Fire Emblem is one of my favorite franchises and is a series I continually return to as a stress-reliever. Fire Emblem: Three Houses in particular has a compelling framework that’s allowed for some interesting reflections on my own personal coping skills as well as models for how to strategically cope in the everyday. Namely, Fire Emblem: Three Houses is about strategically managing limited resources.
As someone with ASD and SAD, I find myself discovering that I have more limited resources than I have always accounted for. Growing up, I rarely hit roadblocks, met my established goals and had consistently high energy. But as I’ve gotten older and have more responsibilities, I’ve come to realize that I have limitations. That I can’t always achieve everything that I want to. I’ve struggled to accept this, frequently setting unrealistic expectations and continually being disappointed or confounded by my need to rest or take a step back. But as I play Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I’ve started seeing this continued pattern of managing limited resources, and seen it as a metaphor for my own life. Through playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I’m coming to not only identify and accept my personal limitations, but also learn how to healthily manage the resources I do have for maximum success.
I found myself today using this analogy to an author who was asking how to juggle everything about being an author (social media, blogging, newsletters, writing, editing, etc): In Fire Emblem, you can’t master every single skill. That is, you can’t be a pegasus knight while simultaneously being an A rank mage and a thief and a dancer. Instead you have to strategically select which skills to excel at or prioritize. Likewise, for being an author, you have to choose which skills to hone in on, and which skills or platforms to drop. So for me, I might have A-rank skills in editing and in-person events, but I’ve left Goodreads and blogging skills stay at E. I wasn’t planning on using this analogy. After all, the author I was speaking to isn’t even a gamer. But this analogy hit me as a realization, and it was incredibly healing for me to verbalize.
As someone who has workaholic tendencies, I struggle to accept my own tiredness and weaknesses. I am coming to realize that I have an internalized expectation to “exceed expectations” in all I do. When I verbalize it, I realize how absurd this idea is. But even more so, I realized that putting my life into “Fire Emblem” terms became very healing. No one member of my team is A-ranked at dark magic, as well as light magic, flying, lances, and bows. Even my powerhouse allies like Hubert and Lysithea have shortcomings. My Hubert has probably never touched an axe, and my Petra has no authority skills whatsoever. Seeing this made me realize I need to stop expecting myself to do everything well. Instead, I need to strategically invest my limited resources into the skillsets I care about.
This metaphor of working within the confines of limitations pervades throughout Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Another element in the game that reinforces this idea is motivation. Motivation meters empty after a certain amount of lessons with a student. Like a stamina meter, the motivation meter reminded me that no one can go hard all the time. To continue to increase a student’s skills, their motivation meter must be replenished. This is usually done through giving gifts, resting or having meals together. If you want your students to grow, you have to keep an eye on their motivation meters, and balance working them with letting them rest. You can’t completely drain them and expect continued improvement. This idea of replenishing also transfers to weapons and battalions. Weapons break after too many uses and need to be repaired, or reforged. Battalions must be renewed. It isn’t possible to keep using a dull blade.
Perhaps the most obvious metaphor of limitations is through the management of HP. While playing, you have to strategize how you use your units and make sure to not place too heavy of a strain on any given unit. While my Dorothea can take a lot of damage, I have to be careful not to over-rely on her, making sure she gets necessary attention. As she reminds me when her health is low, “I shouldn’t strain myself.” My Lysithea is incredibly powerful, but I only recently realized just how incredibly low her defense is. Because of this, I’ve paid more attention to raising this stat, but also making sure I don’t put Lysithea in a place where she’ll be attacked much during the opponent’s turn. Like Lysithea, I can do a lot of damage in a short time, but it doesn’t take that much to throw me out of the field. There’s something comforting about connecting to my units in this way, and seeing myself in them.
On the battlefield, the number of enemies to defeat can feel overwhelming. A Fire Emblem map full of enemies isn’t completely dissimilar to my to do list on a Monday morning. Sometimes I look at everything I have to knock out at once and feel defeated before I’ve even started. But I find that Fire Emblem’s turn-based strategy structure and use of units reminds me to take everything one step at a time. It demands that I take time looking at my units in relation to my enemies, and seeing how I can most effectively eliminate one after the other.
Even so, sometimes you have to retreat. Sometimes you need to take a turn out to rest or ask for help for someone else to use their move to heal you. I never like doing this. I used to feel like healing or taking a turn to use a vulnerary was a waste of time. My instinct is to just keep pushing until the enemy is dead. This is also my instinct in real life, which means that when I have a large task or a long-term goal, I find myself having breakdowns because I haven’t allocated the time to rest. In Fire Emblem, not taking this time can cause a whole battle to be lost and having to start over. In realizing this, I’m starting to lean toward Lindhart’s philosophy. I’m no good to anyone if I go past my limits and burn out. Taking time to heal and rest is not only not a waste of time, it’s absolutely critical to winning a battle and being there for the long-haul.
The addition of activity points to the Fire Emblem franchise is yet another reinforcement of this idea of limited resource allocation. I really resonate with the spoon theory, and activity points function as a similar metaphor. You only get so many activity points in a day, so there are only so many things you can accomplish--what will I prioritize, and what will I accept as not happening today? There are endless I can spend my points but how will I strategically use them to accomplish what I need in a day?
I often get discouraged by this reality, thinking that I’ve “failed” these people in my life. However, Fire Emblem reminds me that once again this strategic use of resources doesn’t have to be a bad thing. By using my resources on a limited number of characters, I get to really know them. By limiting my investment in specific skills, I become highly skilled and effective in my chosen field. I can forget these benefits in a social media-ridden world, where it’s easy to think that everyone around us is succeeding in every part of their lives. But ironically, the rules of Fire Emblem ground me back into reality. We all are working under limitations and will only come out victorious if we learn to accept this and strategically work with what we have.
Meg Eden's work is published or forthcoming in magazines including Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO and CV2. She teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, the novel "Post-High School Reality Quest” (2017), and the forthcoming poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (2020). She runs the Magfest MAGES Library blog, which posts accessible academic articles about video games. Find her online at www.megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal.