Lefty List, "Classic" and "Reboot" FE
Mar. 15th, 2013 05:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelSo, riffing off amielleon 's post about Lefties in Elibe, Magvel, Tellius, and Ylisse, here's what I found poking through art for FE1-5 and FE11-12...
First off, keep in mind there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of OA for the Jugdral games-- with different artists over a longish span of time covering two different games. So while we have a lot of data to go on, it's not necessarily consistent. The high number of physical/magical combo units in Jugdral also means that you have multiple poses of characters with different kinds of weapon, and the unit you take to be a potentially left-handed staff chick might be shown waving a sword in her right hand someplace else.
Barensia:
Not a lot to go on, but Valbo or whatever he's called these days is holding his lance in his left hand in the artbook.
Classic Archanea:
There's some interesting stuff in the TCG series art-- frex, Cain has a lance in each hand. Ambidextrous?
Navarre fights with dual swords.
Catria's repeatedly shown with a lance in her left hand but she seems to just be holding it. Modern-day Catria seems right-handed.
Samson has a big honking sword in his left hand and a shield in his right.
Saji is brandishing an axe in his left.
Caesar has a sword in his left hand.
Beck has his giant pizza cutter in his left hand.
Now Ogma's packing a sword in his left... and now it's in his right.
The way Rody's holding his lance suggests the left hand might be dominant... but promoted Rody has a sword in his right hand. Reboot Rody is a rightie.
Cecille has a lance in her left hand and a scabbard on her left hip. Huh.
Sheema has an axe in her left hand.
And now Sirius strikes a left-handed pose with his lance. Modern-day Sirius is a rightie.
Promoted Abel has a sword in his left and a shield in his right.
Reboot Archanea:
Minerva (Hauteclere in left hand in FE11 OA)
Note that while Linde has her tome in her left hand, she's forming a light-ball with her right, suggesting that the tome-balancing hand is not the dominant hand, which gels with Ammie's assumption that the dominant hand is the one turning the pages.
Caeda is holding her Wing Spear in her right hand in FE11's OA and the left in FE12's art, again suggesting that for lance users it's a little more ambiguous than for swordies.
Overall, things seem more a matter of artistic license than actual characterization. Lance users and axe users seem to switch hands a lot; sword-locked types are a little more consistent, and I despair at trying to read anything out of staves and bows.
Jugdral:
There is so much damn art, most of it inconsistent, that it's hard to say. Some characters-- especially swordies-- are always right-handed. Almost no one is consistently left-handed, but here are some examples that do stand out.
Tiltyu's making sparks with her left hand and has a book in her right in the TCG.
Julius is shooting fire from his left hand. Oh, look, the Bad Guy is a leftie.
Larcei strikes a left-handed swordie pose in numerous artworks. Ulster is usually (but not always) right-handed.
Delmud and his replacement Tristan both appear to be lefties. Tristan's sis Janne repeatedly brandishes a staff in her left hand, but Nanna clearly uses her right hand to fight with a sword (her staff poses are ambiguous).
Beowulf is shown with his sword in a left-handed pose on multiple occasions.
Lana and Aideen make a weak case for left-handed staff use.
Trude (obscure sword dude from FE5) seems to be a genuine lefty. I think his OA is actually consistent.
With most lance users it seems totally random as to what hand they're using, resulting in what seems to be a very high percentage of left-handed characters until you start digging and decide no, it's just... random. In Finn's case, though, the overwhelming majority of his OA (and there's rather a lot of it) shows him with the lance in his left, and in the pix where he's carrying ickle Leif around, he's got the kid resting against his right shoulder which is the opposite of what a right-handed person would normally do... at least according to The Throwing Madonna which I read in college back when I was studying genetics.
Carion also seems to be left-handed.
But mostly it's random. I mean, there's one left-handed pic of Eyvel versus four or five or so right-handed ones... and one in which she had the sword in both hands. The two-handed sword thing does complicate the issue the same way massive axes and two-handed lances do. That's why I feel pretty confident in pointing to Trude and his little one-handed sword.
amielleon 's post about Lefties in Elibe, Magvel, Tellius, and Ylisse, here's what I found poking through art for FE1-5 and FE11-12...First off, keep in mind there is a lot, and I mean a lot, of OA for the Jugdral games-- with different artists over a longish span of time covering two different games. So while we have a lot of data to go on, it's not necessarily consistent. The high number of physical/magical combo units in Jugdral also means that you have multiple poses of characters with different kinds of weapon, and the unit you take to be a potentially left-handed staff chick might be shown waving a sword in her right hand someplace else.
Barensia:
Not a lot to go on, but Valbo or whatever he's called these days is holding his lance in his left hand in the artbook.
Classic Archanea:
There's some interesting stuff in the TCG series art-- frex, Cain has a lance in each hand. Ambidextrous?
Navarre fights with dual swords.
Catria's repeatedly shown with a lance in her left hand but she seems to just be holding it. Modern-day Catria seems right-handed.
Samson has a big honking sword in his left hand and a shield in his right.
Saji is brandishing an axe in his left.
Caesar has a sword in his left hand.
Beck has his giant pizza cutter in his left hand.
Now Ogma's packing a sword in his left... and now it's in his right.
The way Rody's holding his lance suggests the left hand might be dominant... but promoted Rody has a sword in his right hand. Reboot Rody is a rightie.
Cecille has a lance in her left hand and a scabbard on her left hip. Huh.
Sheema has an axe in her left hand.
And now Sirius strikes a left-handed pose with his lance. Modern-day Sirius is a rightie.
Promoted Abel has a sword in his left and a shield in his right.
Reboot Archanea:
Minerva (Hauteclere in left hand in FE11 OA)
Note that while Linde has her tome in her left hand, she's forming a light-ball with her right, suggesting that the tome-balancing hand is not the dominant hand, which gels with Ammie's assumption that the dominant hand is the one turning the pages.
Caeda is holding her Wing Spear in her right hand in FE11's OA and the left in FE12's art, again suggesting that for lance users it's a little more ambiguous than for swordies.
Overall, things seem more a matter of artistic license than actual characterization. Lance users and axe users seem to switch hands a lot; sword-locked types are a little more consistent, and I despair at trying to read anything out of staves and bows.
Jugdral:
There is so much damn art, most of it inconsistent, that it's hard to say. Some characters-- especially swordies-- are always right-handed. Almost no one is consistently left-handed, but here are some examples that do stand out.
Tiltyu's making sparks with her left hand and has a book in her right in the TCG.
Julius is shooting fire from his left hand. Oh, look, the Bad Guy is a leftie.
Larcei strikes a left-handed swordie pose in numerous artworks. Ulster is usually (but not always) right-handed.
Delmud and his replacement Tristan both appear to be lefties. Tristan's sis Janne repeatedly brandishes a staff in her left hand, but Nanna clearly uses her right hand to fight with a sword (her staff poses are ambiguous).
Beowulf is shown with his sword in a left-handed pose on multiple occasions.
Lana and Aideen make a weak case for left-handed staff use.
Trude (obscure sword dude from FE5) seems to be a genuine lefty. I think his OA is actually consistent.
With most lance users it seems totally random as to what hand they're using, resulting in what seems to be a very high percentage of left-handed characters until you start digging and decide no, it's just... random. In Finn's case, though, the overwhelming majority of his OA (and there's rather a lot of it) shows him with the lance in his left, and in the pix where he's carrying ickle Leif around, he's got the kid resting against his right shoulder which is the opposite of what a right-handed person would normally do... at least according to The Throwing Madonna which I read in college back when I was studying genetics.
Carion also seems to be left-handed.
But mostly it's random. I mean, there's one left-handed pic of Eyvel versus four or five or so right-handed ones... and one in which she had the sword in both hands. The two-handed sword thing does complicate the issue the same way massive axes and two-handed lances do. That's why I feel pretty confident in pointing to Trude and his little one-handed sword.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-16 06:24 am (UTC)It's kind of counterintuitive but that looks like the way things are. A cursory google search on handedness and jousting didn't turn up anything relevant, though.
But I do suspect, especially in the absence of a core group making official materials, that a lot of this stuff is just "that pose looked better".
As for evil lefties, I have to wonder if it's affected by the way that all the sprites are mirrored for enemy units in most games...?
no subject
Date: 2013-03-16 01:20 pm (UTC)I think aesthetics trump everything, except maybe in the case of guys like Trude and Tristan who don't carry a lot of, er, mythological baggage They went with whatever looked better or carried more symbolic weight-- a right-handed Seliph balancing a leftie Julius, a leftie Altena standing with a rightie Leif... followed by Altenna switching to her right hand to stand alongside a (momentarily) leftie Arion, and so on.