and becomes toxic and violent,
Ferdinand think's it's his duty to be better then everyone and has to come to terms with everyone being equal around him, Sylvain is a hated womanizer who does it in because he's apathetic to himself...
I could go on but my point is that all of the student's have trauma and issues. It's in no way just the woman as you seem to think. I think you are connecting 2 unrelated points in a what is just a bad game mechanic, and the fact that not only the girls but almost all of the student's have terrible pasts to them. It's interesting the writers decided the girls were all experimented on and that's how they go their dark magic though. Lazy writing on that front I can agree to. But not actively mysogyny.
I'm surprised no mention of Tharja at all even though she's a dark-associated mage whose magic use is associated with her Plegian nationality. Cause Tharja was decently written aside from Awakening being really inconsistent in support pacing.
Good video, I appreciate videos like these a lot. That said, I can't say I'm on board some of these Lysithea and Edelgard takes. Lysithea can live a long life without intervention from Byleth (Linhardt which is a romantic ending and Hanneman which is a platonic ending) and Edelgard maintains her agency in all routes barring the second half of Azure Gleam.
Great analysis, I didnt noticed the incredible gender mecanical and narrative distiction these games made, sadly I dont think it will change given that a big part of the series popularity comes from exactly commodifiying their characters.
W content
Misogyny in a Japanese game? I'm shocked 😑
Isn't Hubert closer to Aida than Manfroy? Because unlike Manfroy he don't manipulate Edelgard and is actually a loyal subordinate like Aida is to Arvis.
Also I don't think that Kaga's game are necessarily more sexist than the games that came after for exemple Ninian is a female character that is super dependant on her brother who is way younger than her (and a child by dragon standart) and on Eliwood with who she can have a love story where she is passive while he support her emotionally and protect her,I don't think the writers are necessarily sexist but the way she is written contain unfortunate implication.
She is like Deirdre (a bit better because she has a personnality even if a good part of said personnality is dedicated to love Eliwood the rest is decent) but Deirdre and Sigurd are meant to be a deconstruction of the classical archetypes of the almost perfect hero and his damsel in distress love interest and none of the girl that Seliph can marry is dependent on him like Ninian on Eliwood, even Tine/Linda despite being emotionally scarred is an independent character (in her lover conversation with Seliph show that she is able to decide by her own to support the others on the battlefield even if her husband is worried for her safety), Julia is quite dependant on Seliph but unlike Ninian she is not meant to be the lord's waifu (I think that Seliph and Julia's initial attraction is here to mirror Arvis and Deirdre but Seliph avoid his uncle mistake), she is not an adult (if I remember correctly she is 14) so it's less weird that she rely on her brother Seliph (who unlike Nils is the older sibling) and when she regain her memories she seem more able to take care of herself (I think that even her conversation if she or her lover return to the castle is changed after re recruiting her).
I think dark magic, and magic in general could be greatly fleshed out in 3H. For example, just looking at spell lists makes it clear that most characters in these games have an affinity for specific elements. There's no real reason why that couldn't be included in the games lore. As for the connection between dark magic and men specifically, that could be justified by connecting an affinity for dark magic with traits more commonly seen in men such as disagreeableness and resentment, and by giving more men like Felix, Hanneman and Ignatz dark magic as well.
Great video!
Personally I like gendered classes. Limitations encourage variety in unit usage, at least for me.
Oh, I agree. That's especially true for games with nearly-unlimited reclassing, like most of modern Fire Emblem.
There are just those weird implications behind dark mage/bishop being male-only (even if the classes themselves are...not great).
@gascon-en-exil it's good they.... attempted? To give men a consolation prize for not being able to go into pegasus knight. (Which I also hate, go back to fates' male pegs pls). Shame it's not worth it for a lot of units.
I agree with limiting class decisions, but specifically in the fodlan games it doesn’t make narrative sense, and there would be much better ways to limit classes than gender throughout the series. Fates did it best.
Man FE16 promised so much and delivered so few...
I found this discussion very interesting as it's a topic that I never quite thought of.
Especially the misogynistic angle of all this... I'm not all too familiar with the topic as most people I know don't have much to say on it or at least broad it up in discussion.
I think these bits and pieces are not really all that easy to pick up on if you don't try to look for them.
In general I don't think the story is any worse because of the way characters are written in this case. I think it fits the style and time period rather well... obviously this comes from a man, so take it with a grain of salt, I do not wish to sound like I know these things better than others who are actually affected by this.
Anyway characters like Edelgard to me don't feel like they are in positions where they are powerless in these bad situation happening to them... especially Edelgard to me has always been a strong character all on her own.
Heck saying she can only win because of Byleth isn't really true, because she's winning in every route that you don't have her as a unit, if anything it means Byleth is just the broken MC who is actually necessary to take her down in the other routes.
I mean Dimitri and Claude seemed to be royally f*cked in their routes without you, even if that makes little sense narrative wise given they then have no problems when you are on Edelgard's side... idk, I'd say it's probably because of Rhea.
But what I'm trying to say is that Edelgard at least to me seems like she can stand on her own just fine despite suffering tremendously.
I view this whole thing with dark mages being male only more so in it was done like this for mechanical reasons, because gender locked classes exist.
Why they even exist is a mystery yet to be solved by anyone, but it's probably to give units more indentity by being limited in classes...
Regardless the female characters with dark magic spells always being victims is curious to me, while I don't think of this as an inherently unintentional thing, I'd like to believe this was not done for some empowerment or weird kink kind of reason... Three Houses is a lot less sexualized than something like Awakening or Fates abd yes while Heroes does sexualize them, it's f*cking heroes, it's a gacha game, they don't put thought into which characters shouldn't be sexualized... because if it sells they will do it.
The reason why only the female characters seem to be victims in this is probably because it's easier to write a female victim than a male one and if you believe in more traditional views, as the Japanese like to do, it's also a darker thing to do... think about how often do women get recognized as victims over men when it comes to things like SA.
Like I said, Idk... all I can say is it didn't stand out to me as a thing that affects too much of the quality... I'm just happy as long as the characters are good and the story and gameplay is a fun experience in the end.
But feel free to disagree and maybe make some points I may have missed more clear.
What was the line from Scarlet Blaze?
The one where Cleobulus (Cornelia's true Agarthan identity) is referred to with male pronouns.
I would’ve never even realized that dark mage was gender locked in 3H until watching this because the class is mediocre at best.
However the gross fanservice is something that I like you touching on because although it’s just as obvious in older games it’s nowhere near as in your face as that one Camilla cutscene.
CLOCK IT!
I love you.
I think there is a better argument to be made that the games are misandrist, rather then misogynistic. The fact that males get the dark mage class, implies that they have the capacity to be evil, just by the very nature of being male, while the woman are pure hearted, which is the excuse given, for why they can ride a pegasus. Similarly, the barbarian class (a heavily implied evil class) in awakening is male locked (while woman get pegasus classes again). I'm personally also against gender locked classes, because I think it's unnecessary and kinda dumb.
The part about "men get to act" seemed weird to me as well. Sure, jeritza acts by killing his father, but Edelgard gets to act as well. She burns all of fodland in her ideals of a meritocracy.
The "self insert saving Edelgard" part was bewildering to say the least. Edelgard doesn't need to be saved. She effectively crushes fodland during the time of the protagonists absence. There was no doubt that she would have conquered fodland if byleth wasn't a thing. If there is a character that needs saving, it's Dimitri. In the golden deer and silver snow route, Dimitri goes insane, getting himself killed at the battle of grondr fields. The only way you can save him, is by being by his side. Claude just leaves fodland in the non golden deer routes (assuming you spare him in the black eagle route).
It's also funny to me that you're calling Edelgard a "sympathetic character" when she is arguably the most polarizing lord in all of fire emblem, unironicaly hated by many. She is morally grey to say the least, by going to war against all of fodland (for no other reason than wanting her ideals to be present in all of fodland, instead of just reshaping the empire) and making allies with the agarthans out of necessity to further her own goals.
She is a decently well written character, even though she feels imo a bit flat, because her entire personality revolves around her being the adrestian empress, having been experimented on, how much she dislikes crests and the church, her ideals of creating a meritocracy and going to war for it, which are all connected to one another. It's brought up in 99% of her conversations, which makes sense in a way, since this has been her entire live ever since she had been experimented on, but it still feels a bit too focused imo.
Another thing I don't understand is what feh reusing all the protagonists is supposed to have to do with fe3h's characters and how they are written. Feh is a shallow game, that focuses a lot, if not mostly on "gamble for your png waifu", I don't deny that, but why bring up Edelgards personality when talking about a game she is not even from?
“The camera loving lingering on an upskirt shot” *half the male audience rewinding to see shown upskirt shot again*
Doesn't edelgard use dark magic too
Yes, she does. That's part of the point of the thumbnail - how she's presented vs. how male dark magic users like Hubert are presented.
@@gascon-en-exil oh ok
The worldbuilding of Fodlan was clearly cobbled together over time and not really well thought-out from the beginning. For a game with that much story depth, more concerted effort should have been made, but perhaps it is expecting too much from a video game. Or is it? Fire Emblem really needs a new game that strays so far from the misogyny and the tropes. I think IS underestimates the audience.
Yeah, the quality (or more often than not, just the presence of) of lore and world building is quite inconsistent in 3H. There's lots of bits that are good, and also lots of bits that really aren't or are just plain missing. It stands out against other FE games simply in that it bothered trying at all. It's a direction that I'd like the series to keep moving in and improving on, I think there are lots of people (like me) for whom the (attempted) world building was a draw, and probably plenty of potential fans who would get into the series if there was a serious effort at a coherent, interesting setting to set FE gameplay in. And a serious effort at being aware of and avoiding the bad tropes that often weigh the series down. There are games with really fantastic stories and world building, it's definitely not too much to expect.
Genderlocked classes have existed in FE since the very first game. And yes Dark magic did tend to be gender locked to males while women had a light magic, but it wasn't really evil just really Ying and Yang.
That being said yes Fodlan games would have been better served if they actually followed IS's notes and made Edelgard the villain in control of her own actions.
No, gender locked classes didn't appear until Fire Emblem Gaiden.
@GarbenTheBerserker Wrong. Pegasus Knight class is one that only had women. No men could start out as one.
INCORRECT, please to do some search on FE1 and FE3.
Pegasus Knight sprites are gender neutral in FE1 and there's NO reclassing whatsoever in the game. You don't recruit male Wyvern Knight in FE1, but they still exist.
In Mystery of the Emblem, the Enemy Pegasus Knights are EXPLICITLY MALE.
@@brightlight8852
@@brightlight8852At that point it wasn't said to be a gender locked class it's just that only two kingdoms had access to pegasus and we only got a few playable characters from this kingdom who all happened to be women, given that reclassing didn't existed in fe1 the implication was that Michialis was actually a promoted pegasus knight, we even have enemy male pegasus knight in fe3.
Three Houses is my favourite game, and I'll be the first to admit that I don't think that makes it perfect because no game is. As much as I love its characters, I always disliked how it insisted on gender-locking certain classes, because I wanted to be able to make a War Master Hilda or a Falcon Knight Ferdinand, and I'd always thought Dark Mage being a male-exclusive class made no sense -- especially considering how much better the women often are at using magic (which is a whole other can of worms I won't get into opening). I hadn't thought about the implications of the class this way, so thank you for giving me something to chew on. I think you make a lot of good points and, yeah, I honestly agree that it's pretty twisted for the franchise to keep making traumatised women only to fetishise them in Heroes later.
i like the misogyny writing :)
“The men are *never* objectified like the women.” Cough cough Summer scramble cough cough
I wouldn’t call Gaius in baggy trunks and Chrom in a suit that logically should have some visible shape to it in the back but doesn’t comparable to what we see of Tharja and Cordelia in that same DLC. The summer banners of FEH are even more unbalanced when it comes to the lack of male fanservice. It’s 90% baggy swim trunks, and the rest is Lorenz with Ken doll anatomy in a speedo and Dimitri in a wet suit bottom with no definition either.
It’s also worth adding that Summer Scramble and the summer banners are explicit fanservice episodes. Characters like Edelgard and the Book VII OCs are objectified as part of what are supposed to their main narratives.
@@gascon-en-exil it’s more so the wording behind it. *never* the men are *never* shown as fan service ever 100% there is not a single solitary case of a male character being used as eye candy ever in the history of FE. We both know that’s not even remotely true, is there more female fan service then male? Of course, it’s anime it somewhat come part and parcel with it (like it or hate it) but to blanket state that there is no male fan service is a bold faced lie.
@@braedenmclean5304 If we're being pedantic about word choice, then his original statement of "The men are never objectified 'like' the women" still stands since, as was pointed out, the women are just routinely fanserviced out, not just as part of a routine free-pass event like summer.
Also, 'it's anime, just accept it' doesn't negate criticism. It doesn't make something not objectifying just because a lot of people/things do it.
@@Renteka-Bond 1) if we really want to argue about main stuff only, stack up every nearly shirtless, muscle bound, abs out guys, any of the ‘tragically dark sad boys’ and any of the other extremely effeminate guys as well. The list is fairly long on both sides so at what point does it become a problem for you?
2) I wasn’t using it to negate anything, simply explain *why* it’s a thing. You do understand someone can understand why people do something and still not be a fan of it, right?
Woe be upon thee and w*stoid fans of fire emblem.