Vermilion Rain: An FE3H Story

Author's Note

Hi, I'm currently engaged in unexpectedly demanding physical labor as part of a graduate degree. As a result, I'm a little too tired and a little too busy to put quality work into my main project. I don't want to quit writing entirely though, so I'm going to do some writing just for fun, and that means a fan fiction of my favorite video game, Fire Emblem Three Houses.

That being said, this is just for fun, but I'm still going to be attempting to give it as much quality as possible, so hopefully it stays worth reading or at least worth doing. It's just going to be a fanfic featuring an OC which, though a bit of a self-insert, won't be any more intrusive to the story than I can afford. Let's not forget that Luke Skywalker was a bit of a self insert for George Lucas himself (Luke S., Lucas... mind blowing).

Here's the rules that are going to make my character fit into the world that I'm throwing him into:

1: My character has amnesia. This means that I can't coast by knowing the plot of the game in advance. My character will tap into some prescient intuition at times to make him relevant to the characters, but it won't become distracting or game-changing.

2: My character has no special powers or abilities. That means no crest, no unusual attunement to the magic system, and no skills I don't already possess. This is a fantasy, however, so I am allowing him the ability to remain aware of Divine Pulse when Byleth activates it; this makes sense from a meta perspective and once again makes the character relevant to the plot.

3: No sex, minimal romance. Like many players, I have opinions about the optimal matches for all the characters, and I won't butt a self-insert OC into that calculus. That would be crude. Maybe if the chemistry works out, I'll let him form romances with the other OC's that I add in (there's no way to flesh out an entire world with just the academy characters, after all), but it will not be explicit. Very PG times here.

In addition, I have the goal of potentially fleshing out some aspects of the game that were underdeveloped in the source material... The game has a lot of plot holes, and I hope to patch some of them up. For instance, why does it act like Byleth's origin and age are such a mystery when both Rhea and Jeralt know exactly who he/she is? How come Leonie remembers Jeralt but not Byleth, who traveled with the Captain across Fodlan as a child? I won't resolve every single plot hole, but I hope to be exploring some of them, along with some gaps in the world building.

Also, I will be using the correct storyline... argue in the comments over which it will be :).

Lastly, this is an exercise I'm doing purely for fun, so please nobody get mad at me. I'm not even going to edit it in all likelihood, and I don't know how much work I'll do with it. It may be that after like three chapters, I get so overwhelmed with creative energy that I go back to my main project, but then again, maybe not. Anyway, the upload schedule will be intermittent at best, and it won't be my best work, but if you like, please like, comment and subscribe, or whatever it is people say on this platform.

And so, without further ado, Vermilion Rain.