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waltzoidOkay, so in hindsight, I shouldn't be surprised that A Brighter Dark turned out to be a tedious slog with very few real "bright" spots considering the author admitted to not having done much research on Fire Emblem Fates when writing the story, leading to such oddities as Corrin and Azura's skin retroactively changing color in one chapter, Hoshido being subdivided into colonies named after real Japanese cities, and a dead-end subplot where Laslow hits on his own daughter.
To cleanse my palate, I've been reading An Eagle Among Lions, a Fire Emblem: Three Houses role swap/time travel fanfic that takes place after the Crimson Flower story route. The twist is that Edelgard is suddenly thrown back in time to before she declares war against the Church of Seiros, except her siblings are alive and Dimitri is the one being groomed by "those who slither in the dark" to be that timeline's version of the Flame Emperor. It's a very daunting read - the average chapter length starts out at around 10,000 words and grows to close to 20,000 somewhere around chapter 20, so keep that in mind if you decide to pick it up. The reason I'm calling this a "turning point observations" post instead of "halfway point observations" like I did with Dark is because Eagle is still being updated as of December 19, 2021, but Chapter 37 sounded like a good place to stop because it occurs at the same time of the big reveal in Three Houses.
All of this covers more than 500,000 words over the first 37 chapters. It's probably not saying much since I've only recently started reading fan fiction again a few years ago, but it's probably one of my favorite Fire Emblem stories so far. There's an excellent blend of action, drama, and comedy (especially drama...so much drama), and I enjoyed seeing how Edelgard would bond with characters who either fought against her or died prior to the war in her old world. We've still got at least 30 chapters and 600,000 (!!) more words to go, so I hope An Eagle Among Lions has enough to keep me reading to the end.
To cleanse my palate, I've been reading An Eagle Among Lions, a Fire Emblem: Three Houses role swap/time travel fanfic that takes place after the Crimson Flower story route. The twist is that Edelgard is suddenly thrown back in time to before she declares war against the Church of Seiros, except her siblings are alive and Dimitri is the one being groomed by "those who slither in the dark" to be that timeline's version of the Flame Emperor. It's a very daunting read - the average chapter length starts out at around 10,000 words and grows to close to 20,000 somewhere around chapter 20, so keep that in mind if you decide to pick it up. The reason I'm calling this a "turning point observations" post instead of "halfway point observations" like I did with Dark is because Eagle is still being updated as of December 19, 2021, but Chapter 37 sounded like a good place to stop because it occurs at the same time of the big reveal in Three Houses.
- Unlike the impression I got while reading Dark, it really feels like Eagle's author is having a lot of fun with Three Houses' setting and the characters. There are occasional glimpses of what was going through Edelgard's mind during her time as the Flame Emperor which weren't covered by the game, possibly because it would have spoiled the surprise when it happened. Because most of the story is being written from Edelgard's perspective, the narrative sounds like it's making excuses for her turn to villainy, but whether or not she was in the right to do so is still left for the reader to decide.
- Even with everything that happened in her own timeline, the experience appears to have impacted Edelgard positively, as she tries to be a voice of reason/a shoulder to cry on for some of her past timeline counterparts.
- It looks like I'm not the only one out there who believes that Rodrigue and Lord Arundel are practically mirror images of each other, with the game's Rodrigue being a Holy Knight who values honor and loyalty and has a strained relationship with his son while Lord Arundel is a Dark Knight who's a schemer and manipulator and only pretends to care about his niece Edelgard as long as he thinks she is useful to him. The past timeline flips their roles, too, just like Edelgard and Dimitri: Rodrigue, of all people, is Thales' host body and has an outright hostile relationship with Felix, and Volkhard is the one desperately trying to play peacemaker watching over ELEVEN children after the emperor's sudden death.
- While the present-day Edelgard had the backing of the Black Eagle Strike Force and Imperial commanders and generals loyal to her cause (and no demonic beasts or Agarthan "supporters" as she does on the other story routes) and could win the day through strength in numbers, when she's in her past self's body (who eventually asks the others to name her "Ellie" to avoid confusion), she has to rely more on cunning and (imperfect) knowledge of the present timeline to try to survive. One of my favorite moments so far is when Edelgard scares off Kronya (who is posing as Felix's brother Glenn) by threatening to release information about her group's involvement in the Tragedy of Duscur if she kills any of the Blue Lions. This gives Claude enough time to concoct a poison suitable for making Kronya compliant enough to extract information from her to use in their mission to defeat Thales.
All of this covers more than 500,000 words over the first 37 chapters. It's probably not saying much since I've only recently started reading fan fiction again a few years ago, but it's probably one of my favorite Fire Emblem stories so far. There's an excellent blend of action, drama, and comedy (especially drama...so much drama), and I enjoyed seeing how Edelgard would bond with characters who either fought against her or died prior to the war in her old world. We've still got at least 30 chapters and 600,000 (!!) more words to go, so I hope An Eagle Among Lions has enough to keep me reading to the end.
