Today is the 4th anniversary of the first time I beat Fire Emblem; Three Houses. I prefer my second playthrough to my first due to using Edelgard and Annette as main characters during a time I was reeling from the Insurrection, but the first is still important for laying the groundwork and getting me to like Edelgard, Dorothea, Petra, Lysithea, Bernadetta and Shamir. After two playthroughs of Three Houses, a playthrough of Three Hopes and starting a second playthrough of Three Hopes (currently on Chapter 8), I’ve learned that playing at my pace, you could potentially spend your whole life exploring one House and seeing all the support conversations between characters. Also, it’s hard to listen to the pains of one House plus recruits’ worth of backstories, I don’t know how people play through all the routes and manage it without breaking down.
Edelgard lost all her siblings to Joseph Mengele-like “science experiments,” Petra’s parents were killed in war, Dorothea and her Mom lived on the streets, Bernadetta was tied to a chair and beaten, Hubert and Ferdinand’s fathers were traitors to the empire who reduced Edelgard’s father to a figurehead so she and her siblings could be experimented on and these same people experimented on Lysithea and her siblings. Byleth’s mother died in childbirth and no matter what, Jeralt dies (unless you play Hopes, in which you must keep him alive and kill Rodrigue to recruit Byleth into the Black Eagles), Annette has lost her Mom and is in search of her Dad (it’s Gilbert), Shamir is a veteran of a war’s losing side and Marianne has the “wrong kind of crest” for her family, leading to her having no self-esteem. Also, Hannemann’s sister was killed because she didn’t produce offspring with a crest. This may be typical of the series, but for a person with mood issues like me, it makes me glad I haven’t gotten too deep into the series, you just want them to stay friends as much as they can at Garreg Mach so they’ll always have someone to eat lunch with, sing with, have tea with and so on. That’s why my favorite memories of this universe are just lunches, teas and choir practice with Edelgard and Annette in my second Houses playthrough; keep it simple, stay with the calm voice of Tara Platt and happy voice of Abby Trott and don’t worry about the world and the happenings you can’t control. I kind of want to do something similar in my current Three Hopes playthrough with Edelgard (Tara Platt) and Byleth (Jeannie Tirado) since they also have meant so much to me over these last 4+ years. I’m just concerned I’m not good enough to recruit Byleth or I’ll get it wrong because I can’t stop my anxiety from being wigged out over situations that can go wrong. I try to get out of politics, then the computer doesn’t work right like somebody’s hacking my iTunes account, but nobody is spending money but me, so I don’t get it. It’s also happening more and more, so I’m getting more and more angry, but I also don’t know what to change my password to other than one of those “Google/Firefox smart passwords” like WeX4tWj78&^@ or whatever the browser comes up with that you don’t remember either. No, that isn’t a password of mine, at least I don’t think it is.
The most important thing I learned in my first playthrough 4 years ago was that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems were willing to put full effort and storytelling behind LGBTQ+ characters, which surprised me because 2019-2020 was a time of revolt for such people in the United States due to attempted dictator Donald Trump. In 2019, Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande released “Mother’s Daughter” and “Don’t Call Me Angel,” bold statements against the patriarchy that were sure to get banned by conservative parents from their kids ever being exposed to it, Rob Halford released his second Christmas album and The Highwomen (Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires and Maren Morris, plus one more woman I forget) released “If She Ever Leaves Me” on their debut album, penned by Shires and then-husband Jason Isbell and lead-sung by Brandi Carlile. As a side note, The Highwomen’s “Crowded Table” and Idina Menzel’s “At This Table” that year were technically protest songs even though they were about accepting all kinds of people, which shows how messed up and xenophobic that administration was. In 2020, he attempted to get LGBTQ+ people blamed for COVID-19, in fact. Yet nonetheless, Edelgard and Byleth’s epilogue and Petra and Dorothea’s epilogue implies they got married even though they are the same gender, a first for Intelligent Systems and especially Nintendo. I am under the impression there are others in the other Houses. My first interaction with Tara Platt on Twitter was to thank her for voicing Edelgard, because an LGBTQ+ Nintendo character meant a lot to me. Edelgard and Tara still do, in fact, I wouldn’t be trying to get her with Byleth in Three Hopes otherwise. I don’t know if after this I’ll still repeat playing Three Houses/Three Hopes, but I plan to keep the Edelgard, Byleth and Annette plushies for life and bring them to Church and Pride Parades if I remember to. It is a world of great heroes and heroines, romance and standing for what you believe in, and I’m glad I found it.
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