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Contrast how Felix (who rejects Faerghus culture) treats Dimitri with how Gilbert and the other royal retainers do. Felix spends his every interaction with Dimitri trying to get under his skin and realize what he's become so he'll stop, while Gilbert stands aside and does a lot of "Adan I know Dimitri isn't okay buuuuut he's our only hope please help him" and praying really hard nothing too War Crimes-y happens. He considers it a violation of his duty to actually intervene with Dimitri's over-the-line behavior and tries to justify it to himself, because that's what's expected of a good Faerghus Man. He can't argue with Dimitri's clearly-delusional behavior of hearing the dead cry out for blood because he shares that same cultural dedication to valorizing death and honoring the dead over the needs of the living. He wants to temper it, yes, but he can't actually argue against it except from a practical standpoint ("we can't win right now, we need to strengthen ourselves first") because he fundamentally agrees. Essentially Dimitri's upper echelon of advisors are all enablers and what's questionable right now is if Adan will follow their lead or start to actively intervene and try to stop him rather than hoping he stops himself.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:13
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CmdrKing posted:Essentially Dimitri's upper echelon of advisors are all enablers and what's questionable right now is if Adan will follow their lead or start to actively intervene and try to stop him rather than hoping he stops himself. I don't think they are enablers, really, because there's a deeper problem here. If Dimitri dies, Faerghus dies. He's the last member of the royal family. Everyone in part one was looking to Dimitri to be the one who could turn things around in Faerghus, which as it stood was in severe decline, divided, impoverished, and lacking leadership. Turning on Dimitri at this point is tantamount to giving up on and abandoning Faerghus, because despite all his manifest problems, the hope of Dimitri is the only thing keeping Faerghus in the fight at all. Calling the Lions mere enablers, in my opinion, is an unfair simplification of a larger problem and the question you're really wrestling with is: does Faerghus as a nation deserve to exist? It's a striking contrast with Edelgard, who knowingly and willingly sets in motion a war that kills thousands and causes untold suffering to thousands more. But she scrupulously keeps her personal hands squeaky clean. Dimitri, on the other hand, is fundamentally fighting a defensive war against what he knows to be an unprovoked war of aggression launched against his kingdom without warning (Edelgard would argue it's anything but unprovoked, but that's not how it's seen outside her route). But he actively gets down in the dirt and blood in the process. Who carries the larger share of the blame? The soldier fighting a war, or the leader who committed the soldier to war in the first place? Cythereal fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 13:23
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Cythereal posted:I don't think they are enablers, really, because there's a deeper problem here. If Dimitri dies, Faerghus dies. He's the last member of the royal family. Everyone in part one was looking to Dimitri to be the one who could turn things around in Faerghus, which as it stood was in severe decline, divided, impoverished, and lacking leadership. Debates regarding Faerghus’ culture and whether it deserves to keep existing in it’s current state should also probably be held off on for a bit later into this route; more details about, say, what actually happened in Duscur (the nation that Faerghus seems to have genocided) seem like they’d be key in that judgement. Though, you know, if they were so concerned about keeping Dimitri alive in order to keep Faerghus alive then maybe they should do something about stopping him committing suicide-via-Empire (while using his supposed subjects and allies as ablative armor in an effort to draw out his suicidal charge). Shinji117 fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 13:27
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Cythereal posted:I don't think they are enablers, really, because there's a deeper problem here. If Dimitri dies, Faerghus dies. He's the last member of the royal family. Everyone in part one was looking to Dimitri to be the one who could turn things around in Faerghus, which as it stood was in severe decline, divided, impoverished, and lacking leadership. You might have a point if it wasn't for the fact that the group is proving quite willing to follow Dimitri over the edge of a cliff. If they all die on a suicide mission to attack the enemy capital then the nation dies as well. The group doing nothing more then passively whining or worse when the supposed leader is making dangerous and stupid decisions is the text book definition of being enablers.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:30
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Shinji117 posted:This is a pretty severe misreading of Edelgard, but getting into why will have to wait for CF. I don't think it's a misreading at all. Edelgard knowingly starts a war knowing full well the consequences and cost. She thinks her envisioned utopia is both achievable and worth the cost, and she actively refuses anything less than total victory over Fodlan, Church, Faerghus, and Alliance alike. We've already seen how she reacts to Claude: even when he tries to reason with her and spare her life as Enbarr collapses around her, she insists that she is the only one with the strength and vision to do what she believes must be done. She believes that as an outsider, Claude's ideas and hopes for Fodlan are irrelevant. And she insists on dying rather than living in a world where she failed. Hunt11 posted:You might have a point if it wasn't for the fact that the group is proving quite willing to follow Dimitri over the edge of a cliff. If they all die on a suicide mission to attack the enemy capital then the nation dies as well. The group doing nothing more then passively whining or worse when the supposed leader is making dangerous and stupid decisions is the text book definition of being enablers. I don't think so, because we're not at that cliff yet. The moment of truth hasn't arrived, even leaving aside that Silver Snow is just as much of a suicide mission and no one thinks it's wrong.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:36
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To swerve topics a bit, I always found it interesting that Mercedes of all people is agreeing with Dimitri's plan to rush the Empire, more unequivocally than anyone else. There are several potential motivations for that (her outright stated one of wanting to find Rhea due to her piety of course, but also the fact that she's originally from the Empire might leave her less invested in the Kingdom than any of its natives), but I still found it quite surprising my first playthrough.
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Jun 28, 2021 13:38
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Cythereal posted:I don't think it's a misreading at all. Edelgard knowingly starts a war knowing full well the consequences and cost. She thinks her envisioned utopia is both achievable and worth the cost, and she actively refuses anything less than total victory over Fodlan, Church, Faerghus, and Alliance alike. Shinji117 fucked around with this message at 13:52 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 13:42
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Cythereal posted:I don't think they are enablers, really, because there's a deeper problem here. If Dimitri dies, Faerghus dies. He's the last member of the royal family. Everyone in part one was looking to Dimitri to be the one who could turn things around in Faerghus, which as it stood was in severe decline, divided, impoverished, and lacking leadership. To be clear, by specifying "upper echelons" I meant to exclude the Lions from the equation. In terms of how the game abstracts your army, student recruits are officers but not generals, essentially. They don't really have the authority or influence to actually stop Dimitri short of quitting, aside from trying to invoke their personal friendships with him. I'm talking Gilbert and (to a lesser extent at the moment since he's still off-screen) Rodrigue, along with Seteth since he's an allied general with another faction. They could refuse to carry out Dimitri's orders or hold him under house arrest until he agreed to see reason, but they don't, and that's the enabling I'm talking about. Adan holds a unique position where he could also intervene in a more direct way than the other recruits, and the question the story is asking right now if if he will or not. I think we can say, based on supports up to this point as well as this enabling behavior, that it's not really in dispute what we should think about Faerghus culture. It's diseased, and one way or another will surely die. The question, just as with Dimitri himself, is if it can become something that does deserve to live.
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Jun 28, 2021 14:24
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Funny how FE discourse has slide from "Why don't they just overthrow Garon because he's so evil!" to "Can't throw out Dimitri because of the political ramifications." Just can't get rid of the guy who's threatened all his friends and allies with death (multiple times even). Dimitri has literally tortured and brutalized people even before this scene. Imperial soldiers as said by Gilbert just recently and even during the western Kingdom rebellion where Felix began to call him boar. DanielCross posted:To swerve topics a bit, I always found it interesting that Mercedes of all people is agreeing with Dimitri's plan to rush the Empire, more unequivocally than anyone else. There are several potential motivations for that (her outright stated one of wanting to find Rhea due to her piety of course, but also the fact that she's originally from the Empire might leave her less invested in the Kingdom than any of its natives), but I still found it quite surprising my first playthrough. Mercedes is surprisingly aggro. Way back when she was totally on board with executing dudes for going against the church because Rhea said so.
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Jun 28, 2021 14:51
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I have no real emotional attachment to anyone in this game really but based off of other 3H discourse brawls I've seen on the internet I'll start prepping my popcorn.
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Jun 28, 2021 15:02
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McTimmy posted:Funny how FE discourse has slide from "Why don't they just overthrow Garon because he's so evil!" to "Can't throw out Dimitri because of the political ramifications." In fairness, Three Houses is a much more serious game than Fates, even if Fates desperately wants you to believe otherwise most of the time. It makes sense that people would hold characters in Three Houses to a different standard compared to "Ryoma will wait patiently for his revenge, but only for 25 turns." It makes sense that people would consider political ramifications in a game that actually encourages thinking about them; meanwhile, Fates has Goo Garon.
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Jun 28, 2021 15:03
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Partly this is my fault for bringing up that Adan can win on his own. But straight up, at this point Adan has very little context for the war other than to see Dimitri trying to torture someone to death. This is not a trolley problem. Handcuffs exist, ropes exist. But additionally describing it as one is wrong given that any part of the wider political consequences just don't matter and aren't known. Adan executes someone when he could stop Dimitri and if stopping someone from torture results in the worst possible consequence, which is the person attempting the torture dying in combat, it would still be a better moral action than what happens here. If this is what needs to happen for the plot to happen then fine. But this is where I stop caring about what happens to Dimitri, Adan and the Lions and start just playing so I can say I've beaten the game on Maddening. You are not a bad person if you think this is fine and don't disengage, but it was the line for me. There is a wider discussion of Dimitri and privilege which I think colours this conversation and incident but equally I don't think belongs here and does belong at the end of the route.
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Jun 28, 2021 15:08
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To switch topics, am I the only one that didn't like the Mercedes/Sylvain A support? Mercedes was too 'mom knows best, she's already armchair psychoanalyzed you' for me. I'm not the biggest Mercedes fan in general though, but she does have some nice supports like Mercedes/Dedue C.
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Jun 28, 2021 15:12
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As I've said, I do think this scene is a narrative mistake and substantially out of character (Dimitri slaughtering people on flimsy justifications, yes, or attacking otherwise unrelated people for scanty reasons, or mutilating the dead, but I think showing him torturing a guy is out of character for his particular flavor of broken thinkmeats). I maintain my theory that this scene was written specifically to make Dimitri do something explicitly and indefensibly heinous on camera right away, probably both to have Dimitri do something nasty on-camera where the player can see it and to give weight to how Dimitri is described. But I think the specific way they did it was a mistake, and it's a misstep of writing that does a lot to color Dimitri/Edelgard discourse.
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Jun 28, 2021 15:14
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McTimmy posted:Funny how FE discourse has slide from "Why don't they just overthrow Garon because he's so evil!" to "Can't throw out Dimitri because of the political ramifications." Just can't get rid of the guy who's threatened all his friends and allies with death (multiple times even). Rea posted:In fairness, Three Houses is a much more serious game than Fates, even if Fates desperately wants you to believe otherwise most of the time. It makes sense that people would hold characters in Three Houses to a different standard compared to "Ryoma will wait patiently for his revenge, but only for 25 turns." It makes sense that people would consider political ramifications in a game that actually encourages thinking about them; meanwhile, Fates has Goo Garon. Additionally, in this hypothetical alternate Conquest you'd have to recruit all the siblings to pull it off, Garon would be overthrown by the Crown Prince and the entire royal family. You'd also have to kill Iago to do that plan, so essentially all the heads of government and the army would already be loyal to the people doing the overthrowing. Shoot, that IS the plan in Conquest, to show off Goo Garon so Xander will actually loving overthrow him, but there's an entire convoluted and vaguely genocidal war enacted actually getting him to do it, and the alternative is just "what if we just skipped to the end" This version of Azure Moon people are proposing is "Adan unilaterally kills off Dimitri to end his madness" which ends... badly. If all the other generals backed him up Adan could probably, in fact, pull that off, but even then it'd be risky because unlike Nohr, Faerghus explicitly has a fairly fragile set of nobility elsewhere in the country who may or may not recognize the legitimacy of those generals without an actual heir in their back pocket. CmdrKing fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 15:27
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Nohr was also already steeped in a culture of backstabbing considering the concubine wars when Camilla was a kid. Like I think siblings overthrowing their goo king wouldn't be seen as that bad. Meanwhile people in Faerghus are still fresh from the wounds of Duscur as an event of 'betrayal'.
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Jun 28, 2021 15:43
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Apologies for my posts last night; I jumped the gun on what was being said because there really is a lot of anti-Dimitri rhetoric out there of varying degrees of ableism and "kill him for his own good" and I didn't want to see it here.
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Jun 28, 2021 16:10
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Melomane Mallet posted:Apologies for my posts last night; I jumped the gun on what was being said because there really is a lot of anti-Dimitri rhetoric out there of varying degrees of ableism and "kill him for his own good" and I didn't want to see it here. For all the thoughts I have about Dimitri, "kill him for his own good" is...very much not one of them. What the gently caress? Why do people take the seriousness the game asks of them and twist it into just horrible poo poo like that?
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Jun 28, 2021 16:17
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It is interesting how the Azure Moon route is the only one that shows Dmitri dragging Adan down to some kind of terrible moral level, which I think did a lot to convince me that Dmitri sucked and shouldn't be running anything bigger than a McDonald's. Dmitri isn't just a bad leader, he's dragging all of Faerghus down with him. The game also doesn't show off what life is like under Imperial occupation, and I honestly think if it did that would go a long way toward resolving the Edelgard wars. We don't know if the common people are happy to be delivered from the cruel Imperial yoke or if the Imperials were better than the inept nobles of the Holy Kingdom and/or Alliance.
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Jun 28, 2021 17:54
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:The game also doesn't show off what life is like under Imperial occupation, and I honestly think if it did that would go a long way toward resolving the Edelgard wars. We don't know if the common people are happy to be delivered from the cruel Imperial yoke or if the Imperials were better than the inept nobles of the Holy Kingdom and/or Alliance. I don't have the exact line on hand because I don't remember the exact wording, but the only real clue we get to what life under Imperial rule is the implication in Edelgard/Manuela A that Edelgard chooses not to go after people who believe in the teachings of the Church of Seiros—just the actual church itself. This is technically spoiling stuff in the future, but I'm the LPer, I get to reveal what I want. quote:
Coulda swore that there was a more direct statement of Edelgard refusing to persecute followers of the Church of Seiros that did not oppose her militarily, but I can't find it right now.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:06
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Something on your mind, Edelgard? This may not be the best place to sit and think. An archer might try to take a lucky shot at you.
There's good there, buried in the corruption. Still... I find it extremely difficult to step back and accept the good, overlooking all the rest.
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:The game also doesn't show off what life is like under Imperial occupation, and I honestly think if it did that would go a long way toward resolving the Edelgard wars. We don't know if the common people are happy to be delivered from the cruel Imperial yoke or if the Imperials were better than the inept nobles of the Holy Kingdom and/or Alliance. It is explicitly mentioned, at least, that while Edelgard does not officially persecute people who still believe in the goddess, Adrestian society has turned against the church and followers of the goddess pretty intensely. One NPC in the monastery in all non-CF routes shows up talking about how they're a refugee from Adrestia who experienced heavy discrimination for still openly believing in the goddess. The Empire's track record with nobles and their competency is no better, for what that's worth. I think the biggest question with Edelgard's culpability is the Agarthans. It's hard to distinguish between what's being done by Edelgard and the Empire, what's being done directly by the Agarthans, and what's being done by the Empire but on the Agarthans' direct orders. It's not clear, even in CF, how much or how little control Edelgard actually has over the Empire. Rea posted:Coulda swore that there was a more direct statement of Edelgard refusing to persecute followers of the Church of Seiros that did not oppose her militarily, but I can't find it right now. An unnamed monastery NPC late in non-CF routes talks about it, IIRC. They say that there's been no official persecution, but in practice there's a hell of a lot of discrimination from the nobility and even other commoners.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:07
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Rea posted:I don't have the exact line on hand because I don't remember the exact wording, but the only real clue we get to what life under Imperial rule is the implication in Edelgard/Manuela A that Edelgard chooses not to go after people who believe in the teachings of the Church of Seiros—just the actual church itself. The vs Rhea line Edelgard has is a little more direct; "I have only made an enemy of the church, not of the faith" Other stuff regarding life in the Empire (at least in CF) would be a merchant who says that the nobility being reigned in has relaxed on merchants, another merchant who says that trade is up in Alliance lands after Edelgard takes Deirdru, a soldier who says that the official church members left the Empire for the Alliance at the start of the war and are now leaving the Alliance for the Kingdom, and the stuff in the Abyss that differs between CF and other routes (there's no mention of the Empire troops abusing the Abyss residents like AM has, for example). Shinji117 fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 18:09
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Shinji117 posted:Other stuff regarding life in the Empire (at least in CF) would be a merchant who says that with the nobility being reigned in regulations on merchants have relaxed, a soldier who says that the official church members left the Empire for the Alliance at the start of the war and are now leaving the Alliance for the Kingdom, and the stuff in the Abyss that differs between CF and other routes. [/spoiler] On the other hand, in non-CF routes, merchants pop up saying that the Empire's clamped down on trade and imposed ridiculous taxation. I think AM specifically says there's an imminent famine because hardly anyone can afford to buy food thanks to the new taxes.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:19
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There's also a line from Edelgard somewhere where she says without the professor she's afraid she'd become a tyrant. So I think it's fair to say that outside of CF she IS a tyrant.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:22
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Cythereal posted:On the other hand, in non-CF routes, merchants pop up saying that the Empire's clamped down on trade and imposed ridiculous taxation. I think AM specifically says there's an imminent famine because hardly anyone can afford to buy food thanks to the new taxes. The ridiculous taxation line that I found is specifically regarding the Dukedom, and is a Cornelia "initiative". The "food is becoming scare" merchant line I found isn't attributed to taxes either, nor is it about the Empire specifically. Shinji117 fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 18:31
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Why are we in insane spoiler territory all of a sudden
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Jun 28, 2021 18:44
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Cythereal posted:I don't think it's a misreading at all. Edelgard knowingly starts a war knowing full well the consequences and cost. She thinks her envisioned utopia is both achievable and worth the cost, and she actively refuses anything less than total victory over Fodlan, Church, Faerghus, and Alliance alike. As a minor note and extremely severe spoiler: Edelgard is determined to die, rather than face life in chains/a cell. If you're not sure as to why that is the case, you should take a moment to read Edelgard and Byleth's C+ Support.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:46
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curiousCat posted:Why are we in insane spoiler territory all of a sudden cause a future section was posted by the OP, and any discussion about anything even vaguely related to that feels like it should be spoilered, even if the stuff being brought up isn't actually spoilers for anything. Shinji117 fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 18:48
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Clawtopsy posted:As a minor note and extremely severe spoiler: Edelgard is determined to die, rather than face life in chains/a cell. If you're not sure as to why that is the case, you should take a moment to read Edelgard and Byleth's C+ Support. There is one route where she's offered peace and a chance to explain herself. She chooses to fight.
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Jun 28, 2021 18:52
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Cythereal posted:There is one route where she's offered peace under very different circumstances where she'd even explicitly get to stay in power in Enbarr, and she rejects it. Ok, this is probably getting waaaaay ahead of what we can talk about and should probably move to the FE or 3H threads if it's going to happen now. Shinji117 fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jun 28, 2021 |
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Jun 28, 2021 18:54
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Yeah, time to reel it in, we're getting to discussions that should likely happen after AM is finished.
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Jun 28, 2021 19:02
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Agreed. It's time to talk about more important subjects, like "how many times will Gradivus be 2 uses away before breaking when a stage is finished?" in this run.
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Jun 28, 2021 19:14
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Yeah, and the 3H thread turned into the usual "Nuh uh!" "Yeah huh!" circle jerk it always does when discussing the relative morality of Dimitri and Edelgard.  But on a more amusing note, a friend of mine has been playing 3H again, and this friend of mine has a habit of nicknaming characters in every video game she plays. Her names for the 3H cast: Blue Lions posted:conan the barbarian Golden Deer posted:budgie smuggler Black Eagles posted:arthas Church posted:pope azula
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Jun 28, 2021 20:45
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Edelgard good Dimitri bad
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Jun 28, 2021 21:56
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But what if... Edelgard bad, Dmitri good?
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Jun 29, 2021 00:50
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I fall into the radical camp of Both Good.
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Jun 29, 2021 03:52
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Jadecore posted:I fall into the radical camp of Both Good. Based on 3H discourse in other places this is the part where we start calling each other slurs. The really bad ones.
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Jun 29, 2021 04:31
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I like Claude.
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Jun 29, 2021 10:08
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Seteth is the best lord in 3H
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Jun 29, 2021 10:52
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cardinale posted:Seteth is the best lord in 3H Apart from the whole, you know, getting fully onboard with the "Let's erase the Avatar's mind and put a quasi-divine being in there" scheme among other things.
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Jun 29, 2021 18:01
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