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Another Notion of Canon
By no means is FE13 as gritty as any of its predecessors, and never have the stakes been lower. Yet I believe the most absurdly happy parts of it -- unlike Michelis's resurrection -- are outside of "Main Canon" and for the purposes of most analyses can be safely ignored.
The most egregious resurrections come in a series of spotpass paralogues meant to be played post-game. Unlike the gold/exp/item shower DLCs, they're played straight within the game and on some level they're meant to be taken seriously.
Yet they're incredibly isolated in form and content. There's no better reason given for the recruitable's survival than "oh yeah, I survived... somehow." After recruitment, their interaction is limited to supports with Robin and the usual randomzied one-liners. Their presence, otherwise, has no effect whatsoever.
They're easter eggs, tiny nonsensical treats for the player, and the plot treats them as such. I think the fact that they're only released significantly after the main game is in itself enough of a wink and a nudge to their externality.
And I think, when thinking Seriously about Ylisse, or writing things set in the world, or what have you, the events of these paralogues should be ignored. That's not to say that they're not canon entirely -- Gangrel's supports with Robin reveal that Grima's the main faith of Plegia, which is pretty significant. The external information is useful and telling. But the events themselves need not be considered part of Main Canon simply because they can exist.
Consider, for example, that we have other options in canon that cannot exist in tandem: for example, who is whose parent, and who's banging who. Even back in Jugdral it was always possible to make whatever crack ships you want, and yet there was a notion of More Canon and Less Canon.
Here the two possibilities are things like "Emmeryn is actually dead" and "Emmeryn actually lived," and while it's intuitively strange to suggest the former when you're given direct evidence for the latter, remember that we had damn well proof enough that Emmeryn was dead and only the flimsiest of excuses given elsewise in the paralogue.
So as far as I'm concerned, these are weird little offshoots of canon that represent some kind of alternate reality that I feel no guilt whatsoever in ignoring in favor of what is presented as the more coherent option.
The most egregious resurrections come in a series of spotpass paralogues meant to be played post-game. Unlike the gold/exp/item shower DLCs, they're played straight within the game and on some level they're meant to be taken seriously.
Yet they're incredibly isolated in form and content. There's no better reason given for the recruitable's survival than "oh yeah, I survived... somehow." After recruitment, their interaction is limited to supports with Robin and the usual randomzied one-liners. Their presence, otherwise, has no effect whatsoever.
They're easter eggs, tiny nonsensical treats for the player, and the plot treats them as such. I think the fact that they're only released significantly after the main game is in itself enough of a wink and a nudge to their externality.
And I think, when thinking Seriously about Ylisse, or writing things set in the world, or what have you, the events of these paralogues should be ignored. That's not to say that they're not canon entirely -- Gangrel's supports with Robin reveal that Grima's the main faith of Plegia, which is pretty significant. The external information is useful and telling. But the events themselves need not be considered part of Main Canon simply because they can exist.
Consider, for example, that we have other options in canon that cannot exist in tandem: for example, who is whose parent, and who's banging who. Even back in Jugdral it was always possible to make whatever crack ships you want, and yet there was a notion of More Canon and Less Canon.
Here the two possibilities are things like "Emmeryn is actually dead" and "Emmeryn actually lived," and while it's intuitively strange to suggest the former when you're given direct evidence for the latter, remember that we had damn well proof enough that Emmeryn was dead and only the flimsiest of excuses given elsewise in the paralogue.
So as far as I'm concerned, these are weird little offshoots of canon that represent some kind of alternate reality that I feel no guilt whatsoever in ignoring in favor of what is presented as the more coherent option.
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