Get a load of this nerd

There's no particular ordering within the tiers. Interesting highlights:

If there is one net positive to 3Hopes' existence, it's that it confrims that not only is KT responsible for most of the writing issues of 3Houses, but that KT is fundamentally incompatible with the themes and messages of FE in general.

While Houses did have a lot of KT devs on staff for Houses, it was IS staff that served as director and producer. Hopes was almost entirely a KT production, with Kusakihara only being credited as an illustrator and "consultant/supervisor" this time, KT staff in the director and the producer roles, and two of the writers being replaced. IS basically had almost nothing to do with Hopes; this is very apparent when you compare how the characters, themes and story are handled compared to other entries in the series (the Elibe and Tellius games in particular) and even Houses. I've written about issues I've had with how Houses handled its anti-war and anti-prejudice messages, but there was an actual attempt at communicating said messages. Compare how the relics and the Nabateans are framed in Houses vs Hopes. In Houses, the relics and crests are ultimately the product of human sin and folly, with scenes like Hilda noticing and being repulsed by how her relic seems almost alive existing to draw your attention to it. The big secret Claude learns at the end of his route is not that Rhea was responsible for crests or relics, but that they are the remnants of her family, and she lied about them not to control humanity but because she wanted to protect what was left of her race and couldn't bring herself to kill people for simply being related to her victims. It was not an accident that Rhea turns out to be the one person in Fodlan who understands more Claude's desire for people to live without hiding who they are more than anyone. In Hopes, not only is the nature of the relics and crests completely ignored, the game seems to go out of its way to imply that the Nabateans deserved what happened to them or are equivalent to the people who genocided them for power, which is extremely fucked up.

In fact, the morals of 3Hopes in general are very fucked up, because the messages it communicates basically seem to be the following:

It's a pro-war, pro-imperialist game, and reads more like the manifesto of a Japanese nationalist, right down to the victim complex and refusal to accept responsibility. Edelgard and Claude in that game are not so much characters as they are mouthpieces, and Rhea and the church are standins for everyone the devs don't like. It's not the plot holes introduced or the continuity errors and retcons that should disown 3Hopes, but the thematic and tonal dissonance to both the series as a whole and the entry that it's supposed to serve in the first place.

I love how this image is both an accurate summation of the "good guys" of 3Hopes, and a completely new line in Reborn, whose release date perfectly coincides with 3h discourse.

It's ironic that both Fates and 3Houses/Hopes seem to take a fair amount of inspiration from Matsuno's games, even though those games do not view people like the protagonists of Fates/3H(s) highly at all. There's actually quite a bit of lines in Tactics Ogre that just completely rip apart KT, which is really cathartic.

I'm not sure I remember the exact post you're talking about, but I get the feeling it was in response to one of those posts that complained about people giving Ingrid shit for her prejudices but not Hilda. I think what I was alluding to was that for the most part, nobody makes similar posts regarding Jill and Shinon because the two are very different characters; if someone does, it's pretty much always done to make Shinon look worse. Jill is also frequently brought up when talking about Ingrid.

Pretty much every time Hilda gets brought up in these discussions, it's always done as a way to make Ingrid look better, and it's always done by painting her as uncharitably as possible. There's also the complaint that Hilda's prejudices aren't fixed in a similar manner as Ingrid's, which is like complaining that Shinon's aren't handled like Jill's. It's a stupid complaint because it would be OOC for everyone involved and it would be boring.

I also get annoyed by the comparisons because it's another case of Cyril's character being misinterpreted so he can be used as a tool to bash someone else, which happens way too often.

Basically how I'd rank all the lords in both FE and Kaga Saga games. No particular ordering within the tiers.

The Cyril/Claude support is pretty interesting from a meta-perspective; it's one of his best and most important supports with actual character development and worldbuilding, but it makes the flaws with the support system and with the game's writing even more apparent.

The support is unique in that it's the only time Claude is intentionally portrayed unflatteringly and the only time the game does not attempt to downplay the flaws of Almyran society. The ignorance Claude shows is completely in line with his character; he does research on the church, but displays little to no genuine interest in understanding their perspective. It's worth noting that the only genuine believer that he talks about religion with is Leonie, and she's rather casual about it. His support with Ignatz is the most telling though, because he's legitimately offensive towards an actual believer, and can get away with it because of Ignatz's non-confrontational personality. Once you also consider how he tends to either ignore anything bad Almyra does, or immediately brings up flaws in Fodlan after barely acknowledging it, Claude starts looking more like a myopic thinker who cares more about appearing open-minded than actually being open-minded, which is quite fitting for his age.

This is also the one time where it's impossible for Claude to shift the blame on Fodlan, because Cyril is undeniably a victim of Almyran's culture. He lost his parents because of the war, and not only was he left to fend for himself, but later conscripted and basically sent to die in a meaningless battle at the age of 12. To his credit, Claude does recognize his limited perspective in their B support and even muses that his and Rhea's ideals might not be so incompatible. Unfortunately because the support is optional, this change is never addressed in the actual story. This is particularly hilarious because it's possible for this to happen right before The Alliance Leaders' Ambitions.... where he directly says the church is to blame for Fodlan being closeminded, and Byleth should be in charge because they can make people openminded (lol). It really comes across like the person who wrote the support noticed all of this about Claude, which he means he most likely wasn't one of the main story writers.

It's infuriating because the Claude/Cyril chain is very reminiscent of the scene in Thracia where Leif sees firsthand the horrible conditions that the Thracians are forced to live in, and learns from August that it's a consequence of his country's policies. Leif also genuinely becomes more empathetic and mature throughout the game; there's a big difference in how he talks about the Thracians early in the game vs the end, unlike with Claude, who victim-blames even to the end.

Of course this is a game that thinks that the existence of multiple autonomous states is evil, and whose messages are "Imperialism is good if you do it" and "The ends don't justify the means, except when they do", so I shouldn't be surprised that the writers would think that one of the main characters have their entire worldview challenged and contradicted is just fluff.

Something that's interesting is that just like in Conquest, the main obstacle in Berwick Saga is the asshole king giving you orders. But Volcens is less like King Garon and more like the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert.

Incidentally, I remember seeing a japanese blog post that compared the conflict between Reese and Volcens to conflicts between middle management; I like to pretend it's meant to symbolize Kaga's increasingly poor relationship with IS lol.

The only good self-insert fanfiction is Dante's Inferno. Change my mind.

(I particularly like how half the poem is him making pointed political observations at people he doesn't like while they're stuck in hell).

Speaking as someone who likes both Ingrid and Hilda, I find the discussions around their prejudices to be cancerous.

I'll be blunt: I really dislike how the game handles both the Tragedy of Duscur and the relations between Goneril/Almyra, and a large part of it is because they feel so...mechanical, for the lack of a better word.

The part about Goneril having indentured Almyran servants seems to exist purely to explain how Cyril got to Fodlan while trying to add more "gray morality" and make Almyra more sympathetic; outside of the paralogue, which explains Cyril's backstory, it's never mentioned, which seems like a pretty glaring thing to miss in a route where Fodlan/Almyra relations is supposed to be important. The attempt at making Almyra sympathetic backfires because 1) it's confirmed that they attack the border just for the lulz, and 2) there's no reason why they conscript kids. Generally when a country employs child soldiers, it's a last resort and not the default behavior. In fiction, it's used to either depict a country as extremely evil or extremely desperate, and neither of those cases apply to Almyra.

Another issue with this particular plot point is that the game doesn't give any details on Cyril's time with House Goneril, which ties into third major problem which is that it creates character inconsistencies. Both the Goneril siblings want to make peace with Almyra, and they're both supposed to be rather compassionate individuals; Hilda's support with Cyril also says that everything she knows about Almyra is what people have told her, and it's not clear whether or not she's even met one before. So if House Goneril does have indentured servants, are they kept by relatives? Are there many of them? Are Holst and Hilda even aware of how they're being treated, and if they're not, is it a case of willful blindness or complete ignorance? These are important questions, but none of them are even acknowledged.

Claude looks worse too, since he just seems to ignore all of this. He doesn't acknowledge Almyra using child soldiers, his best friend's family using the captured soldiers as servants, or the fact that there are pointless raids happening in the first place, so his talk about opening borders and eliminating race issues just makes him look like a clueless knobend. Which again, would not be an issue if that was by design and if it was a part of the story, but it's not.

The worst part is that this wasn't even necessary to explain how Cyril got to Fodlan; he could be a survivor of a village on the border that got destroyed in the crossfire that Rhea just happened to find. If the writers didn't want to address the elephant in the room, that's probably what they should have gone with.

The Tragedy of Duscur has the advantage of being used in the plot, but just like with the servants in Goneril, the game only cares about it as a way to give something for the Lions to angst about and to serve as another mystery box. But the circumstances and details are barely touched upon and it's resolved by just having some random guy who doesn't even have a name say that he did it because Ideals before being just dropped altogether. To be honest, I find that even worse than the game forgetting about Goneril and Almyra, because this is something you're blueballed with for the whole game and the payoff is completely unsatisfactory, so it feels like game is wasting your time for getting invested in it.

So what does this have to do with Hilda and Ingrid? Basically when the topic of Ingrid and her racism comes up, there's often someone who brings up Hilda, often accompanied by "Hilda is the REAL CEO of Racism." Then there's a debate about who is more racist and therefore who deserves to be torn down, and these plot points will inevitably come up. I hate these arguments for several reasons:

It's because of this that you end up with people talking about some weird, bastardized, one-dimensional versions of the characters, such as Ingrid being a homophobe because she doesn't let Dorothea sexually harrass her, or the Claude/Hilda ending leading to Hilda being some sort of oppressive queen, which is a take I've actually seen. It also has the consequence of stifling the discussion of certain character traits that don't get brought up often, but give them a lot of color.

tl;dr version: Ingrid and Hilda are good people with a pretty glaring character flaw that is not addressed properly because the writers are hacks; all the memes are reductionist garbage and I wish people would stop trying to tear them down.

Did you know that the Gatekeeper has a brother 15 years older than him, and he guards the jail in Narvia? Not many people know that.