3h wank #5 (final srs): definitive church edition (ft. khalid)

[shrineofseals]

Edit 10/10/22: Just read my later posts okay.
Edit 20/08/22: Intsys's reluctance to meaningfully condemn the Central Church/of Seiros is ruining my reading comprehension. I give up.
Minor edits 23/9/22.
Minor wording edit 10/5/25.

Original post:

I don't agree with all the choices the creators made. They didn't consider the implications, I wouldn't do it myself, and I dunno if it was a worthwhile story to tell. That said, it's not uninteresting.

So... let's roll with it for a bit. I guess. Please humour me...!

My claim: the creators did not intend to make true villains of Rhea or the church.

It's funny how the game doesn't allow you to oppose the church in any substantial way without also targeting a woman who would be hunted for her blood, and her corpse mutilated for the purpose of using her bones as weapons... over a length of time spanning several human generations... just as the rest of her kin were.

It's true that other characters have died for less, but the details of Rhea's backstory are such a combination that I can't see how her death would be anything but tragic, even if she's white (we're rolling with it, okay!). Edelgard (also white) doubles down on her dehumanisation of the dragons, even in her S support! It's the first thing she says! When she could have said anything else! It literally doesn't matter that she is a Child of the Goddess, but she mentions it anyway, suggesting that it makes Rhea inherently untrustworthy. (Though to factcheck, I think both she and Rhea belittle each other due to their 'race' at some point during the game?) In the end, this game comes too close to pulling a 'what if the oppressor became the oppressed' that I think even Tellius pulled off, though as far as I can remember it wasn't emphasised all that much in the game. It was still off-putting. At least it leaves Rhea the opportunity to do her lifespan's worth of good instead. Like a certain white boy...

And I wonder if this page is relevant to understanding the creators' choices/context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakure_Kirishitan. Isn't this what Silence (novel and films) is about?

(Yes, I know that I tolerate, even like Elibe despite it doing both fantasy racism and actual racism. You have to understand that Elibe was the peak. Seriously though it's just not presented in a way that aggravates me.)

Additionally, it was weird going from FE's mostly anti-war and not-anti-dragon stances to... whatever 3H was supposed to be.

Which is to say: I don't agree with all the choices the creators made. They didn't consider the implications, I wouldn't do it myself, and I dunno if this was a worthwhile story to tell. That said, it's not uninteresting.

Dunno how to explain but it's important that this game mechanically doesn't let you oppose the church. It indicates that the creators were not especially preoccupied with framing the church as antagonists for 3/4 of the game.

Otherwise, why is A Funeral of Flowers like that...

Considering this, I reckon that the creators did not consider the implications their portrayal of the fantasy church, its dirty history and the depth of corruption that plagues it even if in the text the branches are different, e.g. forbidding autopsies, being open to internal refugees but their whole 'foreign policy' not extending much further than letting foreigners sit around the Monastery grounds (yes, Cyril was effectively groomed/assimilated, and Shamir seems too close to a 'token Dagdan' for comfort), withholding technological development (beyond the Adrestian aqueducts, apparently?)—seriously, assuming that the church was powerful enough (which is left somewhat unclear in the text, further muddying the church's exact culpability), they could roll out all this shit while stopping people twisting shit for harmful purposes (based on stuff I read I haven't played the DLC myself—dunno if that means anything). Y'know, the thing that religion church detractors cite. Which is completely understandable, coming from someone whose ancestors were colonised. But we need to be clear about whether we're arguing whether that's what the text said OR is this a good story to tell. Here, I am indulging in the former despite my above misgivings re optics/the latter. Otherwise we'd be here all day. [Edit 23/9/22: And I'm too much of a fan of religion to rag on on the one vague representation of Abrahamic religion in the text.]

One could argue that Claude was used as a device to expand the lore, but I find the manner in which it uncovers the church/Rhea rather interesting, and it's a journey that only he could have undergone. The church has secrets, ones that, if left alone, leave the continent to stumble in the darkness of ignorance, left at the mercy of an ongoing series of authority figures that don't have truly considered, good visions for their world. The thing is: a woman's deep grief and rage lay at the bottom of it. What then?

It's an intriguing parallel(?) to Khalid keeping secrets regarding his own identity while trying to bring his own dreams to life. Obviously, his haven't resulted in historical injustices and disproportionate uses of power, but it's there; Rhea also hides her identity. (I doubt it's a good idea to have a brown guy sympathise with the head of a religion whose irl equivalent was used as a tool of colonialism, but I've already said that I'm not here to talk about that.) Maybe his discoveries have no deeper meaning than to see yourself in a structural enemy, make you wonder if there is any use in the experience? Could that experience have value in itself? (How that would factor into a coherent narrative is another story...)

It's cute that Claude wants the people of the present to wake up to that new dawn, rather than raze the present to the ground just for something different. (That said, those irl "what's your solution, then" types can't be engaged in good faith—someone already wrote/spoke on it anyway, you just have to look.) Imo his dreams are not quite intuitive, but at least they're outside the box, and hint at the importance of foundations and IMAGINATION for progress. (Also they free me from the boring-as-hell Edel-Dima story. I don't care about the white girl with faulty ideas of progress. I don't care about the [borrowing from a post] rotten Anglo Camelot.) I'll give the white pope a pass for being hot a dragon, which, as a FE veteran, is an easy point of sympathy. Radical, swift change is possible without building mountains of corpses (that's me talking, not the text.)

Lies are powerful, and the truth moreso. The righteous one must weigh these appropriately in their pursuit of change (that's the text talking—I know it disregards structural violence move on.)

(As a bonus, his visions won't degrade the [non-]human environment, either, which I feel is an underappreciated detail...)

That's how truly good change is made. In the process and the result, especially when the line between these is blurred.