Another Notion of Canon

[amielleon]

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.

Comments

[raphiael]

I don't know; what I know of these seems less akin to stuff like FE8's tower/ruins or other games' assorted bonus maps/playthrough perks, and more akin to letting Pelleas live in FE10 - canon possible, really doesn't affect much, but still something that is a legitimate "this can happen".

I might buy this as discountable if the characters had no bearing on anything, but they can be spouses of the main character and parents of another playable. That's... kind of hard to put aside, IMO, even if I kind of want to because I liked when being dead actually meant something.

[amielleon]

Well, of the Avatar, specifically, who is in some ways a self-insert and given the option to marry *everyone* as a policy. But aside from the wish gratification option they've got no other options, no matter how much it would make sense (eg. Walhart, Yen'fay + Say'ri). Is it so believable to credit them actual presence when no one acts as if they're really there?

[raphiael]

I think it does, since, well, the Avatar does, and Chrom does, and then they talk to each other. That's not no one, IMO. It's in stark contrast to basically every bonus character thing, and right in line with other events in the game. Figuring out why they don't talk to others is a challenge, sure, but they do talk and are acknowledged by some pretty major characters.

[mark_asphodel]

and more akin to letting Pelleas live in FE10 - canon possible, really doesn't affect much, but still something that is a legitimate "this can happen".

I might buy this as discountable if the characters had no bearing on anything, but they can be spouses of the main character and parents of another playable.

This is how I feel about both Michalis and the FE13 gang. Michalis has in-game dialogue and a character ending. The FE13 "survivors" can have a child. I detest both these developments but it's not the same thing as Hector in the Trial Maps or Glen in the Creature Campaign.

I like the analogy to FE4's cracky pairings, but is the status of Schroedinger's Emmeryn more of a Beo/Raquy/Finn situation ("Ship whatever you want, LOL! We confirm nothing!") or a Lewyn/Sylvia ("Here's a family tree confirming Lewyn/Fury for all time! BWA HA!") sort of thing? It doesn't matter how many alt-Levin babies you breed, his canon wife is still Fury, so the canon status of Fury as Lewyn's wife is independent of your Forseti!Corple or Forseti!Arthur or Forseti!Patty, however good or bad the evidence for each of those pairings. Fury's kids exist independently in canon even if you killed her in your playthrough and got Hawk and Femina.

So is Emmeryn still dead regardless of the existence of Emm!Morgan? I think that's the gray area these Paralogues inhabit. Is alive!Emmeryn as AU as Forseti!Corple or as AU as Hawk? I can't answer that.

[amielleon]

Chrom does within the chapter itself, much like how he acknowledges vegetarian zombies in one self-contained chapter. The legacy characters (Even the ones that talk to Chrom and you-the-player-as-Robin) are said to be Einherjar, dudes in playing cards, rather than mysteriously alive, which makes their status inherently different (not to mention the workload of writing supports for Avatar and all 100some spotpass characters!). It's worth noting that the game does treat Einherjar as independent of the story, putting them in the Avatar Log, and it's true that Walhart et al don't get that treatment -- but as major NPCs I'd hardly argue they outright don't really exist in the universe.

If anything, I'd rate base acknowledgement by Chrom and Avatar less, as they react to a number of things clearly intended as crack.

Teal deer, a bonus character like Ismaire is more like Walhart and less like spotpass Soren.

[raphiael]

There's nothing to counter the paralogues, is there? Outside the initial "okay, they're dead" -- the paralogues say they survived somehow and that's all. Whereas with things like Levin/Sylvia, or things like units in FE9 dying, you've got explicit contradiction later on in a piece clearly set in the same timeline and everything. (I do maintain that it's safe to ditch anything FE13 says about previous FEs.)

I think the only thing they actually contradict is our sense of logic and the norm for other FEs. They aren't countered by anything in FE13, and are grouped in a set of chapters otherwise taken as straight canon. And it's totally tempting to go "they don't count", because they are pretty dumb, but I think they're pretty firm canon. Especially since unlike FE4's cracky pairings, storyline-wise, not getting those paralogues doesn't mean the characters stop existing/surviving - it just means Chrom & co. don't find them.

[amielleon]

Michelis is encountered in the actual body of the game. Whether or not the game has something other than its main arc (and it sure does have gaidens, and didn't even stick him there) I think that's easy.

Also, since Morgan came from a different future and remembers nothing, any number of explanations are readily conceivable, such as being from an alt timeline where various characters didn't die -- but much like the status of Chrom, perhaps they're better counted dead in some others.

I do like the comparison to Raque and Levin though -- I agree that much's gray. Well, if Kakusei got a sequel (which I hope it doesn't) we'd see for sure, eh?

[amielleon]

That's certainly the intuitive notion, but not all games have treated the act of seeing something as independent of reality. My best example comes from ToS but alas, it's late in the game and spoilery as Hell. So here's a different one: in Cave Story, at one point, an old professor falls down a ravine. If you follow him, he gives you an equip with the last of his strength and dies. But if you ignore him, and jump over the ravine and continue, you later find that he survived, and be gives you the best equip necessary for the best ending.

Cave Story players have wtf'd plenty over this and joked that he lives if he saves the energy he used to talk to you but come on.

So it's apparent in some other Japanese games that things don't always happen the same way independent of observation. I cannot think of an example from FE of this effect atm, but at least provisionally I'd argue that larger JRPG convention is fair game when it comes to FE13. I like Mark's description of "Schrodinger's Emm" - she could be dead or alive until you peek inside the Paralogue.

[amielleon]

Actually, stylistically speaking, wouldn't it be cute to imagine that these alivedead bosses are spirited away versions from closely parallel timelines?

I mean if Kakusei wants stupid future shit let's enjoy it.

[raphiael]

But the Xenologues are a group of chapters totally regarded as outside-canon, explicitly not part of the same timeline as FE13 or any other. The paralogues also include pretty explicitly canon characters, so regarding just some of them as not counting seems odd to me. Like, is it okay to say Donnel's not really canon? I'd certainly prefer a game where no one made Larry the Cable Guy references, but I think it's fair to include that as intended canon, no matter how much I hate it.

It's in line with other things that happen, too, so I guess I'm wondering what's actually gained from discounting them outside our own desire for actual consequence, when from where I'm seeing it, including them ties in just fine with everything else the game gives (both in terms of "crack" and treatment of death), while discounting them, especially in analysis, seems entirely arbitrary.

I've seen other people try to argue that all the "wacky" supports should be discounted as not-really-happening, and they both just seem like an attempt to make a conventional FE out of a game that doesn't want to be one, especially when it comes to things like bad things happening to good people.

[raphiael]

But couldn't there also be a case like that for every optional character ever? I think not getting the paralogues is more like not getting the chapter in FE7 where you recruit Canas, or getting Karel over Harken -- they still exist, no matter what. There's just an outcome where your party never meets them, not an outcome where they aren't there at all.

[amielleon]

I think meeting a character for the first time is substantially different from up-ending their fairly concrete death.

EDIT: That said, there's actually an interesting case in FE7 now that I think about it. If you start with Eliwood or Hector's route without ever doing Lyn's, there is no reference to Mark whatsoever. What's up with that? (People seem pretty happy to pretend Mark doesn't exist now and then.)

[raphiael]

FE13 is happy to upend concrete death, though. And I mean, FE overall has been going "SOMEHOW I SURVIVED" to concrete deaths since Camus. Honestly, the only thing that strikes me as odd for FE13 alone here is that not every good guy can be found miraculously alive somewhere. No Phila paralogue, great injustice.

I think Mark is more game mechanic than character in actual treatment, honestly. Lyn needs him in story, and all it's really saying is that Eliwood and Hector don't. I think that's a pretty fair assessment. Actually makes more sense than some of the other tutorial mechanics where characters explain to novices what to do in easy modes (but don't in harder ones, as if the character themselves just became more competent.)

[amielleon]

You could get Donnel even if you never connected to the internet. There's certainly something separating these paralogues from other paralogues, if not solely in name.

Unlike wacky supports, which are differentiated only subjectively via content, the paralogues are obtained differently and occupy a very different place in the game given their level of involvement with other events. (The children characters can talk to a whole host of others and all come from an explanation very fundamentally tied to the plot -- "oh I came here via Naga power from the future.")

But if we're going to talk about content, let's talk about how contradictory the resurrection paralogues are. Gangrel is conceivable, given that we have precedent by Basilio that you can apparently play dead pretty effectively. Walhart's apparently a sentient Risen who Chrom is totally okay with recruiting?? but I guess vaguely conceivable.

Emmeryn? I know her chapter isn't out yet, but the explanation according to Japanese resources is apparently that she just randomly fled by herself to a village (paralogue opening). Her supports with Avatar shed no more light on this matter. Let's recall that per the normal course of events, she jumped from a point high enough to let her reach terminal velocity (I think that's like at least 96% fatal on impact in itself), and she was apparently in bad enough shape after the fall that Chrom didn't bother screaming for a healer once he found her body. Then she somehow not only lives, but flees to a village, from the middle of enemy territory, with no one attested as having helped her.

If we take this as a normal part of canon, the world starts making dramatically less sense, and I get the feeling that the developers are well aware how thin these excuses are. Why not take it as a hint that they're not exactly meant to be part of the real story?

[amielleon]

For a case where a character is defeated in battle, sure. I mean, you have Basilio. For a character that dies a plot-important death in a giant cutscene... that's quite deeply suspect.

Where do you draw the line between game mechanic and actual character, then? After all, people talk to Mark in FE7 -- not just the main lord, but a whole variety of the cast if you take them to the right chapters. He's really more embedded in the game than spotpass Walhart. If it's all right to ignore Mark, I should think it's all right to ignore spotpass Walhart, who is more easter egg than canon in actual treatment.

Actually makes more sense than some of the other tutorial mechanics where characters explain to novices what to do in easy modes (but don't in harder ones, as if the character themselves just became more competent.)

Incidentally, when I started FE13 on normal for supports I was super confused why the game wasn't letting me trade or pair up or anything at first. Turns out you actually aren't allowed to use those commands until they explain them to you, on normal. Quite funny.

[raphiael]

But in the scenario where you discount Mark in Eliwood/Hector modes, you're not saying "Mark doesn't exist". He still did whatever with Lyn, because that's unavoidable, it canonically happens even though she has no cause to talk about it, but then he went off to do something else. He doesn't stop existing. Similarly, I think spotpass Walhart is still on that paralogue map even if you don't get there. And you could write fic or whatever where he never comes up, or where Emmeryn's still assumed dead, or whatever, but the game is still saying "nope still alive somehow" even if you don't see it. You seeing the scene doesn't change it any more than not finding Soren's heritage creates a canon where he isn't Almedha's son.

Things like that are why tutorials are the worst.

[raphiael]

Emmeryn has amnesia and trouble speaking due to her fall, from what I've read. So she is directly referencing the fall, making an alternate timeline help basically nothing (unless it was an alternate cliff, too?) It's totally nonsensical, sure -- but no more nonsensical than other things the game does with a totally straight face. And honestly no worse than "everyone thought I was dead but I was actually chilling out being partially blind on an island somewhere" or "everyone thought I was dead but I was actually washed up on a different island somewhere and banging a really hot priestess" or "everyone thought I was dead but I had magic teleportation power so I could be in the sequel and not crushed under a building". Those are some amazingly flimsy excuses! I mean, they're not in extra chapters, but it's still pretty standard.

I just don't think "Emmeryn didn't die because reasons" et al has any reason to be considered outlandish or extracanonical. Maybe if this was something like Kaga's notes on FE4, sure. But it happens in game with some effect and still fits with everything else, so I think I'll consider it as canon myself. Stupid canon, but still canon unless when it comes out it tells me "didn't actually happen lol". Which to my knowledge, there isn't; it's just a fan assumption that I think is faulty.

[amielleon]

That certainly suggests that Lyn is fairly ungrateful, never once mentioning one huge reason she won back her throne and apparently something of a friend. Is that so much better than thinking that Mark might have died on the plains, or never existed?

When it comes to information I certainly think it's best to use everything you're given -- for example, Tauroneo has a son whether or not he supports with Rolf. And in general I think the "observation has no effect on reality" principle is a good way to go about things. But I point out the ToS and Cave Story examples to show that it's not the only way games go about things, and that this principle does not always hold, and that ultimately games are constructed realities that might hold better to Schrodinger's Paradox than our own sense of what is true.

[amielleon]

Sure, she's clearly brain-injured, but looking over the script (a bit quickly, I admit) I don't actually see any proof or statement from Emmeryn that it was from the fall.

The examples you give, Camus aside, all have elaborate backstory fleshing out the incident. Douglas's covert arrangement for Elphin to be cared for by his daughter forms a pretty big part of all three characters' stories. The latter was actually an inconsistency introduced by NoA -- in the Japanese, Warp Powder is explained as not quite a full teleportation, so the BK you meet in PoR is actually not entirely there (which also accounts for his difference in strength). It's further explained in RD that his armor was left at the scene which corroborates this mechanic and explains why his armor's no longer blessed in RD.

Camus, poor sod, he was from the NES era and a great deal of things go unexplained there. A flimsy excuse in the NES era is not nearly the same thing as a flimsy excuse in a game with this much text, where sisters who miraculously and counterfactually survive only ever talk to someone they met about twice, and not their next of kin.

[raphiael]

I understand what you're saying with the examples, but I think those are presenting a duality that this is not. They're presenting two different outcomes based on player choices - I don't think this is. I think it's saying "this happens, but you might not see it." Those two Cave Story possibilities can't coexist - the guy's either dead or he isn't. I think these can and do. "It looks like they died, but they didn't." You don't get the paralogue, and you just see the former part. It looks like they died. But they're alive, even if you don't see them again.

Actually in this respect I think it's more set in stone than Pelleas, since he either lives or dies. I think the paralogues suggest "definitely alive".

Lyn's actions regarding said throne tell me that a total lack of gratitude for winning it back would be totally in character. There's no possibility where Mark isn't involved with her mode, so I think it works just fine.

[amielleon]

I agree that there's a difference in that the paralogue can be reconciled neatly -- so maybe we want to accept its bullshit explanation and reconcile them. But do they have to be reconciled? Eirika's Route Lyon and Ephraim's Route Lyon can be reconciled with some handwaving -- should they be? Or should we consider them slightly different versions of canon, with one more compelling and fitting to the main plot?

Haha, no comment about Lyn, I have no particular interest in defending her character, though I think it's outside of the usual expectations for a JRPG protagonist.

[raphiael]

FE8's routes contradict each other pretty strongly, so while reconciling them is useful for fans who want to figure out how both might happen at once, it's not really possible to create one solid canon without throwing away material the game keeps. It's great for trying to figure out characters, but there's no actually canon scenario in which both exist. You have two different but equally canon scenarios, and that's fine.

I think in cases where one solid canon can be created from the source material without external handwaving, it should be regarded as just that. And in this case, the canon does the handwaving for us and throws itself out. "Don't worry about the specifics; they survived, here, recruit them!" It takes handwaving to make them not count.

[amielleon]

The routes of FE8 contradict only if you start to use real world logic like "But Lyon can't both be in control and not be in control!" etc which I think is about as fair as real world logic like "Emmeryn can't actually be alive after that kind of fatal situation!" FE8 canon certainly doesn't act like you have two different Lyons, and many fans accept its canon at face value and never think too hard about the disparity. "Emmeryn somehow survived, just sayin'" is about as much of an explanation we get from this game. It's thin, and I think it's intentionally thin precisely because the designers don't believe it "actually" happened and don't want to go about justifying it as part of the story.

[raphiael]

Both routes have scenes that are mutually exclusive - Seth can't advise both Eirika and Ephraim, Lyon can't confront both Eirika and Ephraim to crush Renais' stone, and so on. They can't both happen at once, and any disparity with Lyon's character is tied to each route.

I'd buy "but the excuse is flimsy"... if it weren't for things like the Avatar in that ending. Talk about flimsy. It's perfectly in line with that, and I think saying the designers didn't take it as a serious thing, with the information I have at least, is giving them too much credit. It's a convenient happy ending in a storyline full of convenient happy endings, and I really don't see any reason to discount it.

[amielleon]

I think your choice of whose path to take paints the past differently. Lyon has been DK'd for a long time before chapter 9, and your choice of who to follow means something completely different is made out of his condition -- present, future, and past. It's not a logical result of whether or not the army goes with Ephraim. It's a separate reality you're given based on your completely unrelated decision as a player.

The Avatar resurrection is actually pretty well set up in the game. Naga mentions that there is a ~slim chance~ that you can survive if your ~bonds in this world~ are strong enough, but the chances are so slim that you might as well forget it. (Which, in JRPG language, means it's bound to happen.) In the post-epilogue scene you see that the Brand has disappeared from your hand, suggesting that you'd killed the part of Grima inside you but the part of Robin that was Robin continues to live. It makes a reasonable amount of sense, it's set up, and it's thematically coherent as hell, even if I don't care for it.

[raphiael]

Yes - so, they're two completely different scenarios. And you see Lyon so little in those first 8 chapters that they can exist perfectly fine in either continuity. It's different from FE13, then, isn't it?

So there's a slim chance it'll be okay - a slim chance like falling from a cliff and managing to survive? Chrom and Lissa and all of Ylisse love Emmeryn a lot, so it seems to me like it ties perfectly with FE13's thematic tendencies.

I don't know. Maybe playing through it will change my mind, but right now all I'm seeing is that FE13 doesn't want these people to really be dead, but it just doesn't really know how to finagle that successively and didn't want to put the effort into other script. Which, despite the size of said script, is something that's come up time and time again. (Like, does Chrom's dad even have a name?)

[amielleon]

Well, Emmeryn can certainly be dead and if you didn't view Paralogue 20 you'd no reason to believe otherwise. If you do choose to view Paralogue 20 (and it is a choice that requires choosing to download the chapter then choosing to play it, and it can only be done in the postgame) you're presented with a separate version of events in the past. This is precisely why we're calling it Schrodinger's Emmeryn.

Also you know very well that a realistic "slim chance" is a completely different thing from someone saying on screen that there's a "slim chance." Emmeryn's death is treated as a given after her fall and the two things are, from a thematic and intentional perspective, completely different.

I really would rather discuss this after you've read the script for yourself. Disliking the game based on seeing a little is all well and fine, but when it comes to nuances of presentation I think it's a requisite.

[raphiael]

Yes, I understand why you're calling it that, and I continue to hold that it makes no sense. Again, Soren's heritage is similarly optional (who's going to find that naturally?) - is there thus a separate canon wherein he's not Ashnard and Almedha's son, because the player doesn't see it? Because I think that's the kind of can of worms this would open.

This isn't a matter of me liking or not liking it, really. It's a matter of what's considered canon and what isn't, and the only thing that's going to convince me that this can be discounted is a little blurb going NOT REAL DO NOT TAKE FOR SERIOUS at the front. Discounting characters who can marry and make babies with the main one is an idea I find inconsistent, and I still don't understand why you'd want to do it. If it makes the world incoherent, that's the world's fault for being incoherent.

[amielleon]

Soren's heritage is an easter egg, but it's the kind of easter egg meant to throw a little information at the player, not the kind of easter egg meant to let you dick around with a character you couldn't otherwise have. The intention is different -- and intention is basically the foundation of this argument. If we were playing by Death of the Author I wouldn't begin to propose this.

That said, what has been considered canon has always been to a great extent arbitrary and by convention, whether we're talking about a game or a holy text. If you don't find this amenable to your tastes that's quite all right, but I mean to point out that it's not so different from other cases in the past where the verdict has been that something is okay to ignore or treat as somehow "less canon".

[mark_asphodel]

I do maintain that it's safe to ditch anything FE13 says about previous FEs.

Yes. To the point where I object to dubbing FE4's Dark Warlords as "Deadlords" and calling them by their new names. They are not the same characters and that was three years ago on a different continent. No.

[mark_asphodel]

I mean if Kakusei wants stupid future shit let's enjoy it.

/shrug

Gonna save my mental energy for the gameverses I'm more invested in. I feel the writers didn't give much of a damn in many places in Awakening and, therefore, neither do I.

[mark_asphodel]

I think meeting a character for the first time is substantially different from up-ending their fairly concrete death.

In FE11, you can only recruit Norne, Athena, Horace, Etzel, etc with terrible casualties to your own people. They died. Not retreated, died. In FE12, they were part of your party regardless. Everyone Lived. Only Nagi even acknowledges dissonance.

IMO, FE12 very, very much set the tone for what we got in FE13.

[amielleon]

FE12 presents its own continuity paradoxes of a rather different kind. :P

[amielleon]

I think it's precisely its massive gaping flaws that give it potential as fic fodder. It's not very difficult to imagine sticking to the letter of the text while twisting the spirit into all sorts of funny shapes, and this thought is presently amusing me.

Insofar as this post is concerned though, I just think the spotpass resurrections are very fancy trial map characters and it's a little odd to take them as Kakusei's greatest failing when we have completely storyline endorsed shit with consequences like Basilio's survival and the whole ending basically.

[amielleon]

Agreed there. FE13 is like a fanfic for FE written by a bunch of Final Fantasy fans.

[mark_asphodel]

I feel about FE13 the same way I do the new Star Trek films. Are they Trek? Yeah. And I will ignore the gaping holes they blast in canon and continue to enjoy the originals as though this ascended fanboy reboot never came to town.