How to Bring Content to the Fire Emblem Fan Creation Community Table

If you’re involved with the Fire Emblem fan community in any fashion, then you may be aware of the recent controversy that has plagued the community for a week dealing with a major Fire Emblem streamer accused of allegedly grooming minors and sexually assault a woman at an anime convention.

As such, there has been various blog/social media posts and YouTube video on the controversy from members of the F.E. community: ranging from fans within community expressing their concerns of the incident, revealing their own ill encounters with the accused, and calls to improve the community to make fans feel safe. In fact, there has been a lot of posts and videos of people talking about wanting to improve the community and welcoming new content creators into the fandom.

That is all fine and dandy. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see your (fnadom) community better itself after such an event. However, (and this is no disrespect towards anyone who have spoken on the subject) I have yet to find anyone talking about how to use the controversy for the better of the community content creation wise. There’s talk about welcoming in new faces to this scene, but there’s nothing about how to go about it (in terms of networking with other Fire Emblem content creators, putting your work out in the community, promotion your work, etc.)

It’s not to say there not out there, but I feel that as someone who has been in this community for 15 years, and as someone who has been on this Earth for 30 years and seen his share of controversy in many nerd communities, I want to use my information and knowledge to inspire those who may want to create their own Fire Emblem content as well as be a service for the community (or for any other fan community for that matter).

So, here are my ways that you can use to make yourself known as a Fire Emblem content creator.

FULFIL/FIND A CREATIVE NICHE WITHIN THE FANDOM

Before entering the Fire Emblem’s creative community, ask yourself this question: “What do I do and bring to the table that is both unique and beneficial to this fandom that will make people want to pay attention and support me and my content?”

Do you have an (actually funny and not tryhard edgelord) dark sense of humor will make people laugh at a disturbing situation in a Fire Emblem game that they normally wouldn’t laugh at while other Fire Emblem content creators tip-toe around it? Can you use your bright, yet laid back personality to attract new viewers with no knowledge of who you are? Can you offer a service such as Fire Emblem fanart for another content creator for their YouTube channel, podcast, etc.?

How can you use your knowledge of one unrelated subject matter that nobody would have thought of to create content and make it not only interesting, but in relation to a Fire Emblem subject? Can you fulfill a niche that has yet to been targeted?

Example: Let’s say you’re into and have a passion for etymology, or the study of word origins and history. Combine that passion with Fire Emblem and create a Fire Emblem YouTube channel solely dedicated to breaking down the name origins of Fire Emblem characters, nations, weaponry, and so forth.

If you know that Sothis’s name originates from the Greek translation of the ancient Egyptian/Kemet goddess of fertility named Sopdet, then you can create a YouTube video breaking down Sothis’s name and who was Sopdet in ancient Egyptian/Kemet mythology. You can do the same for any Fire Emblem character and game that you please. And who knows? Your knowledge on etymology – a subject seemly different from Fire Emblem – could inspire a young Fire Emblem fan to get into etymology.

For my fellow musically gifted/inclined Fire Emblem fans: you can take the beaten path of covering songs from the series on your instrument of choice for people to listen. Everyone loves musical covers (for the most part). However, if you’re truly talented, you could go one step further and create a remix or new arrangement of a classic Fire Emblem song.

A classically trained jazz musician could take Divine Dragon from Mystery of the Emblem and turn into a Miles Davis inspired jazz track and post it on the fan-ran video game music arrangement website OC ReMiX. Someone versed in sampling songs could easily take a song like As Fierce as Fire from Three Houses and make it into a bass heavy trap beat. Take something already established and make it new again.

Finally, we’ve come to what is perhaps one of the largest creative circles in the Fire Emblem community: the fan visual artists. The fan visual artists have it best when it comes to creative scene of this fandom, thanks to how many artists there are in the community. People are willing to pay artists to bring their wild Fire Emblem fan-art fantasies to life.

Wild fantasies such as fanart of Edelgard as a cheating alcoholic housewife regretting her marriage to Byleth because Byleth has a cocaine addiction. We would love to see someone create a fan comic of Anna laundering drug money and running a prostitution ring with Tiki and Ceada. Someone out there in this great, big, wide world wants fan animation of Flayn having a nice, fun little visit to the abortion clinic because Flayn almost ruined her life by wanting to do more than just hug Ferdinand.

If you can use your artistic talents to bring those ideas to life, people will love you for it.

(And by “we”, “someone”, and “people”, I mean me, of course.)

alcoholic_housewife_edelgard_von_whatsherface — Alcoholic cheating housewife Edelgard. Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLnHpJ4LQVY

If you can fulfill a niche within this community and put yourself out there, eventually, people will come to you. Look at what the community lacks in terms of (original) content, take advantage of that lack of, and build upon it. However, the only way to achieve this is through networking with other F.E. fans and promoting yourself online.

NETWORK

Look, the internet isn’t just for you sick nerds out there that enjoy downloading a ludicrous amount of L’arachel hentai because you have a thing for holy women doing unholy things and/or having unholy things done to them. Social media isn’t just a place where you can troll all day because you think trolling others to make them feel bad about themselves will cure your crippling depression (it won’t).

Use the internet and social media to your advantage by networking with fellow Fire Emblem fans and content creators. Follow a couple of artists online and talk to them. Share and comment on their art. Chat it up with fans on Fire Emblem Facebook groups or message boards. If you’re into the cosplaying and traveling to conventions, share Fire Emblem meetup cosplay events at major conventions as a way to find people who also love to dress up as fictional characters to escape your lowly reality.

marianne_fire_emblem_heroine_addict — An average discussion in the Fire Emblem community.

Commutate! There’s no other way to find fellow Fire Emblem fans to talk to, learn game and information from, and share you creation with other than commination. Plus, if you want people to support and share your works, you got to let them know who you are. If they see you putting in work – solid work, mind you – into the F.E. community while building your brand up, then the people will grow to trust you.

Another benefit of networking with fellow F.E. fans is collaborations. As you build your brand and continue to network with others, fellow content creators will take notice. If they enjoy your content and work, they might offer to do a collab with you for their channel, podcast, or art project.

By collaborating with other F.E. content creators, you’ll create a new network of creative types whom you can bounce ideas off of, exchange news relating to the series, and capture their audience and fanbase; adding them to your own.

Never neglect the advantage of networking and commutation. They’ll always be key in doing business, forging bonds, and personal growth. Nobody will do watch and support a content creator who is unknown, which leads to my final point:

PROMOTE YOUR WORK!

You must promote yourself and your work in order to gain followers, fans, and traction. If you believe that your works should be viewed by others, then put it out there.

So, how do you promote?

It’s simple. You go wherever Fire Emblem fans hang out: may it be on Serenes Forest, GameFAQ, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, whatever. Post your works there, ask for feedback, subs if they like your work, and engagements. When somebody comment on your video, fanart, Podcast, or whatever, reply back to them.

Thank them for viewing your work and listening to your content. Keep it at and eventually people will promote and share your works for you on their page, groups, etc; organically growing your brand through word of mouth.

In order to gain what you want from this community, you must spread your name, content, brand, and products. Spread ‘em like how Manuela used to spread her legs on the casting couch for creepy, shady, corrupt stage producers for Opera roles in her prime.

Now, there is one thing you must know when you’re promoting yourself: Not everyone will rock with you and your brand. There will be those who will be turned off by what you’re offering, saying, or producing.

Let’s take me for example. I know I just lost readers and listeners with my low-brow comments on Manuela being a ho-for-a-role nature (even through it’s the truth why you think she sleep around with young men so easily and often). If Manuela is their favorite and they lack a sense of humor, or they take virtual world people seriously because nobody in the real world take them seriously, they’ve already left the blog or my channel. They’re not fans of low-brow humor and commentary.

And that’s alright because there’s going to be people who appreciate someone who can approach Fire Emblem characters with low brow commentary. You have to be like that with you works and say to yourself “I know there will always be those who will never rock with me or my style. That’s cool: there are countless others who will regardless.”

Focus on netting those who you know will like your style of showing love to Fire Emblem (or anything else you do in life). Don’t waste your time on those who will never get with you.

The Fire Emblem community needs more people to create content around this wonderful and amazing series. We need more folks to show their love and respect to Fire Emblem by the way of the arts, dialogue, romhacks, whatever! Hell, myself included, as I’m planning to create Fire Emblem content on my YouTube channel in the near future. I hope this video/blog post inspired you to do the same if you’re a fan.

Until next time, take care

-Yuki

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By Yuki The Snowman Posted on July 16, 2020

25 Days of Blogging 2

25 Days Of Blogging Day 13: Ending Superficial Fanboy Elitist Bitterness

I’m not one to fanboy. Okay, let me take that back. I can be bit of a fanboy, but I don’t see myself being a fanatic for anything – except for Fire Emblem. I love Fire Emblem. I truly do. It’s my favorite video game series of all time. Thracia 776 is not only my first Fire Emblem game but it’s my favorite game of the series; as well as my second favorite Super Famicom game (my first being Final Fantasy 6). Genealogy of the Holy War is my favorite video game. Nothing can beat it. I could go on and on about how it made me appreciate politics, wanting to create my own linage with my last name, how I love the tone change Chapter 2: Disturbance in Agustria brings to the game, and how I almost got banned from Serenes Forest for “slut shaming” Lachesis: the Incestuous Slutty Half-Sister Wonder back in the late 2000s.

Not only is she’s a slut, she’s a pedophile too.

Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with Nintendo’s other franchises; I love Smash Bros, I think Zelda is a great adventure series. Pokemon, a childhood favorite, is still going 24 years later. F-Zero is dead. And Star Fox is a dead series for sexually confused furries in denial. But, there’s something magical about Fire Emblem that draws me into more than any other Nintendo series.

I’m glad to have witness the rapid growth, reinvention, and renaissance of the Fire Emblem series this past decade. Awakening saved the series (and yes, to you spaz ass emotional ass FE super fanboys who gatekeep the series because you’ll never create anything original worth gatekeeping in your lifetime; I know their marketing campaign saved the series). Echoes proved that the younger fans can appreciate unforgiving brutality of the classic Fire Emblem game’s mechanics. FE: Heroes is gacha garbage. If Cowmila was a real girl, I’d pay her to give me a lapdance along with Tharja while Azura sings over an Dirty South trap remix of Lost im Thoughts on my birthday because Azura and Camilla are the only good things about Fates besides Lost in Thoughts All Alone being a remix of this song. Finally, Three Houses has not only dominated the strategy genre, but proven itself to be a mainstream Triple A juggernaut of a game.

Three Houses MCs from left-to-right: Some white girl, Neil Patrick Harris, and Prince.

It is an understatement to say this is the best time to be a Fire Emblem fan. Words cannot describe the fact of how happy I am to be a Fire Emblem fan today. There is none. With that said, you will be surprise to learn that this wasn’t always the case. In fact, during the start of the Fire Emblem renaissance, I was a bitter, angry, gatekeeping old school fan that hated the reinvention of the series and the fans. And by old-school, I was one of those annoying, assholish Shouzou Kaga dick riding FE fanboys who thought he was superior for playing the older games (who am I kidding I’m still am an assholish Kaga fanboy).

Let’s go back to April of 2013.

Fire Emblem: Awakening made it to the states after a year after the Japanese release. The American Fire Emblem community was at abuzz. We were all excited to get our hands on the new game. Well, not me actually. My money management at the time was foolhardy at best; so I didn’t save up for both a 3DS and the game. Nevertheless, my excitedment couldn’t be contained for long, so I decided to check online for news surrounding the game over here in America.

I was met with the following:

“This is a fucking waifu simulator!” “This pissed on Kaga’s legacy!” “Fire Emblem should have stayed dead!” “Not only is Lucina’s a Mary Sue, she made me realized that at least I’m not AS flat chested and flat ass like her!” “The fanbase is stupid and refuse to play the older games!”

I was shocked. The beloved series that I loved since high school became a weeaboo waifu simulator pandering to new gen anime fans. The new fans are talking reckless about the older games. Worse: classic FE fans stated that Awakening was a cheesy anime game than a tactical game about warfare, life, death, and the horrors of war. Overtime, I became angry at the fandom – bitter even. How could a weeaboo trash entry of Fire Emblem outshine the rest of the games in the series ?

How dare this so called Fire Emblem game became the one to save the series from death!?

I wanted to talk about the other games prior to Fire Emblem (sans the Wii and Nintendo DS garbage FE games), but the newer fans only wanted to play Awakening. Some had the nerve to call Thracia 776 and Genealogy of the Holy War archaic…which is kinda true but man, that hurt. Nevertheless, I wanted nothing to do with Awakening besides bully the Thraja fanboys for being fans of an abusive woman and bully Lucina fans for thinking a Mary Sue character is a good one.

Lucina dealing with the trauma of war and her hate within the fandom. Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1108249-fire-emblem

But, like the Grinch, something in my heart changed.
As time passed, it dawned on me: If it was not for the popularity of Awakening, nobody would be talking about the Fire Emblem series – because the series would had died. Because of Awakening, interest towards Fire Emblem began anew – especially the older games – and especially Genealogy of the Holy War. Awakening used the paring and generation mechanics of FE4 (where in the first half of the game, you must pair a male and female unit together in order for them to have a child unit to fight in the second half.) The newer fans started to get curious about the origin of Awakening parent/children system. Naturally, a few of them started playing Genealogy of the Holy War along with the older games.

Rather than gate-keep and bully them (as I saw a few older fans did), I welcomed the newcomers to the series and gave tips for Genealogy and Thracia. Some complained about the massive maps of FE4 and difficulty of FE5, but I appreciated the fact that they at least tried the older games. Some stayed with those two games while others went on to play the GBA era FE games.

Fire Emblem’s popularity was starting to rise again.
And my bitterness towards it began to wane.

***

Naka-Kon 2015

While I was walking back to my hotel after hanging out with one of my Umineko no Naku Koro ni cosplay buddies at the convention center, I spotted a girl who couldn’t be no older than 16 cosplaying as Celice/Seliph: the second generation Lord of Fire Emblem 4. I was shocked. Normally, anyone who was cosplaying from the series were only cosplaying as the newer characters — not the older characters. I wanted to take her picture of the Celice cosplayer and tell her how I appreciated that she was cosplaying a character from my favorite video game, but by the time I had turned back around to get off the escalator, she was gone. Oh well. I was just happy to see the next generation of Fire Emblem fans taking appreciation of both the new and older games.

To see that somebody as young as her cosplaying as the classic Fire Emblem characters made me realize that the newer generation of fire emblem fans do have an appreciation for the older games. Plus, it made me fully aware how foolish I was to be angry at something as superficial as the popularity of Awakening. The anger temporary blinded me from seeing the bigger picture:

Fire Emblem – my favorite video game series – was receiving love and appreciation again.

Until next time

-Yuki The Snowman

By Yuki The Snowman Posted on December 14, 2019