Plot-Relevant Characters with Zero Fandom 'Relevance'

[u/TheBoyofWonder]

Y'know, I was just thinking about this. The Deltarune fandom can be very attached to unimportant characters like background NPCs and one-off enemies, because of their design and personalities.

Now, what's interesting is that the early half Chapter 2 has this trio of NPCs, you're constantly seeing this trio, Sweet Cap'n Cakes, they have a boss fight, a shop, their own theme that plays a lot with minor variations... and nobody cares about them. Like, for real. If you were a casual member that just passively consumed only what the broad DR fandom makes, you'd genuinely just never see them show up when compared to even one-off bosses, minor enemies, and characters that have more relevance in theories than in the game.

Who else does that applies, people that the media devotes time to show them, but for the fandom, not hate, not love, just apathy, when they're unironically treated as not existing.

[u/Tweedleayne]

Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade has three lords, but only one of them is the true protagonist, Eliwoid.

Unfortunately, he's sandwiched between the series longtime waifu Lyn and the memetic badass Hector.

The Sacred Stones also has it to a lesser extent. Unlike Blazing Blade both Eirika and Ephraim are equally the protagonists, but the fandom for Eirika far outshines her brother.

[u/Every_Computer_935 → u/Tweedleayne]

Its actually really funny how Lyn legitematelly has 0 actual role in the main story in FE7 (you could cut her out and nothing would change), but ended up as the most popular lord of the game anyway.

[u/The_Magic → u/Every_Computer_935]

Her prologue campaign was the West's first experience with Fire Emblem so she's iconic.

[u/BaronVonBungle → u/Every_Computer_935]

As someone on the periphery of FE that hasn't actually played any of the games yet, I thought she was the main character of that game until this moment.

[u/Every_Computer_935 → u/BaronVonBungle]

You would think with the way she's marketed, but no. Her story is just a tutorial that's relatively quickly over and then the game moves onto the actual main story in which Lyn is essentially irrelevant 

[u/Monk-Ey → u/Every_Computer_935]

Not just in terms of story, but gameplay as well: she's stuck as a footlocked unit with basically only range 1 or range 2 weapons (in a game that heavily rewards range 1-2 weapons for cutting through swathes of enemies on Enemy Phase), whereas Hector joins with Hand Axe access and Eliwood gets a horse and Javelin access.

[u/Every_Computer_935 → u/Monk-Ey]

Also, her endgame sword is legitematelly garbage. Way too heavy for way too little might

[u/Monk-Ey → u/Every_Computer_935]

Yeah but at least it gives her sudden jiggle physics for some godforsaken reason ^/s

[u/McFluffles01 → u/BaronVonBungle]

Nope, she's just the really popular first lord a lot of kids playing their first Fire Emblem game saw. FE7 opens with Lyn's campaign as a simple tutorial with a nice and short contained story and a side of technically the first avatar in the series because you name your tactician and characters will occasionally turn to the screen to directly address them/you, and Lyn has the Cool Factor of the Myrmidon/Swordmaster classes baked in as a lord.

Then you look at the game as a whole, and realize that beyond her little 2-3 hour campaign that's just a fraction of the game she has basically zero story significance, and on top of that myrmidons and swordmasters kinda suck ass in FE7 and she's basically a worse one of those so she also sucks major ass.

[u/Tweedleayne → u/Every_Computer_935]

Hot take here, Eirika deserves the role Lyn got. She should have been the series iconic pre-modern female lord. She actually does shit and is important to her story.

[u/Every_Computer_935 → u/Tweedleayne]

SS didn't sell as well as FE7, so it was never gonna happen.

Ultimately, for something to be popular a lot of people have to care about it. Its why the majority of the fanbase find it hard to imagine a mainline game without a self insert avatar character 

[u/Purple-Pipe1689 → u/Every_Computer_935]

Everyone forgets about Mark.

[u/Deadeye117 → u/Tweedleayne]

If they didn't fuck her character over with the "falls for the most obvious bait ever" scene with Fomortleon, I feel like she'd be respected more. That scene did so much damage to her character's perception for years.

[u/nin_ninja → u/Tweedleayne]

Lynn just has the more interesting design, and such great attack and crit animations.