first off, i know this is a very random thing to post about since it has nothing to do with art or anything i've posted here, but i remembered that this is myyyyyy page and i wanted to treat the journals here as a thought dump on top of a place to post wips or random life updates. so fuck it i'm posting my byleth post, because it's important to me and no one else.
this was originally posted on tumblr, so it's pretty much word-for-word pasted from there.
i guess some baseline context if you still wanna read for whatever reason. byleth is the protag of fire emblem three houses who was added as a dlc character for smash ultimate, and that inspired a lot of thoughts in me.
~

me not wanting byleth before he was revealed and the aftermath of the reveal

okay so byleth, or any three houses character, getting into smash was very obvious. one would have been in the base game had the game released during ultimate's development cycle. and as awesome as it would have been to see one of the cool tri-colored lords who DIDNT wield a sword nor had blue hair (or in edelgard and claude's case, had no blue in their color scheme at all, a trait only shared with robin in smash), we all knew they couldn't pick one over the other. if they had to go on a neutral major character from three houses to put in smash with no accidental slant towards one route of the game, it had to have been byleth, the avatar.
(i heard some people say they could have handled this by doing a pokemon trainer style character where byleth switches between all three but i think we all knew that was super unrealistic)

i remember before he was revealed that i was vehemently anti-byleth. i literally loved three houses when it came out so much (main personality trait from summer-fall of 2019) but i really wanted dimitri cuz he was my favorite lord (yeah the white male of the three lords was my fave 😔 maybe it's me or maybe it goes to show how they handled the other two in comparison). i was sort of prepping for a three houses character in the game by temporarily implementing dimitri into my headcanons and getting a small bromance started between him and link. i also wanted an air of mystique surrounding the professor (byleth) he brings up, so having him involved in smash was unideal. however, i was also aware of the previously mentioned point of them not picking one lord over another. dimitri was not gonna happen, but i still wanted byleth to not be in smash, so my mindset was "if no three houses lords, then no three houses rep at all"

so anyway byleth got into smash and i remember it so vividly. i could not watch the reveal live (with how the reveal was handled, thank god) because i was in class but during down time one of my friends who also liked smash ran up to me to tell me. i heard whispers online but i was in denial until he straight up told me unprompted. i kind of screamed "WHAT" a little too loudly (cuz i was still in a classroom we just weren't working 😭). and when i saw their renders online (which tbh look sick as hell like the rest of ultimate's renders) i think i temporarily started spiraling but i couldnt explain why i was acting funky because the reason why was so stupid lmao

(sort of reminds me of a time when i was anticipating persona 5 on switch in like, 2019 and heard an announcement was SURELY gonna reveal it, but then it didn't that and i was visibly disappointed during my morning math class to the point where my teacher TOLD MY COUNSELOR and i had to get pulled during the day to see her so she could check up on me LMAOOOO)
~

the reveal trailer that seemed to have been lab-tested to reflect as poorly on the character and fire emblem in smash as possible

it should go without saying that byleth might have one of the most unfortunate reveal trailers for smash, especially with the standards smash ultimate and especially the fighters pass had set. the fact that he was the LAST fighter of the first fighters pass is crazy in hindsight, imagine if it just ended there.

the only other character that could compare to the disparity between "expectation vs reality" was corrin who was revealed in the final smash 4 presentation (which promised to reveal the winner of the smash ballot so corrin just padded the runtime). corrin was also from a game that was not yet released outside of japan (i dont think it was even revealed to get a localization yet????) so not only was it kind of unecessary it felt like a very blatant ad for The New And Upcoming Fire Emblem Game!!
(i know roy did this first, melee predates the release of binding blade after all, but it hits different when the character is revealed in a presentation loaded with expectations)

and of course, the awkwardness of corrin's reveal was the main start to souring people's opinions towards fire emblem in smash. i like corrin and i even like fates but... deserved. even if corrin's moveset was cool as hell.... nothing short of unfortunate

but back to byleth. both avatars actually have similar issues in their reveal trailers actually. the main sticking point is that they both just recycle a cutscene from their home game 💀💀 byleth at least got some new scenes in the style as the ""story"" of the trailer progressed but yeah the opening is straight up ripped from three houses. and crucial context is that this reveal wasn't revealed in a direct where general nintendo news was expected; this was revealed during a dedicated smash reveal, revealing the FINAL character of the first wave of dlc, so expectations were crazy high. the previous four dlc fighters were also ALL third parties that were either out of left-field or miracle picks, so byleth coming in was both mundane and comically funny with how out of place he looked in the lineup.

there was also the awkwardness of byleth's female alt being given her own splash screen, which some people watching thought was wierd since this wasn't extended to previous fe avatars revealed or even the other dragon quest heroes. this was because in japan male and female byleth have different names, so another splash screen for girl byleth was necessary, but that kinda got lost in english so now the trailer has an awkward pause revealing an alternate costume that was expected 😭

in general even if the trailer was plopped in a less... i guess high-stakes context (a mystery presentation dedicated to revealing the final FP1 character) and instead in a nintendo direct, it still would be a bad trailer because i must reiterate THEY REUSED A THREE HOUSES CUTSCENE TO OPEN THE REVEAL. like you could tell it was for smash and not say the three houses dlc since it's pulled from a random ass part of the game's story. there's no suspense since byleth is one of the first characters seen in the video too... maybe it could have been interesting if sothis, instead of helping byleth out of his bind, says "fuck you i'm joining smash" and then the splash card is like "SOTHIS DIVINELY INTERVENES" or some other shit but sothis doesnt really do anything in three houses so that does not seem plausible.....

uh but anyway, given the context and how mid their reveal trailers were i always toss up between corrin and byleth between who is worse. i guess corrin since he didn't get any new animated material in his trailer (after the ripped cutscene it's just gameplay footage), plus byleth being revealed to use the different hero's relics did surprise some people. corrin also being super unknown at the time also didn't help and he did poison the well when it came to fan reaction towards fire emblem characters.... but to be honest i kinda get a kick out of the "why side with one of the kingdoms when you can JOIN SMASH INSTEAD!!!" hook of the trailer/the reason why corrin joined smash. he's like jill in path of radiance, he recruited himself into the roster without anyone asking.

ok this section became more about corrin than byleth but the point is that byleth's reveal is similar to corrin in that it was so underwhelming given the context they were revealed in and the actual execution of their entrance into smash.
unfortunate.
~

male byleth's voice actor

a fun bit of trivia i know as an english voice actor enthusiast: male byleth in english has been portrayed by two voice actors. in the launch of three houses he was voiced by chris niosi (who i only knew from octopath traveler but that's neither here nor there), but starting in a post launch patch onwards (including smash brothers) he's voiced by zach aguilar. why the change?

well i think there's been some word floating around that niosi was a kind of shitty person, but i think the more concrete reason was that he broke nda with nintendo by revealing he was the voice of byleth before he was allowed to announce it. i think i heard that he specifically said in some discord server that he was voicing a character that was guaranteed to be in smash.

now look at byleth now. he's in smash and not voiced by him. it's just really funny to me.

another thing that kind of tickles me is i recall when i used to watch zach aguilar's streams he'd usually introduce himself by stating the major characters he's voiced, as a voice actor may understandably do. and among his most important roles he always brings up byleth. makes sense since three houses was really popular and also he's in freaking smash! and sometimes i can only imagine chris niosi punching the air seeing someone else always state he voices byleth constantly when that could have been him if he didn't brag about it too early 🙃
(or idk maybe he doesn't care, i'm not really invested in whatever's going on with some random guy, i'm mostly just amused by the irony of it all and how it turned out in the end)
~

that's all. byleth was a very expected and mundane addition to the smash roster from a franchise that is not exactly well favored by smash fans, coming after two fire emblem characters who disappointed a lot of people (corrin, due to the circumstances previously mentioned, and chrom, the infamous Clone of a Clone), yet i always have so much to say about his existence in relation to smash.