Thank you so much for addressing the annoying anti-shipping fandom culture that has been growing over the years that makes fandom discourse more of a genuine headache rather than the silly musings of fans over a piece of media. I'm so done with these people ahdjf This video was extremely entertaining, I wasn't expecting to agree with so many (and almost all) of your opinions here. You also made an extremely spot-on description of fandom and its different 'bubbles' and how they interact with each ither (like how people that usually stay in the gameplay discussion side of the fanbase don't have the same etiquette as the people that engage in transformative works, because theyre like two different cultures. I've never seen anyone point this out or saying it so explicitly and it was so refreshing). I made a tumblr relatively recently so I'll go and follow you there!!

@GeorgisTrying

9 ай бұрын

Some pushback against the shipping culture is reasonable, sometimes people are overzealous and attack others more in shipping than in any other place of fandom. That can and **should** be checked; criticism **is** allowed other's preferences are just preferences

It's so funny to hear that people thought of Hector, Eliwood, and Lyn as the harry potter trio. That comparison has never occurred to me and not once have I heard anyone mention it either, thank god.

@gascon-en-exil

11 ай бұрын

I suppose it's less that anyone thought that they were exactly equivalent and more that the FE fandom of the time copied (maybe subconsciously) shipping discourse trends from what was then the biggest thing in online culture, helped by the ships conveniently mapping onto certain HP ships. (That said, there is a 100% chance that buried in some long-forgotten Livejournal or DeviantArt account there's fanart of the FE7 lords as the HP trio. Generalized HP AUs were all over the place in pretty much every fandom for what felt like a decade at least.)

As someone who stays away from fandom drama, this was an interesting watch

About the toxic fic ones, I specifically remember a Claude/Dedue/Petra fic where Dedue escaped from Dimitri’s abuse to heal with these two. To say that the author had a negative interpretation of Dimitri’s actions in Azure Moon and of Dimidue as a romantic relationship is to make the understatement of the century. This isn’t to say that I don’t read fic where my perception if a ship is challenged. I’m completely fine with fic where Dimidue split off because they weren’t working out. But the author’s opinion on Dimitri and Dimidue rubbed me off so bad that I blocked them on ao3.

@gascon-en-exil

11 ай бұрын

I've seen that fic before. It ranks up there with the one (that I tried to find again as a reference here, but couldn't) where Felix physically threatens Mercedes for being too close to Annette...because of their age gap. Why Felix of all people would care about or even notice such a thing, I don't know, but it's so easy to tell that the author had a bone to pick with Anncedes/Mercinette shippers and wanted to express that in the silliest way possible.

@veestreams

11 ай бұрын

That fic was WILD. IIRC it also came bundled with a weird essay where the author asserted that Dedue's paralogue was actually Dimitri being abusive and forcing Dedue to kill the Duscur soldiers (which to anyone who actually, you know, READ the dang paralogue was soooo patently ridiculous) which is why Dedue needed to "escape" him.

I am an Edelgard fan and disagree with basically everything you say on that matter BUT Thank you for calling out these "we understand the story better than the developers" people.

i am aware that this is more of an analysis of the general fan culture around the games and not the discussion of specific events in the fanbase, but this makes me recall the time when a couple of people decided that this one Dimitri/Claude shipper was being gross about the pairing, and decided to out them as the person who ran away with 10 grand from their webcomic kickstarter, and that they had an alt where they posted despicable me incest yaoi. interesting times

As someone who is new to the fire emblem fandom and has only played houses, hopes, and engage so far, this is interesting. 😂(I do plan to play some of the old games once I find my old ds and gameboy at my parents houses.)

I remember the apocalypse that occurred when FE Heroes released bridal Sanaki and the heroes subreddit mod had to write a message to shitpostemblem to ask them to please stop. I think that was at a time where shitpostemblem was more contrarian, but it got really diluted after Three Houses.

I don't really think that the negativity towards Engage is all that deeply specific to inveterate Three Houses fans. it's rather another step in the cycle that seems to be inescapable in long-term franchises: a new title comes out and it goes in its own direction, and not everyone likes the new direction better. and among the ones who don't, not everyone practices good hater etiquette, and not everyone has the perspective to understand that other future titles are also going to go in new directions as well. Three Houses's commercial success magnifies this phenomenon relative to what we've previously seen in the Fire Emblem fandom, but it's still nothing compared to the nuclear miasma that was, say, the Pokémon Diamond/Pearl pre-release season. anyway, I still think one of the funniest bits of Fire Emblem wank I've seen in my life was someone on tvtropes writing up a Fridge Brillance entry for Fire Emblem Awakening, where the idea was that it was truly clever how people who don't like Chrom/Sumia are just like Sumia before she (allegedly) underwent Character Development

3H faction discourse only gives me headaches, but I am now at the point where Fates faction discourse by contrast is hilarious to me. It was aggravating at the time but is funny in retrospect that people seem to treat the plot implications in that game so seriously they would ascribe real life moral values to liking Nohr/Hoshido and get mad at others about it, when the plot in question is, well. I've seen some remnants of it floating around as well relatively recently too. That said I'll never get over the 'Hoshidans are racist towards Nohrians' stuff in particular (aside from the pedantic akshually it's xenophobia not racism), because of course not being kind and understanding towards the people currently invading your country is a blight on one's personal values forever

Clashing about "canon" wife is really stupid when you know that it has been confirmed that Fire Emblem has a multiverse with multiple versions of the same world (representing the different way your play can end (character death and option chosen)). If someone annoy people by arguing that their ship is more canon it tend to prove that this someone don't find any value in said ship other than the label

I didn’t know some of these existed.

Being an Edelgard and Kylo Ren fan at the same time, *that* side of the internet wasn't very happy over people enjoying fictional anti-heros.

I largely checked out of Nintendo games after Smash Ultimate came out so it just looks like to me I dodged a million bullets from Three Houses “discourse” lmao

This reminds me of when I didn't have internet. Playing Awakening and all the other games while blissfully unaware of the controversies. Just having fun with best boy Henry doing a cool and fun murder party. Nothing to see here. Just Fire Emblem being Fire Emblem. I ahd a good time with Engage but actively hate all the 3houses comparisons people make. Why can't I just have fun with my Saturday morning cartoon villains like back when I was 10? I don't care about Fodlan politics! I just want to see cools word action and fun villains. And Engage really had the better villains. I just thought they were all really fun. 3Houses was also a fun game, but I haven't played Hopes yet. Which I am still going to do, because Shez and Byleth are the best ship to come out of that spinoff! Go away Edelgard, I need space for my Mercenary pairing. I loved all the fun comics regarding the Shez and Byleth ship. And now that Byleth talks I like him way more. I gues this series will always have discourse no matter what. Nothing to do but to just have fun, I guess. I really hope we get that FE 4 remake soon. The first FE game to probably be USK 18. I think. It has to be USK 18, otherwise the game can not live up to its true potential. I just want to play FE 4. Thank Naga , I don't have twitter.

@yunuss58

8 ай бұрын

Bist du Deutsch?

As someone who only recently got into the whole internet discourse with Engage, I can only really say that I'm glad that I wasn't here for the entire Elite vs Casuals during Awakening or Three Houses as a whole. Seriously, anyone I've seen involved in said discourse is either sick of it, no longer enjoy TH cuz of it or seem too into the whole mess. I can only say much in regards to Engage and the slew of insults and berating its received, especially those sales numbers, super insane takes for a game that sold 1.6 mil. But it's super cool to get a general idea and viewpoint into this series' discourse! Never would have thought shipping would have this much of a reach before Awakening. But yeah, great video man!

Yeah NGL, I came to the FE series roughly around the time that the Fates discourse was around and the antis were loud asf. I didn't think too much of it at the time mainly because back in 2017, I generally preferred GBA, Tellius and Awakening over Fates anyway, but as I got interested in a lot of other anime-esque game series since then (a somewhat relevant example I can point to is getting into the Xenoblade Chronicles series through Xenoblade 2) while still keeping up with the recent Fire Emblem games, I've grown to absolutely despising a lot of the antis.

I'm surprised you only covered games like FE7 and onwards

@gascon-en-exil

11 ай бұрын

I mentioned in the intro why I didn’t cover the Japan-only games or remakes. Plus, this video turned out long enough as it is!

Having played 3H and currently playing Engage, one ridiculous take I remember seeing last year was on how Fire Emblem as a series is all about dragons bad, humanity good (guess who spewed that take), which is even more hilarious given how you play as a divine dragon in Engage. With that last one, I think there were people trying to stir up discourse by saying "Engage sucks cause you play as a dragon" or trying to categorize Alear as "one of the good ones". (yikes) Regarding the whole anti stuff though, I remember seeing a noxious twitter take years ago about how it's okay to harass someone if they ship studentleth (I wish I was kidding about that one). It's the spiritual successor to the video game moral panic from the 90s and 2000s, just replace violent video games with inappropriate perverted video games, except probably worse cause at least the people participating in that moral panic were transparent about what they wanted versus antis who'll get on their soap box about how this game is normalizing a problematic element while giving said creators/developers their money, thus enabling them.

@chococats2337

11 ай бұрын

Pretty sure it's from the same person who wrote her BW nuzlocke comic series which is always funny to me. I also remember her complaining about the Korean version have the students addressing Byleth informally which was already established in the first scene Byleth meets their class.

@Inuconandoyle

11 ай бұрын

@@chococats2337 I can't imagine what was their reaction to the DLC sidequest where the game pokes fun at the people complaining about Byleth being able to form close relationships with their students.

@veestreams

11 ай бұрын

dRaGoNs bAd was always such a funny take considering the guy who said it will ALSO say stuff like “the game could pause for 25 minutes and break the fourth wall to explain things and people still wouldn’t get it” But he apparently missed the part of Echoes where the game looks directly into the camera and says “humans bad, humans worse than dragons”

@Inuconandoyle

11 ай бұрын

@@veestreams Which is hilarious considering when the game does explain things to him and he doesn't like it or it contradicts what he says (like the aforementioned Echoes part about humans bad and worse than dragons), he'd be like "the game is an unreliable narrator and is lying to you." XD

@veestreams

11 ай бұрын

@@Inuconandoyle don’t forget “THAT WAS JUST A LOCALIZATION ERROR! (Provides no alternate translation)”

43:48 there's Rheagard?! What were the theater gays up to?? Most of my fandom consumption for Fodlan has been on Discord rather than the socials you listed, so despite my immersion in the fandom for years there's still so much I missed.

@gascon-en-exil

5 ай бұрын

Rheagard has a small but apparently dedicated following, with ~100 fics on AO3 last I checked. Theatre gays is a reference to Ferdibert, given the fandom's love of associating them with Wicked (based on a cover video the VAs did here on KZread) and with musical theatre in general. Ferdinand and Hubert are both melodramatic enough for it to work out.

@Blackacre438

5 ай бұрын

Ooohh that makes sense. For whatever reason I saw "theater" and my brain went right to Dorothea, Manuela, and Yuri and I was wondering if them as an OT3 was a big part of the fandom or something. Thanks for clarifying!@@gascon-en-exil

@Blackacre438

5 ай бұрын

@@gascon-en-exilside note: do you have a discord server? The link to your patreon is currently busted so I figured I’d ask here

@gascon-en-exil

5 ай бұрын

@@Blackacre438 I wasn't aware about the Patreon link; when I click it it seems to be working fine. I don't use Discord very much myself, and I don't feel like I have enough of an active base here to make my own server. Maybe if there's demand for it the future...anyway, my usual hangout on social media has always been Tumblr, where you can find me under the same handle.

I’ve always been more into the initial appeal of Fire Emblem so like a lot of my earlier experience with the fandom is debating over two different gameplay experiences

@gascon-en-exil

11 ай бұрын

It’s harder to break down into concise little bits of drama, but gameplay discussion really can be just as heated if people get into it enough. I still remember the Radiant Dawn tier list thread on SF that went on for nearly 10,000 posts…

I have never participated in online fandom so could you explain what "wank" is? I'm very confused. Or is it just a dirty word for masturbation?

@gascon-en-exil

11 ай бұрын

Wank in this context is just an older synonym for discourse. When people call it that they’re implying that it’s not something to be taken seriously - that it is, essentially, the equivalent to verbal masturbation. This stands in sharp contrast with calling it discourse which aims to sound academic and important. Using the two interchangeably is a subtle way to reinforce how seriously I take most of this.

Interesting watch. I have nothing to say about the GBA games and Engage so here's my very brief thoughts about the rest: PoR: I never really cared about the Ike sexuality wank mainly because it comes from people who think IS cares about LGBT+ stuff (spoiler alert, they very much don't) RD: same for the Micaiah mary sue thing. Still never cared about her character anyways. Awakening: Certianly taught me to stear clear of shipping stuff because they're fundamentally a waste of time. Otherwise, what an forgetful ass game. Absolutely one of the worst FE games. Fates: Controversy is this game's legacy. I don't have much to say what's already said before, but I will say something about the localization stuff. Nothing annoys me than people who know jackshit about the language complain about the changes made because certain cultural stuff will fly over over people's head (see filial piety with the Nohrian royal family and Gilbert, etc). I've seen the JP script and to be blunt, it's really bad. 3H: A 2-year Reddit reply to a bad post said this best: "Debates on the story are spicy because the game is vague and evasive and misleading, leading people to play guessing games and talk past each other. There's a lot to unpack because the game is overwritten and bloated. Never before has so much worthless "analysis" been written of a subject with so little substance to it." Localization wise, it's ok. It gets hold back by too much literal translations and fluff as well as sanitizing a certain character.

I'm just gonna say it. Soren is a boring character with a underwhelming arc. If you want gay Ranulf is a far better option.

@gascon-en-exil

11 ай бұрын

I personally prefer Ike/Ranulf myself, but I acknowledge that Ike and Soren have more material to build from in canon and have always been the more visible ship in fandom. It’s a funny situation to be in.

@diegorojas8959

11 ай бұрын

@@gascon-en-exil I do think Ike has more chemistry with Ranulf and Lethe but my problem with Soren is purely on his writing. He has so much going on and the only thing that we got aside his devotion to Ike is a underwhelming and short support with Steffan and a option convo with Petrine, at the very least I expected a little convo with Mordecai or Lethe but again nothing. I think thatgiving the amount of elements he has going on makes him rather popular to write in fanfiction, but in the game itself he is a all set up no pay off type of character.

@eleonorepb4565

11 ай бұрын

In general Intelligent System is lazy when they write the relationship between the lord and the "pushed " love interest , in general the lords have no reasons to love back Lilina, Ninian... They thing that has long that the love interest scream 5 time per chapter that they love the lord it's a good romance whitout many more developpement . While for their other romantic options they added them because they tough that these two characters could work well together and have good character development rather than being forced to add it. What is funny is that all those endings with the "pushed" love interest can be interpreted as bad ending : Julia, Seliph end up doying the same mistake as his uncle aka incest Lilina, Roy marry her because of his duty because he promised to protect her to Hector and he saw that she stayed foccused on him, by marrying her he is reduced to Lilina's husband (wich increase is inferiority complex) while Lilina stay foccused on him and don't really grown to be her own person Ninian, instead of hoping to built a world where humans and dragons could leave in peace she switch side to live as an human and deny her dragon heritage to the point that not even her son know about it, she left her brother hoping to grown old with Eliwood but instead she die long before him, and for Eliwood he probably confessed his love for her because he feel that since she was dependant on him he had to marry her and he denied his fetishism for strong blue/green haired people (but I guess that since Wolt's father is not in Roy's army it mean that after FE6 Eliwood can finally get a Green haired fighter) Tana, is not Lyon nor L'Arachel thus it's a bad ending for Ephraim Never played Tellius games Village maiden, Chrom never learn her name and in the original timeline he got a bad ending Sumia, never tried this one but apparently it's character assasination and it mean that Cynthia never cared enough for her dead father since she never looked Chrom's portrait Azura, in Birthright and Conquest it end up like Anankos and Mikoto's story: blue haired person go missing for mysterious reasons and in Revelation the revelation is that it's incest Rhea, she stays close to the power wich is not good for her and she switch her obsession for the goddess to one for the goddess avatar