Fanfic / Spellbinding Radiance

Spellbinding Radiance is a Self-Insert fanfiction written by Foxwolf Jackson.

John is a typical musician going to college. However, after a freak automobile accident, he finds himself thrust into the world of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. It's thus up to John to journey along with Ike, Elincia, and the gang on their quest to save Crimea from the clutches of the nation of Daein, as per the game. Along the way, though, a lot of things change...

Be careful, as it is an incredibly LONG read.

Now available on DeviantArt!

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The following tropes apply to Spellbinding Radiance:

• Anyone Can Die: It's a fanfic in the Fire Emblem universe, what did you expect? The trope applies more extensively as found here, though. John himself even dies. He gets better, though. Both times. Everyone else... not so much.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: "Crimes against Begnion including murdering soldiers, harassing and assaulting officers, impeding imperial shipments, and disturbance of the peace." (Chapter 85)

• Attractive Bent-Gender: Shinon hits on John Sophia in the short arc of the spying mission.
• Bag of Spilling: By the time the Radiant Dawn story arc has come around, John is quite rusty and far less proficient than he was during the final battle with Ashnard. Justified in that he's been sitting around studying magic and learning to play instruments than practicing his magic and swordplay.
• Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Elincia, Mist, and Jill respectively. The author has commented on many occasions that he jokingly called them John's version of Charlie's Angels.

• Betty and Veronica: Earlier chapters of the story seemed to have this trope in spades with John being too oblivious to notice the situation, though YMMV which female is in which situation. Early chapters hinted at Mist being Betty and Karla being Veronica, until John started dating Karla in a short-lived relationship. There is also speculation about later on when it seemed to be hinted at that Elincia was Betty and Jill was Veronica. There was also option in other characters, such as Natasha, Carin, Nino, Selena, and the list goes on. However, it appears that currently, this trope no longer applies (although one can assume this is only temporary). Whew...

• Big Damn Heroes:
  • The entire Crimean army comes in to help John while he's defending Leanne from Oliver.
  • Soren marches in on the battle with Ashnard as if he owns the place and insists that he'll take care of the Mad King himself.

• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Ashnard's general reaction to just about every atrocity he's responsible for save for killing Elincia's father.
• Butterfly of Doom: While John knows what should happen in the future thanks to playing the game god knows how many times, his very presence in Tellius is enough to make sure that a LOT of stuff changes.
• Canon Foreigner: A lot of the cast of Blazing Sword somehow manages to end up on Tellius, as well as a few cast members from Sacred Stones. The entire Black Fang even shows up in Crimea as an honest mercenary company in Begnion. And then there's Carin, A.K.A. Cassandra from Soulcalibur. Ashley has also been confirmed to be one, with many hints dropped to the observant that she's from Mass Effect; more specifically, her iteration from the self-insert fanfic Mass Vexations by Foxwolf's friend Herr Wozzeck.

• Cardboard Prison: Patrick breaks out of capture so quickly and easily AND manages to get his hands on so much stuff that one has to wonder whether or not he had inside help. However...
• Cast from Hit Points: John does this when trying to not only attempt a high level spell, but a spell that requires a lot of power when he was already worn from the battle. Although the desired result of stopping Naesala, it came with a cost of John losing his life.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Selena and Calill have a conversation about boys while attacked by beast laguz. One has to wonder if the author has any psychological dislike or distrust of his gender with how much male bashing is done in the story.
• Celibate Hero: John avoids romance because he fears he may still be drawn back into his own world, thus leaving the object of his affection alone. After he comes to terms with the fact that he's probably not going back to his own world, he becomes a bit more like a mild case of Chaste Hero instead.

• Chekhov's Gun: The 'chocolate cake' bit from when John first runs into Karla comes in handy when Karel shows up.

• Cross Dresser: John is forced to become one for an infiltation into the Daien camp planned by Soren. Needless to say, he is not amused.

• Cute Bruiser: Karla qualifies in the rare example she uses a blade. Jill also qualified as one before she died, although her dream self seems to continue this theme.
• Dark Action Girl: Petrine early in the story. She enjoys terrorizing everyone, puts John through a moral dilemma early, ships him off to prison, mocks John at the Daein border when he's at a moral low, etc. Even the trope page cites the canon version of Petrine as one.
• Dark Is Not Evil: John appearantly has quite a bit of talent using Dark magic. He also happens to be a real swell guy.
• Dark Magical Girl: Petrine seems to morph from Dark Action Girl to this trope as her character is explored. She wants approval from Ashnard, it's hinted that she's smart and talented but has never really gotten a break, she has a reputation of being harsh to the troops and delights in torment and punishment. The flame lance upon which she uses to battle can also be considered magical, thus fitting the "Magical" part of the trope name. While she laughs at John's attempts to recruit her to Crimea at first, it seems that Ashnard leaving her prisoner to Crimea sparked a change in her that eventually transforms her into an atoner making the ultimate sacrifice.

• Denied Food as Punishment: Oscar seems to love leaving Tanith in charge of food when he was gone. One has to wonder what happened that Oscar would leave a punishment that even Montressor would shudder at.

• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Much to the surprise of everyone present, Patrick somehow defeats Ashnard after he's revived though the power of the medallion a la Hard Mode.
• Disguised in Drag: John has to dress up as a female whom he arbitrarily names Sophia Domivere. This is one of the uncommon cases where, overall, it isn't Played for Laughs
• Dope Slap: Ash delivers one to John in Chapter 86.
  Ash: What was that?
  John: The bartender keeps staring at us. I used the act to cover up the fact I was scrutinizing him.
  Micaiah: What did you find?
  John: That waitress is pretty good looking.
  Ash: *slap*

• Early-Bird Cameo: Micaiah appears in Crimea looking for Sothe during the Path of Radiance arc.

• First Law of Resurrection: John finds a way to come back to life twice. The first time, Gatrie takes the price. The second time, the other people in the camp are given a one-use staff that they use to bring John back to life.

• Genre Savvy: Well, John, obviously. However, recently Soren has got into the action as well.
  Soren: As a tactician and an important person to Ike, I cannot die," Soren said. (Chapter 74)
  • Patrick seems to want in on this, too, since the Radiant Dawn portion started.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: John comes into Tellius with a pocket watch, a wallet, a trumpet mouthpiece for some reason, and his cell phone. Subverted when he throws the cell phone into the water instead of using it to improve life for the citizens of Tellius.

• Hero of Another Story:
  • It's a little known fact that recurring Bit Character Patrick (that guy with a crush on Ilyana) is supposed to be one, with him being the main character of a Spin-Off fanfic created by one of Foxwolf Jackson's friends. Sadly, his story is currently Dead Fic. Subverted in that Patrick has now become a recurring antagonist instead.
  • There is a Supporting Protagonist of Another Story with Ash. It's not explicitly stated in Foxwolf's fic itself, but those who have read Mass Vexations can immediately catch that Ash is from that fic. She even mentions Art, the hero of that story, at one point. And then there's Chapter 83, in which this is outright stated to be the case in an A/N, as well as in Ash's descriptions of the ME universe.

• I Just Want to Be Normal: An interesting version of this trope in that John is normal... in his world. Now, he just wants to be normal by the standards of Tellius.
• Implied Love Interest: John and Elincia seem awfully close together...
• Improbable Weapon User:
  • Instead of selecting from the normal Fire Emblem arsenal of swords, lances, knives and axe, Shinon decides to use a staff composed of two sections connected by magic during his final battle with John, since a bow wouldn't be practical in the situation. John actually planned on this. Word of God has said that this random change to Shinon was part of the reason the chapter took so long to write.
  • Patrick attempts to use Wallace's spring-loaded chain axe despite having no prior training with it at all. The results were as expected.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: During John and Titania's mock date, John sputters out that Titania's "like a really great mom... or something." After she responds with a Flat "What", he excuses himself from the situation by claiming he needs to use the bathroom.
• Intra-Franchise Crossover: Aside from the standard Path of Radiance cast, there's other Fire Emblem characters present such as Selena, Karla, Cormag, Linde and Nino.
• Inverse Dialogue/Death Rule:
  • Kieran and Gatrie both have few lines, so their deaths aren't so bad.
  • Conversely, John's and Jill's deaths both subvert this trope by being anti-climatic despite their huge roles.
  • Sothe has a huge death scene despite having almost no lines in the story. It is excusable given the fact that it firmly establishes that Anyone Can Die is in FULL swing, since Sothe is one of the few people who CANNOT die in Path of Radiance under ANY circumstance.

• Lampshade Hanging:
  • "It was like some kind of comic relief in the middle of a heavily serious battle. If only my adventures on Tellius were some kind of self-insertion fanfiction, I am pretty sure the author just decided to do that to try to relieve tension." (Chapter 65)
  • John seems to point out in his thoughts that the theory of Buxom Beauty Standards had translated from the video game to reality.
• Laser-Guided Karma: John saves Petrine from the fate that she, by all accounts, should have gotten. John eventually befriends the extra character slowly, but surely. The result is Petrine saving John, Ike, and Mist from The Black Knight aka General Zelgius in the battle at Castle Nados leading to a Villainous Rescue.

• Lightbulb Joke: In chapter 35, John attempts to tell Jill a lightbulb joke by asking "How many wyvern knights does it take to screw in a light bulb?" While Jill is confused by the joke due to lacking familiarity with light bulbs, John proceeds to deliver the punchline anyway.
  • In chapter 43 John asks how many Daein residents it takes to screw a chandelier into a palace ceiling. The answer is five: "King Ashnard holds the chandelier and the four riders turn the palace!"
• Magic A Is Magic A: Exposited on a lot when John is learning how to use magic. Later results in a Funny Moment when John uses fire, lighting, and wind magics in one spell and gets reprimanded by the other mages in the army in a 'training' session.

• Master of None: John is able to use Anima, Dark and Light magic, something that has only been seen a couple times in the Fire Emblem games. (Specifically Athos, a very strong but fully leveled 11th-Hour Ranger character from Fire Emblem 7 and Ewan from Fire Emblem 8 as a SuperPupil, a Bragging Rights Reward promotion only unlocked during a third playthrough and onward.) However, while he has great potential, John has a great deal of trouble applying it. This leaves him frequently overshadowed by more specialized spellcasters like Selena.
• Meta Guy: Jay has evolved into one of these, snarking on things even John - with all his pop culture knowhow and genre savvy - doesn't pick up.
• Mind Screw: Apparently, Sophia Domivere is a real person, seeing as how she and John are somehow able to be in two places at once. This later turns out to be an older Nino posing as Sophia Domevire.

• Most Common Card Game: The beginning of Chapter 103 sounds like an intimidating scene... until we find out it's just a game of Go Fish.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Averted, although to be fair, John and Noah met in a dream world. Reality does not exactly apply in there.

• Noodle Incident:
  • John apparently had an incident with a chocolate chip cookie when he was a Daein Commander
  • John appears to have had bad experience with alcohol.

• Not What It Looks Like: Chapter sixteen has John doing something to silence Mist. This something is never explained in the story. Of course, who else should enter the room at that very moment but Ike and Boyd. I Can Explain occurs without much luck for the poor hero.
• Omniscient Morality License: Jay knew quite well that Jill was going to die but didn't say anything to John to try and avert it. She has a VERY good reason.
• Papa Wolf: Do what you will to John, but you do NOT mess with his friends if you know what's good for you.
• Pinball Protagonist: Lift John out of the story and, well, you get the two games that the story is based upon. Author has hinted this will be changed in the current arc, but we'll see.

• Pop-Cultured Badass: For those rare moments where John isn't getting his ass royally handed to him, he certainly qualifies. Patrick is perhaps even more of a contender, considering he was the one to off Ashnard.
• Precision F-Strike: Selena is always portrayed as a calm character, always being a gentle, kind guide to the rash hero of the story. However, Chapter 88 has a gem that is very rarely seen in the form of a rare moment of despair.
  Selena: Well, shit.
  • There is another one in chapter 91 with Selena as well.
  Selena: What in Ashera's name—what the fuck are you doing?
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: This happens in the story a lot.
  John: That. Is. AWESOME! (chapter 19... at the magic breakfast he got.)
  • Note, though, that it never seems to work that well whenever John tries to invoke the trope by name...
• Purple Prose: Sometimes the narrative of the story can become this.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Dawn Brigade.
• Redemption Equals Death: Petrine. Despair was had all around.
• Real Men Hate Affection: Averted. For a story about people fighting in an army and killing, desensitizing emotions has little effect here.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Elincia becomes one way earlier than she was supposed to in the original game.
  • Nailah seems to be one in canon and her little skirmish with John proves she's just as badass in game.
• Running Gag:
  • Chocolate cake is something of this for Karla before it becomes a Chekhov's Gun. Ash picks it right back up during the Radiant Dawn arc.
  • Tanith's horrible, horrible cooking. Also, Oscar's heavenly cooking.
  • "Are you an orange?"
  • John and titles in general.
  • And now in the Radiant Dawn arc, Ash facepalming at almost all of John's spoken pop culture references.
  • Selena questioning John about his Pokemon Battles.
  • There's also the artichoke, which is treated with such reverence that a newcomer to the story may think it's supposed to be a MacGuffin.
  • His name is not Simba, as much as John calls King Caineghis that.
• Scry vs. Scry: Patrick versus Jay. Both have played the game. Both know the future. Yet one seems to want to fight against canon for unknown reasons while the other seems determined to help preserve it. Cue John, the former oracle, who seems to be nothing more than a pawn in this match now.

• Senseless Sacrifice: Sothe, Gatrie, and Kieran. Jill, too, could qualify.

• She Is the King: Apostle Sanaki. You'd never guess it was a girl just by name. You might even guess it's a guy if you didn't know better.
• Ship Sinking: Patrick pretty much took his relationship with Ilyana and shot a cannonball at it. John and Jill has also been thoroughly sunk thanks to The Reveal of Jay.
• Shipper on Deck: It seems that a few characters tried to push for John to date Elincia. Pity how that ended up.
• Ship Tease: Happens rather frequently, often without the author's intent. However, given John's nature, it'd take some doing to make something out of it.
• Shout-Out: Quite a few.
  • As he becomes a more proficient mage, John names his custom-built spells after certain special attacks. Some of his spells? Rasengan, Tri Attack, and Indignation Judgement.
  • An entire chapter is also an homage to the first Christmas of World War 1, in which soldiers on both sides of the battlefield engaged in one big, happy Christmas.
    • And during that chapter, John finds out that Canas' last name is Lualdi.
  • John's first time dying while in Tellius grants us some insight into some of the character's thoughts on the event. The whole thing is somber enough... until we get to Patrick's thoughts, which promptly go from mourning John's passing to accidentally making himself (and the readers) lose The Game and reciting a certain love ballad to himself in hopes of using it to win over Ilyana. A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read, indeed.
  • General Wallace's spring loaded chain axe has been constantly referred to as "chained axe God of War bull$#!@" by Patrick. Upon stealing it, Patrick immediately flies into more references to the series, as well as breaking out the infamous DO NOT PURSUE LU BU.
  • John making a drill out of wind magic from his sonic sword and crying out "Giga! Drill! BREAKER!"
• Silk Hiding Steel: Princess Elincia is portrayed as a kind-hearted person toward John. Even if she isn't the Mary Sue that many fans consider her to be in the games, she is still relatively peaceful and calm. Just don't anger her or force her hand into combat. Therein lies a badass behind that veil of formality and peacefulness.
• Skilled, but Naive: John. He still doesn't always fully grasp his magic or the world around him.
• Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: John's attack on Ashnard after Jill dies.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Patrick has this quality in SPADES.
• Smug Snake: Patrick. Ignore the fact that he technically knows almost everything worth knowing about the Dawn Brigade. He fits this to a tee.
• Something Else Also Rises: John has a spyglass poking Sophia Domivere— The Nino Version, that is—when she sits in his lap. Eventually Jay remarks how the spyglass disappears into hammerspace.

• Switching P.O.V.: Although the main bulk of the story is first-person through the eyes of John, there are chapters which are first-person through the eyes of Rhys, Ike, Ilyana, Jay, etc. There is even an arc with Selena's backstory that goes completely into third person.
• Synchronous Episodes: Chapters 39 (Do or Die) and 40 (Do or Die: Jill) start at roughly the same time and end roughly the same time, except Chapter 40 has a little funeral blurb tacked on to the end. They even have some scenes that are the same in both chapters. One has to wonder if this is brilliance by the author to combine the two chapters or sheer laziness.
• Take That!: There are quite a few in Chapter 74, although the ones to the new Clash of the Titans movie, the new War of the Worlds movie, and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World are the most prominent. It seems like the author just MIGHT have something against sequels...
• Tempting Fate: "It was nice to be in a town where we weren't worried for our lives. I think we'll be safe in a secluded, out of the way desert town. It's finally a time of peace for us. What could go wrong?" (Chapter 87). Cue the spotting of a Begnion soldier in town.
  • Subverted in that There wasn't a battle like was seen in previous chapters. Turns out the soldier is just Meg.

• The Stations of the Canon: Lampshaded, both when they're being followed religiously and when they're not. Being able to stick to the stations of the canon in Radiant Dawn is going to be exceptionally difficult given that he killed off Sothe and revealed the Black Knight's identity way earlier than it happened in either game.
• This Cannot Be!: Zelgius flies into a combination of this and Unstoppable Rage after he gets his ass kicked not by Ike, but by Mist.
• This Loser Is You: John and archery do not mix. At all. Even when he finds out he's a natural mage, he struggles throughout basically the entire first three quarters of the fanficPath of Radiance story arc to even be up to par with every other mage in Elincia's army. And then he starts sucking again at the start of the Radiant Dawn arc.
  • To be fair, while John's improved in the last quarter of the Path of Radiance arc and is on the rebound in the Radiant Dawn one, he seems to have INCREDIBLY bad luck still.
• Took a Level in Badass: John takes quite a few by the time the fic gets to the final quarter of the Path of Radiance arc. The cincher comes during chapter 57.
• Training from Hell: Poor John gets this a LOT. One can easily assume the same was the case for Patrick, given he learned to fight under General Wallace.
  • This seems to have gotten worse since Radiant Dawn started
  • John seems to have taken after Selena's pushiness and Shinon's tactics when apprenticing poor Leonardo.
• Tranquil Fury: A few characters seem to have directed this at our protagonist at one point or another.
• Trapped in Another World: John. Patrick, to some extent.
• Trial by Combat: John and Jarod near the end of the Path of Radiance portion of the story.
  • It seems Patrick and John are heading in this direction considering Patrick seems to be of a higher status in the Begnion army and John seems to be right-hand man to Micaiah in Sothe's place.
• Tsundere: Jill alternates between beating John up, admitting he's cool to talk to, insults him, becomes a good friend, kills him, then ends up dating him. All over the place, that one is.
• Two Aliases, One Character: Jay/Jill
• Unfortunate Name: Jay's REAL name is LisaMarie Pheobe. Really. It's also Jill Fizzart, but she's not embarrassed about that one.
• Unreliable Narrator: John always attempts to narrate to himself through Inner Monologue that his actions in preserving canon—even the truly bizarre or immoral ones—are justified. Whether they are actually justifiable or not is up to the reader and those around him.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Between John and Jill. It seems to be acted on when she starts dating him, but alas, Ashnard killed her.
• Villainous Rescue: Petrine rescues John from the Black Knight in Castle Delbray.
  • Petrine does again later on in the story but pays the price with her life.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Boyd and John certainly qualify for the second version of this. There's rarely a moment when these two are together where Boyd isn't either spoiling a nice Ship Tease or trading vocal jabs with our protagonist.
• We Do the Impossible: This is Fire Emblem. Impossible does not exist.

• Wham Episode: Chapter 82. Patrick became an Ascended Extra, pulled a Face–Heel Turn, won a Curb-Stomp Battle and got his own Hatedom... all in one chapter!
  • And then Chapter 102. Mind Fuck much?
• Wham Line: Twice in the same chapter.
  Ashley: Who is Jay? [And then, much later on...] Do the words 'Spellbinding Radiance' mean anything to you?
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Mist exhibits a wisdom and power beyond someone her age, although it seems unlike her brother, she is more reserved and reluctant to use it.
• Worthy Opponent: By what John's future-sight has shown, it could be noted that John becomes this to both General Ike and Queen Elincia.
• Write Who You Know: John, obviously.
  • It's starting to become subverted as Word of God has mentioned numerous times that fiction John and author John have become so different that it's like writing a whole other character.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Elincia and Selena tell this to John on occasion.
• You Are Not Alone: Ike gave this speech to John once as well as Elincia. Somewhat of a dick move that John chose to pass up their offers before joining the very country they struggled to defeat in the war.

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