Fire Emblem: Three Houses/YMMV

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Claude a coward in all the routes but his own, or just savvy enough to know that Fodlan's prejudices run deeply enough that an outsider and half-Almyran like him could never convince the people to break down Fodlan's barriers and stop clinging to outdated ideals?
  • Bernadetta's father. It turns out he had her commoner friend Yuri beaten to a pulp for trying to assassinate her, rather than simply being a commoner associating with his daughter. Is this the one act that proves he cares about Bernadetta in some way despite his constant abuse...or was he just trying to keep his meal ticket alive?
  • Is Sylvain just a misogynist who blames his Crest for his behavior towards women, or have the bad experiences he's had with Gold Diggers been so traumatic he can't bring himself to go into detail about them?
• Base Breaker: Of the Ashen Wolves, Constance and Yuri are getting both quite a bit of love and some major hate. The former gets pot shots for her personality disorder, to which fans react with the same distate they do for Bernadetta (see below), while others think she's bombastic and hilarious. The latter is called a Gary Stu by his detractors because of his good looks, tragic past, and ability to romance Dorothea "Fanon Lesbian Queen" Aranult, whereas his fans believe that he's very interesting and complex plus like pairing him up with Male Byleth.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Edelgard from Hraesvelgr can marry both Byleths, is the most popular option for Female Byleth AND is strongly implied to still love him/her even if her route's not chosen and therefore she can't be Byleth's lover. The Edelgard/F!Byleth fans tend to look down on near every other Byleth ship in one way or another. Especially Edelgard/M!Byleth, which is said to be "heteronormative".
    • Some of them also hate, HATE Rhea/Byleth as an extension of the "Edelgard vs. Rhea" fandom war, whining about Rhea's manipulative streak to paint her as an evil monster who doesn't deserve Byleth at all (while she's hardly an innocent, she isn't completely evil). Rhea/Byleth fans aren't exactly innocent either, as the better known ones and their cohorts tends to constantly shit on Edelgard and Edelgard/Byleth to make Rhea look like the better option (while downplaying Rhea's massive, tragic flaws and bad decision).
  • Dorothea Arnault is canonically bisexual, being able to marry either of the Byleths and having some A-paired endings with ladies what ooze Les Yay. Many yuri fans openly and aggressively complain about the girl being paired with any men, period, insisting that she's "coded lesbian" and that she'd only care about guys (especially Black Eagles men, who are all nobles while she's a commoner) to be a Gold Digger to them.
  • Some bashers of Edelgard also happen to be Hubert/Ferdinand shippers who pair the boys together while at the same time suggesting neither of them should be "forced" to stay with Edelgard, even in her own route.
  • Female Byleth is starting to get this from people who ship Dimitri with anyone else, but especially Dedue.
  • From the Ashen Wolves side, Yuri is liked for being a romance option for both Byleths AND loathed by yuri fans because, as said above, one of his m/f romance options is Dorothea. At the same time his best friend Balthus von Albrecht has been questioned because he can romance Lysithea, who's 12 years his junior.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Claude von Riegan is the only "lord" character who doesn't get this. Even his biggest fans acknowledge that he's sketchy as hell and only love him more for it. The others? While all of them have led extremely harsh lives that none deserved, their ways to deal with such terrifying pains and pasts do cause lots of grief to many innocents and toss Fódlan into a gigantic war... but telling this to to their fans will cause MASSIVE Internet Backdrafts.
  • Edelgard von Hraesvelgr's poor decisions and harsh attitude are glossed over so fans can go "poor baby, it's not her fault, she's had such a hard life!", even when other routes than hers make her pay dearly for her actions and she dies in all of them.
  • The fans of Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd ignore the atrocities he committed during his downward spiral because he's just so cute and troubled and they can heal him with their love -- even when he gets a GIGANTIC call-out in his own route as his hatred and insanity lead him to lose one of his strongest supporters (who's also the father of a close childhood friend), forcing him to reconsider his methods... and he dies in the other routes
  • And Lady Rhea fans? Why, she's just a poor sad little girl who lost her mommy and all but three of her siblings (plus her niece) in truly horrible ways! It's not her fault she's corrupted the Church and harmed countless people and made Byleth a walking zombie just so she can get her mommy back! This stays even when, if she survives, she realizes how terribly wrong she was and both apologizes to Byleth for what she wanted to do to them, and retires from her leadership position!
• One True Threesome: Some fans of the Black Eagles faction have come to adore Hubert / Edelgard / Ferdinand, while some Blue Lions supporters favor Sylvain / Felix / Ingrid.
• Player Punch: You can actually kill your own students!
• The Scrappy: Bernadetta gets a lot of shit thrown at her by fans who think she's a "joke character" due to her over the top panic attacks and assumptions of the worst anytime someone so much as looks at her. Granted, a good chunk of these supports do have the "funny music" playing in the background, but her fans are far from amused by this take, citing that her behavior is actually very realistic for abuse victims conditioned to apologize for offending their abuser.
  • According to this video, Cyril isn't well-liked due to his almost single-minded devotion to Lady Rhea, even though he has damn good reasons for it and a few of his supports do focus on other aspects of him.
• Tier-Induced Scrappy: Gilbert. Many players find him seriously lacking and underwhelming as a unit due to his horrendous speed growth and lackluster other stats. Plus, you get Dedue back within a few chapters anyway if you played his Paralogue right, and Raphael or Ferdinand can make just as good of an armor unit in the meantime. The fact that he appears as an NPC on an early map and can either rob your units of valuable EXP or get killed in the process doesn't help matters.
• That One Boss:
  • Unless you defeat him immediately, Dedue will use a Crest Stone to turn into a Demonic Beast, and his beast form is not easy to bring down.
  • If you chose the Crimson Flower route, Catherine. Advanced class, excellent speed and attack, wielding a Hero's Relic, and she shows up twice-once being on the final map. You're better off just avoiding her completely, even if you're not particularly attached to her as a character the chances of not dying against her are slim to none.
  • Another Crimson Flower example: If you were hoping to go for a Pacifist Run, you can forget sparing Hilda unless you either have someone with a long enough Warp range or manage to avoid her entirely. If you can't avoid her, you'll have to attack her before she goes after you, and she is not an easy fight: she's a Lightning Bruiser carrying a Hero's Relic with a high crit rate. And unfortunately, this game does not have a Sleep or Freeze spell to keep her from moving for a turn or two while you sneak past her. Made worse by both Claude's heartbroken reaction to her death and the fact that for he told her to run away if things got hairy but she chose to die for him this time; and by how Balthus, her Childhood Friend and prospect Love Interest, can be sent out to kill her, but not before he tries to disuade her and fails. OW.
  • The freaking Death Knight is this to the point where the game itself advises you not to fight him until a late battle in Azure Moon where he's a mandatory kill. And even if your units are high-leveled enough, he won't go down easily. Also? On the higher difficulties, he moves.
  • Umbral Beast!Aelfric in the endgame of Cindered Shadows is one of the bulkiest monsters in the game, but add to this the severely limited choice in battalions, lack of grinding, fixed classes, and only one healer who can restore a decent amount of HP and you've entered a world of pain.
• That One Level: The final chapter of Azure Moon can be quite painful thanks to one factor: a Mook named Myson who spams an infinity-use spell that knocks your HP down to one if it hits. He's not easy to kill, either, protected by walls even fliers can't go over. Sure, there's a way to avoid him (stick to the left side of the map), but the other enemies are still strong and can KO your units in double quick time if you make one wrong more. As a final insult, the boss of the map attacks twice in one turn.
  • The Blue Lions-exclusive paralogue "War For the Weak" doubles as this and a Guide Dang It. Unless you complete it, Dedue will be permanently unusable for the Azure Moon path due to a Heroic Sacrifice during the time skip. If you complete it, he'll show up alive and well thanks to the Duscur soldiers he rescued taking him in and ensuring his survival and eventual return to Dimitri. Unfortunately, it's one of the harder paralogues in the game: See, in order to successfully complete it, your party has to defeat the enemy commander in 15 turns or less while keeping Dedue alive. The last one is fairly easy, since Dedue is a pretty durable unit, and fifteen turns can seem like a lot, but the allied soldiers fighting alongside you are just as determined to take out the commander, and if you're not careful one of them just might do it, resulting in a game over. Oh, and if you want a bigger reward, you've got to take out more enemies than the green units. Have fun!
  • Marianne's paralogue. Fog of War? Check. Glass Cannon Marianne starts out right near the boss and there's tons of monsters lurking about? Check. The monsters all move and have long-ranged attacks plus a healer nearby to help them out? Check. Also, if Marianne dies it's game over, and unless you really leveled her up and gave her a Silver Shield and can rush to her rescue in time, she probably WILL die.
  • Chapters 4 and 6 of Cindered Shadows, with "honoray mention" for Chapter 2:
    • Chapter 2 isn't that difficult, but the endless waves of reinforcements can get really boring after a while. Thankfully, once the Death Knight shows up the end is in sight. You don't even have to defeat the Death Knight to finish the chapter.
    • Chapter 4 has you on the run from a giant golem, and you have to reach each gate within ten turns. While the timer resets with each gate, the chapter throws reinforcements at you every time a unit moves, especially on the last part, and EVERY unit needs to be on the escape space. This isn't good if you kept Edelgard a Fortress Knight, and is not good for your foot units in general
    • Chapter 6 features stronger enemies two mages with the long-range Bolting spell, plus the boss. Anyone with poor resistance will be taken out in a flash thanks to the Bolting, and on top of that you have to make sure the Ashen Wolves survive. Worse? They're all poisoned and losing HP every turn and the only way to fix it is to sit other units atop the vortexes responsible. AND there's a turn limit.