Magic: the Gathering Colors of Magvel and Tellius Characters

[queenlua]

I'm pretty sure the intersection of the sets "people interested in Fire Emblem meta" and "people interested in Magic: the Gathering color types" is like, me and me alone, but OH WELL posting this anyway.

Partially inspired by professor_tammi's affection for MBTI typing of FE characters, I decided to figure out what colors a whole bunch of FE characters would be if they were placed in Magic: the Gathering.

WHAT THE COLORS MEAN

Green corresponds strongly with commitment to familial ties, tradition, instinct, and a personal sense of honor and ethics. Often includes an appreciation for nature, though not always. Pop culture example: Al, from Fullmetal Alchemist. Noteable M:tG canon character: Jolrael.

White corresponds with order, peace, obedience to a higher authority, religiosity, and respect for the community and laws. Pop culture example: Captain America. Notable M:tG character: Mangara of Corondor.

Red corresponds with passion, recklessness, dedication, emotion, freedom, and power. Pop culture example: Ash fucking Ketchum. He wants to be the very best! Notable M:tG canon red character: Jaya Ballard, who's got some of the funniest card flavor text ever.

Black isn't the "evil" color, per se, though it sure tends to have a disproportionate share of baddies—it's associated with pragmatism, selfishness, ambition, practicality, and pride. It's basically the Slytherin of Magic colors. Noteable black characters in M:tG canon include Toshiro Umezawa (a hero!) and Yawgmoth (one of the most notorious baddies ever).

Blue corresponds with intellect, cunning, patience, and objectivity. Pop culture example: Spock, predictably. Noteable M:tG character: Teferi.

It's also quite common in Magic for a card to have two colors (or three, or four, or even all five, though for my sanity's sake I limited each character to two colors max). "Ally" colors lie directly next to each other on Magic's color wheel; "enemy" colors lie directly across from each other on the color wheel. This leads to ten possible two-color combinations.

And now, for the breakdown. I put a "?" next to characters I felt uncertain about.

MONOCOLORS

White

• Elincia
• Geoffrey
• Eirika
• Kurthnaga

Blue

• Innes
• Lute

Black

• Rennac
• Valter
• Makalov

Red

• Mia
• Nailah
• Skrimir (though he gets more red/white-ish as the game progresses)

Green

• Ike
• Ephraim? (Green tends to be pretty associated with instinct/impulse, and honestly I don't know if Ephraim really thinks much before he does stuff—not because he's like overwhelmed with passion or anything, which would be red, just because he's not an introspective guy—so I put him here? :D;;;; /badatmagvel)

ALLIED COLORS

White/Blue

• Lucia
• Sanaki?
• Lyon (if you go with "squishy"/Eirika route Lyon; otherwise, he's more Blue/Black)

Blue/Black

• Soren

Black/Red

• Almedha

Red/Green

• Tibarn
• Marcia
• Reyson (honestly, if I were allowing myself to use three colors, I'd go with red/green/white for him, but since I can only use two...)

Green/White

• Micaiah?
• Titania
• Rafiel
• Rhys

ENEMY COLORS

White/Black

• Naesala (borderline; you could argue he's monoblack)

White/Red

• Kieran
• L'Arachel
• Zihark? (I feel like he's a bit of a hard case. He eventually becomes Mr. Peacekeeper, which is very white, and I imagine getting involved with a laguz despite the whole Daein thing involved lots of red, but I also get a pretty green vibe from a lot of his conversations—probably his general easygoing-ness and unruffled-ness. I nearly placed him in green/red, and if I were doing three colors, I'd just make him all three.)

Blue/Red

• Calill

Blue/Green

• Ranulf
• Bastian? (It was either this or blue/white; it's hard to tell whether his dedication to the royal family is due to his friendship with him or out of some higher ideals about order and such)

Black/Green

• Shinon?

CHARACTERS I WANTED TO PLACE BUT HAD TROUBLE WITH

• Pelleas
• Sephiran
• Stefan (probably varies wildly, depending on your particular headcanon regarding him)
• Forde
• Joshua

Comments

[raphiael]

Hm, I think even on Eirika's route, Lyon is heavily at odds with religiousness, obedience, and order. In both routes, after all, his entire goal is playing god for Grado.

Pelleas is weird, because mages are usually associated with intelligence. Pelleas never really read as bookish or clever, to me; there's power there, yes, but it's not "I studied for ages to become awesome". And he changes so radically across the game that it's hard to pin anything down. I guess I'd lean toward green for endgame (not dead) Pelleas, from what you have here?

I agree with your assessment of Ephraim, btw. There's probably some red in there, because he is pretty impulsive and dictated by emotions (hey let's plow through enemy territory with three other guys to talk to my broski about this war thing!!)

I'd offer opinions for Joshua, but I don't understand him at all, to be honest.

[queenlua]

Hm. I feel like there's an argument to be made that Eirika-route Lyon has a bigger/more genuine interest in promoting public good/order/harmony/whatever, rather than explicitly playing god, and something something the demon king corrupts his good intentions something, though I don't know the source material as well as you, and black seems like it could fit as well.

And yeah, green seems like an okay approximation for Pelleas—in general, green seems like a pretty okay "neutral" option for characters I'm unsure of :P

...I felt awkward when I was doing this because I realized I don't have a very clear mental model of Joshua, despite the fact that he's one of my favorites D:

[amielleon]

Stefan is truly a character who is up to interpretation. The way I interpret him, I'd put him as Red/Green, in that order. Deep down, I think he's a very, very bitter emotional creature (See Mordecai supports, 4-0 "Visitor/Stefan".) who hides it under practiced calm, perhaps honed as a part of his studies in swordplay. Apart from this facet that's grown strong as a result of his life experiences, I think his place in leadership shows that he is intuitively attracted to togetherness, unity, familial ties -- and perhaps you can even say his bitterness arises from the betrayal of his expectations of familial closeness and justice. (It's interesting that he makes a point in insisting that his heritage wasn't his fault, nor his parents'. It's an interesting detail to insist upon! Perhaps some lingering attachment/loyalty to his parents.)

/Stefan feels

[queenlua]

That observation about the reference to his parents is new to me, and very sweet/interesting.

My first instinct with Stefan was that there's some blue in there, because that measured/calm/practiced facade combined with the seriousness with which he takes his sword-skill seems very blue (cunning, intellect, patience, all that), so I was leaning toward making him green/blue, but yours makes a lot of sense as well (also I'm probably just biased because I'm green/blue myself :P).

Stefan feels are the best feels aaaah

[amielleon]

Yeah, he certainly projects a blue image, but there's something that feels very learned about it to me, like patience is a virtue he adopted because he recognized that he would need it for his goals.

His first instinct, for example, is retaliation:
My laguz blood gives me great power.
I thought about using my power to gain revenge against the people who scorned me, but I decided against it.

When it's clear that Gallia is no place for him, and he no longer has any use for Mordecai, he openly provokes him:
What will you do, Mordecai?
Am I so wretched to you that you feel you must take direct action against me?
You laguz are closer to nature than the beorc.
Are you going to enforce the goddess's law? Is that it?

But then to really decide if the blue doesn't count because it's learned, you'd have to ask what level the colors are meant to represent... :P

But yeah basically if Stefan could be rainbows I would gladly make him rainbows, because I think he has a bit of everything.

[writerawakened]

Hope you don't mind if I drop in? I saw this post on a few of my friends' lists, and this: "the sets "people interested in Fire Emblem meta" and "people interested in Magic: the Gathering color types" basically describes me XD

I pretty much agree with most of your character alignments, although I'd probably slot Ike in as Green/Red (in that order); aside from the "smash all the things!" (instead of "smash all enemy things!") part, he'd fit in swimmingly with the Gruul guild :P And post-possession I think Lyon fits well into Orzhov colors, although I certainly couldn't argue against Blue/Black either.

As for the chars you were on the fence about, I'd personally classify them as so:

Pelleas: Blue/White. This is a tough one, seeing as Pelleas never shows any sort of thirst for knowledge in a clinical sense, but in terms of his desire to find answers in Chap. 3, plus his general gravitation towards peaceful solutions (and willingness towards self-sacrifice!) suggests U/W to me.

Sephiran: Black/White. Being a faithful servant to (and sharing a few core beliefs with) a mono-white Goddess puts him in white, while his detached, pragmatic ruthlessness would suggest black (not completely dissimilar to Sorin, lord of Innistrad). Although you could probably make a good case for him being any color except...I guess red :P

Stefan: I would say Green, but he's mysterious enough (and I'm not well-versed enough in Tellius to say) that he could fit basically anywhere.

Forde: Probably mono-green. Else maybe green/white. He's a pretty salt-of-the-earthy type of person.

Joshua: Mono-red all the way, mannn! 8D Running away from his titles, living his life by the flip of a coin, and being a mercenary, to me, is the epitome of a Red occupation :P He's definitely a heroic character, but he's neither as inflexible/lawful as white nor as ruthless/ambitious as black, and I don't see either the blue pull towards knowledge and artifice nor the green pull towards understanding and nature.

[queenlua]

Fire Emblem and M:tG fans are always welcome here :D *waves*

I giggled at the mental image of Ike hanging out with Gruul :P And the Orzhov/Lyon connection is a pretty cool one; I was thinking of him more in terms of individual colors than guilds, but Lyon would be pretty at home in Orzhov.

And I particularly like your placements for Pelleas and Sephiran (heh Sephiran as Sorin)—Pelleas throws me because he's definitely not bookish/intellectual in the traditional blue sense, but he does care about truth/answers in the way you pointed out.

I got to wondering a bit with Joshua—red's certainly a part of him, but I couldn't decide if his character arc might've been a bit about becoming more white-ish as well? —what with the whole "oops now my mom's dead maybe I should pull my shit together and rule Jehanna" thing —but we don't get much dialogue from him post-Jehanna, so it's hard to get a read on that.