Misaimed Fandom / Fire Emblem

• According to the developers, the Fire Emblem series' central theme revolves around the inherent humanity of the characters, who have more to them than just being chess pieces. The games also encourage a lot of individual growth and players using whoever they like the most, due to the emphasis on the humanity of the cast and the sanctity of each life. This, it seems, is sadly lost on the portion of the fandom that takes the Nintendo Hard difficulty as a reason to rigidly adhere to using characters within the lens of strategic elements based on immediate gains. Add that to how a lot of the series locks behind character potential through supports and the fandom's reluctance to actually learn more and state their opinions on it without adopting an extremely binary morality view (see below), and the community clearly enjoys the game, if for much different reasons than what the devs intended. Can't get more of a dissonance than to have a theme song loudly blare The Power of Friendship and people not understanding that the characters are humans within their own rights. Matters are not helped by virtue of people wanting to validate themselves within their "correct" opinion of the story, not taking into consideration how others may see differently or the fact that there's only losers in war for all sides, a theme that Fire Emblem Fates and Fire Emblem: Three Houses bash you on the head with.
• Fire Emblem: Awakening:
  • "Mad King" Gangrel is simply after War for Fun and Profit, not having any noble motives by the game's beginning. This is hammered repeatedly through the game, even by Gangrel himself after his Heel–Face Turn who says he lost sight of his original goal of uniting the continent against Valm after taking power. And yet many Gangrel fans say he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist out for justice against Plegia. This is despite the game showing Gangrel oppressing Plegians, his backstory making it clear the Ylisse/Grimleal war didn't affect him, and his Motive Rant revealing he wanted revenge on Plegia for his bad childhood.
  • A lot of fans see Tharja's Yandere attitute towards the Avatar as fetish material and it's a major reason why she's so popular. Her ending up as an abusive mother to her daughter Noire in the Bad Future was most likely intended as a Player Punch for players who didn't realise this, as well as a Deconstruction of what marrying a Yandere might eventually lead to. And yet there are a ton of fans who see the Avatar, Tharja and their children as a perfect happy family, despite Noire herself calling her mother out on her behavior and Tharja herself realizing that this isn't the way to go. There's no denying she does have a Hidden Heart of Gold, but that still doesn't mean her negative traits were meant to be appealing.
  • Some players view the actions of the first generation parents negatively due to the Bad Future details that suggest many of the first generation parents weren't the best parents to their kids. This ignores the fact that the characters that discuss the topic with the kids are the past versions, who haven't done anything yet to warrant the same criticism or ire, something that almost all the Supports between the parent and child discuss and work to resolve. For example; some people use Future Cordelia being unable to get over Chrom according to Severa to criticize Cordelia, despite the current Cordelia addressing it, while Tharja's detractors will criticize her future self using Noire as a way to test curses, something past Tharja actively avoids doing upon learning.
  • In the Summer Scramble DLC, Miriel has a conversation with Sumia where, due to the extreme heat, she hallucinates that Sumia is secretly a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who's been faking being a Cute Clumsy Girl all along to lure in men. This is supposed to be a joke, but since Sumia has a massive amount of Die for Our Ship surrounding her, her haters use this conversation as legit canonical proof that she's really Evil All Along.
• Fire Emblem Fates:
  • The game has two realms with very different sets of morals and very different world-buildings associated to them. Both are supposed to be seen as possessing pros and cons which are incarnated in their Royal Families: despite their differences they all love the Avatar, who belongs to both groups, with all their hearts and will not react well to them choosing one over another (or, in Revelation, not choosing a side). However, the fans have decided to latch on one Royal Family/Kingdom and bash the fuck out of the other, portraying their chosen "family" as poor dumb innocents whose cons must be ignored or swept away to fetishize their suffering, while the other one is downgraded to Evil Incarnate and has its pros handwaved. The most rabid Nohr fans creepily reduce the genuinely tragic Nohrian Royal Family into helpless and fetishized victims who should never be called out for their own mistakes, while at the same time whining about the "horrible and privileged" Hoshidan Royal Family and deliberately ignoring how their supports and Takumi's fate in Conquest show that they're more dysfunctional than they seem; the most rabid Hoshido fans paint Nohrians as nothing more than Card-Carrying Villains blindly following an Avatar who is little more than a deluded fool so they can have some sort of petty revenge at these privileged Hoshidans (at worst) or as complete idiots who also blindly follow an Avatar who is little more than a deluded fool so they can appease King Garon (at best).
  • Leo's son Forrest is a Wholesome Crossdresser and Action Fashionista who explicitly says he's a guy despite his girlish tastes in clothing and openly states that he's uncomfortable whenever he's mistaken as a girl. In Supports, he reveals that because he was lonely in the Deeprealm, he took up fashion as a way to find some kind of happiness, so his love of fashion is a coping mechanism as well. Despite this, and the game even discussing this notion not being the case, part of the fandom insists that Forrest is a trans girl.
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
  • All of the story routes run on Grey-and-Gray Morality, with various plotlines being exclusive to one or more detailed in another, and many revelations are exclusive to one route. Due to this, and the habit of most players to default to one route as being "their Golden Ending", many fans will take their route's storyline as being the one that explains all of the game's story as fact, even when other routes throw suggestions that it is not the case. A person playing the Crimson Flower route for example might see Rhea as hating all of humanity, behind every single problem in Fodlan and evil, due to Edelgard's biased assertions about her, missing the nuance of the Silver Snow route and the revelations of the Verdant Wind route, while someone on the other routes will see Edelgard as an Evil Overlord and the Big Bad, causing them to miss her Dark and Troubled Past and reasons for her actions. The routes most guilty of this are the Crimson Flower and the Azure Moon route because they are the ones most opposite with each other, and present many views and revelations that are true, but only Metaphorically True.
  • There are parts of the fandom that insist the Church of Seiros is homophobic, for no other reason than its vague inspiration to the Catholic Church, which is through the eyes of a Japanese game developer. Not only is there nothing to suggest this in-universe, the archbishop and founder of the church itself is a Bi Option. Compounding it further, Mercedes, one of the most devout characters in the game is also a Bi Option. Marianne comes at a close second when it comes to piety, and though she's not a bi option, she does have a bit of subtext with her friend Hilda. Even Yuri is shown to have some faith and he's flirting with a Byleth of either gender right out of the gate. The Goddess herself is a Bi Option. In each of these cases the issues of two women or two men getting together in a romantic relationship isn't even considered an issue, just two people coming together. Yet there's a troubling percentage of the fandom insisting the Church is homophobic.

---