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

[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.