A couple of things. One: I've updated the description with links. It was late last night when I uploaded this, sorry. Second, I've started recording RD, done the first three chapters plus some bios already. However, it might be another day before I start uploading because... I'm going to need to get some extra footage that requires me to back up my entire RD savefile to an SD card and delete it. Basically, there are things in this game that irrevocable change after beating it once. The opening movie, for one. I want to show the original opening movie to start. The second thing is the Glossary and Character Tree in the base. These persist across playthroughs, and as I found out, even if you don't load Clear Data they still carry over. So in order to show them "clean", i.e how a player would see them upon getting to 1-4 for the first time, I'm going to have to play on a totally clear Wii. And I need to research how I can do this without destroying my saves. I have someone else's Wii on loan, but annoyingly they have RD saves too, and I don't want to screw up the SD-copying of theirs.
BigKlingy Hey, take your time. Just don't do what my father did when attempting to transfer data between our Wii U's, & delete 5 years worth of progress on accident. Its not even deleted, its just trapped on a flash drive formatted for a PC!
BigKlingy Tell me about it. I was in traumatic shock for the next few days trying to recover the data. It wasn't even 5 years now that I think about it. It may have from all the way to '07.
BigKlingy There also may or may not have been 150+ hours of Xenoblade Chronicles X in that data. This REALLY taught us to not leave the console on for months at a time, because we burned out the disc reader.
For the record, you're right about the definition of a Mary Sue. Back at the beginning of your Awakening playthrough someone asked what a Mary Sue is and I told them that it's a characters who's perfect and never fails, that's the definition that my grandfather told me. As I'm watching this video I ask my grandpa what the definition of a Mary Sue is, and he admits that your definition was better than his. My grandpa is a professional author, so I think that's a noteworthy achievement.
Interesting. Bear in mind I got my definition mostly from things like TV Tropes and other online communities, any my own experience reading bad fanfiction. I agree with a lot of the Overly Sarcastic Productions video, but I'd mostly come to that conclusion on my own. Perfect and never failing are often symptoms, but imo they mostly arise from the fact that a Mary Sue is never written with a personality or character traits in mind, their starting point is, to steal from the OSP video, "This character is by default the BEST character". And when you have that as your starting point, you... don't really have the foundation to build an interesting character. You can also still have a really flawed character being a Sue if the story still treats them like they're the only thing that matters in the universe. Some others have pointed out this definition is flawed because that'd make every central character a Sue, but this spotlight-hogging goes beyond merely being the main character. It means that nothing else in the setting truly exists aside from them. If you remove them, no plot point or character has any substance or reason to exit. E.g Ike is pretty much the entire focus of PoR, but people like Oscar and Titania would still live lives and have personality if he wasn't around. Meanwhile, if you took away Enoby D'arkness Dementia Tara Raven Way from My Immortal, no other characters would have ANY personality, motivation, or reason to exist.
I said it here, Sothe's character is 90% devotion to Micaiah. (The remaining 10% only exists due to his supports in PoR) But it's not like everyone in the plot is like him, and as I said he's... kind of biased when it comes to her.
BigKlingy Yeah, I heard, and totally agreed. That's kind of my point - his character revolving around her probably led to a lot of people falsely labeling her a Mary Sue - especially players who have either never actually played the game, or have never played past Part 1.
Thing is, Sothe sings Ike's praises almost as much as he sings hers, which is pointed out in-universe. (Micaiah isn't as snarky about it in Japanese, but she's still clearly annoyed)
i'd say its more accurately 85% michiah devotion, 5% supports from PoD and 10% worshipping his old friends, 90% of that worship being aimed at ike. sothe in general is kinda just a massive kiss ass. fitting considering he's basically the RD jagen.
You know who actually is a Mary Sue to the teeth? Corrin. Every single part of Fates revolves around Corrin on how they are super special and awesome, everyone is absolutely willing to bang with them and their only flaw is that they care too much about their friends. And it's also quite obvious that they are basically wish-fulfillments for the player.
Sadly, that's all pretty much true. Don't forget how the plot bends over backwards to make sure Corrin is never directly guilty of any deaths besides Hans and Garon (who isn't human anymore) I think. Flora and Ryoma, suicide. Xander got himself killed on purpose. Zola, killed by Leo or Garon. Rainbow Sage, old age. Freaking IAGO? Killed by Leo on all three routes even though Corrin specifically admits they'd have no issues with killing them. And that "flaw" is one of those classic "flaws that don't mean anything", because all the siblings straight up say "we know you're naive, we don't care and will clean up your messes for you."
@@nah4467 It's been awhile since I've played FE7, but Lyn didn't feel like a "special" character. During the first 10 chapters or so, yeah I could see it. But it was called Lyn's Tale for a reason. All of that specialness goes right out the window during the other two tales. In fact, she didn't really have anything to do during that time.
“Wish fulfillment for the player” is exactly why Corrin was referred to as simply “the avatar” up until Smash 4 brought them in. At least Heroes redeemed them somewhat.
Hi, remember me from one hour ago? Good video, good video. As someone else said already years ago, Micaiah possesses a lot of superficial "gifted" traits which contrast when you go through Ike's journey. However, I feel like it's still represented as a struggle for her to reclaim Daein because of the gameplay. The first chapters having any Dawn Brigade member dying = game over, both in gameplay and story, tell us how everyone's needed otherwise they're vastly outmatched. And Part 3 makes fun of that achievement, it feels, by labeling her followers as fanatic and Micaiah as ridiculous and insane. And by part 4, she gets effectively shoved aside by Yune and Ike, and it also follows in gameplay. All that she gets is a stupidly late promotion and struggling to stay alive as Ike chainsaws through hordes of reinforcements with his Yune-given Aether and his Ragnell. Micaiah doesn't even get a weapon of that caliber. It feels like the writers, or producers, either stopped caring about her or deliberately shoved her aside to have Ike more on the box. The final hero ode at the very end is about Ike. Micaiah gets no say in BK's death but Ike sure does (cut content notwithstanding), and there's so much missed potential on Support interactions with Ike, Elincia, Sanaki and SOREN. I feel like Heroes did more justice to her than her base game (thanks Veronica). Also heard she's broken in Engage just today. I really wish they would have done more with Micaiah.
I almost feel like Micaiah was a clumsy attempt at deconstructing a Mary Sue. She's got a lot of the superficial earmarks of one, and initially it's set up like she's going to be one, but that all goes to pot in Act 3 as it becomes increasingly clear that she's out of her depth. It'd also fit with the Tellius games' existing deconstructive tendencies.
Nah, I think IS wanted to shake up the formula on lords which is why I can like Micaiah in most areas. I can agree on bad plot points of RD but that's a plot point, not really her character.
They wanted to make clear in part 3 that her army was inferior to Ike’s in almost everything and that’s why she had to do risky strategies and in part I feel like she kind of hated Ike so she didn’t care much about his army (like throwing boulders at a convoy). I feel like they tried to make her an anti hero in part 3 but didn’t do a good job.
I was going to talk about that but it wouldn't really be relevant here. I don't actually think Robin is a Mary Sue... in-game. Some players certainly treat them like one though. Robin has character beyond being an idealized self-insert, and the plot doesn't really revolve around them until the third act. And it's not like the game throws in a contrived plot twist to make them unrelated to their siblings so they can bang them... (Not saying Corrin is fully Sue either, but... they're closer) The reason I did what I did with Awakening was to continue a silly joke I did in FE12, after finding out Awakening is set in the same universe. I treat Mary Sue like a Persona final boss: she's a manifestation of all bad fanfic OCs, so she will always be reborn as long as bad fanfiction exists. Or he. They can reincarnate into any form depending on the writer. I did what I did with FE12 because when I found out you could create your own character who becomes one of Marth's knights and enters that world I thought "that sounds like a fanfiction". I wasn't meaning to bash any ship. All the Mary Sue stuff in my Awakening playthrough, including how it ended, was planned LONG before I knew Sumia existed.
I think that's a big part of what turned the fandom's opinion on her around: when they saw Corrin they saw what a REAL Mary Sue FE protagonist looks like.
@@BigKlingy To be fair, most of the Fire Emblem main protagonists have been Mary Sues. Corrin was just the biggest one. I never really thought Micaiah was one. I think the reason they went so hard Mary Sue with Corrin had to do with just the whole choosing between Nohr and Hoshido aspect. It made sense for the plot.
@@MegaJesseman corrin, like roy, is half my favorite character, and half the worst. I love the premise of corrin, an mc lord with the use of swords, a dragonstone, and staves, but hate his/her personality
I actually kind of liked how they did her character. She started out nice and sweet, but then she started to fall into the darkness after the blood pact threatened to kill everyone in her kingdom. She started out doing things, that albeit led to misfortune for Ike's kingdom, was justifiable for her own kingdom's well-being. Then she started to delve into immorality. Doing obscene things that even her own people were against. Once she started down the path of darkness for the sake of her kingdom she just kept going further down that path. Likely she had to basically steel her emotions away in order to allow her to do what needed to be done for her kingdom, and doing that progressively caused her to delve deeper into the darkness. Which actually does make logical sense. The lines between right and wrong were starting to get blurred as she became someone else for the sake of her kingdom. Tibarn and Ike calling her an idiot was likely just frustration. It is pretty normal for people to resort to insulting peoples' intelligence when aggroed.
Elias Chacon she is an appealing looking character and she is pretty likable (her primary character traits in part 1 are: a nice girl but with a sarcastic side, and in way over her head due to being easy to rally around), Radiant dawn just has a lot of problems, that they need to fix making her underdeveloped
Minor issue: I vaguely remember the part 4 script saying that if Yune was awoken by war, then it would be both her and Ashera that would deliver judgement. However, since she was awakened by the Galdr, she would have to Phoenix Wright with Ashera over whether or not the humans deserved judgement. The only reason Yune turned on Ashera was because she completely disregarded the rules and did what she would have done had Yune been awoken by the war. But if that actually happened, Yune would have no reason to object to Ashera's decision, thus causing a 'bad ending' of sorts due to everyone becoming statues and the world getting destroyed.
Oh, right. I was mostly looking at the big picture rather than the smaller details of the plot, but now that you mention it, I do remember that. Still think Micaiah doesn't have a lot of plot importance outside of Part 1 though.
It's almost silly how her sole utility as a staff-bot after part 1 could be considered a representation of her loss of importance. Then again, I only left this comment because of 20:31, where you specifically look closely at the script, and I think that might have triggered me due to spot-check incompetence. I probably thought something like "if you scrutinized the script for that, then why couldn't you scrutinize it for this?" or whatever. Still a good vid, tho.
Definitely interesting to see the bare synopsis of RD's plot, definitely seems interesting to see what happens. I wondered how the Parts system would work, but considering the story it does make sense to have it in parts.
19:35 I think it is the length of war where everyone is fighting. Not that Kurth joined the war. In the battle there's the kill count and that is was triggers the events [technically]. If it had been because of Kurth I think it would have happened a lot sooner.
Oh, I see that you followed my advice. I thank you so much for this; well done! I apologize for my ignorance if you also did this in PoR as well, but I've decided to be on hiatus from watching that playthrough until I finished completing transferring all supports to Radiant Dawn. Anyway, as someone who's currently on hiatus from playing Trails in the Sky: (the First Chapter & series as a whole), I thank you so much for how you mention Cassius Bright! Seriously, that means a lot to me! I feel comfortable watching the Radiant Dawn playthrough now; thank you lack of in-depth support conversions! Please continue this good work. (I case you're wondering, I have played through both Tellius games already - multiple times each. I'm just not as well-informed about them as you are; that's all.)
Please keep playing the Trails series, they're great. I hope to record them someday, because they really need more exposure. I'm not trying to bash Cassius Bright at all, he's just an example of a character so overpowered it's played for laughs. If he was the focus character in a fanfic, he'd probably be labelled as the biggest Gary Stu of all time. But he's only a minor character in the grand scheme of things, showing up maybe 4 times max per game. It's still hilarious how, according to a file in The 3rd, Erebonia considers him setting foot on their soil as a NATIONAL EMERGENCY. And how the villains in Sky specifically lure him out of the country before putting their plan in motion.
Oh, I know you weren't trying to bashing on him; it was just to make your point. I get that. I'm sorry if my comment implied otherwise. I'm excited to see how overpowered he is.
Hmm, I liked this video. Everytime you make something I end up learning something new. But something to be said about this game before it begins. What do you think of the idea that part of the reason Micaiah is written badly as an extension of the ~~plot~~ Blood contract and a method of keeping ike's group in the spotlight.
The Blood Pact is probably the one part of this game's plot that I can't really defend, and I fully understand why it gets hate. I do kind of like the backstory it gives Naesala though. And I'm actually okay with Ashnard having used one to kill all the other princes.
It probably was, at least the way it was used. A lot of fans think Lekain easily just could've blackmailed Pelleas and Micaiah about being Branded, which considering Daein's racism is confirmed to be still very present in RD, could have worked just as well. It would've hurt Micaiah's sympathy a lot though, which is probably why they pulled the Blood Pact to begin with. I'll also say the English localization did at least re-write a lot of scenes involving the Pact to make its rules more clear and Micaiah and Sothe more proactive in researching how to cancel it.
Eh... I'd consider these two traits more important than the wish fulfillment aspect: - *The character has no character arc,* whether or not it's due to being flawless in personality or skill or just due to bad writing. (Note that this is not to be confused with a static character, who is capable of having an arc where they learn a skill or positively/negatively affect someone else.) - *The character's capabilities and/or feats sap all dramatic tension from the story.* (For example, in a mediocre Superman story which doesn't use any of his weaknesses like Magic, Kryptonite, or trust issues, [as illustrated in Trope Talks: Paragon,] there's no possibility of Superman failing or making things worse, and thus, no dramatic tension. Also: Serious consequences such as disfigurement, another's death, etc. Add to dramatic tension, so while a lack of consequences does play into qualifying as a Sue, it's not enough on it's own so long as the story retains dramatic tension.)
Personally, I think wish-fulfilment is THE main criteria. The Sue must exist not as a character in their own right, but to make the author feel good about themselves. There's a reason why this is very common with young teenagers writing for the first time. "The character's capabilities and/or feats sap all dramatic tension from the story" This kind of goes along with the fact that in a Mary Sue story, there IS no dramatic tension, because there's no story. The "story" of a Mary Sue fic will always boil down to "hey everyone, I have this really awesome and cool character that you should all check out because they're the best character ever!" Also, a character can be overpowered to the point of sapping the story's dramatic tension without being a Mary Sue. In that case they're just a badly-handled overpowered character. Not all bad character writing = Mary Sue. It's kind of like.... okay, this is just my opinion, but I feel Superman is stupidly overpowered but they never felt like a Mary Sue to me. A comic character who occasionally does, I find, is Wolverine. Wolverine has a crazily extensive power and skill set, is super long-lived when not a lot of Mutants have that kind of power, but the main thing is he has a tendency to hog the spotlight and be constantly shilled by the story, even stealing moments that logically shouldn't be about him. That's only when he's done badly though. When done well, like in the Days of Future Past movie, I still like him. Essentially, imo the Mary Sue trope is less about the actual character and more about the story being nothing but a vehicle to show how cool they are and how much you should love them.
While I agree with most of this video, I'll have to firmly disagree with your stance about the events of part 1 having little to no effect on part 2. The whole reason why Ludveck got so many commoners to join his rebellion is because of his fear mongering in regards to Daein's restoration. Many of his soldiers, primarily consisting of rebellious youths and the occasional disgruntled war veteran, join him because they want to go to war with Daein and destroy them for good, not believing Elincia would be strong enough should the reborn Daein make advances towards Crimea. As such, their fear of Daein returning to power would not be present if Begnion would still have tight control of Daein. Therefore Ludveck would have considerably less resources to draw upon. And even if the revolt did occur, it wouldn't be nearly as much of a threat. For example, the traitor that lead Ludveck's forces into fort Alpea would not have done so if it weren't for Daein, provided Ludveck's rebellion could even get this far.
I hadn't played the game in a little bit when I made this, and I had forgotten that aspect. Pelleas being restored to the throne stoked Crimea's fears Daein would invade again, which was a big part of the rebellion.
@@BigKlingy Thanks for the response. Even still, the rest of the game would have turned out like you said it would. While one could argue Daein would rather make use of the opportunity of the Apostle's Army invasion to revolt, that wouldn't do much to delay Yune's awakening, being dependent on how many sides join the fight, not which side they are on. Not to mention Bengion itself still had ample amounts of reserves left (may or may not include the occupational army) , so even if Daein joined the Apostle's Army, the fight would still be on a large enough scale to awaken Yune.
Today I learned... the majority of RD's plot (And I don't care about spoilers because I'm not buying a $60-80 game. Seriously, a VC rerelease on the Wii U would have been nice) Also, I learned what a Mary Sue is and I have a few questions: 1. Does this make Corrin a Mary Sue? 2. Are the Pokemon protagonists in general Mary Sues?
Didn't expect anyone who didn't know about RD to actually watch that part. Hope it made some sense. 1. I'd say it's arguable. A lot of their character, and the story around them, seems designed more to make players projecting on them feel good about themselves. Most characters are defined by their relation to Corrin in some way. The plot also constantly makes sure to absolve them of any direct guilt in anything morally-questionable, and some of the big plot twists only exist so players can marry the siblings. But like I said, it's arguable. 2. I'd say no. They're more blank-slate player-proxies, and the whole universe doesn't revolve around them. (Just to name one example... did Kukui and Prof Burnet get married because the SuMo player exists? ...No.)
So the Pokemon Protags aren't, they are just us on a power trip and the plot mostly doesn't revolve around them. Gotcha. And the plot dump kinda made some sense, I'll probably understand it better when I see it.
@@BigKlingy Fates is badly written and pretty heartless with it's morals. Is it really necessary to entertain the idea that it's good siding with the imperialistic assholes because they pampered you or the Kingdom where you originally belonged to but were separated from them by said imperialistic assholes? No I think not.
@@basilofgoodwishes4138 There's so many things wrong with Fates. For example, she grows up in a tower and is isolated from the world her entire life, but for some reason she has natural leadership skills and charisma that makes everyone follow her or help to capture the other throne. There is this weird corrin worship thing going on throughout the entire game where everyone loves Corrin. It's really disturbing. The vast majority of each character's world revolves around Corrin. They always tell her how great she is. And all 3 routes have Corrin featured as the central character of the plot. She is also the only character who can defeat the final boss, if memory serves, due to the Yamato weapon (I could be wrong about that, although I think it's weird that she gets a pref weapon right away too rather than having to work for it). While there is dragon lineage with Corrin, it's still not entirely believable how much training she had with Nohr that would be considered enough to accomplish the feats in the actual game. This one is up in the air I guess, but it's reeks of Mary Sue just because the first 2 points above also check the boxes so convincingly. Revelations was so poorly balanced that first big chunk of the route feels like a Corrin power-fantasy. Everyone that joins your army is trash and you end up having to solo the maps with Corrin, which is very unlike Birthright or Conquest. They even went out of their way to lower the strength and speed of various units by 2 points just to make them ~4 levels worse than they were in their respective games. Only the Royals and a couple of other units felt good in Revelations. Definitely had that Corrin power fantasy vibe, like you were just soloing the game with Seth or Titania but you didn't actually have a choice. Seth and Titania have background stories that show why they so over-powered at the start of the game, but Corrin does not. She has led a tiny fraction of the life of those characters, especially in real combat situations and politics and other things.
Micaiah may be interpreted as subversion or deconstruction of Mary Sue, but at the end of the day, she still effortlessly solves a lot of problems in the story in Mary-Sueish manners: Destroying the blood pact by simply tearing a paper, singlehandedly stopping Lehran's Medallion from going berserk, seemly knowing things she shouldn't so she can be an exposition machine, and becoming a perfect vessel of the so-called evil goddess that isn't really evil. The game flip-flops between depicting Micaiah as a monster and a miracle maiden and sends out mixed messages. If she's Anti-Mary Sue, she's an incredibly half-hearted one. Being half-hearted is the worst thing when it comes to tearing down an archetype. People who can't recognize the satire will genuinely view her as a tyrant who's overplayed and forced to be a good guy by the narrative. On the contrary, people who can see her as a broken character still scratch their heads at how she's easily forgiven and validated in the end. Even after everything's said and done, I still don't understand what's the point behind Micaiah's character. This is yet another reason why I loath the "heroes vs heroes" story Radiant Dawn's trying to push. The story's so desperate at making Micaiah a villain in Ike's POV that it rushes her character and destroys it. Micaiah could have been a lot better character if she was the only protagonist and the story was all about her dealing with the consequences of her actions, acknowledging her imperfection and learning responsibility and requirements as a real saviour without relying on her miracle powers.
One thing to note is the blood pact being destroyed by tearing it was actually a localization addition. In Japanese, how the blood pact was dealt with was even stupider: the curse just... faded on its own by the time you fight Lekain in E-1, apparently because Lekain died once offscreen. In that version the plot just threw it aside once it'd served its purpose as a Part 3 conflict starter, so the localization added some extra rules for how it works and some new scenes to make Micaiah and Sothe more proactive in breaking the curse.
@@BigKlingy yeah i’ve always been one for no spoilers as i don’t think games are designed with things like heroes in mind plus i love the experience, right now i’m on ch3 and wow the dawn brigade are severely lacking in manpower
"Is treated like the ONLY thing that matters in the story. EVERYTHING else in the plot is effectively an extension of them." I... WANT to say Madara Uchiha but at the same time not. lol.
I've heard a lot of accusations about Sasuke being one, but I'm not sure. There's a lot in that universe that doesn't relate to a single person. Madara might be an overpowered, not-so-well-written villain, but I wouldn't really say he's a "Villain Sue". There's a character in a show I watched a long time ago that I felt was a "Villain Sue", only in the sense that the writers kept making asspull excuses to bring him back every time he got caught, and it felt obvious the writers favoured him disproportionately. Every episode with him felt like it was constantly screaming "Isn't this guy just the BEST VILLAIN EVER?!" Fans rejoiced when he finally died... for all the wrong reasons. And he still showed up in flashbacks and nightmares afterwards! (For those curious, the character is Christopher Pelant from Bones)
I’m not sure if this was already laid out in the comments, but I hadn’t seen it so I thought I’d add it (very late to the party I know, but still) The Laguz Alliance fighting Begnion is set off by Part 1. Rafael and Tormod head to Gallia where Rafael gives the information about the Senate having been the ones to orchestrate the Massacre, leading to war, and Rafael and Tormod only meet because of the circumstances of the Dawn Brigade’s rebellion. Without that, I’m not sure if the other Laguz nations find out about the Senate’s involvement, meaning no continent spanning war.
Radiant Dawn severely needs a remake with a rewrite, more chapters for each part, proper support conversations and a rebalance of the skill system. It was my very first FE game, so I have a soft spot for it, but I really cannot ignore its shortcomings, especially with gameplay. And it's sad that Micaiah is such a poorly written character, because she ends up as one of my favorite units to take to the Tower, who I would pick every time even if she were not mandatory!
@@theflashgordon193 Mastery Skills - OHKO. Ignore defense and multiply strength by 3. MS that stun enemies or put them to sleep almost never trigger their secondary effect precisely because they kill the opponent in one shot 90% of the time they trigger. It is so ridiculous, the game balances it out by giving every single boss from the Tower past the senators the skill Nihil, which nullifies ALL combat-related skills, so no Mastery Skill can one shot them. As for the rest of the skills, the capacity wheel and the limit of 6 skills are at odds with each other. If you have a limit of 6 skills, why limit per capacity, and if you limit per capacity, why have a set number as the limit? Characters like Ena, that are terrible for the endgame but could make up with her extreme capacity wheel size, by giving her support and combat skills that would make her more useful overall, end up remaining useless because she comes with 5 skills already, meaning she can only get one more or you take away some to make room for what you deem necessary on her. Also, back to Mastery Skills, unlike in the previous title, where every single MS is entirely optional, they are mandatory in this game for all Beorc units, as they immediately get their upon 2nd promotion and can never remove them. These mandatory skills take up to 60 points in capacity, eating away all the extra capacity you got from the promotion, and sometimes even more, meaning your non-mastery skills need to be removed from the promoted character. Just a few tweaks could have solved a lot of issues - capacity wheel is the only limitation on the number of skills a character can have; locked skills, like Canto, Shove and Mastery Skills are entirely outside of the CW; MS no longer have outrageous effects, rather simply bypassing defense/resistance for Sol/Luna/Eclipse/Rend/etc. and adding effects for Stun/Deadeye/Astra(5 hits at half strength)/etc; then finally the rest of the skills need to have their capacities downgraded so more can be used by a single character, with the balancing part coming from common enemy units also being able to use them, with higher difficulties having more mobs with more skill combos.
I’ve also noticed that some people think that Cordelia is a Mary sue because she’s perfect in every way and everyone loves her for it. But she’s one of the better Mary sues because 1. She’s flawed with her unrequited love for Chrom as well as her insecurities. 2. She isn’t the main character in some badly written fan fiction. 3. She also goes through some character development with the help of her husband (Robin/Stahl/Lon’qu/Gaius/Duke Virion/Ricken) and her daughters (Morgan if she married Robin). 4. She does have a backstory in where she was bullied by her fellow knights for being the smart one. I also think that a lot of the female cast of Three Houses aren’t Mary sues at all because they’re well written and mostly flawed. We don’t know whether or not we should root for them anyway. And they do go through a lot of character development.
I think a great video that talks about Mary Sues is one that Terrible Writing Advice made. ruclips.net/video/YhrfhQbY0K8/видео.html I don't think Micaiah is a Mary Sue, but I kind of disagree with your definition because I think that having no flaws is also a criteria. It's possible to have perfect characters (Cordelia), but also having flaws is important which is something Cordelia has. I know I'm beating the dead horse here, but I think Rey from Star Wars is a good example for a Mary Sue; although, it's kind of hard to tell sometimes due to how the new movies are poorly written. She has no flaws, does everything better than everybody with almost zero training, has almost no motivation, and be the attention of the villain once she was known. Also, I wasn't able to comment on your last vid, and I wanted to say that I never knew about the extended script. I'm gonna give RD's plot another go since losing out on scripts can seriously hurt the story.
Mary Sue means different things to different people, like I said. I still like to mention Cassius Bright (Trails in the Sky) as an example of how perfect, flawless, overpowered characters can still not be Sues if the plot doesn't focus on them. (Seriously, if Cassius Bright was a 14 year old's OC he'd easily be called the biggest Gary Stu of all time. Look him up.) Thing is, the reason most Mary Sues have no flaws is that, as the OSP video says, they're not written as characters first, they're written with "this character is by default the best character" as the starting point.
+BigKlingy I read some stuff about him on the wiki and my god does he sound overpowered. I'm curious how he got his skills with a sword because I couldn't find that in the wiki. Yeah I have to agree that people have their own definition for a Mary Sue, but there seems to be a few things that must be consistent for them to be classified as one. Such as having the world revolving around them.
I don't think his sword skills are ever explained, but he did train most other master swordsmen in his setting. And all of them aspire to be as badass as he is, but aren't anywhere close. And then he gave up his sword and chose a Bo staff instead... and is STILL the single strongest human being in the setting. But his extreme overpoweredness is kind of played for comedy, and he doesn't appear a lot in each game he's in. He's also one part of the ultimate bonus boss fight in Sky The 3rd and... he's exactly as difficulty as his reputation suggests. And there he's teamed up with the second game's That One Boss. I should also mention that I don't think there's a single person in the games who dislikes him. Even the most horrible, unsympathetic villains have a great deal of respect for him. But again, he's not a Sue because he's more of a side character, and his overpoweredness serves a plot purpose in The 3rd, when the party fights a clone of him with his exact memories (so basically the same as fighting the real him) and is able to win, it shows how far they've all come.
Honestly, Mary Sue is an critical shortcut for people too lazy or in the worst cases too dumb to form a critical opinion on a Character and are just reducing the problem unnecessarily, by insulting literature with a buzzword, that lost it's meaning a long time ago. That's why I can't take someone seriously using that term to describe a Character, it just doesn't make sense to me, but enough with the long talking, now I get to the video: "Something I have in fact come to realize is that a Mary Sue is a STORY TROPE, not a CHARACTER TROPE. But I am getting a little ahead of myself" No you don't, it's a problem with the story and not the with Character, if he/she/they/it gets no consequences from their actions that are fitting or bad, then it's the fault of the story and not the Character itself, it's the story that decides, how a character gets treated, not necessarily the other way around. On your criteria: 1.This argument can be done to almost any Character that represents or propagates the views of the Author or personality like Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Aang, Altair,Kreia,Gumball,Superman,Rider from Fate/Zero,Steven Universe, Batman Scorpion, Lancelot, Galahad, Souma,the new Kratos and for the most famous example, Jesus Christ (if you view the Bible from a literature perspective). In short, the most influential and most popular Characters happen to be those that serve as wish-fulfilment for the Author, because the character people who write the most is the one that represents what they want to be and in a genre like fanfiction, where it's about people fantasizing to have sleep with Ike or beating Thrawn in chess, I find it unfair to criticize young fanfic author's for this. It's like criticizing Children for playing with toys, when they have nothing else to do. Basically the problem is that fanfiction and readers are people with opposing wishes and desires and should be allowed to enjoy their stuff without infringing the others territory. 2. When a character gets free from punishment or consequences whole powering through most obstacles then it's a failure to Balance the powers with the setting like with Steven Universe, who can just turn Nazis into angels without any logic whatsoever. This can be easily fixed by putting limitations to their power OR an Morale code that prevents them from owning everything like Iroh's refusal to fight Ozai, because the world would view it as an grap for power, rather than some divine justice like how the Avatar would have done it. In a fanfic of a FE game I plan to write, I have an Diety's mortal Avatar as Main Character, who reincarnated into the world as an Mortal with many of it's Divine powers still there, but limited because it's Goal is to make people less dependent of it and give them the knowledge of how to coexist with one another, instead of taking control of everything without solving the problem. So the God is good and has more powers than anyone, but refuses to use it to solve every problem. So you can have an absurdly powerful Character, if you give the Character reasons for not soloing everyone, so being powerful is not the issue, but there needs to be a balance with the setting. This comment is getting too long, I will make a part two of it, where it's more about Micaiah.
Even if she's not a Mary Sue, she still makes about 90% of the game's narrative problems. Almost every issue I have with RD's story and character development trip-outs can be traced all the way back to how Micaiah is written, and becoming the face of it all doesn't make her easy for me to like her for much.
wow I didn't realize that micaiah it is kinda like zephiel or nino... so sothe is like jaffar, nino is like micaiah and pellas is like zephiel? huh weird.
I share quite a few of your opinions about how Micaiah isn’t really a Mary Sue and I feel you articulated it much better than I could. This game has several protagonists not just Micaiah who each get their time in the spotlight. If she was a Mary Sue she would be the only protagonist as a Mary Sue is the focal point of everything. Although the fact that Micaiah has several traits with amateur fan fiction protagonists probably meant that the the preconceived negative reactions that people might have regarding that type of character which would be transferred to Micaiah as soon as they realise that she reminds them of them. I never realised how inconsequential she was to Radiant Dawns overall plot considering that she can be removed with minimal rewrites to anything apart from Part 1 which appears to be mostly self contained. Micaiah being a slightly subpar unit also probably contributed to her negative reception considering how she is both a character with multiple flaws in how she is executed as a character (I will elaborate during the playthrough) and is a unit with glaring problems. It creates a situation where her character has trouble making up for her flaws as a unit and vice versa for some people. Although as a Lord I would say she ends up better than Bolting Bait as atleast she can make herself useful for something on a more consistent basis unlike Bolting Bait who flip flops from very good to very bad and is an active liability for quite a few chapters. If Micaiah and Elincia do talk it was probably a line or two at best considering that I can’t remember it happening. Although I’m pretty sure the peace talks happened after 3-13 might have involved the two communicating her but that was offscreen. Slight Spoilers for Radiant Dawn ahead I think it was more the case of having all the Nations involved in the fight otherwise Dheginsea’s plan of keeping Goldoa out of any conflict wouldn’t have worked as well if a long war between Begnion and the Beast Tribes would trigger it. Although it does take a while for the Medallion to get to breaking point as a lot of combatants have to be defeated for it to happen so it might be a case it requires all nations to be at War for a certain amount of time for it to become unstoppable Now for something completely different with some details from the Persona Q2 footage released. Spoiler Warning for those who haven’t seen them so far I was pleasantly surprised that we are getting the entire cast of all 3,4 and 5 but considering the scope of the original this was probably the only way they could top it in terms of increasing the scope of the crossover as just 4 and 5 it would just be Q1 level scope and although using characters from 1 and 2 I don’t think they have the selling power of the latter games cast. Although one problem I had with Q was that keeping some many characters somewhat evenly levelled is a huge undertaking and now they’ve added about 10 characters on top of that. I really like the Film motif they are going with and I feel that it could lead to very interesting Dungeon Choices considering the multitude of movie genres they could make Dungeons out off like imagine the party entering a Fantasy Movie with mythical creatures roaming around or a Film Noir detective movie where they have to follow clues to find the Boss Shadow responsible for killing other Shadows in the dungeon. Shadows are now back to 3 and 4 style enemies like the Dice and Balance enemies. Which is infact the enemies of 2 of 3 games represented so it makes sense for them to be back and your Personas and enemy Shadows being the same is cool and all but the weird enemies helps differentiate Persona from its sister series. Hikari looks like an interesting new addition but I will have to wait and see what’s going on. Why is the Female Protagonist from Persona 3 Portable here? Sure I’m grateful to see her back finally but considering how the P3 Makoto is the canon one they can’t just throw her in and not explain it considering how she doesn’t even exists in the canon timeline. Also what would her Ultimate Persona be and how would they not make her a clone of the P3 Makoto. Sure her Orpheus looks different from his but there is no prebuilt different Messiah design to take from. So would they make her Ultimate Persona Thanatos instead and change her Orpheus to not be Fire based? I wonder if they will distribute Nuclear and Psy magic amongst either some members of 3 and 4 casts or some of the new characters considering how P5 Makoto and Haru are the only characters who have those elements who are being included who have those elements and considering the large cast having 2 elements locked to 1 character each would be a bit problematic. Chibi Joker having his All out Attack background from Persona 5 is just so adorably awesome. And finally for something completely different we have the Smash Direct coming up. Hopefully we get some new stages and some more returning stages confirmed like how i would like new stages from some games like Fire Emblem Fates or Donkey Kong Country Returns Tropical Freeze like imagine fighting in the void where you fight Anakos or the ice lolly factory from World 5 of Tropical Freeze. Expecting a new character but I don’t know exactly who it could be as there a lot of possible options like Ashley or a Gen 7 Pokemon. Lots of characters who have popularity of either them or their series or relevance on their side to justify a spot on the roster. However Sakurai is an unpredictable beast sometimes so it’s hard to predict who’s coming like who expected Wii Fit Trainer. Might also have a few modes shown off considering how we don’t know much about Ultimates single player content. Sorry for the really long and somewhat tangential comment.
So regarding Micaiah not being super important to the plot, after some thought i reached a different conclusion she is important to the plot, and removing her breaks the plot enough to make it not reach its conclusion. So lets start at the beginning... Dawn brigade, they're captured and executed, without micaiah's foresight they don't last long. Rafiel, never learns of his surviving siblings and decides to stay in Hatari forever. Pelleas, here's where things get interesting, depending on whether Izuka was conspiring with Begnion from the beginning or after Pelleas is crowned, a few things changes. If Izuka was conspiring from the beginning Pelleas is crowned and signs the blood pact, same as before. If Izuka wasn't conspirating from the beginning, the Daein Libaration Army would've been quashed due to Izuka's horrible leadership, leading to the deaths of all its members including: Pelleas, Izuka, All the soldiers, and most importantly, Almedha also dies. This causes Daein to become part of Begnion and causes Kurthnaga to lose his reason to stay in Daein if he finds out about Almedha. Assuming Begnion stays occupied because i doubt Izuka was conspiring with Begnion from the beginning. Kurthnaga returns to Goldoa after leaning of his sister's death thus making it impossible for Goldoa to technically engage in the world war. And since Rafiel never leaves Hatari, no one ever learns of the Senate's conspiracy and the war between the laguz alliance and Begnion never starts, this also means the senate is free to do what it wants, thus they likely also arrest Sanaki and Sephiran and have them both assassinated in secret. Even if i assume Begnion starts a war with the laguz alliance all on their own, there's a good chance that begnion gets defeated and the world returns to peace. And even if begnion wins there's no way the senate would go so far as to provoke Goldoa, so really, begnion simply returns to being a bigass empire with the dragons still isolated in Goldoa. Even if i assume Sephiran somehow orders Zelgius to free him and save Sanaki, it simply makes it more likely that the laguz alliance wins and the world goes back to what it once was. Even if Sephiran wants the dark god to awaken, he cant do it if Kurthnaga returns because he is the reason Goldoa gets technically involved in the war. The only way for the plot to reach its original conclusion without micaiah, is if i assume that Izuka was conspiring with the senate from the beginning which is unlikely, and that Almedha finds out about the blood pact that Pelleas inevitably signs and then calls for Kurthnaga's aid thus implicating Goldoa, which is slightly more likely, but in this case there's still no war between the laguz alliance and begnion, unless begnion start it themselves which i find unlikely. That took a while to write and i know you've probably changed your mind about it considering this is a pretty old vid but still, i like to write things. And i always find myself coming back to watch these videos over an over again.
0:42 Thus is why I take comments of Rey from that Star Wars movie no one likes being one as a grain of salt. Repeatedly calling someone something regardless of how true it is just makes the term meaningless.
I've seen some good arguments by people who know what they're talking about, I admit. But it's hard to separate them from the mindless parrots sometimes.
BigKlingy Granted, I have literally no interest in watching Star Wars movies period, so.... yeah. For all I know, maybe Rey IS a Mary Sue, but I just don't care enough to... care.
I personally enjoyed the new Star Wars movies, but it helps that I don't take Star Wars too seriously and never have. I forgot how "serious business" it was to a lot of people. Imo, and I'm going to get murdered for saying this, the original trilogy wasn't even that good.
+BigKlingy So does that make my comment about Rey legit or mindless parroting. I mean I understand where you come from I've seen it too. I can add more to what I say, but it seems you already know the arguments.
+Delta dragon) I mean, if your opinion is yours alone and was not heavily influenced by someone else, it's not mindless parroting (which would be more or less just plagerising someone else's). +BigKlingy) -BLASFEME!- I REALLY don't like it when people do that. There's loving a series, and then there's more or less going yandere over it.
Another thing that seems common in Mery Sue's/Gary Stu's is a lack of character development, particularly in the case of Rey in the new Star Wars trilogy. They don't change don't learn anything new or have their a abilities justified, in other words a lack of a character arc essienal to most storytelling. This is different from a paragon (I think) who has had growth in the past and is the wise mentor (Greil for example) or to a lesser extent RD Ike, they've already had their journey (be it offscreen or in a different game/book/film/show). Just something that I'd add to this.
I... and please don't kill me for this since it's a VERY heated topic, still don't think Rey is a Sue, mainly because she doesn't dominate the story enough. A Sue/Stu has to be the literal centre of everything in the universe, as if the whole world only exists to serve them. I agree than RD Ike gets a pass due to already having character development in a past game. If RD Ike existed in isolation, he wouldn't be a very good character.
@@BigKlingy i know this is from a year ago, but now that star wars's sequel trilogy is over (which it wasn't when this video was made, let alone this comment i am replying too), would you now say that Rey is a mary sue now that her story is over and it turns out she's not only a secret palaptine, but also takes on the name and lightsabers of the skywalkers, and that she's literally all the jedi? alright i admit thats a loaded question, but i feel like as long as the story of the sequels weren't finished, that alone was enough to cast doubt on her being the perfect center of attention, but now that this is finished, i'm mostly just asking to see if your opinion changed here at all.
@@hadoukenfighter The Palpatine thing was really dumb and fanfiction-y, it felt like it was thrown in to appease the people who wanted her force heritage to be explained. Rise of Skywalker in general felt like a fanfiction, so I can see why you'd think that. I still don't see her as one. A Mary Sue is not just a protagonist you don't like. They have to have been written specifically as wish fulfilment for the author, and unless one of the writers comes out and says that, I don't think this is true of Rey. Inheriting the Skywalkers name and lightsabres is just a very protagonist-y thing to do. The best summary of the sequel trilogy I saw was this: "The sequel trilogy is like when your teacher gives you a group presentation and you split each section but don’t discuss it before presenting". I also think it's an example of when listening too much to fan input goes wrong, the first one went all-out on nostalgia pandering, the second saw people complain about the first being too derivative so it went radically different and got hated by fans for being too different, so the third one was just "hey, let's address every single fan complaint about the second one" without thinking about the consistency of the films. They don't feel like a connected story at all. In general though, I think people take Star Wars way too seriously. IMO, the original trilogy wasn't even that good.
Question about part 3: if part 1 doesn't happen the way it does if micaiah doesn't exist, how do Nailah and Rafiel get to Gallia and tell them about the truth of the Serenes Massacre? Would they be able to get through Daien and Crimea easily by themselves without tormod's help? Just curious what you think
I admit I focused more on the big picture and didn't look at the little details. I forgot Nailah was that important. That does kind of throw a wrench in things, but I guess the fact that Nailah knows what happened doesn't have anything to do with Micaiah, thus still invalidating the "center of the universe" thing.
Yeah totally with you on that last part and the video's overall message. Just couldn't help myself in thinking about when you were going through the theoretical plot without Micaiah
My profile picture makes it pretty obvious that I like Micaiah, but I do agree that she has a lot of issues as a character. I honestly hate Mary Sue as a term. It just gets thrown around all the time for any new female characters that are written into a story. It feels like it's gone from what it originally meant in fanfiction to a blanket term for people to insult female characters with. With that being said, I disagree about Micaiah being one of the worst lords, gameplay-wise. She's not fantastic by any means, but honestly, I think her staffbotting is more useful than most swordlocked lords. (Especially coming off GBA lords).
It's kind of always been like that, not just now. Basically I think the main reason it got codified as female is that it originated as a parody of the kind of Star Trek fic usually written by teenage girls. Even the original writer of "A Trekkie's Tale" hated how it got misused to insult female characters. Male fanfic authors are just as guilty of doing the op center of the universe self insert in fanfics as females are, I once read a fanfic that had a really blatant Gary Stu in it. From what I remember.... he had multiple Legendary Pokemon, including a shiny Mew, he had magical powers on top of that, his Pokemon had moves no-one else had, everyone in-story was in awe of him, the evil team was obsessed with him, he did some really questionable things to get "revenge" on them that made him look like the real bad guy and yet everyone still loved him. He was clearly the focus of everything once he was introduced. And at the end of the fic it became a Naruto crossover. Heck, don't know if you saw me talk about this in Pokemon videos, but when I was a kid I had a Pokemon story (THANKFULLY only in my head) literally called "Pokemon with Me Instead of Ash", where I [deep breath] Became a trainer younger than 10 because I was just that talented, my Charmander used a massive blast of fire to KO every single Pokemon in Viridian Forest and evolve into Charizard immediately, I became a Gym Leader and also had a Mewtwo, and died and came back to life at one point. I'm pretty sure everyone in every fandom has been guilty of this at some time or another. I agree that Miciah still at least has utility, which is more than a lot of swordlocked Lords have. As much as Lyn keeps getting RNG-blessed for me, I'd say she's arguable worse than Micaiah. (Though Mani Katti getting a free repair at the end of Lyn Mode is nice). Micaiah also has the ability to oneshot most horse/armoured units in Part 1, which is better than some Lords.
Its the game itself in my opinion she does not have enough screen time or supports except for Sothe. Look at Edward or all the Dawn Brigade they sure are screaming great peraonality compared to Path of Radiance or any other games. The devs were not given enough time to flesh out other supports or characters. We compare her to most units that have had time to develop whereas she was thrown to the wolfs only for Heroes to pick up the pieces. I do not see people criticising her character there. You would think bad characters with the same personality would be not well received but she won CYL 3 and was up at top 10 alone. My stance is criticize the devs and writing and not her character. In a small amount of time she changes stances or opinion on things like Ike and she was fighing end game because Yune does not posess foghting powers so it would seem. It looks like Yune took over her at the last second otherwise why is her name still Micaiah and not Yune? It would be pretty easy change but eho knows.
I'm just seeing this now bit assume tune could just be like "well I'm gonna awaken your bloodline because your the closest thing I got" I also though it was because she was the second borne child and thus didn't fully inherit powers aka its just weaker in her than her sister. Cause the blood of Altina is on a first borne female basis. Sanaki is second borne but all that means is that she either has no power or weaker power.
Since this vid came up on my algorithm, so I'll just make a comment : People who only played Engage and not RD : Micaiah's a bad character? (While using Warp/Rewarp/Rescue with her)
Looking forward to your RD playthrough. Never seen anything of the game and am really thankful for the spoiler warnings and tags. Had to stop around the 16 minute mark as there we no spoiler tag so I'm just gonna play it safe and assume the rest of the video is about plot spoilers. I want to keep an open mind and give Micaiah a chance. Maybe she isn't as bad as a character as many think. After all, (for most of us) roy's still our boy despite his low stats and *long* time to promote. But maybe I'm just a bit biased because I recently just summoned her, filling in my vacant role of blue infantry mages, alongside Oliver (also looking foward to him in RD). I'm not gonna deny her awful combat prowess though. From what it sounds like, she's a frail mage who can't double many things. I've got no problem with units that can't dounle as long as they have massive strength or resistance to compensate for it. But it looks like Micaiah has to be protected, not relied upon. Maybe she would've received less flak if she started the game as a healer and *then* promted to a (I'm assuming) light magic mage/sage. A healer lord could be interesting in FE
16 minutes on is basically all spoilers, so skip it if you want. Hope you find the playthrough interesting. Micaiah is weird in that she combines massive Magic with non-existant speed... and defense. She's like an armour knight without the tanking ability, which is... egh. I always thought a healer Jagen would be interesting in an FE game.
Her stats definitely have issues, but she is easily my favorite character of all the lords. She is also one of the only lords to be a truly gray morality
Well this was very insightful and educational. I personally think she's arguably the most divisive lord in the series. Everything you've said kinda supports that. Oh, by the way.....have you seen the new Persona Q2 trailer. This is gonna be a HUGE crossover and it only gets me hyped for the third persona arena game.
No WAY is she the most divisive now that Corrin exists. Also Kris. And there's always Roy, who still has a massive fanbase despite being near-unanimously considered the worst Lord in the series gameplay-wise. I've seen it. I've put my thoughts on that elsewhere, but I'm surprised the P3 cast is back.
ok, while I do approve of the nod to Overly Sarcastic Productions, you don't just plug a video like that without adding a link to said video in the description. Due diligence and all that. And really Micaiah is quite frankly a microcosm of everything wrong with Radiant Dawn's overall writing placed into a silver-haired girl that does not deserve 90% of the flak she gets.
Micaiah not existing means one of two things for Sanaki 1: that Sanaki becomes Heron Branded since that seems to pass down matrilineally to the first-born daughter, which in this case would probably be Sanaki. in this case, Sanaki would be a viable vessel, and would've succeeded in actually singing the Galdr of release. 2:that the senate was not lying about having murdered Micaiah. this ending is where the gods get released via the war itself. In this case, I could see Mist becoming Yune's vessel in a "it's the next best thing" scenario due to how long she held the medallion for. tbh, i feel like the only reason Yune never took a full humanoid form was that she hadn't been awake long enough for that (similarly to why she couldn't just unpretrify everyone iirc), and the bird was the best she could do for a while.
@@gypsysprite4824 honestly thats not bad . I would like to say betyer that if Micaiah was made to be dead I would actually prefer if salami was still not able to sing the song . it be kinda funny
Man, Mary sues have been lot in my mind lately, i got some friends to play a RPG whit me, and that's the first time i am not the master. And now being in the place of a player, and i been having a hard time worrying about being one. Most often than not i feel like i hog the Spotlight, so tô compensate i make some stupid decisions and let the others take the stage, but don't know if it's working all that well. And to boot some of the others characters started do the whole "you are the dissapointment" because of some of those worse ideias i made, and while this makes for great drama in the game, i still not used to separate It 100%. But it's Fun nonetheless
That's something I worry about with tabetop RPGs, which I'm thinking of getting into. I don't really have the best advice because I've only been a player in a session once, but what I'd suggest is: 1. Only do something if it's what your character would do. In real life, it's hard to "hog the spotlight" because we're all individuals and the world isn't about one of us. If you have something you want your character to say, first think "Would my character say this now?" I know I had a few moments where I really wanted to do something but the other players didn't give me the cue I needed. And that's fine. Just let it go and move on. 2. You don't have to intentionally make bad decisions (that are ooc) just because you're scared of your character being a Sue. That will only make it look worse. Instead, just let the bad decisions occur naturally as a result of dice rolls or the DM's reactions to your actions. Then think about how your character reacts to knowing they screwed up. 3. Let other players have their turn. If, say, you're at a temple to the party Cleric's god, recognize this is probably their moment and don't interfere too much. (Side note, one thing I worry about as an aspiring DM is players getting left out. At the one session I played, there were two characters who barely got to do anything all game, and I could really tell one player was getting bored. This happens with Travis/Grog a lot on Critical Role during non-combat episodes too.)
BigKlingy só to begginer GM to begginer GM, the best tip i have to give is to make a mental checklist (or a real one) of things a player can do tô progress the game, and try to make each player work in one My last session was in a victorian setting whit werewolfs, and more of a grimdark tone (my players like to play morally grey a little to much for other types of games), and i made sure to keep the most foward ones busy whit people that work in the área and working around bureaucracy , só the others had tô investigate around the lot and interrogate civilians, that made the more quiet ones have a slot tô fill that the others could not. The only problem was that they got way too attached to an NPC, a sick lady that walked the block to Go to work, and she became their Kiki, and i had tô make her backstory in the spot, made a whole thing about she having a Very light case of lycanthropy that made her have sensitive senses and a need for fresh meat.
I'm currently writing a vague outline of my first oneshot (set in Critical Role's universe because I have the sourcebook and less world-building work for me), but I have no idea who'll be playing and what their characters will be. I feel like maybe I'll have everyone make characters and have them email me, and then I'll write in ways everyone can contribute. That's kind of cool. If I ever DM, I can't wait till my players inevitably get attached to one random NPC and force me to improv around that.
I will say I do appreciate the explanation on the whole Mary sue thing due to the fact I've seen my fair share of this term thrown around and those who did use it put it in a way where it sound wrong note to me after seeing this I do have a bit more of a understanding of the trope where it makes sense to me though with vary little experience with RD I didn't know people labeled her as a sue till now
It's a common label people through around for characters they don't like, mostly because it's so damning to a character. It's one of the WORST things you can accuse a character of bring. I think there are less people who call her a Sue now... mostly because Corrin and Kris exist and have drawn most of that ire their way. Personally, I think Mary Sues are exclusive to fanfiction. The closest thing canon works have to a Sue is a "Creator's Pet", which is something kind of different. (Loved by the creators, hated by the fans, constantly shilled and spotlighted by the creators. Wesley Crusher from Star Trek is considered the archetypal example, even his actor hated him) I feel like if you're a fanfic author and are worried about having a Mary Sue on your hands, the best test is to ask yourself: "Is there one specific character in my story who I care about 1000x more than all the rest?" The whole Mary Sue thing is about author favouritism. It's okay to have a central protagonist, so long as they're not the only thing in the cosmos that matters.
Yeah... The moment that you talk about the 2nd criteria, I know it is not a Mary Sue. Like she really is important to part 1 for good reason and part 3 is just there to see the other side of the war. I like her as a character (although I have a bad of part 3 though). That alone doesn't focus so much on her and their other games better than this(Persona series, Kingdom hearts 1,CM,2,DDD,BS(Fragement passion version) Bayonetta 1 and 2 a little bit, etc). At least I like her even if bad written and she really good in Heroes. 😉 I definitely look forward to playthough. This is a game that I enjoyed watched. Quick question:What is your impressions for Persona Q2 :new cinema labyrinth? Any plains to do a blind playthough when it localized? Or it will after P5 project finished? (You could say it also is canon to P3 but is more in to P5 side.)
I'm not sure how good she's supposed to be in Heroes, but I still haven't pulled her yet. Seems like it'll be hard to beat Ishtar and Reinhardt as blue mages though. (And for me, Bride Caeda, I've got a really good one due to getting unlucky with dupes on the first LH banner) I'm considering a blind playthrough, though Q1 could get very grindy at times. I'll see where I'm at when it comes out.
BigKlingy Update:Now we have two Michaiah in Heroes. They reveal the new banner and she in. She a red unit and she got the same effect as a regular tome with a twist. That banner is insame expecely Blue and Green daggers. We halve COLERS DAGGER😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍. What your thoughts? Looking forward for your PQ2 blind playthough. A quick question. I know that the Q1 launch in USA digital and pishicalic (correct me). Did in Europe get only the digital release?I got the digital version and took much space of the 3ds.
So I've skipped the spoiler warnings because I'm not finished with Radiant Dawn yet, though I'm getting pretty close to the end. 4-1, to be exact, but I'm not sure which spoiler sections of this video I'd be fine with listening to. Would it be alright to note which spoiler sections are spoilers for certain parts or which ones are spoilers for the whole game? I've definitely heard mixed things about Micaiah, particularly on the subject of whether she's a Mary Sue or not. She's got powers that makes things in Part 1 more convenient than otherwise, and Daein's citizens are really drawn to her. But some of her decisions past Part 1 made me raise an eyebrow, especially 3-12. I don't think anyone could paint _that_ moment in any good light for Micaiah. Not exactly fulfilling any wishes. I'm... actually okay with Micaiah being a staffbot at best. She's definitely not great in combat, but at least she can contribute in some way. I'd honestly rather have that than a mediocre combat unit that can't do much else. Then again, Vulneraries and Concoctions heal quite a lot in Radiant Dawn... But sometimes, I want my frontline fighters to press the attack and top up their health on the same turn.
It should be kind of obvious when I'm going to talk about Part 4 spoilers, but I'll go back and check just in case. Exactly, also even in Part 1 Micaiah makes bad decisions as early as 1-P. Going in to help fight off some bandits blows the DB's cover in that area and forces them on the run again. The good thing is she can use Physic immediately after promotion, and this can help in 3-13 and 3-6.
I feel like you might be underselling how vital Micaiah is to the main story. A lot of small details change that could have massive implications for how the story goes. Part 2 does change since Bastien left to meet with Pellias after hearing about their liberation, so without Micaiah, he would have no reason to leave Crimea. This could massively impact the rebellion plot since he was the master tactician and court savant that Elincia relied on, possibly changing the tactics and choices that were made. He could have beeb captured instead of Lucia, and since he was the one who hired Ike, he might have been killed by the rebellion, or he might have never been captured and ended Luvdec's plans sooner, which would have damaged Elincia's character development and made her less willing to oppose Begnion and the laguz alliance in part 3. In part 3, if Begnion still controlled Daein, then instead of having an intelligent general leading an attack on the alliance, they would have had another incompetent senator trying to win a glorious victory against the alliance and likely failing miserabley. Keep in mind, the military victories in part 3 were due to Zelgius's leadership, not the senators. Finally, the biggest issue, if Micaiah never sang the Galder of release at the end of part 3, everyone would have turned to stone and the plot would have ended then and there. Again, I feel like youre ignoring a lot of the story to try and prove that she isn't a Mary Sue. She is vital to the plot in multiple ways.
I made this before replaying the story so... yeah, I missed a lot of details. There's also Rafiel and Nailah getting to Gallia through Tormod's group, which is how the Laguz find out the senators were responsible for Serenes, which kickstarts a lot of Part 3.
@@BigKlingy Also, I'm not really sure what point you were trying to make by saying Micaiah not profoundly impacting every character in the story means she's not a Mary Sue. You don't have to profoundly impact literally every character in a story to be considered a Mary Sue. That's such a narrow definition that I doubt you could ever find an example of one that fits that all of those criteria.
The whole "Micaiah is a Mary Sue" argument is pretty much entirely dead now so this video is kind of a relic. It's funny how the fandom opinion shifted though. (Though sadly, the shift towards re-evaluating Micaiah seems to have been Corrin existing) I still feel that a Mary Sue has to warp the plot around themselves. It's more a genre than it is a character type imo, it's about a story that only exists to be wish fulfilment for the author's self-insert, and every other character might as well be empty shells that get possessed by part of the Sue's essence whenever they're nearby and are lifeless otherwise.
@@BigKlingy Personally I find the whole author wish fulfillment arguement to be an arbitrary addition, since a writer can make their character the center of the universe and bend the plot to suit them, while honestly believing that they wanted to build the character this way because it fit their story and not as wish fulfillment. By that logic, it's only the author of the story that can say if their own character is a Mary Sue, which due to the negative stigma, would never happen. Using Corrin as an example, I doubt the author would say he/she was meant to be wish fulfillment for the author or the player out loud, so they can't be a Mary Sue. We all know that's not the case since they're the most blatant example of a Mary Sue in Fire Emblem
For me Mary Sue has a layer of complexity. For example in Baki the grappler Yujiro is the strongest character, he dominates all other characters even the main one, but he isn't a Mary Sue, because he has a developed character, and he needs to be this way because otherwise the plot wouldn't work, it is about a child trying to surpass his father. On the other hand a Mary Sue to me is a character who just radiates perfection, he has no character flaws, and faces no dilemma, and is perfect and has no real purpose other than to be the envy of others. Take Iseki wa smartphone, the dude has no trouble beating anything in his path, can literally do anything, he has 9 wives who oggle him, he faces no moments where i feared for him, because he is made to be op. Overall though A mary sue is just an op character meant to be the envy of the reader.
honestly aside from corrin who is a pretty hardcore mary sue the closes FE has come to one is ephraim, who is constantly talked up while being one of the most unremarkable protagonists across the entire franchise. even the route that forces ephraim to take the backseat has eirika pussyfooting around with merchants in an arc that has zero story consequence outside of her ultimately failing her goal while she worries about her brother(as he effortlessly tears through the entire grado empire and is still able to get to eirika's final destination just as she takes the castle)
I think some of the Mary Sue confusion comes from the fact that she kind of does fit the bill in /part one/ specifically for being a Sue (and the plot really does revolve around her, because even in the scenes she's not in such as Jarod and Numida's or Alder's scenes, they constantly discuss her), but it falls short in part three and from then on (as part four is mostly Yune when Micaiah's around, and the main characters shift for a hefty chunk of part four). In part three she's facing off against basically all the most powerful armies in the world, so it makes sense she continuously loses her battles, but that's an aspect that drops the Sue argument. The story stops revolving around her and she's no longer the center of /everything/ like she is in part one. In a sense I suppose she could be viewed as player wish fulfillment in that in part one she's the savior everyone loves for doing the "right thing" and freeing her people from oppression. In some form, she kind of does fall under a sense of wish fulfillment, but that's also a person to person basis. I can see where people are thinking she's a Mary Sue from, because part one displays a lot of the common issues such character display. Unfortunately RD hopped around a bit too much and I think it may have hindered her development, but that also falls a little short to me considering she's the first character we meet in the game along with Edward; meaning she had the most time out of everyone to develop and still didn't. Micaiah's character could be described as a cardboard cutout type, not unlike the arguments seen against FE:A and FE:F's characters. Ngl, I've always hated Micaiah's character. I hate how she's treated like a perfect savior and whatnot in part one, and then she does a ton of 180s in part three. In both parts I found her all around annoying and aggravating, which was a shame because I enjoy all the other Dawn Brigade characters. I've replayed RD /many/ times and I have never once grown to like her character, and still to this day do not. Another thing that bugs me about her is how she handled the whole Blood Pact issue. She told multiple people about it and basically kept dropping implications after she found out. Meanwhile Naesala kept his mouth shut for /years/ and suffered the loss of his friends and any trust anyone ever had for him. His character becomes sympathetic, and that's something I've never felt for Micaiah. The Blood Pact didn't make me feel sorry for her or their situation. It didn't make me understand her situation more. It just annoyed me more because she handled it terribly. I do hate the fact that Micaiah gets off scott free after everything is said and done just because the world almost stopped existing. Tbh, more than anyone else, she was a massive cause for Ashera waking up. Ike and Sanaki kept pushing for her to stop fighting and they were getting desperate because they knew about the medallion. Micaiah pushed against that and kept trying to fight over and over despite that Ike even went out of his way to have his men avoid firing at her. Micaiah is /basically/ the reason Ashera awoke (as far as being the last straw) and turned all the people to stone. Ultimately what woke her was the war between Sanaki and Micaiah's forces that Sanaki kept trying to stop /several chapters prior/. It's not just that fans rooted for Ike or anything - it's the fact that Micaiah wouldn't listen to /anyone/. Even /Ranulf/ tried to get her to stop long before all of it even got as bad as it did. Micaiah ultimately gets all these great things in her life during the game and all this NPC love and whatnot, but tbh I find her to be one of the most awful and sadistic characters in the game. For example, she expressed fighting Sanaki's army to stall them so the Senate wouldn't initiate the power of the Pact... ...and she chooses to do this attempting to set people on fire. ...Yeah, um... that's awful and basically torture if anyone actually died like that? Regarding your analysis about Ashera saying it doesn't matter, Yune actually mentions that it did matter how she released from the medallion. If she was released by war and not the galdr, Ashera would have apparently wiped out everything immediately. The reason Sanaki & Ike, Tibarn, Skrimir and Micaiah's armies weren't turned to stone was because Yune was awoken by the galdr. At least, that's how othey explained it from Yune. Honestly, the difference between Ike in PoR and Micaiah in RD is that Ike is THE main character, unquestionably so, in PoR. RD has /several/ main characters and we follow stories with Micaiah, Elincia, Ike, and Tibarn. PoR couldn't happen without Ike because we follow his story specifically, but RD follows more than one person. It wasn't handled like a typical FE game, where there is a very specific designated main character that the story follows throughout the game (as even though many would argue Ike is THE main Tellius character, we don't follow his story throughout the full duration of the game). As for her battle characteristics, I mostly level her up by using Sacrifice tbh. I prefer she doesn't take EXP away from the other DB members because fact is, I have to use them later on when it's more /difficult/ to use them (i.e. part three). I try to focus as heavily as I can on other characters who will actually be on the front lines, because damn if chapter six in part three isn't a disaster if you're unprepared and don't have the other DB members all promoted or close to promotion. Even then, that chapter can still be difficult. The whole group isn't great, but she's definitely the one who suffers most battle-wise. It doesn't help that Nolan, Leonardo and Edward all get special weapons that help them in part three and Micaiah has nothing better than Thani.
I can't believe you made a My Immortal joke. You're lucky I think it's funny. Seriously, though, insightful video. Mary Sue really is an overused term.
This video makes a lot of really compelling arguments about how to categorize a Sue, and what a Sue exactly IS. I had an argument with a group of people last week about whether or not EPHRAIM of all people was a Sue... because he was overpowered. Not to mention the absurd number of people complaining about Robin being a Sue despite the fact that I’m pretty sure Robin fits totally fine as a lord if you ignore them being an avatar. Corrin is... a bit of a gray area in my mind. They aren’t totally a Sue, but good god they REALLY TRIED TO BE. Byleth definitely isn’t a Sue, the issue with them is that they’re a silent protagonist. So all the character development for them has to be delivered by other people, making them seem like one. Kris tho... I don’t think anyone has a solid defense of Kris.
A lot of people used to accuse Ephriam of being one. Admittedly him doing everything he does early in the story with just 4 men is kind of stretching disbelief, but he's also a Fire Emblem Lord, not to mention and RPG character, and they tend to be one-person-armies. I also don't think he's meant to be idealized wish fulfilment, and even if they are that's deconstructed in-game as part of the Big Bad's motivation is wanting to be as strong as them. I agree that Corrin is a grey area. Almost EVERY other character's reasons for being in the story revolve around them in some way, and the most suspicious thing to me is the story bending over backwards to keep their hands clean at all times. Even major villains like Iago and Zola get offed by Leo. I was pleasantly surprised when 3H allowed Byleth to execute an enemy commander in a cutscene to spare him from Dimitri's torture. Byleth is really just a pre-established character who happens to be a silent protagonist. Kris is literally just a self-insert fanfic character. At least they don't impact the main plot at all, all they really do is recruit Katarina and that's optional and not related to the main story.
@@BigKlingy actually Kris takes a lot of different moments in the plot away from other characters. It probably isn’t very noticeable without playing FE3 first, which I would consider a good thing to some degree. What strikes an odd chord with me about Corrin is that I... actually kind of like them. Not in the sense that I think they’re well written, but in the sense that I actually enjoy them as a person. They’re a kindhearted dork who’s supremely ignorant about the world around them, to the extent that it often gets them bitten in the ass. And while the story’s constant efforts to take all blame from them is exhausting, I still find that I can’t help but enjoy how they act in supports. I guess that’s Fire Emblem’s legendary character writing in action, haha. (For the record, I’ve played through the original JP IF, the fanslation, and the localization. So I’m disgustingly well read on this topic) Byleth’s dialogue options in Cindered Shadows and in their supports with the Ashen Wolves really surprised me. There was a lot more personality shining through in them than there was in the rest of the game. It gave me an actual sense of who Byleth was, and I honestly really liked that. Shame that it rarely ever appears in other parts of the game.
Everyone says that, but I don't remember them "taking away" any major moments. All I remember from the last time I played FE12 was Kris telling Marth not to kill the Clerics in the final chapter which... I'm okay with, as Jagen came off as a jerk in the original scene. But it's been a while since I played FE3. If I had clear evidence of this I'd believe it, but I know most of the "big name" FE-RUclipsrs hate FE12, so there's a lot of biased opinions going around. I agree that Corrin in isolation isn't a bad character, it's just the way the story treats them that's the issue. That's kind of how it always is with Sues.
@@BigKlingy story treatment of a character actually leads me to another question. At what point does a character lose their individuality and become more of a plot device? I’ve personally been of the opinion that Sigurd doesn’t really have much to him as a person, rather everything that happens to him exists to further the plot along. Him meeting Deirdre, him fighting Eldigan, him **spoiler**. One could argue this is because of limitations of the time, but Seliph is a fantastically characterized lord with a lot going on.
@@Fish-ep4cn I think the TV Tropes term for that is "Pinball Protagonist". A protagonist who mostly exists to be bounced from plot point to plot point. In a way I feel it makes sense for Sigurd, he's kind of a hapless dupe for most of his part of the story and doesn't realize he's accidentally set up Granvalle to rule the continent.
come to think of it, if michaiah didnt exist, then maybe sanaki would fulfill that role. Plus with the concept of an Adult Sanaki, you could use this game as a way to build her up to that status.
23:21 And that right here nails why Corrin isn't a Sue either, and even other definitions fail to apply to Corrin, like them being perfect or loved by everyone: Xander and Leo are quick to point out Corrin's kindness and naivete are very serious weaknesses, and Corrin's manages to injure himself when Takumi tries to teach them archery. Hell, while Corrin's roster description states they are "well-liked by all", _Kaze_ is explicitly stated to be the _best-liked_ member of the army, even on Revelation where you get literally everyone except Izana and Yukimura. At worst, Corrin isn't written very well, but I'm sick to death of the Mary Sue label. I also really do not understand why people think Revelation Corrin is an idiot who "constantly has to be saved by their siblings".
I... still feel like player pandering dominates a lot of Corrin's character and plot, and the story bends over backwards to keep their hands clean multiple times. Iago, one person Corrin freely admits to being okay with killing, gets killed by Leo on all three routes. I really WANT to like Corrin because they have a lot of good elements to them, but it does feel like they were created with "make the player feel good about themself" first and actual character second.
I've said it before, Leo does NOT finish Iago on all three routes! Yes, he kills Iago on Birthright and Conquest, but in Revelation, Iago just dies when defeated in gameplay. There is no cutscene where he gets finished, he just dies. And while the story does keep their hands unrealistically clean, it's not like they NEVER kill despite the war. Again, Corrin can kill Iago on Revelation, and they have no problem killing Vallite soldiers. Also, Hans always dies in gameplay. He NEVER gets finished by an outside source, so Corrin can kill him on all three routes. I'm not saying Corrin was a great or even good character, but they are not a Sue.That is my point.
Around 21:00 you claim the way Yune is awakened doesn't matter because of what Ashera says in 4-E-5 But in 4-P(I think?) Yune says that if she was instead awakened by the spirit of war, then Ashera would've instantly wiped out all of Tellius
I'd forgotten about that line at the time. So my theory has a few holes. But if Micaiah didn't exist, Sanaki would likely have both components of the Galdr of Release anyway.
who did you meant by "long lost relative of a prvioudly estableshed character who just so happened to have better powers then her and be the real chosen one in her field" ? Ike? her Sister? the Spoiler party member? (I'm try to not give awy spoilers, so not naming her sister)
7:36 Such as 'a kidnap victim locked in a sex dungeon'? Or 'kidnapped and placed on the slave auction block', which is probably more accurate to the medieval-ish time period?
honestly kind of a weird video. Language doesn't really work like this. Just because a term orignally meant something doesn't mean thats what it means when people use it. You could dig up a ton of older english words and have this exact discussion and definition regarding them. I've heard the term "mary sue" be a perfect flawless character for over 10 years, it would be more appropriate to create a new term instead because 99% of people who hear the term "mary sue" will think its a flawless character.
terminology in general has gone down a shit hole these days. edge lord is probably the biggest one, where anyone who's a just a jack ass is an edgy try hard because we couldnt just call them a dick. seriously i dont get why wouldnt we just say the character is poorly written, kinda dumbs down the meaning in words if you just use them for anything you dont like.
Exactly. People love to throw around terms when talking about characters they hate, and eventually those terms lose all meaning. I personally think Mary Sues are strictly a fanfiction phenomenon, and official characters can be badly-written at worst.
to elaborate on my point with a series example i'd like to mention R. edge lords are typically a dark gritty character trying too hard to act cool (the perfect example is the first 10 seconds to shadow the hedgehog showing you just how edgy a character can be). and Rutger really gets that moniker thrown his way because navarchetype. Rutger is just a guy who's constantly pissed and sucks at opening up. besides his Deke c support (which frankly is one of my favorite supports to quote of all time so i can kinda live how that one conversation is the sole root of Rutgers flanderization ) he generally just tells every to piss off and leave him alone, and then once he gets comfortable with them he finally decides to open up and he actually has something meaningful or considerate to say. he's a dick sure, his only motivation to join you is Clarine accidentally said they're fighting Bern and he didn't wanna waste a second to get revenge, but he's not trying to be cool like navarre was made into in the ds remakes (or the movie if you really wanna be petty), he's just trying to be uninvolved with the world. i guess the roundabout point i'm trying to make is it makes characters harder to criticize and dissect when everyone blankets characters together with a term that doesnt apply to them all and we get no where when discussing them because every one just says "Oh they're just a XXXXX character, what else is there to say?"
Rutger is definitely not an edgelord. People often use the term jokingly these days, but Rutger really isn't one. Contrast STH Shadow. Black and red colour scheme, uses guns in a typically kid-friendly setting, rides motorbikes, angsts constantly, swears all the time, has overly hard-rock music including victory jingles... yeah.
I think its just the original meaning just being lost over time (which makes it sound like the term's Shakespearean in origin when I put it that way) where legitimately I've seen real people get called an edge lord just because they threatened to kick someone's ass. I guess argumentative intelligence is just going down hill these days...
Micaiah is your usual generic FE lord character wise, with a few special things sprinkled on top. (spoilery wall of text below) The blood pact is a BS plot device. The way i would have done it, is have begnion kidnap almedha/ have lekain threaten to reveal the fact that pelleas is a branded making daein people lose faith in him, and revealing that he is a puppet for begnion or even both. Pelleas, being inmature as a king goes to war with the laguz and is unrelenting and maybe even ruthless, despite how his subordinates feel, and after yune is awakened, he regrets what he's done, but since lekain can no longer reveal pelleas' secret to the daeins (they are petrified) pelleas gains the resolve to stand up against him, alongside the other Chosen Ones in part 4. Almedha could also be used as leverage to convince (or blackmail) Goldoa to join ashera's side. Which would be a better motive than "because we have to" for goldoa to join ahsera. One other thing that bugs me about goldoa, now that we are talking about it, is that dheginsea, kurthnaga and ena have nothing to say about pelleas even though they "supposedly" are related. I don't know for a fact whether they know he's the real deal- if they know or can sense that he is not almedha's son, wouldn't they recognize soren? Anyway, i'm bummed that they didn't do more things with that. branded beorc-dragon laguz should be very rare to see due to goldoa being so isolated. I'd like to see hwo the goldoan royalty would deal with that situation.
One interesting thing I find in 3-13 is that if Nailah talks to Volug as an NPC, he doesn't mention anything about the Pact. He just says "The Daein king was tricked into cooperating with Begnion." Maybe they hadn't always planned to use it? I still feel it isn't as bad as some of the plot points in Fates, like Azura being revealed as Corrin's cousin for no reason in a throwaway line that has no bearing on anything, or the curse on Valla. (The idea of a curse preventing people from mentioning the name of something has potential, but it was clearly used to handwave "why doesn't Corrin just explain what's going on?")
1:18 I kinda disagree because the Mary-Sue trope can be both story and character tropes. For example, in character trope side, she or he can have no anger issues, no vice, good at anything, and never makes mistakes.
While these character tropes do appear often in Mary Sues, I don't think they're what makes a Sue a Sue. A character can be perfect and flawless, but if they're not the sole reason everything else in the story exists, they can't be a Mary Sue. On the flipside, a character can be ugly, fail at everything and be hated by everyone, but if the story treats them like they're the only thing in the universe that matters, they're still a Sue. I basically sum up the Mary Sue trope as "The story only exists to show off the author's pet character."
okay from having played radiant dawn ive got my own thougths on micaiha and my grand conclusion is shes a bad character but ive seen much much worse she is hardly the worst character in FE honestly this is mostly story wise, gameplay wise I don't like her either but to be perfectly honest one shotting a general even nailah and naesala couldn't kill was certainly fun.(also omg you watch OSP too?! that's awesome!).
I'd agree. She's very under-developed and imo doesn't have much character beyond "I'm nice and like to help people, also I'm totally not love interests with Sothe". I kind of blame that on both her lack of focus after Part 1 and the lack of a support system. I'll say it when I get to the playthrough, but oneshotting Armours is one thing that keeps Micaiah from being useless gameplay-wise.
Ah, right, that. Eh, the senate is corrupt enough to be able to find an excuse to pull a coup anyway. And at the time in the plot that thing happens, no-one, on either side, has any proof of their claims of Sanaki being a "False Apostle" being true. Most of the heroes assume it's just senate propaganda.
While this is the stereotype, there's also a lot of excessively edgy sues who are typically excessively violent and immoral and act like a jerk to everyone, yet the narrative still treats them as the most important person in the universe and desperately wants the audience to think they're the coolest thing ever. They're just as annoying as overly pure ones.
I do like Micaiah and while i understand why you think she's a bad character, bc i certainly dont think she is, i 100% agree that Micaiah isn't a Mary Sue and ppl who call her a Mary Sue and hate her for that are not bright in the head.
Honestly, the only reason I consider Micaiah a bad character is that form a gameplay standpoint, she’s probably the worst playable main character since Roy.
She at least has staff utility and Thani to oneshot armours and Cavs. She dies to pretty much anything, but I personally rank her above Roy just for those two things.
Off that Start hurt man :( Off if your Mary sue description is what you said (need to not be that important and all Yah Micaiah is clearly not Mary sue As she got to litle screen time in my opinion Ike takeing way to much of the Story... (I think she could have use like 3 more chapter to help her character and the Dawn brigade growth a bit.) Yah Radiant dawn is so much center about Ike It kinda Sad... At less he could have let the boss to Micaiah... I don't think Micaiah is badly written tho I just think she lack Support conversation and lack the Chapter to make the most of her. Tho she still my Fav "main ish" character (Tho RD Main character is Ike let be real... Sorry Micaiah I like you alot you did so much good but still Ike is the main Character of RD for Parth 3 and 4 and end Game.) But hey She still the best (say what you want about the blood contract But it was still unique and fun plot twist that help Micaiah Characters, A "blackmail letter" isn't a bad thing it something that can hapend) But really Give the Girl 2 or 3 more chapter some support Conversation and give her slightly better SPD (so she dosen't just get double by everything) and you get yourself a GREATH character Much better than Ike in my humble Opinion. SORRY FOR THE BAD ENGLISH
As much as I joke about Miccy Sue here, Ike kinda steals the show a little bit, and makes Miccy look like the bad guy via "bad plot/devices" but in no way make her any better by a long shot.
I never really liked/cared for Micaiah's character at all and this vid made me care for her even less. RD is one of my least favorite FE games and the story (and some gameplay mechanics) are the reason why. I actually really like the way you retold the story without Micaiah, it honestly sounds better than the actual story of the game. also, I disagree with Micaiah being a bad lord, she isn't game breaking or anything but I'll gladly take her over Roy and Elimeh anyday. Anyway looking forward to your LP of this game.
Funny that you happened to release this video around the same day that micaiah just got a alt in fe heroes. And from what i have been in that game......people seem pretty happy about it. I'am not sure what to make of the fanbase right now when people seem more happy to see micaiah then freaking lyn. I know that fe heroes has been going overbord with the lyn alts but people also got WAY too mad about eirka's first alt too. Not gonna lie the fe heroes sub reddit seems to hate everthing now day's so this reaction was surprising to me. So yeah judging from how micaiah been recived in heroes and how high her character ranking in that game, i think most people have moved on or just kinda accepted her by this point. No offence to you, mamodxx, blazingknight, omni, max hp, and others. But i think it's time you all relise that micaiah does have a fan base, doesn't have nearly the amount of hate she used to have, and honestly people either change their opinon over time or just tend to be fickle as hell anyway. Like summer corrin or with smash ultimate and the echo fighters or with reinhardt in the heroes subreddit. But yeah tl:dr version i think most people have just moved on from hating micaiah by this point.
I believe that one of the major reasons Eirika's alt was bashed was because she was given the Gleipnir tome, which at this point is fanonically considered to be Knoll's weapon. A lot of people were pissed off that Knoll didn't get in, along with other SS characters not getting their chances (Ross, Gerik, Tethys, etc.). I dunno, I'm kinda grasping at straws. Why am I even commenting on this, anyway?
I love Micaiah and in all my radiant dawn playthrouh she's a great magic user. Sadly I just know all you will use her for will be a staffbot . sad it really it. Well you do that then how about do do me a favor and NOT use ike for killing. Just having him deal chip damage but never kill except the black knight . cause I'd can say slot of people would be way more interested in seeing Micaiah fight more than the buff Boyd old swinging his ettard around . no I'm not trying to force you I just do not want to have to see one of my favorite characters not be used in something she can definitely do. If you are so worried about her safety well guess what you can think of a way to use her still and keep safe
I'm going to have Micaiah fight when she can, because she's a main character so I still like training her. I'll still use Ike a lot though. Not using Ike for killing is just not something you can do in RD outside of self-imposed challenges.
I know I'm going to rustle a lot of jimmies with this, but I always felt like the people who call Micaiah a Mary Sue completely ignore the fact that Ephariam is a Gary Stu (although I'm not sure he fits the criteria) and treat Eirika like garbage (even though her naivety is almost painful at times). I realize that's a pretty big tangent, but I wanted to get it off my chest.
Nah, sure Ephraim has his issues(who the hell attacks a fort with 3 other dudes), but when he returns home after defeating orson, he at least learns to grow up bit and maybe being king isn't so bad. But yeah I see your point.
I've never really felt Ephriam was one. He's a bit overpowered in-story, but the entire plot isn't "Ephriam is awesome and you all should love him". You even have the option to push him to the sidelines by choosing Eirika's story.
How is she a Mary Sue when in part 3 she almost loses every fight against Ike and her strategies are always behind Soren, she looks pretty bad in part 3 and it’s kind of an anti hero but since part 4 is kind of rushed they didn’t address the things she did in part 3.
![Hunxho - Ball Forever [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nki9ZTF9Uls/mqdefault.jpg)
A couple of things. One: I've updated the description with links. It was late last night when I uploaded this, sorry.
Second, I've started recording RD, done the first three chapters plus some bios already. However, it might be another day before I start uploading because... I'm going to need to get some extra footage that requires me to back up my entire RD savefile to an SD card and delete it. Basically, there are things in this game that irrevocable change after beating it once. The opening movie, for one. I want to show the original opening movie to start. The second thing is the Glossary and Character Tree in the base. These persist across playthroughs, and as I found out, even if you don't load Clear Data they still carry over. So in order to show them "clean", i.e how a player would see them upon getting to 1-4 for the first time, I'm going to have to play on a totally clear Wii. And I need to research how I can do this without destroying my saves. I have someone else's Wii on loan, but annoyingly they have RD saves too, and I don't want to screw up the SD-copying of theirs.
BigKlingy Hey, take your time. Just don't do what my father did when attempting to transfer data between our Wii U's, & delete 5 years worth of progress on accident. Its not even deleted, its just trapped on a flash drive formatted for a PC!
That's... annoying.
BigKlingy Tell me about it. I was in traumatic shock for the next few days trying to recover the data. It wasn't even 5 years now that I think about it. It may have from all the way to '07.
Reminds me of when my sister accidentally deleted my Crash Bandicoot 2 file. She was really sorry for that, though.
BigKlingy There also may or may not have been 150+ hours of Xenoblade Chronicles X in that data. This REALLY taught us to not leave the console on for months at a time, because we burned out the disc reader.
I don't think that Micaiah is badly written just the lack of support conversations hold back any and all development for new units
That's sadly a major issue with the new characters in this game.
For the record, you're right about the definition of a Mary Sue. Back at the beginning of your Awakening playthrough someone asked what a Mary Sue is and I told them that it's a characters who's perfect and never fails, that's the definition that my grandfather told me.
As I'm watching this video I ask my grandpa what the definition of a Mary Sue is, and he admits that your definition was better than his. My grandpa is a professional author, so I think that's a noteworthy achievement.
Interesting. Bear in mind I got my definition mostly from things like TV Tropes and other online communities, any my own experience reading bad fanfiction. I agree with a lot of the Overly Sarcastic Productions video, but I'd mostly come to that conclusion on my own.
Perfect and never failing are often symptoms, but imo they mostly arise from the fact that a Mary Sue is never written with a personality or character traits in mind, their starting point is, to steal from the OSP video, "This character is by default the BEST character". And when you have that as your starting point, you... don't really have the foundation to build an interesting character. You can also still have a really flawed character being a Sue if the story still treats them like they're the only thing that matters in the universe.
Some others have pointed out this definition is flawed because that'd make every central character a Sue, but this spotlight-hogging goes beyond merely being the main character. It means that nothing else in the setting truly exists aside from them. If you remove them, no plot point or character has any substance or reason to exit.
E.g Ike is pretty much the entire focus of PoR, but people like Oscar and Titania would still live lives and have personality if he wasn't around. Meanwhile, if you took away Enoby D'arkness Dementia Tara Raven Way from My Immortal, no other characters would have ANY personality, motivation, or reason to exist.
Mary Sue is not an official literary term and is actually a very recent thing.
Micaiah being labeled a Mary Sue is like, 90% Sothe's fault.
I said it here, Sothe's character is 90% devotion to Micaiah. (The remaining 10% only exists due to his supports in PoR) But it's not like everyone in the plot is like him, and as I said he's... kind of biased when it comes to her.
BigKlingy
Yeah, I heard, and totally agreed. That's kind of my point - his character revolving around her probably led to a lot of people falsely labeling her a Mary Sue - especially players who have either never actually played the game, or have never played past Part 1.
Thing is, Sothe sings Ike's praises almost as much as he sings hers, which is pointed out in-universe. (Micaiah isn't as snarky about it in Japanese, but she's still clearly annoyed)
i'd say its more accurately 85% michiah devotion, 5% supports from PoD and 10% worshipping his old friends, 90% of that worship being aimed at ike. sothe in general is kinda just a massive kiss ass. fitting considering he's basically the RD jagen.
You know who actually is a Mary Sue to the teeth? Corrin. Every single part of Fates revolves around Corrin on how they are super special and awesome, everyone is absolutely willing to bang with them and their only flaw is that they care too much about their friends. And it's also quite obvious that they are basically wish-fulfillments for the player.
Sadly, that's all pretty much true. Don't forget how the plot bends over backwards to make sure Corrin is never directly guilty of any deaths besides Hans and Garon (who isn't human anymore) I think. Flora and Ryoma, suicide. Xander got himself killed on purpose. Zola, killed by Leo or Garon. Rainbow Sage, old age. Freaking IAGO? Killed by Leo on all three routes even though Corrin specifically admits they'd have no issues with killing them.
And that "flaw" is one of those classic "flaws that don't mean anything", because all the siblings straight up say "we know you're naive, we don't care and will clean up your messes for you."
She just reminds me a bit of Lyn's level of special tbh.
@@nah4467 It's been awhile since I've played FE7, but Lyn didn't feel like a "special" character. During the first 10 chapters or so, yeah I could see it. But it was called Lyn's Tale for a reason. All of that specialness goes right out the window during the other two tales. In fact, she didn't really have anything to do during that time.
@@Laurmachi Which is why I am mostly fine with Micaiah.
“Wish fulfillment for the player” is exactly why Corrin was referred to as simply “the avatar” up until Smash 4 brought them in. At least Heroes redeemed them somewhat.
Hi, remember me from one hour ago?
Good video, good video. As someone else said already years ago, Micaiah possesses a lot of superficial "gifted" traits which contrast when you go through Ike's journey. However, I feel like it's still represented as a struggle for her to reclaim Daein because of the gameplay. The first chapters having any Dawn Brigade member dying = game over, both in gameplay and story, tell us how everyone's needed otherwise they're vastly outmatched.
And Part 3 makes fun of that achievement, it feels, by labeling her followers as fanatic and Micaiah as ridiculous and insane. And by part 4, she gets effectively shoved aside by Yune and Ike, and it also follows in gameplay. All that she gets is a stupidly late promotion and struggling to stay alive as Ike chainsaws through hordes of reinforcements with his Yune-given Aether and his Ragnell. Micaiah doesn't even get a weapon of that caliber.
It feels like the writers, or producers, either stopped caring about her or deliberately shoved her aside to have Ike more on the box. The final hero ode at the very end is about Ike. Micaiah gets no say in BK's death but Ike sure does (cut content notwithstanding), and there's so much missed potential on Support interactions with Ike, Elincia, Sanaki and SOREN.
I feel like Heroes did more justice to her than her base game (thanks Veronica). Also heard she's broken in Engage just today.
I really wish they would have done more with Micaiah.
Whether she is a Mary sue or not (which she definitly is not), I like Micaiah a lot.
I almost feel like Micaiah was a clumsy attempt at deconstructing a Mary Sue. She's got a lot of the superficial earmarks of one, and initially it's set up like she's going to be one, but that all goes to pot in Act 3 as it becomes increasingly clear that she's out of her depth. It'd also fit with the Tellius games' existing deconstructive tendencies.
Nah, I think IS wanted to shake up the formula on lords which is why I can like Micaiah in most areas. I can agree on bad plot points of RD but that's a plot point, not really her character.
They wanted to make clear in part 3 that her army was inferior to Ike’s in almost everything and that’s why she had to do risky strategies and in part I feel like she kind of hated Ike so she didn’t care much about his army (like throwing boulders at a convoy).
I feel like they tried to make her an anti hero in part 3 but didn’t do a good job.
We have the person who made FE Awekening a fanfiction by Mary Sue. His words must be true. (Or not, I can't force you)
I was going to talk about that but it wouldn't really be relevant here. I don't actually think Robin is a Mary Sue... in-game. Some players certainly treat them like one though. Robin has character beyond being an idealized self-insert, and the plot doesn't really revolve around them until the third act. And it's not like the game throws in a contrived plot twist to make them unrelated to their siblings so they can bang them... (Not saying Corrin is fully Sue either, but... they're closer)
The reason I did what I did with Awakening was to continue a silly joke I did in FE12, after finding out Awakening is set in the same universe. I treat Mary Sue like a Persona final boss: she's a manifestation of all bad fanfic OCs, so she will always be reborn as long as bad fanfiction exists. Or he. They can reincarnate into any form depending on the writer. I did what I did with FE12 because when I found out you could create your own character who becomes one of Marth's knights and enters that world I thought "that sounds like a fanfiction". I wasn't meaning to bash any ship. All the Mary Sue stuff in my Awakening playthrough, including how it ended, was planned LONG before I knew Sumia existed.
Well, she ain't the fates avatar
I think that's a big part of what turned the fandom's opinion on her around: when they saw Corrin they saw what a REAL Mary Sue FE protagonist looks like.
@@BigKlingy To be fair, most of the Fire Emblem main protagonists have been Mary Sues. Corrin was just the biggest one. I never really thought Micaiah was one. I think the reason they went so hard Mary Sue with Corrin had to do with just the whole choosing between Nohr and Hoshido aspect. It made sense for the plot.
@@MegaJesseman corrin, like roy, is half my favorite character, and half the worst. I love the premise of corrin, an mc lord with the use of swords, a dragonstone, and staves, but hate his/her personality
I actually kind of liked how they did her character. She started out nice and sweet, but then she started to fall into the darkness after the blood pact threatened to kill everyone in her kingdom. She started out doing things, that albeit led to misfortune for Ike's kingdom, was justifiable for her own kingdom's well-being. Then she started to delve into immorality. Doing obscene things that even her own people were against. Once she started down the path of darkness for the sake of her kingdom she just kept going further down that path. Likely she had to basically steel her emotions away in order to allow her to do what needed to be done for her kingdom, and doing that progressively caused her to delve deeper into the darkness. Which actually does make logical sense. The lines between right and wrong were starting to get blurred as she became someone else for the sake of her kingdom. Tibarn and Ike calling her an idiot was likely just frustration. It is pretty normal for people to resort to insulting peoples' intelligence when aggroed.
I haven't played this game yet, but what I can say is... in my eyes, Michiah at least looks nice.
Elias Chacon she is an appealing looking character and she is pretty likable (her primary character traits in part 1 are: a nice girl but with a sarcastic side, and in way over her head due to being easy to rally around), Radiant dawn just has a lot of problems, that they need to fix making her underdeveloped
@@mangamanzx this wouldn't be a problem if there were support conversations
@@thanakoto2239 that is one of the solutions to that problem yes
Minor issue: I vaguely remember the part 4 script saying that if Yune was awoken by war, then it would be both her and Ashera that would deliver judgement. However, since she was awakened by the Galdr, she would have to Phoenix Wright with Ashera over whether or not the humans deserved judgement. The only reason Yune turned on Ashera was because she completely disregarded the rules and did what she would have done had Yune been awoken by the war. But if that actually happened, Yune would have no reason to object to Ashera's decision, thus causing a 'bad ending' of sorts due to everyone becoming statues and the world getting destroyed.
Oh, right. I was mostly looking at the big picture rather than the smaller details of the plot, but now that you mention it, I do remember that. Still think Micaiah doesn't have a lot of plot importance outside of Part 1 though.
It's almost silly how her sole utility as a staff-bot after part 1 could be considered a representation of her loss of importance. Then again, I only left this comment because of 20:31, where you specifically look closely at the script, and I think that might have triggered me due to spot-check incompetence. I probably thought something like "if you scrutinized the script for that, then why couldn't you scrutinize it for this?" or whatever. Still a good vid, tho.
I can fully see why that would bother you. For some reason, Yune's exchange in E-5 stood out to me more than the scenes in 4-P.
I didn't know people were debating over this but eh I haven't played radiant dawn yet so I don't know much about her besides the basics.
It's definitely died down a lot in the past few years, though that's more due to new targets than anything.
She's an Anti-Mary Sue
Edit: don't hurt me plz
Definitely interesting to see the bare synopsis of RD's plot, definitely seems interesting to see what happens. I wondered how the Parts system would work, but considering the story it does make sense to have it in parts.
22:06 To be fair, after being deceived and used by his adviser, he was probably burned out from his short rule of Daen
19:35 I think it is the length of war where everyone is fighting. Not that Kurth joined the war. In the battle there's the kill count and that is was triggers the events [technically]. If it had been because of Kurth I think it would have happened a lot sooner.
anyone who calls her a mary sue needs to play hard mode.
On my hard mode play through she is getting one rounded by mages or close to it and she is like level 11 or 12
Oh, I see that you followed my advice. I thank you so much for this; well done! I apologize for my ignorance if you also did this in PoR as well, but I've decided to be on hiatus from watching that playthrough until I finished completing transferring all supports to Radiant Dawn. Anyway, as someone who's currently on hiatus from playing Trails in the Sky: (the First Chapter & series as a whole), I thank you so much for how you mention Cassius Bright! Seriously, that means a lot to me! I feel comfortable watching the Radiant Dawn playthrough now; thank you lack of in-depth support conversions! Please continue this good work.
(I case you're wondering, I have played through both Tellius games already - multiple times each. I'm just not as well-informed about them as you are; that's all.)
Please keep playing the Trails series, they're great. I hope to record them someday, because they really need more exposure.
I'm not trying to bash Cassius Bright at all, he's just an example of a character so overpowered it's played for laughs. If he was the focus character in a fanfic, he'd probably be labelled as the biggest Gary Stu of all time. But he's only a minor character in the grand scheme of things, showing up maybe 4 times max per game. It's still hilarious how, according to a file in The 3rd, Erebonia considers him setting foot on their soil as a NATIONAL EMERGENCY. And how the villains in Sky specifically lure him out of the country before putting their plan in motion.
Oh, I know you weren't trying to bashing on him; it was just to make your point. I get that. I'm sorry if my comment implied otherwise. I'm excited to see how overpowered he is.
Hmm, I liked this video. Everytime you make something I end up learning something new. But something to be said about this game before it begins. What do you think of the idea that part of the reason Micaiah is written badly as an extension of the ~~plot~~ Blood contract and a method of keeping ike's group in the spotlight.
The Blood Pact is probably the one part of this game's plot that I can't really defend, and I fully understand why it gets hate. I do kind of like the backstory it gives Naesala though. And I'm actually okay with Ashnard having used one to kill all the other princes.
I agree, more back story is nice. Do you think it could have been done better or was it kinda just doomed to fail?
It probably was, at least the way it was used. A lot of fans think Lekain easily just could've blackmailed Pelleas and Micaiah about being Branded, which considering Daein's racism is confirmed to be still very present in RD, could have worked just as well. It would've hurt Micaiah's sympathy a lot though, which is probably why they pulled the Blood Pact to begin with.
I'll also say the English localization did at least re-write a lot of scenes involving the Pact to make its rules more clear and Micaiah and Sothe more proactive in researching how to cancel it.
Oh boy here we go. Micky video. This title already says a lot, let's see where this goes.
Eh... I'd consider these two traits more important than the wish fulfillment aspect:
- *The character has no character arc,* whether or not it's due to being flawless in personality or skill or just due to bad writing. (Note that this is not to be confused with a static character, who is capable of having an arc where they learn a skill or positively/negatively affect someone else.)
- *The character's capabilities and/or feats sap all dramatic tension from the story.* (For example, in a mediocre Superman story which doesn't use any of his weaknesses like Magic, Kryptonite, or trust issues, [as illustrated in Trope Talks: Paragon,] there's no possibility of Superman failing or making things worse, and thus, no dramatic tension. Also: Serious consequences such as disfigurement, another's death, etc. Add to dramatic tension, so while a lack of consequences does play into qualifying as a Sue, it's not enough on it's own so long as the story retains dramatic tension.)
Personally, I think wish-fulfilment is THE main criteria. The Sue must exist not as a character in their own right, but to make the author feel good about themselves. There's a reason why this is very common with young teenagers writing for the first time.
"The character's capabilities and/or feats sap all dramatic tension from the story" This kind of goes along with the fact that in a Mary Sue story, there IS no dramatic tension, because there's no story. The "story" of a Mary Sue fic will always boil down to "hey everyone, I have this really awesome and cool character that you should all check out because they're the best character ever!"
Also, a character can be overpowered to the point of sapping the story's dramatic tension without being a Mary Sue. In that case they're just a badly-handled overpowered character. Not all bad character writing = Mary Sue.
It's kind of like.... okay, this is just my opinion, but I feel Superman is stupidly overpowered but they never felt like a Mary Sue to me. A comic character who occasionally does, I find, is Wolverine. Wolverine has a crazily extensive power and skill set, is super long-lived when not a lot of Mutants have that kind of power, but the main thing is he has a tendency to hog the spotlight and be constantly shilled by the story, even stealing moments that logically shouldn't be about him. That's only when he's done badly though. When done well, like in the Days of Future Past movie, I still like him. Essentially, imo the Mary Sue trope is less about the actual character and more about the story being nothing but a vehicle to show how cool they are and how much you should love them.
I found this very enjoyable to watch, I think your very good a these video essay type videos :)
While I agree with most of this video, I'll have to firmly disagree with your stance about the events of part 1 having little to no effect on part 2.
The whole reason why Ludveck got so many commoners to join his rebellion is because of his fear mongering in regards to Daein's restoration.
Many of his soldiers, primarily consisting of rebellious youths and the occasional disgruntled war veteran, join him because they want to go to war with Daein and destroy them for good, not believing Elincia would be strong enough should the reborn Daein make advances towards Crimea.
As such, their fear of Daein returning to power would not be present if Begnion would still have tight control of Daein. Therefore Ludveck would have considerably less resources to draw upon. And even if the revolt did occur, it wouldn't be nearly as much of a threat. For example, the traitor that lead Ludveck's forces into fort Alpea would not have done so if it weren't for Daein, provided Ludveck's rebellion could even get this far.
I hadn't played the game in a little bit when I made this, and I had forgotten that aspect. Pelleas being restored to the throne stoked Crimea's fears Daein would invade again, which was a big part of the rebellion.
@@BigKlingy Thanks for the response. Even still, the rest of the game would have turned out like you said it would.
While one could argue Daein would rather make use of the opportunity of the Apostle's Army invasion to revolt, that wouldn't do much to delay Yune's awakening, being dependent on how many sides join the fight, not which side they are on.
Not to mention Bengion itself still had ample amounts of reserves left (may or may not include the occupational army) , so even if Daein joined the Apostle's Army, the fight would still be on a large enough scale to awaken Yune.
Micaiah deserve better... she is great
Today I learned... the majority of RD's plot (And I don't care about spoilers because I'm not buying a $60-80 game. Seriously, a VC rerelease on the Wii U would have been nice)
Also, I learned what a Mary Sue is and I have a few questions:
1. Does this make Corrin a Mary Sue?
2. Are the Pokemon protagonists in general Mary Sues?
Didn't expect anyone who didn't know about RD to actually watch that part. Hope it made some sense.
1. I'd say it's arguable. A lot of their character, and the story around them, seems designed more to make players projecting on them feel good about themselves. Most characters are defined by their relation to Corrin in some way. The plot also constantly makes sure to absolve them of any direct guilt in anything morally-questionable, and some of the big plot twists only exist so players can marry the siblings. But like I said, it's arguable.
2. I'd say no. They're more blank-slate player-proxies, and the whole universe doesn't revolve around them. (Just to name one example... did Kukui and Prof Burnet get married because the SuMo player exists? ...No.)
So the Pokemon Protags aren't, they are just us on a power trip and the plot mostly doesn't revolve around them. Gotcha.
And the plot dump kinda made some sense, I'll probably understand it better when I see it.
Compared to Alm. She is the most flawed character in the series.
Corrin is actually Fire Emblem's Mary Sue.
Sadly... pretty true. It's very notable that the fanbase stopped hating Micaiah as soon as Fates released.
@@BigKlingy Fates is badly written and pretty heartless with it's morals. Is it really necessary to entertain the idea that it's good siding with the imperialistic assholes because they pampered you or the Kingdom where you originally belonged to but were separated from them by said imperialistic assholes?
No I think not.
@@basilofgoodwishes4138 There's so many things wrong with Fates.
For example, she grows up in a tower and is isolated from the world her entire life, but for some reason she has natural leadership skills and charisma that makes everyone follow her or help to capture the other throne.
There is this weird corrin worship thing going on throughout the entire game where everyone loves Corrin. It's really disturbing. The vast majority of each character's world revolves around Corrin. They always tell her how great she is. And all 3 routes have Corrin featured as the central character of the plot. She is also the only character who can defeat the final boss, if memory serves, due to the Yamato weapon (I could be wrong about that, although I think it's weird that she gets a pref weapon right away too rather than having to work for it).
While there is dragon lineage with Corrin, it's still not entirely believable how much training she had with Nohr that would be considered enough to accomplish the feats in the actual game. This one is up in the air I guess, but it's reeks of Mary Sue just because the first 2 points above also check the boxes so convincingly.
Revelations was so poorly balanced that first big chunk of the route feels like a Corrin power-fantasy. Everyone that joins your army is trash and you end up having to solo the maps with Corrin, which is very unlike Birthright or Conquest. They even went out of their way to lower the strength and speed of various units by 2 points just to make them ~4 levels worse than they were in their respective games. Only the Royals and a couple of other units felt good in Revelations. Definitely had that Corrin power fantasy vibe, like you were just soloing the game with Seth or Titania but you didn't actually have a choice. Seth and Titania have background stories that show why they so over-powered at the start of the game, but Corrin does not. She has led a tiny fraction of the life of those characters, especially in real combat situations and politics and other things.
Micaiah may be interpreted as subversion or deconstruction of Mary Sue, but at the end of the day, she still effortlessly solves a lot of problems in the story in Mary-Sueish manners: Destroying the blood pact by simply tearing a paper, singlehandedly stopping Lehran's Medallion from going berserk, seemly knowing things she shouldn't so she can be an exposition machine, and becoming a perfect vessel of the so-called evil goddess that isn't really evil. The game flip-flops between depicting Micaiah as a monster and a miracle maiden and sends out mixed messages. If she's Anti-Mary Sue, she's an incredibly half-hearted one.
Being half-hearted is the worst thing when it comes to tearing down an archetype. People who can't recognize the satire will genuinely view her as a tyrant who's overplayed and forced to be a good guy by the narrative. On the contrary, people who can see her as a broken character still scratch their heads at how she's easily forgiven and validated in the end. Even after everything's said and done, I still don't understand what's the point behind Micaiah's character.
This is yet another reason why I loath the "heroes vs heroes" story Radiant Dawn's trying to push. The story's so desperate at making Micaiah a villain in Ike's POV that it rushes her character and destroys it. Micaiah could have been a lot better character if she was the only protagonist and the story was all about her dealing with the consequences of her actions, acknowledging her imperfection and learning responsibility and requirements as a real saviour without relying on her miracle powers.
One thing to note is the blood pact being destroyed by tearing it was actually a localization addition. In Japanese, how the blood pact was dealt with was even stupider: the curse just... faded on its own by the time you fight Lekain in E-1, apparently because Lekain died once offscreen. In that version the plot just threw it aside once it'd served its purpose as a Part 3 conflict starter, so the localization added some extra rules for how it works and some new scenes to make Micaiah and Sothe more proactive in breaking the curse.
i know i’m really late to radiant dawn but thank you so much for that spoiler warning
So many people just don't care about spoiling this game. And by "so many people", I'm including Heroes...
@@BigKlingy yeah i’ve always been one for no spoilers as i don’t think games are designed with things like heroes in mind plus i love the experience, right now i’m on ch3 and wow the dawn brigade are severely lacking in manpower
"Is treated like the ONLY thing that matters in the story. EVERYTHING else in the plot is effectively an extension of them."
I... WANT to say Madara Uchiha but at the same time not. lol.
I've heard a lot of accusations about Sasuke being one, but I'm not sure. There's a lot in that universe that doesn't relate to a single person. Madara might be an overpowered, not-so-well-written villain, but I wouldn't really say he's a "Villain Sue".
There's a character in a show I watched a long time ago that I felt was a "Villain Sue", only in the sense that the writers kept making asspull excuses to bring him back every time he got caught, and it felt obvious the writers favoured him disproportionately. Every episode with him felt like it was constantly screaming "Isn't this guy just the BEST VILLAIN EVER?!" Fans rejoiced when he finally died... for all the wrong reasons. And he still showed up in flashbacks and nightmares afterwards!
(For those curious, the character is Christopher Pelant from Bones)
I’m not sure if this was already laid out in the comments, but I hadn’t seen it so I thought I’d add it (very late to the party I know, but still) The Laguz Alliance fighting Begnion is set off by Part 1.
Rafael and Tormod head to Gallia where Rafael gives the information about the Senate having been the ones to orchestrate the Massacre, leading to war, and Rafael and Tormod only meet because of the circumstances of the Dawn Brigade’s rebellion. Without that, I’m not sure if the other Laguz nations find out about the Senate’s involvement, meaning no continent spanning war.
I'd actually forgotten about this detail when I was making this video. And that's a big flaw in my argument.
Radiant Dawn severely needs a remake with a rewrite, more chapters for each part, proper support conversations and a rebalance of the skill system.
It was my very first FE game, so I have a soft spot for it, but I really cannot ignore its shortcomings, especially with gameplay. And it's sad that Micaiah is such a poorly written character, because she ends up as one of my favorite units to take to the Tower, who I would pick every time even if she were not mandatory!
what are the issues with the skill system ?
@@theflashgordon193
Mastery Skills - OHKO. Ignore defense and multiply strength by 3. MS that stun enemies or put them to sleep almost never trigger their secondary effect precisely because they kill the opponent in one shot 90% of the time they trigger.
It is so ridiculous, the game balances it out by giving every single boss from the Tower past the senators the skill Nihil, which nullifies ALL combat-related skills, so no Mastery Skill can one shot them.
As for the rest of the skills, the capacity wheel and the limit of 6 skills are at odds with each other. If you have a limit of 6 skills, why limit per capacity, and if you limit per capacity, why have a set number as the limit?
Characters like Ena, that are terrible for the endgame but could make up with her extreme capacity wheel size, by giving her support and combat skills that would make her more useful overall, end up remaining useless because she comes with 5 skills already, meaning she can only get one more or you take away some to make room for what you deem necessary on her.
Also, back to Mastery Skills, unlike in the previous title, where every single MS is entirely optional, they are mandatory in this game for all Beorc units, as they immediately get their upon 2nd promotion and can never remove them. These mandatory skills take up to 60 points in capacity, eating away all the extra capacity you got from the promotion, and sometimes even more, meaning your non-mastery skills need to be removed from the promoted character.
Just a few tweaks could have solved a lot of issues - capacity wheel is the only limitation on the number of skills a character can have; locked skills, like Canto, Shove and Mastery Skills are entirely outside of the CW; MS no longer have outrageous effects, rather simply bypassing defense/resistance for Sol/Luna/Eclipse/Rend/etc. and adding effects for Stun/Deadeye/Astra(5 hits at half strength)/etc; then finally the rest of the skills need to have their capacities downgraded so more can be used by a single character, with the balancing part coming from common enemy units also being able to use them, with higher difficulties having more mobs with more skill combos.
I’ve also noticed that some people think that Cordelia is a Mary sue because she’s perfect in every way and everyone loves her for it. But she’s one of the better Mary sues because 1. She’s flawed with her unrequited love for Chrom as well as her insecurities. 2. She isn’t the main character in some badly written fan fiction. 3. She also goes through some character development with the help of her husband (Robin/Stahl/Lon’qu/Gaius/Duke Virion/Ricken) and her daughters (Morgan if she married Robin). 4. She does have a backstory in where she was bullied by her fellow knights for being the smart one.
I also think that a lot of the female cast of Three Houses aren’t Mary sues at all because they’re well written and mostly flawed. We don’t know whether or not we should root for them anyway. And they do go through a lot of character development.
I think a great video that talks about Mary Sues is one that Terrible Writing Advice made.
ruclips.net/video/YhrfhQbY0K8/видео.html
I don't think Micaiah is a Mary Sue, but I kind of disagree with your definition because I think that having no flaws is also a criteria. It's possible to have perfect characters (Cordelia), but also having flaws is important which is something Cordelia has. I know I'm beating the dead horse here, but I think Rey from Star Wars is a good example for a Mary Sue; although, it's kind of hard to tell sometimes due to how the new movies are poorly written. She has no flaws, does everything better than everybody with almost zero training, has almost no motivation, and be the attention of the villain once she was known.
Also, I wasn't able to comment on your last vid, and I wanted to say that I never knew about the extended script. I'm gonna give RD's plot another go since losing out on scripts can seriously hurt the story.
Mary Sue means different things to different people, like I said. I still like to mention Cassius Bright (Trails in the Sky) as an example of how perfect, flawless, overpowered characters can still not be Sues if the plot doesn't focus on them. (Seriously, if Cassius Bright was a 14 year old's OC he'd easily be called the biggest Gary Stu of all time. Look him up.)
Thing is, the reason most Mary Sues have no flaws is that, as the OSP video says, they're not written as characters first, they're written with "this character is by default the best character" as the starting point.
+BigKlingy I read some stuff about him on the wiki and my god does he sound overpowered. I'm curious how he got his skills with a sword because I couldn't find that in the wiki.
Yeah I have to agree that people have their own definition for a Mary Sue, but there seems to be a few things that must be consistent for them to be classified as one. Such as having the world revolving around them.
I don't think his sword skills are ever explained, but he did train most other master swordsmen in his setting. And all of them aspire to be as badass as he is, but aren't anywhere close. And then he gave up his sword and chose a Bo staff instead... and is STILL the single strongest human being in the setting.
But his extreme overpoweredness is kind of played for comedy, and he doesn't appear a lot in each game he's in. He's also one part of the ultimate bonus boss fight in Sky The 3rd and... he's exactly as difficulty as his reputation suggests. And there he's teamed up with the second game's That One Boss.
I should also mention that I don't think there's a single person in the games who dislikes him. Even the most horrible, unsympathetic villains have a great deal of respect for him. But again, he's not a Sue because he's more of a side character, and his overpoweredness serves a plot purpose in The 3rd, when the party fights a clone of him with his exact memories (so basically the same as fighting the real him) and is able to win, it shows how far they've all come.
Honestly, Mary Sue is an critical shortcut for people too lazy or in the worst cases too dumb to form a critical opinion on a Character and are just reducing the problem unnecessarily, by insulting literature with a buzzword, that lost it's meaning a long time ago. That's why I can't take someone seriously using that term to describe a Character, it just doesn't make sense to me, but enough with the long talking, now I get to the video:
"Something I have in fact come to realize is that a Mary Sue is a STORY TROPE, not a CHARACTER TROPE. But I am getting a little ahead of myself"
No you don't, it's a problem with the story and not the with Character, if he/she/they/it gets no consequences from their actions that are fitting or bad, then it's the fault of the story and not the Character itself, it's the story that decides, how a character gets treated, not necessarily the other way around.
On your criteria:
1.This argument can be done to almost any Character that represents or propagates the views of the Author or personality like Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Aang, Altair,Kreia,Gumball,Superman,Rider from Fate/Zero,Steven Universe, Batman Scorpion, Lancelot, Galahad, Souma,the new Kratos and for the most famous example, Jesus Christ (if you view the Bible from a literature perspective). In short, the most influential and most popular Characters happen to be those that serve as wish-fulfilment for the Author, because the character people who write the most is the one that represents what they want to be and in a genre like fanfiction, where it's about people fantasizing to have sleep with Ike or beating Thrawn in chess, I find it unfair to criticize young fanfic author's for this. It's like criticizing Children for playing with toys, when they have nothing else to do. Basically the problem is that fanfiction and readers are people with opposing wishes and desires and should be allowed to enjoy their stuff without infringing the others territory.
2. When a character gets free from punishment or consequences whole powering through most obstacles then it's a failure to Balance the powers with the setting like with Steven Universe, who can just turn Nazis into angels without any logic whatsoever. This can be easily fixed by putting limitations to their power OR an Morale code that prevents them from owning everything like Iroh's refusal to fight Ozai, because the world would view it as an grap for power, rather than some divine justice like how the Avatar would have done it. In a fanfic of a FE game I plan to write, I have an Diety's mortal Avatar as Main Character, who reincarnated into the world as an Mortal with many of it's Divine powers still there, but limited because it's Goal is to make people less dependent of it and give them the knowledge of how to coexist with one another, instead of taking control of everything without solving the problem. So the God is good and has more powers than anyone, but refuses to use it to solve every problem. So you can have an absurdly powerful Character, if you give the Character reasons for not soloing everyone, so being powerful is not the issue, but there needs to be a balance with the setting.
This comment is getting too long, I will make a part two of it, where it's more about Micaiah.
Even if she's not a Mary Sue, she still makes about 90% of the game's narrative problems. Almost every issue I have with RD's story and character development trip-outs can be traced all the way back to how Micaiah is written, and becoming the face of it all doesn't make her easy for me to like her for much.
wow I didn't realize that micaiah it is kinda like zephiel or nino...
so sothe is like jaffar, nino is like micaiah and pellas is like zephiel? huh weird.
Alejandro Rodolfo Mendez So three characters everyone hates parallel three other characters everyone hates. kek
I share quite a few of your opinions about how Micaiah isn’t really a Mary Sue and I feel you articulated it much better than I could.
This game has several protagonists not just Micaiah who each get their time in the spotlight. If she was a Mary Sue she would be the only protagonist as a Mary Sue is the focal point of everything.
Although the fact that Micaiah has several traits with amateur fan fiction protagonists probably meant that the the preconceived negative reactions that people might have regarding that type of character which would be transferred to Micaiah as soon as they realise that she reminds them of them.
I never realised how inconsequential she was to Radiant Dawns overall plot considering that she can be removed with minimal rewrites to anything apart from Part 1 which appears to be mostly self contained.
Micaiah being a slightly subpar unit also probably contributed to her negative reception considering how she is both a character with multiple flaws in how she is executed as a character (I will elaborate during the playthrough) and is a unit with glaring problems. It creates a situation where her character has trouble making up for her flaws as a unit and vice versa for some people. Although as a Lord I would say she ends up better than Bolting Bait as atleast she can make herself useful for something on a more consistent basis unlike Bolting Bait who flip flops from very good to very bad and is an active liability for quite a few chapters.
If Micaiah and Elincia do talk it was probably a line or two at best considering that I can’t remember it happening. Although I’m pretty sure the peace talks happened after 3-13 might have involved the two communicating her but that was offscreen.
Slight Spoilers for Radiant Dawn ahead
I think it was more the case of having all the Nations involved in the fight otherwise Dheginsea’s plan of keeping Goldoa out of any conflict wouldn’t have worked as well if a long war between Begnion and the Beast Tribes would trigger it. Although it does take a while for the Medallion to get to breaking point as a lot of combatants have to be defeated for it to happen so it might be a case it requires all nations to be at War for a certain amount of time for it to become unstoppable
Now for something completely different with some details from the Persona Q2 footage released. Spoiler Warning for those who haven’t seen them so far
I was pleasantly surprised that we are getting the entire cast of all 3,4 and 5 but considering the scope of the original this was probably the only way they could top it in terms of increasing the scope of the crossover as just 4 and 5 it would just be Q1 level scope and although using characters from 1 and 2 I don’t think they have the selling power of the latter games cast. Although one problem I had with Q was that keeping some many characters somewhat evenly levelled is a huge undertaking and now they’ve added about 10 characters on top of that.
I really like the Film motif they are going with and I feel that it could lead to very interesting Dungeon Choices considering the multitude of movie genres they could make Dungeons out off like imagine the party entering a Fantasy Movie with mythical creatures roaming around or a Film Noir detective movie where they have to follow clues to find the Boss Shadow responsible for killing other Shadows in the dungeon.
Shadows are now back to 3 and 4 style enemies like the Dice and Balance enemies. Which is infact the enemies of 2 of 3 games represented so it makes sense for them to be back and your Personas and enemy Shadows being the same is cool and all but the weird enemies helps differentiate Persona from its sister series.
Hikari looks like an interesting new addition but I will have to wait and see what’s going on.
Why is the Female Protagonist from Persona 3 Portable here? Sure I’m grateful to see her back finally but considering how the P3 Makoto is the canon one they can’t just throw her in and not explain it considering how she doesn’t even exists in the canon timeline. Also what would her Ultimate Persona be and how would they not make her a clone of the P3 Makoto. Sure her Orpheus looks different from his but there is no prebuilt different Messiah design to take from. So would they make her Ultimate Persona Thanatos instead and change her Orpheus to not be Fire based?
I wonder if they will distribute Nuclear and Psy magic amongst either some members of 3 and 4 casts or some of the new characters considering how P5 Makoto and Haru are the only characters who have those elements who are being included who have those elements and considering the large cast having 2 elements locked to 1 character each would be a bit problematic.
Chibi Joker having his All out Attack background from Persona 5 is just so adorably awesome.
And finally for something completely different we have the Smash Direct coming up. Hopefully we get some new stages and some more returning stages confirmed like how i would like new stages from some games like Fire Emblem Fates or Donkey Kong Country Returns Tropical Freeze like imagine fighting in the void where you fight Anakos or the ice lolly factory from World 5 of Tropical Freeze.
Expecting a new character but I don’t know exactly who it could be as there a lot of possible options like Ashley or a Gen 7 Pokemon. Lots of characters who have popularity of either them or their series or relevance on their side to justify a spot on the roster. However Sakurai is an unpredictable beast sometimes so it’s hard to predict who’s coming like who expected Wii Fit Trainer. Might also have a few modes shown off considering how we don’t know much about Ultimates single player content.
Sorry for the really long and somewhat tangential comment.
I think the Black Knight would probably be the new leader of the Dawn Brigade
i still go by the characterdefinition and not the storydefinition,but still quite nice to see a video discussing a controversial character.
So regarding Micaiah not being super important to the plot, after some thought i reached a different conclusion she is important to the plot, and removing her breaks the plot enough to make it not reach its conclusion.
So lets start at the beginning...
Dawn brigade, they're captured and executed, without micaiah's foresight they don't last long.
Rafiel, never learns of his surviving siblings and decides to stay in Hatari forever.
Pelleas, here's where things get interesting, depending on whether Izuka was conspiring with Begnion from the beginning or after Pelleas is crowned, a few things changes. If Izuka was conspiring from the beginning Pelleas is crowned and signs the blood pact, same as before.
If Izuka wasn't conspirating from the beginning, the Daein Libaration Army would've been quashed due to Izuka's horrible leadership, leading to the deaths of all its members including: Pelleas, Izuka, All the soldiers, and most importantly, Almedha also dies. This causes Daein to become part of Begnion and causes Kurthnaga to lose his reason to stay in Daein if he finds out about Almedha.
Assuming Begnion stays occupied because i doubt Izuka was conspiring with Begnion from the beginning. Kurthnaga returns to Goldoa after leaning of his sister's death thus making it impossible for Goldoa to technically engage in the world war. And since Rafiel never leaves Hatari, no one ever learns of the Senate's conspiracy and the war between the laguz alliance and Begnion never starts, this also means the senate is free to do what it wants, thus they likely also arrest Sanaki and Sephiran and have them both assassinated in secret.
Even if i assume Begnion starts a war with the laguz alliance all on their own, there's a good chance that begnion gets defeated and the world returns to peace. And even if begnion wins there's no way the senate would go so far as to provoke Goldoa, so really, begnion simply returns to being a bigass empire with the dragons still isolated in Goldoa.
Even if i assume Sephiran somehow orders Zelgius to free him and save Sanaki, it simply makes it more likely that the laguz alliance wins and the world goes back to what it once was. Even if Sephiran wants the dark god to awaken, he cant do it if Kurthnaga returns because he is the reason Goldoa gets technically involved in the war.
The only way for the plot to reach its original conclusion without micaiah, is if i assume that Izuka was conspiring with the senate from the beginning which is unlikely, and that Almedha finds out about the blood pact that Pelleas inevitably signs and then calls for Kurthnaga's aid thus implicating Goldoa, which is slightly more likely, but in this case there's still no war between the laguz alliance and begnion, unless begnion start it themselves which i find unlikely.
That took a while to write and i know you've probably changed your mind about it considering this is a pretty old vid but still, i like to write things. And i always find myself coming back to watch these videos over an over again.
0:42 Thus is why I take comments of Rey from that Star Wars movie no one likes being one as a grain of salt. Repeatedly calling someone something regardless of how true it is just makes the term meaningless.
I've seen some good arguments by people who know what they're talking about, I admit. But it's hard to separate them from the mindless parrots sometimes.
BigKlingy Granted, I have literally no interest in watching Star Wars movies period, so.... yeah. For all I know, maybe Rey IS a Mary Sue, but I just don't care enough to... care.
I personally enjoyed the new Star Wars movies, but it helps that I don't take Star Wars too seriously and never have. I forgot how "serious business" it was to a lot of people. Imo, and I'm going to get murdered for saying this, the original trilogy wasn't even that good.
+BigKlingy So does that make my comment about Rey legit or mindless parroting. I mean I understand where you come from I've seen it too. I can add more to what I say, but it seems you already know the arguments.
+Delta dragon) I mean, if your opinion is yours alone and was not heavily influenced by someone else, it's not mindless parroting (which would be more or less just plagerising someone else's).
+BigKlingy) -BLASFEME!-
I REALLY don't like it when people do that. There's loving a series, and then there's more or less going yandere over it.
14:31 ...What. Why are a lot of these mucked-up Harry Potter character names?
Because of My Immortal, one of the most infamous Mary Sue fanfics. I'd recommend looking it up some time, it's hilarious.
Another thing that seems common in Mery Sue's/Gary Stu's is a lack of character development, particularly in the case of Rey in the new Star Wars trilogy. They don't change don't learn anything new or have their a abilities justified, in other words a lack of a character arc essienal to most storytelling. This is different from a paragon (I think) who has had growth in the past and is the wise mentor (Greil for example) or to a lesser extent RD Ike, they've already had their journey (be it offscreen or in a different game/book/film/show).
Just something that I'd add to this.
I... and please don't kill me for this since it's a VERY heated topic, still don't think Rey is a Sue, mainly because she doesn't dominate the story enough. A Sue/Stu has to be the literal centre of everything in the universe, as if the whole world only exists to serve them.
I agree than RD Ike gets a pass due to already having character development in a past game. If RD Ike existed in isolation, he wouldn't be a very good character.
@@BigKlingy i know this is from a year ago, but now that star wars's sequel trilogy is over (which it wasn't when this video was made, let alone this comment i am replying too), would you now say that Rey is a mary sue now that her story is over and it turns out she's not only a secret palaptine, but also takes on the name and lightsabers of the skywalkers, and that she's literally all the jedi?
alright i admit thats a loaded question, but i feel like as long as the story of the sequels weren't finished, that alone was enough to cast doubt on her being the perfect center of attention, but now that this is finished, i'm mostly just asking to see if your opinion changed here at all.
@@hadoukenfighter The Palpatine thing was really dumb and fanfiction-y, it felt like it was thrown in to appease the people who wanted her force heritage to be explained. Rise of Skywalker in general felt like a fanfiction, so I can see why you'd think that.
I still don't see her as one. A Mary Sue is not just a protagonist you don't like. They have to have been written specifically as wish fulfilment for the author, and unless one of the writers comes out and says that, I don't think this is true of Rey. Inheriting the Skywalkers name and lightsabres is just a very protagonist-y thing to do.
The best summary of the sequel trilogy I saw was this: "The sequel trilogy is like when your teacher gives you a group presentation and you split each section but don’t discuss it before presenting". I also think it's an example of when listening too much to fan input goes wrong, the first one went all-out on nostalgia pandering, the second saw people complain about the first being too derivative so it went radically different and got hated by fans for being too different, so the third one was just "hey, let's address every single fan complaint about the second one" without thinking about the consistency of the films. They don't feel like a connected story at all.
In general though, I think people take Star Wars way too seriously. IMO, the original trilogy wasn't even that good.
Question about part 3: if part 1 doesn't happen the way it does if micaiah doesn't exist, how do Nailah and Rafiel get to Gallia and tell them about the truth of the Serenes Massacre? Would they be able to get through Daien and Crimea easily by themselves without tormod's help? Just curious what you think
I admit I focused more on the big picture and didn't look at the little details. I forgot Nailah was that important. That does kind of throw a wrench in things, but I guess the fact that Nailah knows what happened doesn't have anything to do with Micaiah, thus still invalidating the "center of the universe" thing.
Yeah totally with you on that last part and the video's overall message. Just couldn't help myself in thinking about when you were going through the theoretical plot without Micaiah
:( I liked Micaiah
My profile picture makes it pretty obvious that I like Micaiah, but I do agree that she has a lot of issues as a character. I honestly hate Mary Sue as a term. It just gets thrown around all the time for any new female characters that are written into a story. It feels like it's gone from what it originally meant in fanfiction to a blanket term for people to insult female characters with.
With that being said, I disagree about Micaiah being one of the worst lords, gameplay-wise. She's not fantastic by any means, but honestly, I think her staffbotting is more useful than most swordlocked lords. (Especially coming off GBA lords).
Sequitur Roy tries his best!..
Too bad his best doesn't do anything halfway through his game
It's kind of always been like that, not just now. Basically I think the main reason it got codified as female is that it originated as a parody of the kind of Star Trek fic usually written by teenage girls. Even the original writer of "A Trekkie's Tale" hated how it got misused to insult female characters. Male fanfic authors are just as guilty of doing the op center of the universe self insert in fanfics as females are, I once read a fanfic that had a really blatant Gary Stu in it.
From what I remember.... he had multiple Legendary Pokemon, including a shiny Mew, he had magical powers on top of that, his Pokemon had moves no-one else had, everyone in-story was in awe of him, the evil team was obsessed with him, he did some really questionable things to get "revenge" on them that made him look like the real bad guy and yet everyone still loved him. He was clearly the focus of everything once he was introduced. And at the end of the fic it became a Naruto crossover.
Heck, don't know if you saw me talk about this in Pokemon videos, but when I was a kid I had a Pokemon story (THANKFULLY only in my head) literally called "Pokemon with Me Instead of Ash", where I [deep breath] Became a trainer younger than 10 because I was just that talented, my Charmander used a massive blast of fire to KO every single Pokemon in Viridian Forest and evolve into Charizard immediately, I became a Gym Leader and also had a Mewtwo, and died and came back to life at one point. I'm pretty sure everyone in every fandom has been guilty of this at some time or another.
I agree that Miciah still at least has utility, which is more than a lot of swordlocked Lords have. As much as Lyn keeps getting RNG-blessed for me, I'd say she's arguable worse than Micaiah. (Though Mani Katti getting a free repair at the end of Lyn Mode is nice). Micaiah also has the ability to oneshot most horse/armoured units in Part 1, which is better than some Lords.
Its the game itself in my opinion she does not have enough screen time or supports except for Sothe. Look at Edward or all the Dawn Brigade they sure are screaming great peraonality compared to Path of Radiance or any other games. The devs were not given enough time to flesh out other supports or characters. We compare her to most units that have had time to develop whereas she was thrown to the wolfs only for Heroes to pick up the pieces. I do not see people criticising her character there. You would think bad characters with the same personality would be not well received but she won CYL 3 and was up at top 10 alone. My stance is criticize the devs and writing and not her character. In a small amount of time she changes stances or opinion on things like Ike and she was fighing end game because Yune does not posess foghting powers so it would seem. It looks like Yune took over her at the last second otherwise why is her name still Micaiah and not Yune? It would be pretty easy change but eho knows.
Ike is still the biggest Gary Stu in the series. They had to slash Greil's wrists just to excuse him being the protaginist.
21:31 What about the skepticism of Sanikinee's ability to contact Yune and her forced defection? Would that happen without Miciah?
I'm just seeing this now bit assume tune could just be like "well I'm gonna awaken your bloodline because your the closest thing I got"
I also though it was because she was the second borne child and thus didn't fully inherit powers aka its just weaker in her than her sister. Cause the blood of Altina is on a first borne female basis. Sanaki is second borne but all that means is that she either has no power or weaker power.
Since this vid came up on my algorithm, so I'll just make a comment :
People who only played Engage and not RD : Micaiah's a bad character? (While using Warp/Rewarp/Rescue with her)
Well if Micaiah didnt exist, then Sothe wouldn't meet and tell Rafiel that he has family in Gallia and cause the war to bring back Ashera.
Looking forward to your RD playthrough. Never seen anything of the game and am really thankful for the spoiler warnings and tags. Had to stop around the 16 minute mark as there we no spoiler tag so I'm just gonna play it safe and assume the rest of the video is about plot spoilers.
I want to keep an open mind and give Micaiah a chance. Maybe she isn't as bad as a character as many think. After all, (for most of us) roy's still our boy despite his low stats and *long* time to promote. But maybe I'm just a bit biased because I recently just summoned her, filling in my vacant role of blue infantry mages, alongside Oliver (also looking foward to him in RD). I'm not gonna deny her awful combat prowess though. From what it sounds like, she's a frail mage who can't double many things. I've got no problem with units that can't dounle as long as they have massive strength or resistance to compensate for it. But it looks like Micaiah has to be protected, not relied upon.
Maybe she would've received less flak if she started the game as a healer and *then* promted to a (I'm assuming) light magic mage/sage. A healer lord could be interesting in FE
16 minutes on is basically all spoilers, so skip it if you want. Hope you find the playthrough interesting.
Micaiah is weird in that she combines massive Magic with non-existant speed... and defense. She's like an armour knight without the tanking ability, which is... egh.
I always thought a healer Jagen would be interesting in an FE game.
Her stats definitely have issues, but she is easily my favorite character of all the lords. She is also one of the only lords to be a truly gray morality
Well this was very insightful and educational. I personally think she's arguably the most divisive lord in the series. Everything you've said kinda supports that.
Oh, by the way.....have you seen the new Persona Q2 trailer. This is gonna be a HUGE crossover and it only gets me hyped for the third persona arena game.
No WAY is she the most divisive now that Corrin exists. Also Kris. And there's always Roy, who still has a massive fanbase despite being near-unanimously considered the worst Lord in the series gameplay-wise.
I've seen it. I've put my thoughts on that elsewhere, but I'm surprised the P3 cast is back.
Hehehe, Edelgard says hi
What if an animal is a Sue I would pick Lary Sue
ok, while I do approve of the nod to Overly Sarcastic Productions, you don't just plug a video like that without adding a link to said video in the description. Due diligence and all that. And really Micaiah is quite frankly a microcosm of everything wrong with Radiant Dawn's overall writing placed into a silver-haired girl that does not deserve 90% of the flak she gets.
Sorry, it was late when I uploaded this.
Micaiah with that big red X over her is one of the most hilarious things I've seen in my life 🤣
Wouldn't Micaiah not being there means sanaki still cannot become the vessel?
Micaiah not existing means one of two things for Sanaki
1: that Sanaki becomes Heron Branded since that seems to pass down matrilineally to the first-born daughter, which in this case would probably be Sanaki. in this case, Sanaki would be a viable vessel, and would've succeeded in actually singing the Galdr of release.
2:that the senate was not lying about having murdered Micaiah. this ending is where the gods get released via the war itself. In this case, I could see Mist becoming Yune's vessel in a "it's the next best thing" scenario due to how long she held the medallion for. tbh, i feel like the only reason Yune never took a full humanoid form was that she hadn't been awake long enough for that (similarly to why she couldn't just unpretrify everyone iirc), and the bird was the best she could do for a while.
@@gypsysprite4824 honestly thats not bad . I would like to say betyer that if Micaiah was made to be dead I would actually prefer if salami was still not able to sing the song . it be kinda funny
Man, Mary sues have been lot in my mind lately, i got some friends to play a RPG whit me, and that's the first time i am not the master. And now being in the place of a player, and i been having a hard time worrying about being one.
Most often than not i feel like i hog the Spotlight, so tô compensate i make some stupid decisions and let the others take the stage, but don't know if it's working all that well. And to boot some of the others characters started do the whole "you are the dissapointment" because of some of those worse ideias i made, and while this makes for great drama in the game, i still not used to separate It 100%. But it's Fun nonetheless
That's something I worry about with tabetop RPGs, which I'm thinking of getting into. I don't really have the best advice because I've only been a player in a session once, but what I'd suggest is:
1. Only do something if it's what your character would do. In real life, it's hard to "hog the spotlight" because we're all individuals and the world isn't about one of us. If you have something you want your character to say, first think "Would my character say this now?" I know I had a few moments where I really wanted to do something but the other players didn't give me the cue I needed. And that's fine. Just let it go and move on.
2. You don't have to intentionally make bad decisions (that are ooc) just because you're scared of your character being a Sue. That will only make it look worse. Instead, just let the bad decisions occur naturally as a result of dice rolls or the DM's reactions to your actions. Then think about how your character reacts to knowing they screwed up.
3. Let other players have their turn. If, say, you're at a temple to the party Cleric's god, recognize this is probably their moment and don't interfere too much. (Side note, one thing I worry about as an aspiring DM is players getting left out. At the one session I played, there were two characters who barely got to do anything all game, and I could really tell one player was getting bored. This happens with Travis/Grog a lot on Critical Role during non-combat episodes too.)
BigKlingy só to begginer GM to begginer GM, the best tip i have to give is to make a mental checklist (or a real one) of things a player can do tô progress the game, and try to make each player work in one
My last session was in a victorian setting whit werewolfs, and more of a grimdark tone (my players like to play morally grey a little to much for other types of games), and i made sure to keep the most foward ones busy whit people that work in the área and working around bureaucracy , só the others had tô investigate around the lot and interrogate civilians, that made the more quiet ones have a slot tô fill that the others could not.
The only problem was that they got way too attached to an NPC, a sick lady that walked the block to Go to work, and she became their Kiki, and i had tô make her backstory in the spot, made a whole thing about she having a Very light case of lycanthropy that made her have sensitive senses and a need for fresh meat.
I'm currently writing a vague outline of my first oneshot (set in Critical Role's universe because I have the sourcebook and less world-building work for me), but I have no idea who'll be playing and what their characters will be. I feel like maybe I'll have everyone make characters and have them email me, and then I'll write in ways everyone can contribute.
That's kind of cool. If I ever DM, I can't wait till my players inevitably get attached to one random NPC and force me to improv around that.
I will say I do appreciate the explanation on the whole Mary sue thing due to the fact I've seen my fair share of this term thrown around and those who did use it put it in a way where it sound wrong note to me after seeing this I do have a bit more of a understanding of the trope where it makes sense to me though with vary little experience with RD I didn't know people labeled her as a sue till now
It's a common label people through around for characters they don't like, mostly because it's so damning to a character. It's one of the WORST things you can accuse a character of bring.
I think there are less people who call her a Sue now... mostly because Corrin and Kris exist and have drawn most of that ire their way. Personally, I think Mary Sues are exclusive to fanfiction. The closest thing canon works have to a Sue is a "Creator's Pet", which is something kind of different. (Loved by the creators, hated by the fans, constantly shilled and spotlighted by the creators. Wesley Crusher from Star Trek is considered the archetypal example, even his actor hated him)
I feel like if you're a fanfic author and are worried about having a Mary Sue on your hands, the best test is to ask yourself: "Is there one specific character in my story who I care about 1000x more than all the rest?" The whole Mary Sue thing is about author favouritism. It's okay to have a central protagonist, so long as they're not the only thing in the cosmos that matters.
Yeah... The moment that you talk about the 2nd criteria, I know it is not a Mary Sue. Like she really is important to part 1 for good reason and part 3 is just there to see the other side of the war. I like her as a character (although I have a bad of part 3 though). That alone doesn't focus so much on her and their other games better than this(Persona series, Kingdom hearts 1,CM,2,DDD,BS(Fragement passion version) Bayonetta 1 and 2 a little bit, etc). At least I like her even if bad written and she really good in Heroes. 😉
I definitely look forward to playthough. This is a game that I enjoyed watched.
Quick question:What is your impressions for Persona Q2 :new cinema labyrinth? Any plains to do a blind playthough when it localized? Or it will after P5 project finished? (You could say it also is canon to P3 but is more in to P5 side.)
I'm not sure how good she's supposed to be in Heroes, but I still haven't pulled her yet. Seems like it'll be hard to beat Ishtar and Reinhardt as blue mages though. (And for me, Bride Caeda, I've got a really good one due to getting unlucky with dupes on the first LH banner)
I'm considering a blind playthrough, though Q1 could get very grindy at times. I'll see where I'm at when it comes out.
BigKlingy Update:Now we have two Michaiah in Heroes. They reveal the new banner and she in. She a red unit and she got the same effect as a regular tome with a twist.
That banner is insame expecely Blue and Green daggers. We halve COLERS DAGGER😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍. What your thoughts?
Looking forward for your PQ2 blind playthough. A quick question. I know that the Q1 launch in USA digital and pishicalic (correct me). Did in Europe get only the digital release?I got the digital version and took much space of the 3ds.
So I've skipped the spoiler warnings because I'm not finished with Radiant Dawn yet, though I'm getting pretty close to the end. 4-1, to be exact, but I'm not sure which spoiler sections of this video I'd be fine with listening to. Would it be alright to note which spoiler sections are spoilers for certain parts or which ones are spoilers for the whole game?
I've definitely heard mixed things about Micaiah, particularly on the subject of whether she's a Mary Sue or not. She's got powers that makes things in Part 1 more convenient than otherwise, and Daein's citizens are really drawn to her. But some of her decisions past Part 1 made me raise an eyebrow, especially 3-12. I don't think anyone could paint _that_ moment in any good light for Micaiah. Not exactly fulfilling any wishes.
I'm... actually okay with Micaiah being a staffbot at best. She's definitely not great in combat, but at least she can contribute in some way. I'd honestly rather have that than a mediocre combat unit that can't do much else. Then again, Vulneraries and Concoctions heal quite a lot in Radiant Dawn... But sometimes, I want my frontline fighters to press the attack and top up their health on the same turn.
It should be kind of obvious when I'm going to talk about Part 4 spoilers, but I'll go back and check just in case.
Exactly, also even in Part 1 Micaiah makes bad decisions as early as 1-P. Going in to help fight off some bandits blows the DB's cover in that area and forces them on the run again.
The good thing is she can use Physic immediately after promotion, and this can help in 3-13 and 3-6.
I feel like you might be underselling how vital Micaiah is to the main story. A lot of small details change that could have massive implications for how the story goes.
Part 2 does change since Bastien left to meet with Pellias after hearing about their liberation, so without Micaiah, he would have no reason to leave Crimea. This could massively impact the rebellion plot since he was the master tactician and court savant that Elincia relied on, possibly changing the tactics and choices that were made. He could have beeb captured instead of Lucia, and since he was the one who hired Ike, he might have been killed by the rebellion, or he might have never been captured and ended Luvdec's plans sooner, which would have damaged Elincia's character development and made her less willing to oppose Begnion and the laguz alliance in part 3.
In part 3, if Begnion still controlled Daein, then instead of having an intelligent general leading an attack on the alliance, they would have had another incompetent senator trying to win a glorious victory against the alliance and likely failing miserabley. Keep in mind, the military victories in part 3 were due to Zelgius's leadership, not the senators.
Finally, the biggest issue, if Micaiah never sang the Galder of release at the end of part 3, everyone would have turned to stone and the plot would have ended then and there.
Again, I feel like youre ignoring a lot of the story to try and prove that she isn't a Mary Sue. She is vital to the plot in multiple ways.
I made this before replaying the story so... yeah, I missed a lot of details. There's also Rafiel and Nailah getting to Gallia through Tormod's group, which is how the Laguz find out the senators were responsible for Serenes, which kickstarts a lot of Part 3.
@@BigKlingy Also, I'm not really sure what point you were trying to make by saying Micaiah not profoundly impacting every character in the story means she's not a Mary Sue. You don't have to profoundly impact literally every character in a story to be considered a Mary Sue. That's such a narrow definition that I doubt you could ever find an example of one that fits that all of those criteria.
The whole "Micaiah is a Mary Sue" argument is pretty much entirely dead now so this video is kind of a relic. It's funny how the fandom opinion shifted though. (Though sadly, the shift towards re-evaluating Micaiah seems to have been Corrin existing)
I still feel that a Mary Sue has to warp the plot around themselves. It's more a genre than it is a character type imo, it's about a story that only exists to be wish fulfilment for the author's self-insert, and every other character might as well be empty shells that get possessed by part of the Sue's essence whenever they're nearby and are lifeless otherwise.
@@BigKlingy Personally I find the whole author wish fulfillment arguement to be an arbitrary addition, since a writer can make their character the center of the universe and bend the plot to suit them, while honestly believing that they wanted to build the character this way because it fit their story and not as wish fulfillment. By that logic, it's only the author of the story that can say if their own character is a Mary Sue, which due to the negative stigma, would never happen.
Using Corrin as an example, I doubt the author would say he/she was meant to be wish fulfillment for the author or the player out loud, so they can't be a Mary Sue. We all know that's not the case since they're the most blatant example of a Mary Sue in Fire Emblem
For me Mary Sue has a layer of complexity. For example in Baki the grappler Yujiro is the strongest character, he dominates all other characters even the main one, but he isn't a Mary Sue, because he has a developed character, and he needs to be this way because otherwise the plot wouldn't work, it is about a child trying to surpass his father. On the other hand a Mary Sue to me is a character who just radiates perfection, he has no character flaws, and faces no dilemma, and is perfect and has no real purpose other than to be the envy of others. Take Iseki wa smartphone, the dude has no trouble beating anything in his path, can literally do anything, he has 9 wives who oggle him, he faces no moments where i feared for him, because he is made to be op. Overall though A mary sue is just an op character meant to be the envy of the reader.
honestly aside from corrin who is a pretty hardcore mary sue the closes FE has come to one is ephraim, who is constantly talked up while being one of the most unremarkable protagonists across the entire franchise. even the route that forces ephraim to take the backseat has eirika pussyfooting around with merchants in an arc that has zero story consequence outside of her ultimately failing her goal while she worries about her brother(as he effortlessly tears through the entire grado empire and is still able to get to eirika's final destination just as she takes the castle)
Have your thoughts on Micaiah changed over the years or do you still consider her a badly written character?
@@MorphBall1 I like her a lot more now.
@@BigKlingy Why that?
I think some of the Mary Sue confusion comes from the fact that she kind of does fit the bill in /part one/ specifically for being a Sue (and the plot really does revolve around her, because even in the scenes she's not in such as Jarod and Numida's or Alder's scenes, they constantly discuss her), but it falls short in part three and from then on (as part four is mostly Yune when Micaiah's around, and the main characters shift for a hefty chunk of part four). In part three she's facing off against basically all the most powerful armies in the world, so it makes sense she continuously loses her battles, but that's an aspect that drops the Sue argument. The story stops revolving around her and she's no longer the center of /everything/ like she is in part one.
In a sense I suppose she could be viewed as player wish fulfillment in that in part one she's the savior everyone loves for doing the "right thing" and freeing her people from oppression. In some form, she kind of does fall under a sense of wish fulfillment, but that's also a person to person basis. I can see where people are thinking she's a Mary Sue from, because part one displays a lot of the common issues such character display.
Unfortunately RD hopped around a bit too much and I think it may have hindered her development, but that also falls a little short to me considering she's the first character we meet in the game along with Edward; meaning she had the most time out of everyone to develop and still didn't. Micaiah's character could be described as a cardboard cutout type, not unlike the arguments seen against FE:A and FE:F's characters.
Ngl, I've always hated Micaiah's character. I hate how she's treated like a perfect savior and whatnot in part one, and then she does a ton of 180s in part three. In both parts I found her all around annoying and aggravating, which was a shame because I enjoy all the other Dawn Brigade characters. I've replayed RD /many/ times and I have never once grown to like her character, and still to this day do not. Another thing that bugs me about her is how she handled the whole Blood Pact issue. She told multiple people about it and basically kept dropping implications after she found out. Meanwhile Naesala kept his mouth shut for /years/ and suffered the loss of his friends and any trust anyone ever had for him. His character becomes sympathetic, and that's something I've never felt for Micaiah. The Blood Pact didn't make me feel sorry for her or their situation. It didn't make me understand her situation more. It just annoyed me more because she handled it terribly.
I do hate the fact that Micaiah gets off scott free after everything is said and done just because the world almost stopped existing. Tbh, more than anyone else, she was a massive cause for Ashera waking up. Ike and Sanaki kept pushing for her to stop fighting and they were getting desperate because they knew about the medallion. Micaiah pushed against that and kept trying to fight over and over despite that Ike even went out of his way to have his men avoid firing at her. Micaiah is /basically/ the reason Ashera awoke (as far as being the last straw) and turned all the people to stone. Ultimately what woke her was the war between Sanaki and Micaiah's forces that Sanaki kept trying to stop /several chapters prior/. It's not just that fans rooted for Ike or anything - it's the fact that Micaiah wouldn't listen to /anyone/. Even /Ranulf/ tried to get her to stop long before all of it even got as bad as it did. Micaiah ultimately gets all these great things in her life during the game and all this NPC love and whatnot, but tbh I find her to be one of the most awful and sadistic characters in the game. For example, she expressed fighting Sanaki's army to stall them so the Senate wouldn't initiate the power of the Pact... ...and she chooses to do this attempting to set people on fire. ...Yeah, um... that's awful and basically torture if anyone actually died like that?
Regarding your analysis about Ashera saying it doesn't matter, Yune actually mentions that it did matter how she released from the medallion. If she was released by war and not the galdr, Ashera would have apparently wiped out everything immediately. The reason Sanaki & Ike, Tibarn, Skrimir and Micaiah's armies weren't turned to stone was because Yune was awoken by the galdr. At least, that's how othey explained it from Yune.
Honestly, the difference between Ike in PoR and Micaiah in RD is that Ike is THE main character, unquestionably so, in PoR. RD has /several/ main characters and we follow stories with Micaiah, Elincia, Ike, and Tibarn. PoR couldn't happen without Ike because we follow his story specifically, but RD follows more than one person. It wasn't handled like a typical FE game, where there is a very specific designated main character that the story follows throughout the game (as even though many would argue Ike is THE main Tellius character, we don't follow his story throughout the full duration of the game).
As for her battle characteristics, I mostly level her up by using Sacrifice tbh. I prefer she doesn't take EXP away from the other DB members because fact is, I have to use them later on when it's more /difficult/ to use them (i.e. part three). I try to focus as heavily as I can on other characters who will actually be on the front lines, because damn if chapter six in part three isn't a disaster if you're unprepared and don't have the other DB members all promoted or close to promotion. Even then, that chapter can still be difficult. The whole group isn't great, but she's definitely the one who suffers most battle-wise. It doesn't help that Nolan, Leonardo and Edward all get special weapons that help them in part three and Micaiah has nothing better than Thani.
I can't believe you made a My Immortal joke. You're lucky I think it's funny.
Seriously, though, insightful video. Mary Sue really is an overused term.
I still find My Immortal to be one of the best comedies of all time. But I like so bad it's good things.
This video makes a lot of really compelling arguments about how to categorize a Sue, and what a Sue exactly IS. I had an argument with a group of people last week about whether or not EPHRAIM of all people was a Sue... because he was overpowered. Not to mention the absurd number of people complaining about Robin being a Sue despite the fact that I’m pretty sure Robin fits totally fine as a lord if you ignore them being an avatar. Corrin is... a bit of a gray area in my mind. They aren’t totally a Sue, but good god they REALLY TRIED TO BE. Byleth definitely isn’t a Sue, the issue with them is that they’re a silent protagonist. So all the character development for them has to be delivered by other people, making them seem like one. Kris tho... I don’t think anyone has a solid defense of Kris.
A lot of people used to accuse Ephriam of being one. Admittedly him doing everything he does early in the story with just 4 men is kind of stretching disbelief, but he's also a Fire Emblem Lord, not to mention and RPG character, and they tend to be one-person-armies. I also don't think he's meant to be idealized wish fulfilment, and even if they are that's deconstructed in-game as part of the Big Bad's motivation is wanting to be as strong as them.
I agree that Corrin is a grey area. Almost EVERY other character's reasons for being in the story revolve around them in some way, and the most suspicious thing to me is the story bending over backwards to keep their hands clean at all times. Even major villains like Iago and Zola get offed by Leo. I was pleasantly surprised when 3H allowed Byleth to execute an enemy commander in a cutscene to spare him from Dimitri's torture. Byleth is really just a pre-established character who happens to be a silent protagonist.
Kris is literally just a self-insert fanfic character. At least they don't impact the main plot at all, all they really do is recruit Katarina and that's optional and not related to the main story.
@@BigKlingy actually Kris takes a lot of different moments in the plot away from other characters. It probably isn’t very noticeable without playing FE3 first, which I would consider a good thing to some degree.
What strikes an odd chord with me about Corrin is that I... actually kind of like them. Not in the sense that I think they’re well written, but in the sense that I actually enjoy them as a person. They’re a kindhearted dork who’s supremely ignorant about the world around them, to the extent that it often gets them bitten in the ass. And while the story’s constant efforts to take all blame from them is exhausting, I still find that I can’t help but enjoy how they act in supports. I guess that’s Fire Emblem’s legendary character writing in action, haha. (For the record, I’ve played through the original JP IF, the fanslation, and the localization. So I’m disgustingly well read on this topic)
Byleth’s dialogue options in Cindered Shadows and in their supports with the Ashen Wolves really surprised me. There was a lot more personality shining through in them than there was in the rest of the game. It gave me an actual sense of who Byleth was, and I honestly really liked that. Shame that it rarely ever appears in other parts of the game.
Everyone says that, but I don't remember them "taking away" any major moments. All I remember from the last time I played FE12 was Kris telling Marth not to kill the Clerics in the final chapter which... I'm okay with, as Jagen came off as a jerk in the original scene. But it's been a while since I played FE3. If I had clear evidence of this I'd believe it, but I know most of the "big name" FE-RUclipsrs hate FE12, so there's a lot of biased opinions going around.
I agree that Corrin in isolation isn't a bad character, it's just the way the story treats them that's the issue. That's kind of how it always is with Sues.
@@BigKlingy story treatment of a character actually leads me to another question. At what point does a character lose their individuality and become more of a plot device? I’ve personally been of the opinion that Sigurd doesn’t really have much to him as a person, rather everything that happens to him exists to further the plot along. Him meeting Deirdre, him fighting Eldigan, him **spoiler**. One could argue this is because of limitations of the time, but Seliph is a fantastically characterized lord with a lot going on.
@@Fish-ep4cn I think the TV Tropes term for that is "Pinball Protagonist". A protagonist who mostly exists to be bounced from plot point to plot point. In a way I feel it makes sense for Sigurd, he's kind of a hapless dupe for most of his part of the story and doesn't realize he's accidentally set up Granvalle to rule the continent.
3:05 I was SO hoping that was gonna be a dig at Yiik, but alas.
I had no idea about that game when I made this.
She’s not even close to being a Mary Sue lol. It’s like saying sabine or ahsoka is a Mary Sue lol. I mean…. Lol
It's hard to believe, but people really did make that accusation back when the game came out.
come to think of it, if michaiah didnt exist, then maybe sanaki would fulfill that role. Plus with the concept of an Adult Sanaki, you could use this game as a way to build her up to that status.
23:21 And that right here nails why Corrin isn't a Sue either, and even other definitions fail to apply to Corrin, like them being perfect or loved by everyone: Xander and Leo are quick to point out Corrin's kindness and naivete are very serious weaknesses, and Corrin's manages to injure himself when Takumi tries to teach them archery. Hell, while Corrin's roster description states they are "well-liked by all", _Kaze_ is explicitly stated to be the _best-liked_ member of the army, even on Revelation where you get literally everyone except Izana and Yukimura.
At worst, Corrin isn't written very well, but I'm sick to death of the Mary Sue label. I also really do not understand why people think Revelation Corrin is an idiot who "constantly has to be saved by their siblings".
I... still feel like player pandering dominates a lot of Corrin's character and plot, and the story bends over backwards to keep their hands clean multiple times. Iago, one person Corrin freely admits to being okay with killing, gets killed by Leo on all three routes. I really WANT to like Corrin because they have a lot of good elements to them, but it does feel like they were created with "make the player feel good about themself" first and actual character second.
I've said it before, Leo does NOT finish Iago on all three routes! Yes, he kills Iago on Birthright and Conquest, but in Revelation, Iago just dies when defeated in gameplay. There is no cutscene where he gets finished, he just dies. And while the story does keep their hands unrealistically clean, it's not like they NEVER kill despite the war. Again, Corrin can kill Iago on Revelation, and they have no problem killing Vallite soldiers. Also, Hans always dies in gameplay. He NEVER gets finished by an outside source, so Corrin can kill him on all three routes.
I'm not saying Corrin was a great or even good character, but they are not a Sue.That is my point.
I had a feeling Iago died in gameplay on Rev, sorry.
something i found interesting the name Micaiah in the bible means :poor,humble
Some people think it comes from Michael, the angel who leads God's armies. Which is actually pretty appropriate given her role in Part 4...
Around 21:00 you claim the way Yune is awakened doesn't matter because of what Ashera says in 4-E-5
But in 4-P(I think?) Yune says that if she was instead awakened by the spirit of war, then Ashera would've instantly wiped out all of Tellius
I'd forgotten about that line at the time. So my theory has a few holes. But if Micaiah didn't exist, Sanaki would likely have both components of the Galdr of Release anyway.
@@BigKlingy Fair enough
who did you meant by "long lost relative of a prvioudly estableshed character who just so happened to have better powers then her and be the real chosen one in her field" ? Ike? her Sister? the Spoiler party member? (I'm try to not give awy spoilers, so not naming her sister)
Her sister.
thank you
Let's be honest, Ike is more of a Gary Stu in Radiant Dawn than Michiah.
Very true.
@@BigKlingy Oh! I didn't think you would reply to my late comment on a video that came out last year but thanks!
But yeah!
yes there even a bit where you fight a cult (i guess) that worships Ike like a god.
7:36 Such as 'a kidnap victim locked in a sex dungeon'?
Or 'kidnapped and placed on the slave auction block', which is probably more accurate to the medieval-ish time period?
honestly kind of a weird video. Language doesn't really work like this. Just because a term orignally meant something doesn't mean thats what it means when people use it. You could dig up a ton of older english words and have this exact discussion and definition regarding them. I've heard the term "mary sue" be a perfect flawless character for over 10 years, it would be more appropriate to create a new term instead because 99% of people who hear the term "mary sue" will think its a flawless character.
terminology in general has gone down a shit hole these days. edge lord is probably the biggest one, where anyone who's a just a jack ass is an edgy try hard because we couldnt just call them a dick. seriously i dont get why wouldnt we just say the character is poorly written, kinda dumbs down the meaning in words if you just use them for anything you dont like.
Exactly. People love to throw around terms when talking about characters they hate, and eventually those terms lose all meaning. I personally think Mary Sues are strictly a fanfiction phenomenon, and official characters can be badly-written at worst.
to elaborate on my point with a series example i'd like to mention R. edge lords are typically a dark gritty character trying too hard to act cool (the perfect example is the first 10 seconds to shadow the hedgehog showing you just how edgy a character can be). and Rutger really gets that moniker thrown his way because navarchetype.
Rutger is just a guy who's constantly pissed and sucks at opening up. besides his Deke c support (which frankly is one of my favorite supports to quote of all time so i can kinda live how that one conversation is the sole root of Rutgers flanderization ) he generally just tells every to piss off and leave him alone, and then once he gets comfortable with them he finally decides to open up and he actually has something meaningful or considerate to say. he's a dick sure, his only motivation to join you is Clarine accidentally said they're fighting Bern and he didn't wanna waste a second to get revenge, but he's not trying to be cool like navarre was made into in the ds remakes (or the movie if you really wanna be petty), he's just trying to be uninvolved with the world.
i guess the roundabout point i'm trying to make is it makes characters harder to criticize and dissect when everyone blankets characters together with a term that doesnt apply to them all and we get no where when discussing them because every one just says "Oh they're just a XXXXX character, what else is there to say?"
Rutger is definitely not an edgelord. People often use the term jokingly these days, but Rutger really isn't one.
Contrast STH Shadow. Black and red colour scheme, uses guns in a typically kid-friendly setting, rides motorbikes, angsts constantly, swears all the time, has overly hard-rock music including victory jingles... yeah.
I think its just the original meaning just being lost over time (which makes it sound like the term's Shakespearean in origin when I put it that way) where legitimately I've seen real people get called an edge lord just because they threatened to kick someone's ass. I guess argumentative intelligence is just going down hill these days...
Micaiah is your usual generic FE lord character wise, with a few special things sprinkled on top. (spoilery wall of text below)
The blood pact is a BS plot device. The way i would have done it, is have begnion kidnap almedha/ have lekain threaten to reveal the fact that pelleas is a branded making daein people lose faith in him, and revealing that he is a puppet for begnion or even both.
Pelleas, being inmature as a king goes to war with the laguz and is unrelenting and maybe even ruthless, despite how his subordinates feel, and after yune is awakened, he regrets what he's done, but since lekain can no longer reveal pelleas' secret to the daeins (they are petrified) pelleas gains the resolve to stand up against him, alongside the other Chosen Ones in part 4. Almedha could also be used as leverage to convince (or blackmail) Goldoa to join ashera's side. Which would be a better motive than "because we have to" for goldoa to join ahsera.
One other thing that bugs me about goldoa, now that we are talking about it, is that dheginsea, kurthnaga and ena have nothing to say about pelleas even though they "supposedly" are related. I don't know for a fact whether they know he's the real deal- if they know or can sense that he is not almedha's son, wouldn't they recognize soren? Anyway, i'm bummed that they didn't do more things with that. branded beorc-dragon laguz should be very rare to see due to goldoa being so isolated. I'd like to see hwo the goldoan royalty would deal with that situation.
One interesting thing I find in 3-13 is that if Nailah talks to Volug as an NPC, he doesn't mention anything about the Pact. He just says "The Daein king was tricked into cooperating with Begnion." Maybe they hadn't always planned to use it?
I still feel it isn't as bad as some of the plot points in Fates, like Azura being revealed as Corrin's cousin for no reason in a throwaway line that has no bearing on anything, or the curse on Valla. (The idea of a curse preventing people from mentioning the name of something has potential, but it was clearly used to handwave "why doesn't Corrin just explain what's going on?")
And now we understand that the Enlgih version is objectively better than the original Japanese
Micaiah is the best character in the series. Fight me. serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/topic/80782-micaiah-character-analysis/
1:18 I kinda disagree because the Mary-Sue trope can be both story and character tropes. For example, in character trope side, she or he can have no anger issues, no vice, good at anything, and never makes mistakes.
While these character tropes do appear often in Mary Sues, I don't think they're what makes a Sue a Sue. A character can be perfect and flawless, but if they're not the sole reason everything else in the story exists, they can't be a Mary Sue. On the flipside, a character can be ugly, fail at everything and be hated by everyone, but if the story treats them like they're the only thing in the universe that matters, they're still a Sue.
I basically sum up the Mary Sue trope as "The story only exists to show off the author's pet character."
okay from having played radiant dawn ive got my own thougths on micaiha and my grand conclusion is shes a bad character but ive seen much much worse she is hardly the worst character in FE honestly this is mostly story wise, gameplay wise I don't like her either but to be perfectly honest one shotting a general even nailah and naesala couldn't kill was certainly fun.(also omg you watch OSP too?! that's awesome!).
I'd agree. She's very under-developed and imo doesn't have much character beyond "I'm nice and like to help people, also I'm totally not love interests with Sothe". I kind of blame that on both her lack of focus after Part 1 and the lack of a support system.
I'll say it when I get to the playthrough, but oneshotting Armours is one thing that keeps Micaiah from being useless gameplay-wise.
Wait if Micaiah didn't exit how would Sanaki get removed from her leadershIp over Begion
Ah, right, that. Eh, the senate is corrupt enough to be able to find an excuse to pull a coup anyway. And at the time in the plot that thing happens, no-one, on either side, has any proof of their claims of Sanaki being a "False Apostle" being true. Most of the heroes assume it's just senate propaganda.
in addition to your definition of mary sue. I'd like to add that the character must come off as doing no wrong or have no flaws. especially morally.
While this is the stereotype, there's also a lot of excessively edgy sues who are typically excessively violent and immoral and act like a jerk to everyone, yet the narrative still treats them as the most important person in the universe and desperately wants the audience to think they're the coolest thing ever. They're just as annoying as overly pure ones.
Can you add the text From 4:25 into the description. It is hard to view with some resolutions. Thanks in advanced
Done now.
BigKlingy Thank you!
I do like Micaiah and while i understand why you think she's a bad character, bc i certainly dont think she is, i 100% agree that Micaiah isn't a Mary Sue and ppl who call her a Mary Sue and hate her for that are not bright in the head.
Honestly, the only reason I consider Micaiah a bad character is that form a gameplay standpoint, she’s probably the worst playable main character since Roy.
She at least has staff utility and Thani to oneshot armours and Cavs. She dies to pretty much anything, but I personally rank her above Roy just for those two things.
Off that Start hurt man :(
Off if your Mary sue description is what you said (need to not be that important and all Yah Micaiah is clearly not Mary sue As she got to litle screen time in my opinion Ike takeing way to much of the Story... (I think she could have use like 3 more chapter to help her character and the Dawn brigade growth a bit.)
Yah Radiant dawn is so much center about Ike It kinda Sad... At less he could have let the boss to Micaiah...
I don't think Micaiah is badly written tho I just think she lack Support conversation and lack the Chapter to make the most of her.
Tho she still my Fav "main ish" character (Tho RD Main character is Ike let be real... Sorry Micaiah I like you alot you did so much good but still Ike is the main Character of RD for Parth 3 and 4 and end Game.)
But hey She still the best (say what you want about the blood contract But it was still unique and fun plot twist that help Micaiah Characters, A "blackmail letter" isn't a bad thing it something that can hapend) But really Give the Girl 2 or 3 more chapter some support Conversation and give her slightly better SPD (so she dosen't just get double by everything) and you get yourself a GREATH character Much better than Ike in my humble Opinion.
SORRY FOR THE BAD ENGLISH
As much as I joke about Miccy Sue here, Ike kinda steals the show a little bit, and makes Miccy look like the bad guy via "bad plot/devices" but in no way make her any better by a long shot.
I never really liked/cared for Micaiah's character at all and this vid made me care for her even less. RD is one of my least favorite FE games and the story (and some gameplay mechanics) are the reason why. I actually really like the way you retold the story without Micaiah, it honestly sounds better than the actual story of the game. also, I disagree with Micaiah being a bad lord, she isn't game breaking or anything but I'll gladly take her over Roy and Elimeh anyday.
Anyway looking forward to your LP of this game.
Funny that you happened to release this video around the same day that micaiah just got a alt in fe heroes. And from what i have been in that game......people seem pretty happy about it.
I'am not sure what to make of the fanbase right now when people seem more happy to see micaiah then freaking lyn. I know that fe heroes has been going overbord with the lyn alts but people also got WAY too mad about eirka's first alt too. Not gonna lie the fe heroes sub reddit seems to hate everthing now day's so this reaction was surprising to me.
So yeah judging from how micaiah been recived in heroes and how high her character ranking in that game, i think most people have moved on or just kinda accepted her by this point. No offence to you, mamodxx, blazingknight, omni, max hp, and others. But i think it's time you all relise that micaiah does have a fan base, doesn't have nearly the amount of hate she used to have, and honestly people either change their opinon over time or just tend to be fickle as hell anyway. Like summer corrin or with smash ultimate and the echo fighters or with reinhardt in the heroes subreddit.
But yeah tl:dr version i think most people have just moved on from hating micaiah by this point.
I believe that one of the major reasons Eirika's alt was bashed was because she was given the Gleipnir tome, which at this point is fanonically considered to be Knoll's weapon. A lot of people were pissed off that Knoll didn't get in, along with other SS characters not getting their chances (Ross, Gerik, Tethys, etc.).
I dunno, I'm kinda grasping at straws. Why am I even commenting on this, anyway?
I honestly don't like her much, but she has some really good lines, and is most definitely not a marysue.
Kinda random thought, but...why do I think your Micaiah is gonna end up Speed blessed this LP?
It's probably going to happen. I've already recorded a bit into RD and she hasn't been too bad so far.
I love Micaiah and in all my radiant dawn playthrouh she's a great magic user. Sadly I just know all you will use her for will be a staffbot . sad it really it. Well you do that then how about do do me a favor and NOT use ike for killing. Just having him deal chip damage but never kill except the black knight . cause I'd can say slot of people would be way more interested in seeing Micaiah fight more than the buff Boyd old swinging his ettard around . no I'm not trying to force you I just do not want to have to see one of my favorite characters not be used in something she can definitely do. If you are so worried about her safety well guess what you can think of a way to use her still and keep safe
I'm going to have Micaiah fight when she can, because she's a main character so I still like training her. I'll still use Ike a lot though. Not using Ike for killing is just not something you can do in RD outside of self-imposed challenges.
A
Maybe Leanne ( sorry for possible misspellings) could sing the Galdre of Release, then become possessed and gain more powers simular to Machia.
I know I'm going to rustle a lot of jimmies with this, but I always felt like the people who call Micaiah a Mary Sue completely ignore the fact that Ephariam is a Gary Stu (although I'm not sure he fits the criteria) and treat Eirika like garbage (even though her naivety is almost painful at times). I realize that's a pretty big tangent, but I wanted to get it off my chest.
Nah, sure Ephraim has his issues(who the hell attacks a fort with 3 other dudes), but when he returns home after defeating orson, he at least learns to grow up bit and maybe being king isn't so bad. But yeah I see your point.
I've never really felt Ephriam was one. He's a bit overpowered in-story, but the entire plot isn't "Ephriam is awesome and you all should love him". You even have the option to push him to the sidelines by choosing Eirika's story.
How is she a Mary Sue when in part 3 she almost loses every fight against Ike and her strategies are always behind Soren, she looks pretty bad in part 3 and it’s kind of an anti hero but since part 4 is kind of rushed they didn’t address the things she did in part 3.