I feel like you are taking both your odd dislike of switch FE and feeling bad about your actions in a game and projecting that as bad writing, when FE has done all this stuff before, and lots of media use this kind of story structure, would you call undertale poorly written for making killing feel bad, no because that’s the point, same with three houses, the developers talked about wanting to evoke this feeling, in fact if you want you can just not kill many of the students as many maps are kill boss or seize hell you can just recruit them.
BTW you can spare Claude, Flayn and Setteth if you defeat with Byleth [Edelgard can also defeat Claude] which, in my opinion, boost the story as these deaths can be avoided if you want to, despite likely hindering your strategy, it reflects a real world truth that sometimes the better thing is harder, and creates this satisfying feeling when you achieve this personal, non gameplay affecting goal [think of it as an emotional side objective].
Many characters don’t like fighting but do so anyway in FE, and there’s a whole archtype focused on feeling bad to kill, the Camus, outside of that there are other feel bad kills like Sigune in fe6 [Idunn if you don’t use the Binding Blade on her], or some of the black fang such as Uhai in fe7.
Outside of preference I find it odd you praise the most made fun of aspect of fates, it’s “golden route” for many, myself included this kind of option unless done well [needing to fulfill specific story conditions such as in triangle strategy or being heavily justified like in undertale], it can undercut the story’s tension and conflict, leading to the non perfect endings feeling bad to get, or even incomplete, look at fe6’s bad ending it elicits these feelings too, but there it serves a point, it’s the bad ending not the only ending, it’s meant to make you want to replay for a better ending, keeping the Legendary weapons and getting the gaidens, you have to at least somewhat work for it, unlike birthright or conquest where what? I’m meant to pick the better option at the start, Three houses is praised for not having this perfect outcome option as if it did it would make the non perfect routes just be bad endings, a punishment for not playing the good route.
as a side note the fates endings are even explicitly written to encourage you to buy the good ending, which feels much scummier than any of the switch games dlc, at least to me.
Uhhh yes but no???
Three houses has literally all of this???
and FE has also never really been super serious or deconstructive of these elements [it’s often very reductive too, most bandits are poor desperate people not “Arrgh me, sell people and loot for pleasure” types]
Bernadetta* [sorry lol]
Fe has also had young girls [and boys] take part for a long time
DO NOT MAKE ME GET THE LIST AGAIN!
and all games since FE 6 have given characters interest and foods they like and so and so on, through supports this is not new, it’s just delivered in bios now, did you know every SoV character has a preferred food list, and that fates had a beta version of preferred foods through it’s cooking system?
Uhhhh?
you don’t kill any children, all the students are adults in part 2, and while flayn is young in appearance she is very old in action, one of her main traits is speaking like a grandma, and as such doesn’t come off to me as being very child coded in fact she’s not even that far below the height of the female cast being only, slightly shorter than Hilda, Annette and Edelgard post time-skip
Her facial proportions in official art are also about the same size as the other women, unlike young Dimitri, young Edelgard, who have larger relative features, If you look at Flayn in non monastery outfits you will see that they are much less baggy, a part of what makes Flayn look younger is that her clothes are very baggy, and she’s very short, she often put next to Seteth who is fairly tall, as such she looks much younger. even other short characters like annette stand next to proportionally smaller characters, in the monastery.
She also has supports with mostly men that are taller than her [the shortest gap [Ignatz [pre-time-skip]] is 13 cm!], unlike other characters that have some supports with characters around their height, consequently her already short height is perceived even shorter.
Here is a height chart for reference
however in saying all that I suppose I can see a reading of Flayn as being child coded?
but it is still very weak in my opinion, unless someone can provide a decent argument, I will disagree here.