3: Where the Goddess Dwells: Faith and Interpretation in Fire Emblem

3: Where the Goddess Dwells: Faith and Interpretation in Fire Emblem

Charlie Edholm, @c_s_edholm, Lee University and Southern Adventist University Games often present religions in reductive ways, emphasizing objects of faith – ritual, sacred text, belief, authority, and so forth – at the expense of the subjective relationships these elements form within a faith practice. How can games better explore their faiths? Fire Emblem: Three Houses develops a complex religious system with no single preferred vantage point through its fictional Church of Seiros. Neo-medieval and alluding to Catholicism, the Church comes to life in the many interpretations of its practitioners and critics. At Garreg Mach Monastery students from across the realm study and train together in preparation for their futures as knights or in court. While the monastery hosts the most influential branch of the Church, everyone is keen to share their diverse religious opinions. Some students are devout, some believe reservedly, others don’t believe but join the church simply to help people. A few students from outside Fódlan describe their own religious traditions by contrast, like the polytheism of Duscar or the nature spirits of Brigid. Branches of the church fight over charges of heresy. Family members and nobles view the church’s power as evil, corrupt. One student studies the historical development of the Church, seeking to “read between the lines” and discover truths the Church would rather hide.

This complexity shifts the thematic focus; by exploring conflicts within a tradition, Fire Emblem: Three Houses isn’t asking whether the faith is true, but what acts of faith are best for the world. The issue isn’t what to believe, but how, i.e. what actions should belief engender. Rachel Wagner connects this to playing games: “Play, then, is how much freedom we have within a given rule-based system. Play shapes how much wiggle room we have - how much we can change a received text or tradition and not find ourselves isolated from our religious peers.” Power complicates this relationship, though. Interpretation requires ambiguity, metaphor. When games turn faith into code, faith becomes literal. For example, in the game levelling up a ‘Faith’ skill grants magic powers (its dark magic opposite is ‘Reason’). Faith becomes a tool. In a game, a god can exist just as clearly as anything else. Virtually they are ‘real.’ In Fire Emblem: Three Houses the player character literally becomes the avatar of the goddess Sothis. Mechanized faith differs from contested faith in our world, in that there’s nothing left to ‘prove.’ This makes dissent all the more striking. What does it mean not to believe in a god standing right in front of you? If Fire Emblem: Three Houses was most concerned with an instrumentalized religion, powers and dragons would be enough. Its story isn’t about evidence, but interpretation. Faced with the Immaculate One - a divine dragon - students still question, doubt, and challenge the church. Each late game path takes a different approach, from forming a new theocratic state to reforming the Church or destroying it outright. Faith adapts to many ends. Reductive faiths in our games and stories reduce our understanding of the varied and dynamic roles faiths play across human societies. Fire Emblem: Three Houses shows how a more nuanced exploration of the old can bring us to new explorations of the faith and conflicts of our modern world.

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4: ‘Pseudo-Pseudohistory: The Use and Misuse of Medieval Irish Literature in Scion Second Edition’

Emmett Taylor, @Emm3tTaylor, University College Cork While medieval European literature inspires many historical games, they often struggle with their inspiration’s Christian context. Scion 2e exemplifies this struggle, removing all Christian and medieval features from its chapter based on Irish mythological literature. The 2019 rulebook, Scion: Hero strips the Túatha Dé Danann, literary characters partially based on pre-Christian figures of their medieval and Christian elements. Other chapters, such as one based on the Òrìṣà of the Yoruba, includes complex Christian elements. Scion accepts the medieval Irish pseudo-historical claim that these texts faithfully represent a pagan past, and attempts to create a pagan authenticity out of these sources by removing their historical and religious context, creating a pseudo historical pseudohistory. The Túatha Dé Danann draws on and summarizes Lebor Gabála Érenn, an Irish pseudo-historical text telling the history of Ireland from Noah’s flood, but removes or obfuscates all Christian elements, re-framing the flood as a ‘flood that drowned everything in Ireland’. Even in detailed discussions of Lebor Gabála Érenn’s contents, Christian elements are hidden. One of the figures presented is Éber Donn, step-son of Scotia, niece of Moses, who has his Biblical basis and genealogy ignored, while other character descriptions often include genealogy. Another character, The Dagda, is ‘paganified’ by the chapter, altering his claim in Cath Maige Tuired to match the skills of any of the áes dána, skilled professionals (cupbearers, smiths, druids, etc), to be instead exclusively claiming to match the skill of any druid. Two explicitly Christian figures, Saint Patrick and Crom Cruach (shown to be a Christian invention by Borsje) are included, but stripped of their Christian basis. Saint Patrick is a demigod named Patricius and Crom Cruach is not a mind-breaking idol but a giant maggot. Christianity’s only direct reference is presenting Saint Brigid as being an alias of Brig of the Túatha Dé Danann, something that is not found in any medieval source and is instead based on an ongoing scholarly debate regarding connections between the figures.

This erasure of Christianity from the game’s use of the texts creates a recursive pseudohistory, taking medieval Ireland’s imagined pagan past, deeming it to be too Christian, and removing or ‘paganifying’ Christian elements, creating a second layer of an imagined past. As this choice to remove or subsume Christian elements is unique to this chapter, as others happily include it, we can see that this was a specific choice for this Irish chapter rather than for the entire product. This gives us insight into the reason for this choice. Further, as this chapter transforms Christian figures into pagan ones, this decision is evidently not made to avoid outcry from Christian communities. Instead, I would argue that it is done to avoid challenging the public’s expectations for the Celts and Irish myths. Scion alters their sources, the works of Christian literati who wove Christianity and local traditions together, into a ‘pure’ pagan past. Druids, violent passions and red hair, a Victorian image of the ‘Celts’. Giving an audience what they expect instead of the truth.

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