wooow, our felileth zine has raised over 1k for Doctors Without Borders!
It was a really humbling experience to organize this zine and actually see it come together. It goes without saying that we couldn’t have done it without our amazing contributors. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!
the zine is no longer up for sale, but you can check out the twitter account [https://twitter.com/felilethzine] where we’ll be compiling the work from the zine as the artists and authors upload them.
Here are the pieces I drew myself! I drew art to go with 5 of the fan fics hehe
⚔️a slightly different annoucement, the Felileth digital zine, Blades In Hand, is now for sale!!! It’ll be up on gumroad until JANUARY 15th, and all proceeds with go to Doctors Without Borders. Please check it out! This was a giant labor of love from a small and supportive fandom and its truly a lovely zine.
There are two items for sale: The main Blades In Hand zine, and a bundle that includes the main zine and a free 18+ companion zine All zines are DIGITAL ONLY, there will not be a printed version. you can purchase the zine HERE
Every day. EVERY DAY I’m thinking about the genius move in Azure Moon’s writing to have FELIX be the only one to warn Byleth about Dimitri’s darkside.
It’s genius because of its tragic futility. Felix is the absolute worst person out of the Blue Lions to reveal this knowledge, however, not because we won’t believe him. Except for perhaps about his feelings (textbook tsundere), Felix doesn’t lie—the game establishes straight out of the gate that he is a very blunt person. No, it’s not because we can’t believe him, it’s because both we the player and Byleth the character don’t want to believe him.
We the player are witness to Felix’s interactions with his fellow classmates, and with little insight into his backstory, his early supports paint him as an abrasive, unfeeling jerk who hates his dad and his friends and cares about nothing but fighting and…well, fighting. As most of the barbs and accusations we see him throwing at his friends are for the most part untrue (though he certainly himself believes them, so he’s not lying), we have no reason or desire to believe Felix’s claims about Dimitri.
The same goes for Byleth. The game establishes in White Clouds that she grows more attached to her students than she has to anyone before—in fact, by the end of the game, the implication is that they essentially restore her humanity to her, or even create it in her where it hadn’t existed before. If this is the case, and Byleth is learning from her students how to feel emotions, then why would she want to believe someone who not only tears her students down, but actively represents the philosophy she is trying to escape?
Furthermore, Byleth’s relationship with Dimitri is undoubtedly different from hers with anyone else in the monastery, even from the beginning. While the other students undoubtedly support her, Dimitri is one of the only ones to ask how she is doing as a professor. He’s always offering his assistance and support, canonically is the first to bring out her emotional side, and is the only one of the few to truly empathize with her after Jeralt’s death, even going so far as to offer his assistance in securing her revenge. As he is arguably the person she is closest to in this route, even from the beginning, why would she want to believe he is a soulless monster driven by nothing but bloodlust?
However, here’s the kicker—while Felix is the one she is least likely to believe due to her emotions, he’s the person she’s most likely to believe logically.As I briefly mentioned earlier, out of all the students, Felix most closely resembles the mercenary’s philosophy (no, not you, Leonie). He represents what Byleth used to be (this is kinda the reason I don’t ship Felileth, but that’s another story for another day). Felix even essentially says as much in their supports—much of those supports have a heavy emphasis on establishing their similarities.
Byleth tells Rodrigue mid-White Clouds that she understands Felix. She may not resemble him, or act like him, but she understands him, because she was him, once. She understands his logic, his reasoning—why he comes to the conclusions that he does. Logically, she shouldknow that if Felix is calling Dimitri a boar, it wouldn’t be based on something petty like childish jealousy.
But she doesn’t. She refuses to consider it—she shoves it down and makes excuses. Throughout White Clouds, for the first time in her life, Byleth is caught in a war between her head and her heart—her heart, newly beating, desperately wanting to cling to this strange sense of care and family that she’s never truly felt before, and her head, the voice of the mercenary, the voice of Felix telling her to stop being so blind, tolook up and see the evidence around her.
But that’s the tragedy of Felix, the true Cassandra of Three Houses. He knows the truth, but because he’s so bitter and jaded he can’t communicate, he will never be believed—and the one person who shouldbelieve him refuses.
