My take away with it being petty is that Ch 9 introducing the soldiers abusing the whole town (razing, pillaging) with Darius stopping that. It’s introduction of “The soldiers have assaulted several women.” was a small tip off, but that’s not my core issue with the scene and its showcase.
It is about Ch 10’s ending cutscene where it is mentioned by one of the victims how the soldiers that had been mandated to leave simply abused that one victim right after Darius had left her and before they had to go away - that was what gave me my reason to gripe with it.
This is the “double down” I am refering to and why I consider this showcase ‘petty’, gratuitous, even.
Do also consider how this is pretty much commonplace for the soldiers under Sulla’s command to perform (due to lack of reluctance), which is another thing to ponder on. At times, it feels that almost every man is either perverted, an undercover slaver or racist.
Well it is based on an age very similar to that of Alexander the Great (which I suspect is the main inspiration for Darius himself, among others). At that time, women were openly considered little more than a property, so it makes sense for Sulla’s soldiers to be this way (specially with such a general, who openly lets them be as much of an ass as he is). And this not only happened in times past’s wars, but in more modern wars as well. I believe the sexual assault in chapters 9 and 10 were more like a way to humble Darius and teach him the consecuences of his naivety. In any case, if you want to keep debating (I’d be glad too) about the game you should DM me. It was fine to mention the game itself, but debating about the game for more than 2 or 3 posts could totally be considered derailing the topic.
So I woke up and I guess some of y’all are a little cross with me. I didn’t plan to post again in this thread, but something about getting called a prominent member of a kind of implied elitist exclusionary cabal of superhackers is just so… exciting. It’s like a spy flick, it’s so cool. This reply probably isn’t gonna help make any of those people less cross, but I’m like bedbound level sick today anyway so why not spend my afternoon debating the artistic value of anime incest?
Gonna reply to some smaller things before delving into the two posts I’m interested in
This is basically what I mean, though. I explain it further below, too, but the basic principle is just that an experienced writer will already have the skills to handle a topic like that, and knows they can include it without drawing (meaningful) ire, and so won’t ask the question at all. To a degree, if you’re asking the question, it kind of already means its inclusion is optional, so if it’s not important enough to be a shoe-in, and you’re not confident enough to execute it, then you should be thinking about ways to get things across without the spooky taboo that’s spooking you. If it is vitally important to you, then the question should be “how do I?” not “should I?”
Just quoting this here to say, broadly, that spensir is basically 100% right, and I’m gonna be echoing some of his points in here just as much as he was echoing some of mine from the first post. There are just flatly things that are harder to write, and have more negative consequence for screwing up, than others - an experienced writer telling you as such isn’t because they’re a stupid prude, it’s almost always bc they’ve walked that road before and know where it leads, and are just bothering to let you know before you decide if you still wanna take that walk.
Yeah, exactly. By retrofitting the AW aesthetic into something grimy and lived in and melancholic and weary, the game was able to prime audiences to expect that kind of tone to carry over into the writing. Video games are a multimedia thing, your visuals need to be in line with the rest of your game. When people bring up the jugdral games as a comparison point, they kinda forget how much darker those games are visually than their GBA siblings.
I’m also gonna repeat this bc I don’t really mention it in the main post - people on this forum are extra wary about these things just because, historically, we’ve seen a lot of tasteless shit get posted. Without naming names, some people in this thread advocating for the “”“artistic freedom”“” angle are themselves people who’ve used their artistic freedom destructively… and are also still allowed to contribute to the forums, share their work, talk in threads like these, etc. Because, again, nobody is actually going to crucify you over any of this shit - if you fall afoul of the content policy, your stuff might be removed, but as Spens mentioned, that content policy is intentionally lax, and it takes a lot of work to actually get the hammer to your account.
One last thing before I get into it:
One of the hard parts of giving writing advice is that it all ultimately boils down to “do it good.” There’s a lot of perceived elitism from some people in here, that I’m saying “only the good writers deserve to have access to all the most fun toys,” but I’m really not. Writing is incredibly hard, and incredibly personal, and gets consumed by people who will feel incredibly personal about it.
It takes a delicate touch to even handle some of the easy, basic stuff - a few misplaced words or an awkward sentence or a flubbed character arc can totally collapse an entire scene in on itself. Things only become more fragile when you bring in topics that immediately put people on guard, or that they might have a strong (or even extreme) emotional reaction to.
When I say “only good writers should handle this,” it’s not bc I don’t want the plebian masses to touch my holy incest plot point, it’s bc I spend a significant amount of time teaching people who are amateur writers how to write better, and part of that is fostering that sense for when a topic is worth including and when it’s better to take a lighter approach.
Is that all understood? Bc if you don’t understand where I’m coming from with this, even after the novel that will ensue from this point on, then our viewpoints are probably irreconcilable.
Okay now that all that’s done, Johnny and Jason’s comments are the ones I’m really here for.
wow, hey man, um, I would appreciate it if you didn’t put words in my mouth or something
Anyway I’m not part of the evil FEU cabal keeping you from writing what you want to write, dude. You warped my post to be about “only the cool FEU elites can do this thing,” but Permafrost had 0 interaction with FEU before his hack drop, I met him by playing it, and he’s primarily a forum user so we never talk. He’s not part of some super exclusive club, he just writes well.
The reason I use him as an example is because, as somebody who used to be an aspiring writer, aspiring writers have an extremely high tendency to overestimate their own ability to tackle something exceedingly heavy without stepping on any toes. I wanted to show that these things can be done, but that one of the only hacks I’ve seen it done truly well in is one that’s near-infamous for the quality of its writing. I already said you’re well within your right to write such things anyway, but if you share them with other people, you shouldn’t be shocked when toes are stepped on.
However, when I see somebody asking for advice like this, they’re usually not asking if they, specifically and personally, should do this thing; they’re trying to gauge reader opinion, bc it matters to them, and bc it matters to them, I’ll advise in the vein of reader opinion. And, on average, I can assume that the average romhacker is likely writing for their first, maybe second, time ever. It’s not unreasonable to advise somebody that early into the learning process to start with something less volatile and harder to mishandle. That’s why I said, more or less, that if you need to ask the question, the answer is no - an experienced enough writer to handle it will already know that the reason to include it is because it’s necessary to the story or is something they very deeply wish to speak about.
This is obviously mere opinion, but it’s opinion backed by a lifetime of actually working as a semi-professional, now actually professional, writer. I’m not trying to stifle you, I’m trying to share my growing pains so other people might skip past a few of them. Telling somebody “no, you should not do this” does not necessarily mean “nobody should do this,” or “you should never do this,” and viewing such comments as a personal attack is, if anything, just another indication that you should probably practice a degree or two more trepidation.
Uhh I guess I really don’t lmao. Calling it pandering and favouritism to use a positive example is… you just seem really upset about this, man. I wanted a counterpoint to bounce off of to explain that darker themes can be portrayed well with a deft hand. You don’t have to take shit I say at face value, I just wrote a forum post bc this thread’s been haunting the front page for days - his game is free, if you’re curious, go play it. Form your own opinion, maybe you agree, maybe you don’t, I’m not arguing from a place of objectivity lmao. Also, what was that earlier about putting words in mouths?
No, I am referring to us when I say that. People write dark shit on this forum. People praise hacks for including dark shit on this forum. I am in both of these camps - Lady of Masks, for anyone who’s discussed it with me on the discord, is a deeply political script about war crimes with an evil protagonist and a content warning tag for suicidal ideation. When this stuff gets removed from the forums, it’s because it’s being done incredibly tastelessly, not because it’s “edgy.”
Idk how this point always gets misunderstood even when I spell it out so directly. FE romhacks are a bad fit because a.) FE, especially in the GBA era, is literally a franchise made for children and a lot of them use this forum, and b.) far, far more importantly, the aesthetic language of the GBA fire emblems is a poor fit. If you want to do a major asset overhaul, or are exceedingly confident in your ability to manage that tonal dissonance, then sure, absolutely go right ahead. In fact, I encourage you to do so if that is the case.
However, for most people working in this space, they aren’t going to be in either of those two camps, and the GBA format is incredibly restrictive for how you can write (due primarily to screen space) and the GBA aesthetics will clash with the tone of your big heavy moments. It is not insurmountable, but it is just one more reason to reconsider if you want to do all the additional legwork required to retrofit an ill-fitting medium for your ideas.
Writing is a skill. Just as somebody might advise a new artist not cut their teeth on a big public mural, or a new musician not multi-task learning their chords and busking at the subway station, I am advising new writers start with topics they can approach with relative confidence and whose mismanagement isn’t going to offend anybody’s sensibilities, not because those sensibilities need protecting, but because it will be intensely, intensely embarrassing in five years time to have worked out that particular lesson in a public setting.
If you’re extremely confident, or don’t mind an icy reception, then sure, absolutely go for it - again, I downright encourage you to include things that are extremely important to you to include - but this thread isn’t that. It’s a guy asking if he even should, and providing reasons that aren’t sound from a plotting perspective. So… no, this guy shouldn’t, and he correctly landed on that conclusion before I even showed up. But even beyond that, I already mentioned that new writers who are juuust starting to really hit their stride are, by and large, overconfident. I saw it in basically all my writing friends growing up, myself included, and we all grew out of it with work we made in private and now wince about when we remember it. So, if you have that confidence, it is worth double checking for a moment if that confidence is earned, and considering if you’re actually invested in handling a racy topic… or if you’re just into the thrill of trying.
anyway JasonGodwin7 time
Nah, this is the rare “objectively wrong opinion.” Any serious amount of time spent writing will dispel you of this notion VERY quickly, unless your work is VERY half-assed.
As you state, you will find that what your artistic vision is changes fucking constantly. All the time. Half the writing process is about cutting through all the noise of what you think the project is going to be starting out, and what it actually is once you’re knee deep in the mud. You will have ideas that you staked your entire script on that you just kinda realize don’t really matter. You’ll have major new ideas spring up that you’d never even considered, that suddenly become core to the thesis of the entire work. Your artistic vision is malleable, and flexible, and adaptable.
Now, you acknowledge that already, but then you draw a line in the sand, arbitrarily; that considering how a reader might feel about a topic’s inclusion is, somehow, an invalid reason to re-evaluate your work. You throw in a completely absurd example as though it’s relevant, annihilating any shades or degrees one might approach this topic with by pretending it’s all or nothing - “I either have an edgy blood death murder blood story, or baby’s fun time hero adventure!”
It would entirely reasonable to think about your story, and go “I don’t think I’m going to compromise on my main character’s personality even if some people might find it off-putting, and I’m pretty committed to keeping fan-servicey sexuality out of my script… buuuut even if I find it kinda cool, I think readers would just be left with a bad taste in their mouth if I had a full downer ending, so maybe I should tone that back a bit, keep it sad but maybe focus in on a different kind of sadness.”
Once again, I have to say it; if you aren’t capable of conceptualizing how a reader might experience your story, you should not be including really volatile subject, not bc you’re gonna explode instantly if you do it, but because you’re gonna write a bad story. In this case, a bad story where you haven’t even considered if that story might actually hurt somebody. Sorry, elementary school gamers, but the sticks and stones mantra is kind of cope.
This is the core reason why I say this stuff is almost never actually necessary. I’ve, in the past, written stories with indulgently-awful rape plotlines, because I thought it was the best way to sell the horror of a character’s past. In those same scripts, I’ve later realized that it’s a terrible idea, overshoots the mark by a wide margin, and distracts from the core point trying to be made - and also, is a pretty heavy topic to be bringing into the script when it’s not even doing the script any good.
The major difference is, I kept that story mostly to myself. I wrote it for me, while I was still learning, and nobody who was a survivor of SA had to read it. I haven’t always been so lucky; For all the talk of how based and awesome it is to be a totally liberated writer who’ll include anything that strikes their fancy in their work, it actually feels really fucking bad when somebody reads your story and tells you it hurt them, because presumably you do not want to hurt people with your “true artistic vision”, and it’s worth understanding that when you include this stuff in your work, you run that risk. Not that you’ll offend an evil bogeyman online, but that you’ll offend somebody you care about and respect, to such a degree that it leaves them hurting. If you’ve never experienced that, then you know, good for you; my advice will help you keep it that way.
But good writing is, JasonGodwin7. Good writing understands that the work will exist as a part of a reader’s broader world - the reader exists in the real world, has real world experiences, can and will infer some connections between your work and that real world whether you like it or not, and as such, in the interest of being good writing, it understands how to get its point across deftly and consistently.
Also, not to be mean, but I’m gonna be mean; sharing a source and having it be a kinda-clickbait-titled internet outrage piece about fandom drama on twitter is kind of telling on yourself in this discussion. Like, surely you talk to real people in your real life about writing opinions, and aren’t getting your takes from twitter… right JasonGodwin7? You wouldn’t actually believe booktok is representative of the cultural zeitgeist, would you, JasonGodwin7?
(also I fucking knew all of this was just a proxy war for that fucking coffin game)
Rewinding a bit;
Oh I love horror, let’s fucking go.
I’ve been writing horror, and reading horror, for the past year or two now - like, actively with a writer’s eye, not in the more casual sense I did before - and you know what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately? Silent Hill 2.
Silent Hill 2 is an absurdly heavy game, dealing with some incredibly raw and vulnerable kinds of human weakness and fallibility that are absolutely, knife-twistingly perfect in their execution. That the game is willing to delve into those ideas with such single-minded devotion, tuning everything in the entire game towards bolstering those ideas, is part of what makes it one of the best games of all time. It is astonishingly good, a gold standard for how to use dark themes and taboo subjects to paint an incredibly vivid and, importantly, meaningful picture of a man suffering from intense guilt and grief.
But recently, there’s been word of a new team, Bloober, being handed the Silent Hill name. If you’ve played any of the Bloober Team games, you might know they have an extreme and bizarre fixation on having the monster in their games be a personification of a character’s guilt, or trauma, or some other degree of mental health woe… and then having the only way to beat that monster be suicide. Which has connotations.
Their games kind of suck already, yeah? But even beyond that existing level of sucking, the fact that they so frequently end on this note - that the only way to defeat your inner demons is to just die so they stop hurting other people - is disgusting, and not in a “wow that’s such good horror” way, but in a way that reflects terribly on the people writing these games and makes it very difficult to appreciate what few things their games do well.
Because, you see, SH2 tackles its themes well. It has writers who are prepared to reckon with these concepts, and do so in ways that resonate with the reader on a level beyond “woah, that’s so freaky!”
When talking about writing, if all my advice was aimed towards writing some B or C tier shlock, then sure - go include incest for some shock value, or some SA for a nice dose of edgy grit. Whatever, who cares, clearly not you. But if the goal is to write something good, then yeah - even in horror, thoughtlessly including shocking things because they’re shocking is literally still bad.
Being in horror doesn’t mean you have to try less, it just means - and here comes the important bit where I loop it back around - that your audience is primed to engage with the game on these kinds of levels. It’s a genre that deals in metaphor and symbolism and allegory a lot, and that deals with very touchy and sensitive themes a lot, so a larger portion of the audience is going to be willing to engage with that stuff.
A Fire Emblem romhack is spinning off from a game where the most complex character in it is a sad anime boy with an evil demon in his brain that makes him do evil things. The average romhack really isn’t dramatically more complex - hell, often they manage to be less so, somehow - and so your audience is not going to be predisposed to this kind of content.
That doesn’t mean you can’t do it; it means it’s way, way harder to get people in the mindset for it. When it’s already harder to include touchy subjects in the first place, doing so at the same time as acclimating your audience to a story that does so within a space that historically does not is going to be especially difficult.
This is “where I’m coming from.” Your hack doesn’t need to be a fire emblem hack - it doesn’t even need to be publicly released. When you’re choosing to tell a story within this medium, delivered to this audience, you need to understand that, returning to the initial line you quoted, your work does not exist in a vacuum.
A warhammer 40k fanfiction will get away with some way bloodier action scenes than a FE romhack will, because people who are fans of FE are not already naturally predisposed to be into big bloody action scenes. A steam game called “Nyan Nyan Cat-bath: Naked Girl Bath Time IV” is probably going to get away with having naked girl bath time in ways that would feel absolutely ridiculous in an FE romhack, and its audience will likely only be expecting that bath time in one of the two games.
Anyway last thing
Berserk? The legendary beloved manga that is constantly referenced and cited as an inspiration in dozens if not hundreds of works in the years since its release, that has praise heaped upon it whenever it comes up? Is the point you’re trying to make that Berserk is somehow victim of a hate mob, despite its monumental popularity and cultural influence, because of twitter users?
Did you know the artist had once stated that he regretted a lot of early Berserk’s callous edge and random shock value, because he felt it detracted heavily from the work compared to the more thoughtful techniques he learned over the course of his career? Do you remember when I specifically had a sentence talking about how going on twitter, a site designed to feed you the worst possible opinions to mine outrage clicks out of you, to find what the average person thinks about media is a fucking stupid idea? You wouldn’t do that, right, Jason?
Okay JasonGodwin7 hour over. I’m gonna be explicitly mean again, and say that both these comments show a kind of aggressive incuriosity, a really juvenile “I’m 16 and just realized that if I tip over the garbage can, some poor sucker has to pick it up later” mindset to writing where the only thing that matters is doing whatever you want. You know, getting your raw ideas on paper, fuck anyone who says “you don’t seem to understand this concept” or “bro I think this whole bit is bad” or “have you even edited this yet?”
Seeing somebody come in and say, you know, entirely reasonable things about how nobody can stop you, and nobody’s gonna get * literally hurt*, but you are gonna end up writing something kinda bad and might offend some sensibilities you actually care not to offend, is I guess really upsetting to that mindset. Like, I want to reiterate again that my own project is the fucked up fascism warcrime simulator, early drafts had the protagonist daydreaming about dying on a pile of corpses - I am not a stranger to edgy writing, or the allure it has.
That’s specifically why I’ll sit here and write 20 billion word longposts about it; I’ve written and scrapped my terrible romance-drama with an over the top SA+murder backstory; I’ve written my (unfortunately never released) black comedy VN about suicide; I’m actively writing my war story about the dangers of fascistic ideology and the ways extremist rhetoric fosters intensely broken and dangerous people in times of strife.
I like when writers tackle these ideas - genuinely, I really really do - but when I was in their shoes, I made a ton of missteps along the way, and I’m very glad that the worst of those missteps were confined to the eyes of myself, or maybe my old editor, and not potentially hundreds or thousands of players.
So, I advise new writers to pump the brakes - if you’re looking to have well received work, and want to release that work publicly, then maybe learn to tread water before heading out into the big spooky ocean. And if you really don’t care, and want to throw caution to the wind, nobody can stop you, but… at least bring a floatie or something, just in case.
Basically the moral of the story is that the only thing worse than incest is using twitter.
In Dark Lord and Maiden of Light, there is a support which contains a slight amount of incest. It’s between the Main lord and a Sage where through their C-A supports, begin to warm up to eachother and eventually develop feelings.
Mind you, these two have never interacted before and have never seen eachother beforehand, the only association they have with eachother is that they have the same mother.
These two have a paired ending with eachother where the Sage, having some knowledge that she’s related to the guy she likes, tries to avoid him, but ends up confessing her feelings to him anyway because of the Main lord’s insistence.
She knows this is wrong and questions if her feelings for him are wrong and the paired ending is left ambiguous on what happens since the clearest thing the player gets is “She finally confessed her love”
The game never frames this as good thing or a bad thing, it is intentionaly left ambiguous for the player to decide for themselves. People are obviously divided by this because, of course, incest is disturbing, yet circumstances can change people’s opinions on it.
The main thing I want to point out is that this is a missable support, the player could easily skip over it and never see these lines of dialouge. If players are perverse to the idea of incest, then they don’t have to see it since it’s in such a small part of the game.
However, if the player is forced to look at incest unfolding right in front of them without the option to avoid it, it might make your target audience avoid the game all together.
If you can execute the same idea without incest then I think it would be best to do that. A majority of people are disgusted by incest and if you have a plot that centers around a incestuous couple, I don’t think people would want to see that kind of plot.
guys, i hate to say it, but if you’re not good enough to write your way out of a FEU thread about incest, you’re not good enough to write incest
Now, on a more productive note, I would like to openly invite anyone who participated in this thread to please submit yourselves for my upcoming project Dies Emblem so I can make fun of you directly. You can ignore the clause about being funny; you guys are more than sufficient.
After reading some of the replies here, I’ll give my two cents on this:
If you want to include incest, go for it.
If you think it makes sense for your story, and feel it would be awkward if it was only implied, then go ahead. I don’t think you should be judged because you include sensitive topics in your story.
Because here’s the kicker: People don’t necessarily support all of what they write into their stories.
All FE games deal with Murder in some way. Doesn’t mean the devs at Intelligent Systems are murderers. A lot of Kaga’s games have scenes where a young damsel gets captured by enemies who plan on doing you-know-what to them. Doesn’t mean Kaga is on a watchlist. Or even a more relatable experience: Some FE games have depictions of racism. Doesn’t mean the writters are racist.
So I say: Go nuts! If you wanna add incest to your story, and you think it makes sense, then you should do it.
And I would also consider the general advice others have given. Like don’t make an overly explicit scene, be tasteful about it, etc… But most importanly: Don’t let anyone stop you from telling the story YOU wanna tell.
Sensitive topics or not, what most impacts the success of a story is not necessarily the contents, but the execution. If you study up on some writting tips and principals, you write almost any you want
It’s a hypothesis called the Westermarck Effect. I don’t know if it has been proved, but it makes sense. Genetics are amazing.
Honestly, after seeing that there is (implicit) necrophilia in Sacred Stones, putting incest into anything shouldn’t be too sensitive to anyone
Well, not exactly. The truth behind Freud’s theory is not that you are attracted to your own mother, but that you are attracted to motherly charms. This is, you are attracted to the kind of traits that you see as ideal to the upbringing of the potential children you may have with her. I spoke from the perspective of a man, but it’s the same with women and dads.
But yeah. In short, official FE has done sensitive topics too, so hackers shouldn’t hold themselves back.
Also, another thing that I think has been overlooked so far in this thread is that hacks, by their very nature, are never gonna come out finished on the first iteration. And thus, are subject to change. OP can rework the story as they see fit down the line.
As long as its use in a way thats a tool for story telling and its not like you’re supporting incest everywhere in irl then id say go for it.
But still, since its your first story, i can’t say whether its a good idea to have incest to an extent since theres gonna he some people frowning at the sight of it, and it of course won’t give a good first impressions on those people, which could cause them to not want to look into the rest of your future storys, but, i don’t think you should really mind those people that hate on things just cuz of specific small themes, do what you think is best for your story, after all its your story so who knows more about what the best option to take for your story than you.
One of the most famous legends has incest in it: The Legend of King Arthur. Nothing more needs to be said at this point. Incest is perfectly suitable for a game (Fire Emblem) that bases most of it’s lore off of Shakespearean theatre. (I’m also laughing about it, because it could be seen as somewhat absurd.).
Excellently put. And you made your points with no personal attacks either.
Some people could stand to learn a thing or two from you.
Bruh, like throwing back my words in my face and adding a or whatever that was at the end, as well as “you seem weirdly upset about this, man”. What kind of definition do some of the people on here have of civilised discussion here anyway? ( that thingie is something written in the FEU rules policy, btw, if I’m not mistaken)
THANK YOU! Preach it louder to the people in the back!
I have been a regular fanfiction reader since high school, and to come on here and see stuff like “FE romhacks aren’t the appropriate medium to explore more mature topics” is really bizarre to me.
I could use the “we could literally die at any moment. Why not write what you want while you can?” card, but then I would have even more assumptions made about me. Like, in what kind of dystopia are we now living in that a user can participate in a public conversation, and then get outright insulted and made fun of by the opposing party not in private, by talking about it with friends or whatnot, but publicly, and in the same discussion, while whoever is in charge just stands idly by.
To be honest, I’ve been waiting for the esteemed owner of this website to shut this thread for a while now, since, ya know, their only contribution to this conversation was: "Finally, someone ridicule these fools and get the perfect reply so they can feel humilitated:
Anyways, to get back to you:
I am not a hacker, and came here just to discuss (You know, like the Community tag entails?), and got treated like a gum stuck beneath someone’s shoes for my troubles.
TLDR: I humbly apologize for not being able to see the light sooner like some of you, and was not able to immediately grasp the noble intention of keeping Fire Emblem Romhacks pure and not-edgy.
Now that I’ve been insulted and mocked I feel much better, and can more easily see your point of view.
I have zero issue with the OP, the guy came in with a question and was receptive to answers. But some of the replies in this thread have shown a remarkable willingness to embarrass themselves in public by making this their hill to die on, that cousin-fucking is some kind of Worthy Statement™, a crusade against a grand Illuminati. In my view the fact that people feel bold enough to raise their heads above the parapet for this of all things signals a worrying failure of bullying in the Fire Emblem community, and I for one welcome BigMood’s efforts to remind people to feel shame at their impropriety.
