#a lot of characters don't have that and I think with FE having such large casts that we come to expect that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

teaveetamer · 5 months

Note

more on like. FE misogyny is like. Thinking about which characters are what gender and why. Like there's a reason why seteth has a daughter and not a son. There's a reason(s) why dimitris retainer is a man. Why Hubert, an underhanded and manipulative person, who nonetheless plays second fiddle to byleth (you) is a man instead of a woman. These are all very interesting decisions with a lot to think about irt gender, misogyny, narrative, and it's fuckin annoying that taking note of it is seen as evidence in itself of misogyny. Much of it has to do with female characters not allowed to be unappealing. (Tho this leads into why I enjoy Leonie for being allowed to be genuinely unappealing wrt to jeralt after remire). Reading your and Ezra's stuff on fe misogyny is really great cause I get to finally see people talking about this from like, a cultural and marketing sort of perspective.

To your last bit, anon: I think that's something a lot of people misinterpret when they read discussion of misogyny in media in general (and occasionally my posts specifically). Acknowledging that the world is kind of a fucked up place is not an endorsement of the world being a fucked up place. Arguing that pointing out misogyny is the ~true~ misogyny is like having a pipe burst in your house and insisting that every plumber who comes over to fix it is actually the cause of the leak.

Except it's not even that, because that assumes their own house is actually going to be affected by the leak. Most of these people don't have their lives affected by denying the existence of misogyny. It's more like your neighbor has a pipe burst and you're chilling in your window taking pot shots with a BB gun at every plumber who pulls up to the driveway to help fix it, then patting yourself on the back for "keeping your neighbor's pipes safe" when they all flee in terror. As your neighbor is literally sitting in six inches of water wondering why tf no one seems to be coming over to help with that pipe.

But anyway circling back to the first part of your message, yeah there are a lot of subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways the genders of characters play into stereotypes and archetypes we've come to be familiar with. There's a million examples of characters who just would not work the other way around, largely from an appeal/marketing standpoint, because of gender expectations. Sylvain the male shameless flirt is seen as a cool player but if he were a woman he'd be a slut. No one wants to marry "used goods" which is why we don't have a ton of female shameless flirt characters in FE.

A dad (Seteth) protecting their daughter (Flayn) to the degree where he'll try to screen and control the people (especially the men) she speaks to is seen as endearing and an extension of paternal duties, if a wee bit overprotective. A mother doing the same to her son would be seen as a creepy harpy engaging in emotional incest and stunting her child's natural development. Men find it humiliating when they're treated like children, but society expects women to be treated like that. That's why we don't have a whole lot of mommies with shotguns in FE.

If anything the idea of overcoming the overprotective father and being the one to usher a girl into womanhood (this sentence felt gross to type ew) is a power fantasy in itself. The fantasy of a woman being kept pure by some mechanism until a worthy person (i.e. the protagonist) is ready to claim her. There's stories through the ages of this kind of thing. Noble virgins (or devoted wifeys with husbands lost at sea) dutifully staving off waves of suitors until the right one, the worthy one, swoops in, proves their worth by some means, and sweeps her off her feet. If you think about it, that's really part and parcel of Hubert's role in the Edelgard-Byleth-Hubert trio. He's the clinger-on who the virginal woman rejects endlessly to show her purity and devotion, until her proper suitor comes. Her appeal would probably disappear like a puff of smoke if, say, she'd been FWB with Hubert for years before the story started and Byleth was just another notch in her belt.

I could probably make a whole post on that last one too tbh cuz you can point to a lot of really varied examples with the same undercurrent. Like, I'd say a story of a woman having tons of meaningless sex with people until her Worthy Man(TM) unlocks the key to her heart and opens her eyes to the beauty of making love (or whatever) follows the spirit of the trope even if it doesn't follow the letter of it. It's still a woman keeping some piece of herself (in this case her ability to form emotional attachment to the men she sleeps with) held back, exclusively to be shared with the Worthy Man(TM). What makes someone the Worthy Man(TM) can range from having the strongest bow arm to being the only one who understands the ~true~ her and makes her feel comfortable... but I'll stop here for now.

22 notes · View notes

seaistea · 5 months

Text

post fe rarepair week flora ramblings

I've never really talked about Flora much or why I love her (partially because I am very bad at explaining anything), but after rarepair week, I thought it would be nice to at least attempt to write about Flora in the context of ships, after drawing 5 of them lol.

so: 5 Flora ships I like + 1 I don't. (This is actually really long...)

Rinkah I will admit the ✨aesthetics✨ of the ship does come into play alot here. Heirs of the Ice and Fire Tribe lol. Also, I only really started actually liking this ship after reading this fic years ago. With the way Flora chose to go in BR, obviously there's symbolism in it, but then in the context of this ship, it just evokes a lot of feelingsTM. I like the idea that the fire Flora used being unable to be extinguished was solely due to her own guilt and suffering and determination..but I also do like the idea that it was literally special and something possibly from the fire tribe, and perhaps Rinkah could have known how to stop it. (both is good). Going into some parallels(?). Obviously they both feel a sense of responsibility to their family/tribe. Rinkah is very proud of her tribe, and generally can get heated up and act without thinking (although not always). On the other hand, I feel that Flora feels much more burdened by her responsibilities, and tends to hold herself back and hide how she's feeling. I'm not saying she hates her tribe or isn't proud of it, but their tribe's situations are really different, so it wouldn't be so straightforward for Flora. I never really got the vibe that Flora wants to be the heir of her tribe, but just accepts it as her reality so never considers anything else (beyond fantasies). I definitely think these two together would be really nice. They probably would clash over the different ways they handle themselves and their tribes, but eventually I think they would have a lot to learn from each other and can grow together :)

Kaze This is something in common with Rinkah, but I have kind of a vague mini AU idea of how when Corrin and co let Kaze and Rinkah go, they still ran into Flora on the way out. Flora let them go as well, and where things go from there is up in the air. Anyways, yes. I did initially ship these two due to their (possible) BR story deaths. I love tragic stories. Yes, they never would have met in BR, but that's why I have that mini AU idea lol. I like the ship in both flavors: they still end up as in BR, or they end up happy (somehow. after going through alot. or in some other AU. lol) Now more about their parallels. (I like my parallels....this won't be the last time I mention them....) Guilt is a large part of both their character arcs. And it leads both to their death. Kaze felt guilt over being unable to stop Corrin's kidnapping. How this "leads" to his death? Because he can be saved by reaching A support with Corrin. He is saved by becoming closer with Corrin, and choosing to be loyal to Corrin, not out of guilt, but because he wants to. So, by not reaching this conclusion (not reaching A), he is still feeling alot of guilt over Corrin's kidnapping, and doesn't entertain the idea that his life is worth trying to preserve, and just saves Corrin. It's not like he wanted to die, but in my interpretation, by no longer being weighed with guilt, he puts more value on not only his life but his friendship with Corrin, which is why he takes the time to think of a way to save them both (which I think was more risky than just saving Corrin). (how did this become about Kaze) (anyways) Flora's is way more obvious. She's guilty over betraying Corrin's trust (and her sister's and Jacob's). But she also can't stop. Her family and tribe is being threatened. So in her mind, by dying, she can both free herself of guilt (and probably still protect her remaining tribe (not that there was any guarantee Garon would have kept them alive anyway, but guilt and grief can really affect someone's thoughts/actions)). Kaze after the A support, and Flora by the time she joins in CQ and Rev, have both chosen to follow Corrin, not from guilt or with resentment, but because they truly want to. So anyways--I just think they would be really sweet together (past the tragedy lol). Helping each other learn to value themselves would be such a good dynamic.

Saizo So I actually started shipping Flora and Saizo after reading a Felicia/Kaze fic lmao. Yeah typical "woo twins cool" but really. To a lesser extent but similar to with Rinkah, Flora and Saizo have the ice/fire thing going on. Plus the responsibility to tribe/clan. The whole, being an older twin and trying to look after their sibling, is also a fun angle for them to bond over eventually lol. Personality-wise, I would be all like "opposites attract" and all that, but I actually don't think their personality is that different. I feel like they both don't outwardly show much personal emotion (well, kinda.), but really are pretty intense. Both Saizo and Flora can be opposed to their twin in the games (since Kaze and Felicia stick with Corrin on every route). They both try to take on things by themselves to a probably detrimental degree. I have less to say about this ship, because its kind of really similar to why I like Rinkah and Flora. These two would probably start out on an even worse foot than Rinkah and Flora though. I feel like Saizo would definitely not trust Flora considering Corrin fights Flora on all routes, but at the same time Flora was doing it to protect her tribe, so that could be the start to them slowly getting along. Makes the relationship improving over time satisfying :) lol

Azura I have so many feelings about these two. Truly a goldmine of parallels. (also ✨aesthetics✨ again with water&ice) While Azura was taken into an arguably better situation and environment and Flora wasn't, they were both technically taken as hostages. They both have someone in the same boat (Corrin for Azura, and Felicia for Flora) who is ignorant about the situation, and who they feel is more loved/favored than them. While Azura is treated relatively well in Hoshido, obviously not everyone is happy with her presence there and she still doesn't truly "belong," and is very aware of originally only being there as a way to try to retrieve Corrin. With Corrin, Azura pushes them as the one who is supposed to be there, and witnesses both royal families try to bring Corrin home, while she is relatively forgotten. Flora on the other hand has Felicia with her, but Felicia doesn't know about their situation. Flora feels a sense of responsibility to protect her sister, but that definitely also does lead to a sense of being "less" in my opinion. They were kids when they were sent away from their tribe, and I understand why Flora and not Felicia was told the situation (one of them *should* know, but might as well protect the other) but still. They were little, and since they're twins, they are the same age so the only reason Flora was the one told is that she is "older" and the heir. But to Flora, it could feel like Felicia is more important to keep safe/happy rather than having them both share the burden (while also wanting to keep Felicia safe. Conflicting feelings are a thing.) They both have (in my opinion) self-worth issues (related to the above lol). (I have a hard time articulating this but I'll try) Azura, in BR and CQ, essentially chooses to sacrifice herself. She takes on the burden of stopping Anankos (I suppose inherited knowledge from her mother) without really letting anyone know (partially due to the curse but still). Maybe there wasn't any other way she could see to move forward, but that doesn't change the fact that she felt it was fine to sacrifice herself, and not try to find some way to tell Corrin what she is doing. Flora's self-worth issues come a lot from her relationship with her family/tribe. Since she was little, Felicia was always better at fighting than her, so Flora was never praised for it by their father (which also contributes to feeling less loved). As the heir, it would make her feel inadequate (and she herself admits she is jealous of Felicia). So uh yeah. I think having these two with their bundle of issues grow closer would be so so good. They could totally!! learn to love themselves!! together!! and learn to share their burdens/ask for help!! ahhh ...and a bit off topic but I have an Azura and Flora-centric AU (not necessarily a relationship with them) where Garon somehow found out the plot to kidnap Azura to try to get Corrin back, so he switches Flora in her place, so Flora gets kidnapped to Hoshido...the possibilities with Azura growing up with the Nohrian royals. And Flora somehow having to live in Hoshido alone, while Felicia is left behind in Nohr. (sorry i just love this AU idea)

F!Corrin Yes, specifically F! and not M! Corrin. Mostly because of why I originally started shipping them + F!Corrin is more associated with Nohr, which I prefer. Anyways; Flora and Corrin was my first Flora ship, and is still my preferred one if I *had* to pick. (no one asked, but Azura is my second pick) So I started shipping these two because of their support conversation. I just immediately loved how sweet it is. I mean!!?? Flora secretly going to wish for Corrin's wish to be granted, and Corrin's wish is for Flora to find happiness!?!?! It's so so good. Anyways, with Corrin, I want to talk about Flora's life and feelings growing up as a hostage in Nohr. Unlike Felicia and Jakob, Flora obviously wasn't entirely loyal to Corrin. She is entirely aware she is a hostage. I think Flora, while living as a servant in Nohr, initially feels resentment towards Corrin (and the other Nohr royals). With Corrin, it's a bit different though. I'm actually not sure that Flora knew that Corrin was kidnapped from Hoshido, but under the assumption she does know, I think Flora would feel more personal resentment as a result of Corrin also being essentially a hostage, but being treated so well while being ignorant. It's not really a rational reason, but feelings are feelings. Over time, I feel Flora would come to care about Corrin in her own way, but would try to ignore/forget it/pretend to herself she doesn't, considering her status as a hostage and loyalty to her tribe. By the time she joins Corrin in game, she has chosen to follow Corrin herself. No outside coercion. She finally decides to be loyal to Corrin after witnessing her character (and being able to ensure her tribe is safe). After Flora finally can stop being weighed down by her situation, it opens up the possibility of...opening up. She definitely wouldn't open up right away though. The effect of years of living as a hostage doesn't just go away. And as she (and her sister) choose to continue to serve Corrin, there is still the master/retainer distance. But eventually they can get closer (and with Corrin being Corrin) be more on the level of equals. And obviously they care about each other (i am still screaming about the support conversation). I just love them.

Jakob OK, after all that, here is the one ship I want to talk about that I don't actually ship, and how I choose to interpret it. I don't care if others ship Flora and Jakob, but just I personally don't. But I wanted to talk about it because of Flora's canonical crush on him. (preface with: this is my chosen interpretation, you can disagree) I don't think Flora could have been really happy with Jakob. Perhaps if they had met in some other way than canon. But as it is, they were servants to the Nohrian royal family, and Jakob specifically is incredibly devoted to Corrin. On the other hand (regardless of how she ultimately ended up feeling), Flora was a hostage, and aware of it (already went into this with my explanation of my Flora and Corrin ship). To me, their relationship is too entwined with being in service to Corrin, because that is their life as they know each other. They don't really have a "work life" and separate "home life." If they got together and were no longer servants, I feel like it would be a constant reminder of the past (in addition to the fact that Jakob I'm sure would still be devoted to Corrin) (Why I think this isn't a problem with Corrin: if Flora and Corrin were together, they'd be together as equals, decidedly different from the past where Flora was a servant) (Why I think this isn't a problem with Kaze and Saizo: an important part of this is that Jakob and Flora serve Corrin together for years. and it's during the years of Flora being a hostage, which once again, I already talked about. with Kaze and Saizo, there isn't really that baggage, and at the time they would have really met, Flora would have been choosing to be there.) A ship dynamic where both characters mutually agree/know (verbally or not) that one or both of them put someone else over their SO can work, and in fact I think is very interesting! I just don't think it works with these two. And I don't think Jakob could never put his SO over Corrin. It's just specifically with Flora, as I mentioned, their life is so entwined with doing just that. And for Flora, I don't think she could ever be completely happy with that (due to insecurities and such that I also went into with Flora and Azura). As for Flora's crush on Jakob; it can be taken at face value. She likes him. People have crushes. the end. lol. But, for why (I think/interpret) she likes him. I think a part of why she likes him is for a sense of normalcy. I think this is subconscious, I don't think she's like "I'm going to like Jakob to feel normal" lmao. But like, since she was young, she's been made to be a servant as a hostage. There isn't really any respite from this. She's there, in the castle. Not like she can say she's going on vacation and take off for a break from being a hostage. So just simply liking someone, was something of her own. That couldn't be taken from her, couldn't be forced. Does this mean she doesn't actually like Jakob? No. I do believe she does. In a way, I feel she ironically put him on a pedestal, and made him unreachable for herself (so that even Corrin was more "in reach" than him).

Anyways. That concludes my ramblings on Flora through the lens of shipping, though I don't think I actually talked about the ships that much, rather than parallels. lol. I hope it at least made some sense. Sorry if there were some inaccuracies(?), this is all my interpretations based mostly on my memory of things.

also happy new year! 🎉 :P

#fire emblem fates #fire emblem if #flora fire emblem #character analysis #ship analysis #i love you flora #my post

9 notes · View notes

minimutty · 6 months

Text

Minis FE Awakening Blind Playthrough: Chapter 1 (I think?)

Ok! Next chapter we're camping and vibing, and Chrom does the MC thing of just wandering way from camp bc why not. Of course gotta start the plot somehow.

Read More to keep things clean:

Soon after that He and Lissa just encounter Vesuvius randomly and then a large eye-thing appears (it's admittedly pretty cool) and then zombies spawn out of it??? I don't get it it but whatever, its easier than making soldiers and reduces the number of war crimes our MC and blorbos commit ig.

Anyway soon after we meet someone who totally looks like and sounds like Marth, and sh- I mean he saves Lissa and is all like "yea some evil shits gonna happen in a few yall are fucked" and then dips.

The map itself is like 5 guys route zombies. I've played more than enough echoes maps of the exact flavor, so I just whatevered.

We then meet some lady named Sully (idk her) and some kinda creepy flirt archetype named Virion (it's that guy from FEH!). Virion gave me a bad first impression but after playing 6 Fire Emblem games I'm just like whatever. Sully's not my type but she gets some of my respect for punching Virion.

After this map we go to the town, meet their big sister, get lore dumped, and then just dips? More importantly we get access to the supports! Ro- I mean Greebis has a *lot* of supports I can see what ppl mean. Maybe I'm being an FE boomer but I prefer quality over quantity, but eh. I'll deal. My goal rn is the roommate support and whatever lady I'll find relatively tolerable.

Final thoughts: New characters! Lance cav and archer! Don't know who I'll have to main team yet but we'll see. Plot is zombies and creepy blue eye and creepy foreboding stuff. I don't have a big plan for my team or who to train yet, but it's a process

#minisfeawakening #fire emblem awakening #fire emblem #this whole thing will be rather stream of thoughts #its not gonna be the most organized

7 notes · View notes

claristhegirl · 8 months

Text

And there we have it! After 7 1/2 years, I've finally completed Birthright Lunatic difficulty!

Some backstory: When I originally played Revelation in early 2016, I had already completed Birthright and Conquest on Hard, and decided my first [and only] Revelation playthrough would be on Lunatic as I was already familiar enough with the game. After finishing Revelation, I started Lunatic playthroughs of both Birthright and Conquest, but as Birthright is the relatively easy game I added some extra restrictions:

No grinding.

No My Castle use. This meant I was limited only to items obtained during chapters as I couldn't buy anything from shops.

No statbooster use (…I think, I'm not entirely sure I didn't use any back in 2016 but I had a ton in my inventory, so).

No paralogues, though that's mainly because of how offputting I find the entire kids setup in Fates to be.

Conquest didn't get very far, only reaching Chapter 10 (I'll just start over completely eventually). Birthright made it to Chapter 16; I don't remember why exactly I stopped playing, though the opening of Ch16 is a bit overwhelming.

And so the playthrough lay dormant for nearly 7 1/2 years. But a bit over a week ago, thanks to a friend I was wanting to play some 3DS FE again, and so I picked up this playthrough again and got through the rest relatively easily with the help of over 7 years of additional FE experience.

Finishing this playthrough has really rubbed in how much it feels like Birthright doesn't stand on its own at all. Where are enemy skills? Why are the changes in difficulty level basically just "more enemies"? Why is the hyped up near endgame battle against Corrin's brother so incredibly simple with him "holding back"? Why is the final boss's position so close to the start making it an incredibly easy 1 turn with a bit of setup? The answer to all of these is "because Conquest is the opposite". The game wouldn't be designed like this if Conquest didn't exist. Birthright was basically advertised as the game for fans of Awakening, but a standalone Awakening followup likely wouldn't be like that. It makes the game not feel whole, I guess.

But regardless, it's still Fire Emblem, and Fates does have some really fun gameplay systems (albeit overly complicated at times, which is ironic in how they're all shared with the "simple" game Birthright). I'm glad I finally came back to this playthrough and had a good time with it.

Character and chapter info:

Corrin (238 Battles / 132 Victories) Girl

Oboro (206 Battles / 127 Victories) She was my best physically defensive unit, making her incredibly valuable. I'm surprised her battle count managed to barely surpass Ryoma's. Also, Girl.

Ryoma (202 Battles / 188 Victories) lol. Just… lol. What an absolutely utterly absurd unit. He did a fantastic job of being the emergency delete button for large groups of enemies.

Hinoka (156 Battles / 70 Victories) I'm surprised she's that high, but I suppose her ability to solo Magic enemies across several rounds of combat helped with that. She ended up fairly weak but good for support with her personal and Rally Speed.

Kaze (154 Battles / 99 Victories) Kaze's damage output always disappointed me, but his shuriken debuffs and massive Res ensured he got a bunch of use regardless.

Setsuna (108 Battles / 88 Victories) I had high hopes for Setsuna, as she was decently above average on Strength at promotion… but then proceeded to get only a single point of Str in the next 13 levels after that. She'll always hold a special place in my heart though, for this absurdly unlikely moment back from my 2016 portion of the playthrough:

1 / 250. She just happened to be standing adjacent while Kaze was weakening Camilla, and she got the 1 / 250 chance of finishing off Camilla instantly. This particular moment made this specific playthrough mean a lot to me, which is a big part of why I resumed it from Ch16 instead of starting over. (This picture was taken on April 5th 2016)

Orochi (105 Battles / 74 Victories) My only primary Magic user, her terrible speed meant I didn't use her as much as I would've liked to. I'm very glad I decided to promote her with my somewhat limited Master Seals before Chapter 19 though lol, I did not remember the gimmick of that map beforehand at all.

Takumi (100 Battles / 74 Victories) Fujin Yumi sure is good. He was slower than I'd like, given I almost always had to augment his speed whenever I needed him to do something.

Jakob (100 Battles / 55 Victories) Jakob was reclassed into a Paladin sometime before Chapter 16, before I resumed this playthrough. I don't know if I knew back then that, with my restrictions, it was the only Heart Seal I was gonna get lol. I didn't use him for combat much after resuming the playthrough, but he was a nice support unit thanks to Gentilhomme and Shelter.

Silas (80 Battles / 59 Victories) His main role was Pair Up and Shelter support for most of the later game. It was really funny the few times where I had him do a chip attack and he activated Luna, which I always forgot about.

Kagero (80 Battles / 57 Victories) Much stronger than Kaze, but her even worse defense and significantly worse Res meant she was too fragile a lot of the time. Her main legacy is unfortunately costing me two Chapter 25 attempts (one at the very end) due to very stupid mistakes on my part.

Scarlet (64 Battles / 47 Victories) My only axe unit, her Hammer was incredibly useful late game. She mostly was a very useful support unit thanks to Rally Defense.

Saizo (30 Battles / 17 Victories) I brought him in on Chapters 22 and 26/27 when the game gave me an extra deployment slot and I needed a filler unit for it.

Shura (17 Battles / 9 Victories) A prepromote gotten right after the game gives you another deployment slot, he had a nice role as an extra healer and a 3 range attacker with the Spy's Yumi only he could use.

Sakura (3 Battles / 0 Victories) Very useful support unit between her healing, personal skill and Rally Luck. Due to being unable to buy Staves with my restrictions, I couldn't grind experience by mindlessly healing; combined with my bad habit of never wanting to promote early, she didn't actually promote until Endgame (at Level 18) where it didn't matter anymore. She would have to be an Onmyoji to actually attack, though, as I had no E rank bows she could use as a Priestess.

Azura (2 Battles / 0 Victories) My Azura was absurdly strength blessed, capping Str and Spd pretty early. Super annoying that she was strictly a support unit who only saw combat from occasional Dual Strikes, lol. But as a support unit she sure was fantastic. Her personal was very useful for healing without using staves.

Turn counts and MVPs: Prologue: 2 (None) Chapter 1: 5 (None) Chapter 2: 6 (Corrin & Jakob) Chapter 3: 13 (Corrin & Jakob) Chapter 4: 26 (Corrin & Kaze) Chapter 5: 110 (Corrin & Azura) …I assume I did a ton of Azura grinding here. Chapter 6: 2 (Corrin & Kaze) Chapter 7: 12 (Corrin & Jakob) Chapter 8: 9 (Rinkah & Silas) Chapter 9: 10 (Jakob & Silas) Chapter 10: 17 (Corrin & Kaze) Chapter 11: 15 (Corrin & Kaze) Chapter 12: 7 (Jakob & Kagero) Chapter 13: 9 (Silas & Kagero) Chapter 14: 14 (Silas & Orochi) Chapter 15: 15 (Corrin & Jakob)

Chapter 16: 16 (Hinoka & Ryoma) The first chapter after I returned to this playthrough. The first two turns were a bit overwhelming, but the rest wasn't bad once I decided to let Ryoma do Ryoma things. It was weird having a time limit here before the thieves reach the treasure, only for this kind of objective to never come up again for the rest of the game; kinda set some false expectations as my first chapter back.

Chapter 17: 28 (Takumi & Kagero) Pretty easy, the villages were a bit scary as I didn't know where the enemies would come from but not actually bad when I completely surrounded them with my own units first.

Chapter 18: 3 (Jakob & Orochi) Easy 1 turn but I spent a couple more turns to get the items from Odin and Niles.

Chapter 19: 14 (Corrin & Orochi) I totally forgot about this chapter's weird stat gimmick beforehand; sure made for an easy chapter though I would've had much more trouble without a promoted Orochi.

Chapter 20: 7 (Orochi & Ryoma) Another very easy map.

Chapter 21: 42 (Azura & Silas) Just about the end of the super easy maps as it's the last map where enemies don't charge at you before you're in their range.

Chapter 22: 18 (Corrin & Jakob) Had to get used to enemies coming for me unprovoked now; from this point on I started leaning on Ryoma hard.

Chapter 23: 47 (Corrin & Ryoma) Okay what the hell this chapter?? Such an absurd difficulty spike. I deployed only 8 units, then put them all in 4 pairs in the 4 tile wide hallway to the left so they all avoided Camilla's corridor attack.

Ryoma/Corrin were on the left and took out most enemies.

Kaze/Hinoka were the middle left, Hinoka there as a healer, switching to Kaze when there were bow units around; they were left unequipped to bait a magical ranged attacker that could do no damage and would block the only 1 range tile that could reach Ryoma, letting him slowly pick off every 1 range enemy that surrounded the area.

Shura/Jakob were the middle right. Shura was very nice as a healer with better defenses than my other healers so he could take a ranged attack. Jakob was there in case I needed his support skills.

Oboro/Silas were on the right, tanking anything that came that way as best as I could. Despite much fewer enemies, she had much more trouble than Ryoma did.

Once all the moving enemies and reinforcements were gone, Corrin and Ryoma cleared up the rest of the map, while a few units stayed in the right column to keep Camilla's attention there.

Chapter 24: 26 (Hinoka & Setsuna) So many enemies. So many enemies…. So many enemies………. Not that hard, just long and tedious since I was going for a full rout.

Chapter 25: 55 (Corrin & Scarlet) This chapter was super annoying as I failed two attempts due to very stupid mistakes. The first, I was near the end of the reinforcements, I carefully set up my units to bait two of the four incoming enemies at the edge of their range… And I totally forgot to move Ryoma. So he was left in range of 4 enemies, all having Weapon Triangle Advantage against him, without a pair up or any rallying. And he barely survived!! I thought that would be the end, but Ryoma is too good and Vantage came through. …..And then the VERY NEXT TURN I made the exact same mistake of forgetting to move a unit, except this time it was Kagero who got OHKO'd by a 100% hit attack. The second, I reached the very end. I set up all my units so that each of the 6 enemies in the row at the top would attack one unit each… And I didn't bother to do all of the combat math because I assumed everything would be fine, and Kagero got exactly OHKO'd. Super frustrating mistakes on my part. The beginning was pretty funny, with waves of 6 enemies attacking from the left and right each turn for the first 6 or so turns. Most of my units worked together to take out all the units on the right; Ryoma (with a pair up partner and some rallies) took out every enemy on the left. There being enemies with Entrap was scary, until I realized they couldn't actually warp me anywhere that Ryoma couldn't handle easily.

Chapter 26: 19 (Jakob & Oboro) Went for a full rout instead of the comically easy 1 turn. You don't even get anything for it aside from a Sun Festal pretty close to the start.

Chapter 27: 34 (Silas & Oboro) A large part of the map was [Enemy group moves on the left] Okay Ryoma, go to the left. [Enemy group moves on the right] Okay Ryoma, go to the right. [Enemy group moves on the left] Okay Ryoma, go to the left. I had the game crash once mid-chapter; I entered a battle animation, but the character models failed to load and several seconds later the game gave up. That was a super annoying way to fail an attempt. .-.

Endgame: 1 (Corrin & Kaze) Spent way more time than I needed to setting things up due to not wanting to redo Chapter 27 if I failed. My setup was:

Sakura tries using a Hexing Rod because lol

Corrin moves up

Azura dances Corrin

Kaze is paired with Jakob (+1 move), moves above Corrin, transfers Jakob to Corrin, then attacks the boss with the Spy's Shuriken + a Corrin Dual Strike

Oboro and Ryoma are Rescued closer to the boss

Oboro attacks to activate Seal Defense

Corrin attacks

Ryoma attack with a Corrin Dual Strike

The result was that Sakura missed with her Hexing Rod, but Ryoma wasn't even needed as Corrin finished off the boss herself.

#fire emblem #fates #birthright #corrin #finished playthrough #this playthrough is so old it started before I knew I'm a girl

8 notes · View notes

fizzingwizard · 4 days

Text

couple life things

went to Jamaica Fes on the weekend. Bob Marley everywhere. Had my first ever jerk chicken and festival bread. Sooo good. Also ate taco rice and a warm, gooey churro caked in cinnamon which was easily the best churro I've ever had in Japan.

People were all dressed up in bright colors, especially Jamaican flag colors. It was interested for me to see so much of Osaka's night life out in broad daylight haha. During the work week, most people are dressed modestly, in muted colors. Of course if you go to America-mura or hit up clubs you'll always find lots of stylish young people, but yeah, they're not so visible just out and about. Lots of skin-showing and bright hair colors. It was really fun. And so many tattoos! Japan is really opening up to tattoos it seems. Still not work appropriate most of the time (let alone school), but I don't think people's minds automatically go to "yakuza" when they see a tattoo anymore hehe. At least not in cities. Rural areas are a little different.

Work stuff: One of the toughest, though inevitable, things about my job is when a student leaves the school. They'll all leave my class at the end of the year, and eventually they'll graduate the school itself and I probably won't hear from them again. But although the end of the year makes me emotional, it's even harder when kids leave during the school year.

Last hear I had a particular challenging student, A, who was uncontrollale. If we'd had a smaller class, or fewer students with difficult behaviors, we could maybe have spent more time with him and worked out some things that we weren't able to. A lot of young kids who have trouble at school would do so much better, imo, if they could just have more personal time with the teacher. They really want and need those bonds to feel valued and supported, but when the teacher has to divide her attention among a large class, it's impossible. And "large" is not as large as you'd think when kids are only two or three years old. But schools will pay for only as many teachers as they need legally, so.

Still, we did see a LOT of progress in this student anyway. Once he got comfortable with us, he was so sweet and charming. He acted out when he got overstimulated or when he was lonely. By the end of the year, he'd grown so much. It's impossible to know how much we helped and how much was just his own understanding getting better as he got older. But we loved him a lot and we tried everything we could think of.

He also has a very supportive mom who told us she was like him when she was that age, and that she didn't expect miracles, and that she preferred if we followed his lead and went at his pace. Which was SUCH a relief to hear. Because I very much believe that's what's best with young kids. Not that you shouldn't challenge them, but there's a difference between presenting a challenge and letting them decide when to attempt it, and forcing them to attempt the challenge whether they like it or not "to build character."

A lot of parents are so worried that their kids are not "on level" with other kids of the same age and it's like. Every kid hits milestones at different points. Every kid is different. I have a mom right now who told us she's worried her kid wasn't talking much even though her older sister did at the same age. And I heard from her teacher last year that the mom was saying the same thing back then. This kid, back then, was barely two years old! It is completely, COMPLETELY normal for 2s to do a lot more observing than speaking - it doesn't mean they can't speak or don't understand. It's just normal. Some kid are chatty, some aren't. Something I've seen happen many many times as a preschool teacher is a kid turns 3, and suddenly they're a chatterbox. It is that sudden. They have their birthday and it's like a flip is switched. So I told my coworkers that of course we had to respect and help the mom with her concerns, but that personally I thought her kid was fine and would start talking when she turned 3. Well, the kid turned 3 last week, and guess what - even the week before that, she'd suddenly found her voice. She speaks in sentences and mostly clearly. I called it! haha. We are continuing our support plan for mom's sake, but I'm hoping to hear she's feeling better now that her daughter is talking.

But back to A - so the thing about kids like A is, they take so much time that you get really invested in them. Parents often worry that if their kid is a handful, the teachers will like them less and pay them less attention. Absolutely do be your kid's advocate - but as a teacher, I gotta say it's often the opposite! Much harder to pay as much attention to the kids who don't need much support. Because you're all taken up with the others! And we don't dislike kids just because they don't follow directions perfectly. If they did, they'd be freaky, like what are these robot children?? Challenging kids are a lot of work and you go home exhausted every day. But when they make progress, it's like the sun coming out after weeks of rain. It's amazing. You really feel so happy for them. And even if they don't make progress, you went through so much with them and got to know them so well that you just won't forget them.

I found out last week that after fighting hard to get A into our upper level school, his mom is withdrawing him. The reason isn't anything to do with his support or issues with the school or teachers, but an understandable family reason. I'm so sad though. I really wanted to watch A grow up. I was so, so worried about how the transition from my class to the new school would be for him. I heard from his teachers that he had a hard time at first. But now he trusts his new teachers. I went to help out at that school when they were understaffed and I got to see my students from last year including A. He was so happy to see me and I could see that he loved school.

So it's just a shame. I think he's the type of kid who would have continued to remember his former teachers as the years go by. He's a very affectionate type. It would have been amazing to see him three years from now at his graduation. I miss and wonder about all the students of mine that have left the school. A is just very recent so I'm feeling it the worst atm. I gave him too many hugs all year long to forget him so fast ;_;

#fizz's life #work

2 notes · View notes

lumeha · 9 months

Note

For the series questions... Fire Emblem?

Fire Emblem, my Forever Fandom TM !

... I'm excited about doing that one. It's large but. Heyyy !!

Favorite character

According to my poll (checks notes) it's Rhea :D

Considering where I started with her (not liking her at all), it feels quite strange to now sit here, with an ita bag dedicated to her that features art I got made specifically for it (tiny crochet Rhea !), and a tattoo with her sword and shield and flowers. But Rhea is such a fucking fantastic character. She is what people say they want when they want a morally grey character. She's stuck between a rock and a hard place, she takes decisions that aren't clean cut, and yet.

I adore her. I adore the layers to her character, with grief and revenge and the care and softness and she's so so so good ;; she deserves so much more love than she gets

Honourable mention to Arvis in particular, who had my heart for years and years, and he is still one of my absolute favourite trashfire, but. Yes.

Second favorite character

Just because I did shout out Arvis in the last one, I'm going to avoid him. And without making a joke about the current poll about people deciding my favourite FE character...

There are a lot of candidates.

But right now, I'm feeling it, I'm going to pick Knoll. Knoll is, in the grand scheme of things, a character that means a lot more to the world of FE8 than it looks like, I feel. He was the one working with Lyon. He has knowledge of what happened behind the scene. He's a tired, depressed man who thinks about killing himself and awaited for his execution with the serenity of someone who had accepted his fate. Knoll knows the shit that Ephraim and Eirika don't, about Lyon, Vigarde, and what happens with Grado.

And I love that all of this comes in the form of a quiet, depressed man who does want to find some spark back because maybe there's a hope to let Grado live on and survive in the way Lyon wanted it to.

It's so fucking nice.

Least favorite character

It's a large franchise. There are many characters that someone might not like (that someone being me).

...

But maaannnnnn fuck Clive. I really don't like him. He's just a bit annoying to me, it's not the biggest crime, but actually, yes it is. He's annoying. He's just not doing it for me. I really don't like Clive. /o\

The character I’m most like

... I'll be honest. Luthier. Well. I'm not as much of a hard worker as Luthier. But I do feel like I am quite like him. Certainly not confident and quite awkward and making friends with cat better than with other people.

Some might say I'm endearing and I think he is in his own ways but I'm probably endearing in a similar way to him : awkward and just very, very nerdy.

Favorite pairing

I think this one is going to be coming out of left field for some people because I have not written NOR drawn them. But it's Ephinnes. Been a ship since I was a teen ! I love them ! the energy ! it's so perfect !! They have a dynamic that is just so good, without even having a damn support !!!! I Love Them !!

I have complicated feelings with some of my favourite pairings for FE, like, (carries fraldarddyd) I have Opinions on how they are depicted in general and it makes it a little weird to interact with people about the ship

Shout out to Duessel / Knoll, though, my absolute rarest of rarepair, they are so good and I love them :>

Least favorite pairing

Edel///eth (sorry it looks a bit ridic but look we don't want this brick of a post in the search for people who like the ship)

Favorite moment

Most recent is probably Rhea turning into a dragon to protect Garreg Mach when the Empire walks over to it. It means so much for her character and for the game. Like you know the gloves are coming of.

... But I do need to shout out a very specific moment of FE7. And that is when Ninian and Nils are talking about Elbert to Eliwood, telling him how he died, but actually mostly telling him how this man who didn't know them helped them so, so much, telling them stories of his home and his family, and helping them escape, and. idk. it has stuck with me all this time. Like that fucking tiny ass GBA art ?

That one ??? I still think about it

Rating out of 10

Look. I adore Fire Emblem in general. I think it's a franchise that has many, many cool moments, some really good gameplay, and often stories and characters whom I love very much.

But Fire Emblem can only be rated on a scale from 5.5 to 9 out of 10 as a rating. Because it varies between games. And some of the highs are high and some of the lows are very low.

#barks.txt #Fire Emblem #askbox meme #no Engage specific thing but I need to replay it soon #I have enjoyed it though

5 notes · View notes

leonidskies · 5 months

Text

2023 Writing Reflection

This is a chunky one, so forgive me! I write fic. Sometimes (most of the time) I write lots of fic. It's basically a personality trait at this point, so I may as well ~talk about the thing~

I've posted alllll my fics for the year now. Last year I tracked how much I wrote vs posted, but this year I stopped tracking how much I was writing when I realised I wasn't going to hit my goal, but as always I wrote a TON (and posted only a fraction).

My posted fic stats for the year are:

208k words posted

80 fics posted (88 chapters total (avg wc: 2.3k))

55+ different character perspectives

33 different romantic ships

49 different platonic ships

29 different fandoms

Longest fic: 13k words

Shortest fic: 214 words

I posted fewer words this year compared to last, but the same number of fics - the numbers of perspectives and platonic vs romantic ships were pretty close, and I wrote for a couple more fandoms than last year. The stuff I wrote was more spread out, too (more on that soon).

I didn't manage to finish anything super long this year, which is a shame and I hope I can change that next year. I like writing longfic, but w a full time job this year I haven't had the attention span. I have several projects I'm really deep into that are unfinished!

These are my cumulative vs 2023 ao3 stats - not gonna dwell on them a ton, but I'm coming up on the 1.7mil mark for fic published on ao3 which is exciting!! I also find it helpful (to me) to reflect on stats every so often bc engagement stats are "fake". By fake, I mean I wrote good stuff I'm proud of, but largely in fandoms that don't read the kind of fic I was writing. People who've known me maybe 3/4 years will know that I've worked REALLY HARD to detach worth from engagement, and I think I can say I've succeeded now!!

The following images are from my ao3 'top 10' for all the fics I wrote this year. First up is Relationship tag, which is pretty funny because I only wrote four relationships more than once....and two of them were a flavour of Shalvis. Shoutout to Handers for being up there two years running btw.

My T>G>M rating distribution is almost exactly the same as last year, which is a thing?? I continue to be predictable. My relationship type distribution is weighted more gen, less m/m this year, but the rest are basically the same as before.

I wrote less FE this year compared to last year by a significant margin, and a bit more Dragon Age, but Xenoblade remained a mainstay (I wrote more Xenoblade this year than last, actually). Also interesting is I wrote more evenly distributed amongst FE games!

Anders is once again blorbo of the year as my most frequently written character, but written a lot less than last year - I wrote a wider variety of characters this year in general, actually! Shoutout to not one but TWO of my Dragon Age OCs (four of the five instances of Male Lavellan and all of the instances of 'Surana', which is an incorrectly wrangled tag for Nonbinary Surana) being in my top 10 this year.

Below is my top 10 additional tags for the year - they're all pretty close together still, with no standouts I'm always writing. Interestingly, fluff is not my favourite thing to write but it still just kinda happens! More on trans characters later (I did a comprehensive analysis for myself ahaha).

My 2023 in trans characters: I wrote 20 fics with trans characters, 21 with nonbinary characters, and 34 fics with trans/nonbinary characters total, which is a nice 42% of all fics I wrote this year. I wrote 52 trans/nonbinary depictions total, which is transing one gender per week (!!). Of those 52, there were 40 different characters I depicted as trans. 44 depictions were headcanons, 8 were canonically trans characters! This came to 23 trans men, 23 nonbinary people, and 6 trans women.

There were only six characters I wrote as trans more than once:

A(lvis) - 5 times. This was a chara who got revealed as canon nonbinary this year!

Adrel (my nonbinary Dragon Age OC) - 4 times

Alear - 3 times

Kagetsu, Shulk, and Byleth - 2 times each

Overall I had a really good writing year :) not in fic, I wrote a whole (!!?!??!) fantasy short story collection. I'm going to redraft + maybe more next year!! I'm really excited about it. I do have some goals for next year though - to finish some of my dang wips that have been sitting around forever, for one, and to write more for myself. I wrote a LOT of request fills and exchange pieces this year. Next year I want to write more thoughtfully + for me.

Ty to all of you who were here for the writing vibes in 2023. Here's to even more next year!

#images described in alt text

6 notes · View notes

felikatze · 1 year

Note

11 for the video game ask meme

11. Do you prefer ‘blank slate’ main characters you make yourself or otherwise project onto, or characters with a set personality and backstory?

OH MAN. here's the thing. there's no such thing as a character without a personality. i ADORE blank slate protagonists beyond belief, for precisely one reason: i love digging for personality. i don't even project. my all time favorite in this genre of guy is of course the rider from monster hunter stories 2, whose character arc is the main crux of the game's plot, all told without speaking a word. you can project on them, yes, but rider still has their own complex inner feelings - their desire to live up to their grandfather, their fear and love for ratha - and they never speak. it fascinates me.

another excellent example is how people characterize the persona protagonists differently, even though they're all 'blank slates', so to speak. their available dialogue choices, their presentation and design; these things show a conistent personality.

it's also fascinating to examine modern FE protags under this lens, particularly the "My Unit" genre of lord. Robin obviously has their own personality. Their love for their friends and their inner conflict is largely uninfluenced by the player, outside of four choices, only one of which has consequences. the only way the player can project on them is through the pairing system - picking who robin marries - as well as their name and appearance. byleth, on the other hand, is a much more traditional blank slate, following the dialogue option formula. and yet, there is still a struggle all to themself. their silence is a character trait, and their lack of emotion is a deliberate writing choice. they have their own arc of opening up and learning to feel through helping their students. additionally, all the things that make them a blank slate are noticed by others! their silence is odd, their stare tense and unnerving. they also love their father, and fishing.

in the end, creating a character with no personality is impossible in a story. no matter what you do, everything is personality. how they move, how they attack, what kind of grunting noise they make when hit, what kind of minigames you can grind for hours, how other characters perceive them, their design, the witty quips for the player to pick - it just doesn't work.

however, my main experience here is explicitly with rpgs, as my examples easily show. there *are* games with a protagonist for you to craft yourself. immersive sims like deus ex, or skyrim. games with much more player freedom than ye olde standard rpg, which has to abide by ye olde standard story structure.

i *have* self made protagonists, particularly in pokemon games. nowadays, i tend to make up an oc on the spot and try to play the game as they would. it's a ton of fun, but i think, ultimately, i prefer characters with an established character. i just also like digging for it.

i probably wouldn't enjoy games much that require the player to make their own stories, since storytelling is one of the main draws of video games for me. i tend to get bored quickly otherwise, and prefer writing instead, if i'm already letting my own creativity loose.

that was a long answer, because i have many many feelings about supposed blank slate protagonists. a lot of people use the term to loosely. there's a difference between characters you can project onto, and characters meant to *represent* you. eh.

#Feli gets asked #and of COURSE i bring up robin #does mark know the impact they had on the entire series going forward

6 notes · View notes

dirtyoldmanhole · 5 months

Text

don't know if i've talked recently about why I wrote YRMR (past tense since it's sitting at 98% done in the gdoc file).

not to be navel gazey, but it's cool to look back in hindsight and see what "worked" in terms of endurance fuel for such a massive project, and to see what worked as consistent motivators (maybe motivators to take for future projects?)

there's a few reasons, the big clusters being:

* i actually like revelation's plot a lot. i don't think it's cobbled together at all. but i was missing that specific fictious merged version of 'what if revelation + while corrin romanced gunter (a la conquest)' especially since it (would) make a lot of implied characterization explicit.

talked with one of you recently how FE games do really good at leaving the player a lot of high quality ingredients (such as characters), but oftentimes FE stumbles on mixing the ingredients together to make a killer packaged soup of a plot. so it's weirdly the perfect kind of series to spring off with fanworks to fill that gap.

* the bark bark horny. i uhhh. yeah. would be remiss in leaving this out. :P honestly while there's a lot of stories that gets close to my specific itches/cluster of tropes i like, i feel like stories often pull the punches with,,, how do I say this, "ugly" erotics? how do you make stroke recovery sex smoking hot. i'm going be blunt here, how do you write post-trauma sex with dignity and then also write a rape fantasy from the perpetrator's point of view in the same turn with nuance and have both be hot as fuck? how do you write intimacy between a frankly obscenely large age gap while being explicit about the way bodies fall apart in the end, and yes, it too being hot?

messy fucking stuff. you know, literally.

in a weird way, it's that 'ugly erotics' that strongly feels the most human to me. it's the only kind of erotics i really see myself in, those knife-edged places where erotics intersect with the jagged edge of unpleasantness and sometimes end up creating something all the more tender for it.

* there is a very specific 'chewing my arm off out of a sheer need to selfishly see more fanwork of a specific character' focus that i've only gotten with zihark in the past (got me to start drawing to begin with) that is the same for gunter. it's actually really fun to feel that nameless drive again. there's a real clarity to it that i missed.

* this last reason goes into a little woo-woo territory of how i see some characters, and it genuinely galls me to say this with a straight face, i am not.... a woo-woo person by and large lmao. anyway. i genuinely felt called to make this specific redemption story. dunno how to say it any other way. i remember sitting there halfway through the first revelation playthrough feeling so. fucking pained for the character and what a raw deal he got. like ok yeah, fictional character, I get that part. but then there's quotes like this that do a far better job of capturing that... calling.

i am genuinely fond of this old man and i think he deserved a hell of a lot better. was willing to swear on my Muse about it and i think it says a lot that i'm a stones throw from finishing it, too.

#gunter slowburn liveblog

6 notes · View notes

ystk-archive · 1 year

Note

Do you have any favorite looks for Koshiko and Nakata? Like photos where you particularly liked their fashion or styling?

So many examples that writing a response to this simple question nearly drove me insane for several days lmao. One of capsule's biggest "selling" points for me was that they mostly wore their own clothes for photoshoots, MVs, performances etc and Nakata largely handled styling and whatnot. (Also probably one of the reasons that Metro Pulse landed disastrously with me, I don't want to see polygonal character models fighting to the death, I want you two to serve looks 😭)

Where Toshiko's concerned, I usually loved her outfits at the annual festivals they'd do like Rock in Japan and Countdown:

2010 RIJ FES fit is legendary

I honestly feel like this houndstooth configuration that appeared at CDJ 2012 altered my brain chemistry in some way. I can see it being a bit too "circus" or costume-y for some, the bi-color tights are definitely going a little overboard, but I still think about it all these years later (take a closer look at the heels she wore too).

2014 Summer Sonic, I like to call this the angel look; there's a pattern here with me liking these dresses/skirts with strange construction lol

Big fan of the OTONOKO 2018 sparkly tulle dress (may be a top + skirt combo, either way). It was extremely whimsical, looked beautiful on a stage environment, and I love the idea of Toshiko as a pinch of the night sky placed down on earth. (I like it so much you can have another photo of it here)

At their last Countdown appearance in 2019 she wore this draped dress; the blunt lob haircut really elevated the maturity of the whole look (I think some low denier tights would've made this even crazier).

Thigh-high boots go brrr (starting to wonder if I just really liked this wig a lot)

Special mention to this sequin dress, she is nothing short of a genius for wearing those nylons with it and Nakata was wrong for saying she looked like a fish lmao

I do actually like her simpler stage outfits like this gold babydoll dress. Her headwear is unparalleled, I can't imagine how many hats/hair accessories she owns...

Lastly her WAVE RUNNER tour encore look was just cute and nicely coordinated for being so simple; I also adore the way their shoes matched here but I lose my mind whenever they match their outfits at all…

In general I love how consistent she is in her style, it's very elegant and feminine overall but she likes to do these unusual silhouettes and whimsical accessories that have a lot of drama to them. This is my favorite example of her fashion outside of performances; my list highlighted major appearances where you'd expect her to go full theatrical but even her regular day-to-day outfits are nice, often simple but never boring.

Moving along...

Generally speaking Nakata has a great eye for individual pieces rather than excelling at putting together well-coordinated outfits (on himself at least, I loved the times he styled Toshiko). He's also the living embodiment of the shorts-wearing NPC trainer in Pokemon lmao. Like he's definitely shown the potential to Dress over the years and I'd actually love to see him do styling work on other people again (also would love to see art direction from him again, design, etc etc anyway :^)), he has a very particular aesthetic sense that I always enjoyed, but overall he seems to prize comfort and especially after 2016 you can see his style get increasingly...utilitarian? Unembellished? Honestly there was a video I saw by some YouTuber who attempted to discuss Nakata's style and all they had to go off was his Instagram and their conclusion was "he likes to wear his own logo a lot;" it's an understatement to say that made me die a little inside, lol (not the tuber's fault of course).

I tried to pinpoint specific ~whole outfits but it's kind of difficult, as a result the majority of these are from magazine shoots:

2007 Sugarless GiRL for MARQUEE - I've been obsessed with this since forever but I'm not even sure how to explain it... It's a wintry, boyish sort of look, the overalls were very flattering, the shoes are cute, and that scarf was actually really interesting because it had these weird hand pockets (you can see them in this photo). I'd kill to see more takes from any of their magazine shoots but especially this one.

2005 LDK event covered in CUTiE magazine - I think everyone loves this one lmao, whoever did Nakata's hair is a god. It's a great inbetween style from LDK to FRUITS CLiPPER; it's very interesting the way he sort of found his fashion "voice" the same time he found his musical one for capsule.

Speaking of which, 2006 FRUITS CLiPPER artist profile shoot (well, this is from MARQUEE, but he wore the same thing for their artist pics) - the black-white-gray layered look might be my favorite example of his ~eye for coordinating clothes or whatever you wanna call it lol. Love that C necklace too, he only really wore it during '06 though and was never much for necklaces in general (I think it's funny one of the few remaining pics on his Insta is this one). Blazers are notoriously tricky to wear without seeming like you're stuffy and/or going to the office, he somehow always pulled them off really well...

2007 capsule rmx for MARQUEE - another that seems unanimously loved. I liked that headscarf he's wearing so much that I bought the same one (not a single clue how to style/pull it off though)

2007 FLASH BACK for MARQUEE - love the long zip-up jacket with the fur-trim hood, love those iconic yellow Belly Button boots (yes, that's really the brand name)

Getting away from MARQUEE, I just posted these but his outfit for S&R was actually kinda good? I do wanna beat him over the head for wearing shorts to meet Sakamoto Ryuichi but it's a cute look and I think he was smart to wear the brown frames instead of his black ones as they would've been too harsh. The detailing on the shirt and shorts goes perfectly, while I don't like high-top shoes on him in a broad sense these had cute contrasting laces and I like their suede look. More accessorizing with jewelry would've been great here but at that point (2012) he put away pretty much everything apart from the watches...

self vol. 1 (spring 2009) - this one doesn't go like super crazy or anything but I think it's cute and nicely put-together, here's another picture of it in better/natural lighting. Really like that T-shirt from FRAPBOIS

2013 CAPS LOCK - you could say this is pretty boring compared to the other examples here but I reeeally liked the weird keycap rings(?) and the not-insignificant heels on his oxfords lol. The fact that these are capris and not full-length pants also keeps it from being too stuffy and basic. (And once again wearing the same color for the top + bottom makes this sort of "seamless" look that in turn helps create an illusion of proportionality.)

2015 Downtown appearance - and now I'm going to throw all fashion rules about proportions/looking ~taller out the window because I loved this lmaooo, peak comfy outfit and makes me want to buy an oversized white hoodie so bad (I haven't said it yet but I think white might be his best color). Also I'm pretty sure his hair was professionally done here, it looked great.

Also 2015, the Keith Haring print sweatshirt over a button-up

Since I'm nuts I'm gonna keep blathering but now about specific pieces he's worn that I really liked (not a complete list by any means, just what comes to mind right now):

This baseball cap with the half of a stag rising out of it, he's f*cking crazy I swear to god (naturally he wore this because they shot these pics at Hanjiro which was a clothing store with a particular sense of décor)

Bomber jacket at ageHa last year, I love stuff like this with that sort of mirror-like sheen (it's kind of iridescent but not quite) and the cut/style of it was good

I think way too often about this reversible jacket he wore on a karaoke date with Kyary. Up to that point I'd just seen him wearing logos and boring all-black semi-athleisure stuff for years so this was a pretty crazy statement piece

Speaking of random pieces that live rent-free in my head, I really want to know the brand of this sweatshirt from the 2019 album announcement, it's sooo weird and just, like, interesting

The blazer for WAVE RUNNER was shockingly cute, no comment on the rest of the fit or the wonky Photoshopping though (god their artist photos are so hit-or-miss)

The Jeremy Scott F/W 2007 hoodie of course

Studded bowtie

Uniqlo crossword puzzle shirt

Not the best possible pic of this but I like this shirt with the studded suspenders detail, he wore this to RIJ FES one year

Do headphones count? Headphones count, this is my favorite pair he ever had

This jacket is one of my favorites of his, I wanted the same one so badly for so many years lmao

Honestly there's so much that I'm exhausted writing this list, I'm gonna stop with these pants and leave it at that

His style at its best is just kind of quirky, very very playful, obviously keeps to a grayscale palette but he has some surprisingly colorful pieces. His taste in jewelry was pretty awesome too, he had some interesting rings I was a big fan of but I'm too lazy to go find pics (there was a Hello Kitty one, a giant star, a cow's head...).

In conclusion I think they share a lot of similarities in their style and I would kill for either of them to have ever released a ~style book (sadly the timing for that has long passed and the demand was probably nonexistent in the first place). Some people also may be wondering why I completely ignored their looks from pre-2006/the future pop neo whatever era and the simple answer is...IDK, it's not that I hated their styling back then (well, it was pretty rough sometimes), it was just more costume-y and as a result sort of inauthentic in a sense. They were also frequently styled by other people during that time; their own personal style and/or Nakata's styling had a much greater impact on my teenaged brain as far as influencing my tastes. But Toshiko wore the '60s silhouette and boyish sort of hairstyles extremely well and the contemode hair/makeup girlie Miyagawa Tomoko always did a fantastic job.

Whoever actually read this far is clearly very interested in this topic so if you want to feel free to message me your own favorite capsule outfits and whatnot. I know Toshiko particularly had some crazy colorful/weird dresses she's worn in the past that I didn't mention here lol

#messages #capsule

8 notes · View notes

loregoddess · 7 months

Note

6,11,12,26 and 35? :D

6. Who's your favorite lord/protagonist? Hnngh, technically Alear bc I think they were handled really well as a protagonist character and I adore their characterization and personality, and also as an "avatar-esque" character they fix a lot of issues I personally have with "avatar" and "avatar-esque" characters and also offer the solution to a very specific bone I have to pick w/ an entirely unrelated series that I won't get into bc it's not FE. But mostly I just, adore Alear, what a kind and sweet character, despite all the horrors.

Also I don't talk about it ever, but I really like Ike as a protagonist bc he's. Just some guy. Not royalty, not nobility, not secretly anyone special or of some sort of crazy bloodline (and we all know Tellius has some weird stuff going on with bloodlines), he's just a guy who gets caught up in things, and does his damned best to keep his friends alive through it all.

11. A character that deserved better? Answered here!

But for some more characters, I've got so many thoughts about Subaki (there are a lot of interesting implications about his past, but lack of any proper characterization beyond his joke trait of being a snooty perfectionist means I am literally grasping at straws; fandom likewise ignores him which is wild bc he's our first canonical male pegasus knight, but I mean, large cast so I get it), and Izana having a paired ending with Corrin for Revelations (in both the Japanese and localized versions) despite dying will haunt me forever (also rip that localization, I swear my love for this character isn't as random as it seems, I just happened to follow all the Japanese-release stuff before the localization dropped a year later, and have a really confusing impression of all the Fates characters as a result).

For Echoes, despite my ignoring him every run bc Sonya pretty, I think Deen should have had more...just more everything, I guess. In the actual game, since all his backstory is hidden in the artbook/records book project. He's actually a really cool character overall, but Sonya feels like she has so much more narrative relevance bc of Jedah and Marla and Hestia.

For 3H bc I have a whole lot of thoughts about all sorts of characters, I actually really wanted Sothis to get more...I dunno, narrative relevance as well. I wanna know what her regained memories were, her thoughts about Fodlan as it is. About Rhea and Seteth and Flayn. Three Hopes doesn't count bc the writers kinda butchered Sothis's characterization to the point of hardly being recognizable, and she deserved better than that.

12. A game that deserved better? Hmmmmmmmm, Engage and Fates for sure, at least as far as fan reception goes. Engage's was at least a bit better, but I still see people recycling the old arguments over Fates even all these years later and it's like, listen it was Fine, it was a good game, leave it be. (Also wildly unpopular opinion, but I think 3H--both Houses and Hopes--deserved better writing. What we got was okay, but it could have been so much better. For all the complaints it gets, at least Fates has consistent and completed worldbuilding with little to no questions about lore things at the end of all the routes and DLC. Like I love 3H, I really do, which is why I wish I got More and also Higher Quality writing and worldbuilding and lore and everything).

26. Come up with a pitch for a new FE title, no matter how silly it is! Let's blend fantasy with horror bc it's spooky season. Two nations are fighting each other over [insert some stupid excuse for a war to get people to enlist, but it's actually a scheme to get the people in power more power], and each nation has access to various weapons and things that seem normal at first, but slowly become more sinister and horrific the more the protagonist learns about them (i.e. maybe one of the armies has access to seemingly humane homunculi soldiers as an alternate to sending citizens to war, but it's later revealed that they can only be manufactured with parts of the dead, and the nation using them harvested their own population to make the homunculi army).

I dunno who this protagonist is, but I want them to be just some random person who gets caught up in things bc I love random people who get caught up in things. Anyhow, eventually the protagonist and friends figure out that both nations are harvesting their "technologies" from some sort of eldritch horror buried deep beneath the earth (which is NOT an evil entity, I feel this is important to note, but like I think it should be how the nations are using the being that's malicious, and the being is just a thing that exists), and I dunno, instead of fighting god or the being (which can be a dragon of sorts for the purposes of this being FE, and also be we don't have enough weird dragons in fiction), the protagonist and friends have to find a way to root out the corruption in both nations' rulers or something, although how balancing taking out two different final bosses would work who are also very much trying to kill each other, without doing split routes (which I'd like to avoid if possible) would be a task. (Maybe have the protagonist start off as part of an uprising/rebellion in one nation and then after throwing out the corrupt rulers, have to turn around and somehow fend off invasion from the other nation? I dunno, I'd have to think on this plot point a bit).

Oh but, hm...I've written all this, and now I kinda like the idea. Might let it stew in the back of my head for an original project later on.........

35. What's something you wish IntSys would just stop doing? I will sound like a broken record, but I think gender-locked classes are stupid, I want them vanished. Fates had it right (although I think I should have been allowed to stick men in maid dresses and women in butler suits. As a treat). If I can have nothing else, I want the gender-locked classes removed forever.

I'm also not a fan of split-routes (although again, Fates handled them better than 3H, in my opinion, but they're still a lot of work to get through). I was so relieved Engage was just one route. It's not like they're bad per se, it's just that FE has been kinda messy with the narrative trying to span that many routes. I'd rather have solid, consistent characterization and worldbuilding in a single route, than a flimsy attempt to explore various "what ifs".

EXCEPT for whatever the fresh hell FE Heroes is doing--the multiverse can continue to exist in that with all its weird "characters from this alternate universe you didn't even know existed now exist and can be summoned to fight alongside you in this incomprehensible Norse-themed story". Whatever FEH is doing is hilarious, I will never play it ever in my life, but I love seeing all the character art and pretty animated cutscenes. (And sometimes we get tidbits of interesting characterization for wildly underdeveloped characters. Sometimes).

#Alear is great and also hit me out of nowhere bc I was NOT expecting to love them as much as I do #like! they're just so nice! they're so traumatized but they're doing their best #Alear was such a good protagonist #but I also love Ike a lot despite literally never talking Tellius ever (partly bc it's been a hot minute since I visited the story)#one of these days I'm gonna rewatch PoR and actually finish RD and then I'll rue not having Tellius remakes to easily play #unsuspecting-person #ask game #I still don't have an ask tag

2 notes · View notes

burr-ell · 1 year

Note

If nothing else there is a sort of karmic irony that the Violent Invader Claude who would Totally Side With Edellgard and would Turn On Others On A Dime (the one edelstans SWEAR up and down was what Claude always was in 3H) is ONLY liked by edelstans and like, damn near no one else. Like a few others that aren't edelstans do but it is SO overwhelmingly them who even tolerate Clyde, even if they are a loud as hell minority. Meanwhile the game (relatively) FLOPS in large part because of specifically Clyde's writing and how terrible it was (at least according to a LOT of reviews, both ENG and even JPN). Shocker, people like Claude and wanted to see Claude, not Edellgard 2.0.

Course tho just like edelstans, GW stans refuse to listen to anyone pointing out all the flaws in Clyde's writing, mock people who criticize their shitty fave, and then cry about how people "won't let them like things" (aka: anyone anywhere dared to publicly vent about how they don't like Clyde and Dissenting Opinions Are Mean). The jokes write themselves tbh.

it's not surprising that the game sold so poorly, and as others have said, i don't think it even sold well enough to make dlc worth it. even the feh banners don't prove anything because they're planned 6 months in advance and they're using characters who would be popular enough to carry banners anyway. (except arval, who according to sensortower data did pretty badly. i don't know if we know enough about the shez banner to get an idea of how she did but i'm guessing it wasn't that great, though she probably did marginally better than arval.)

because they wanted, so badly, to make a super serious game set in this super serious universe because this game is super serious, but they couldn't make a super serious game that ended happily or gave us a golden route because—as they admitted!—it would overturn byleth's journey, and from a financial standpoint it would mean no one would want to buy the bestselling game it's based on anymore. so they had to make a super serious game that ended ambiguously-to-badly and apparently expected it to fly off the shelves because it had fodlan on it. what did they THINK would happen? this game was set up to fail from the start, no two ways about it. and it's a crying shame, because i like this setting and wanted to see more of it, but not like this, where all my favorite characters get sidelined at best and torpedoed at worst. (seriously, we could have had a war of heroes prequel and instead we got THIS?)

and honestly, the only non-edelstans i've seen who like GW claude like him as a tragic character, which is rather vindicating. i really hope that between this and the harassment campaigns the stans have led seeing more pushback that when engage and other future FE games come around, we can drop the stupid edelgard discourse. still, it's small consolation considering they still treated the series' first lord of color like garbage the first chance they got and i think we have some good ideas as to why.

#fe3h discourse #asks #hint: it's waifu favoritism and colorism <3

11 notes · View notes

adelle-ein · 1 year

Text

Lace's Engage Review: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (minimal spoilers)

So I ended up deciding to get Engage shortly after it released, and I uh…have some thoughts about it. Far too many thoughts. As usual.

This is intended to be a spoiler-light review for those on the fence. There's pretty much no story spoilers, they all pertain to gameplay aspects. Also these are my opinions. They're subjective. You'll probably disagree with me. And I don't want to fight about it. Like at all. Okay? Okay.

Overall, I think the gameplay and general style puts me most in mind of the GBA games, with maybe a splash of 3ds-era (Fateswakening, that is, echoes is really more its own thing.) The general focus on the maps and battle, the feel of said maps, the game mechanics, the relative length and varied quality of supports, some characters being very gimmicky while others are more layered — it definitely doesn't feel like Three Houses, and it's more of a return to traditional FE form wrapped up in a strangely-colored package. The story is quite bad, but in a more "average FE story way" — some sweet moments, not a bad concept at all if a common one, but poor and very straightforward delivery. Alear is very Corrin-like in that they aren't the smartest and get largely worshiped just for breathing, which is definitely tiring, but they do actually have a consistent personality and characterization unlike Byleth. C-B supports are mostly (not all) for humor, but several A supports are surprisingly thoughtful and well-done. Unfortunately, the game falls down hard in what, for me, are a few key areas. Basically, maybe this is a three out of five stars? Something like that?

The Good:

Let be known, for starters, that I am a ~casual~ gamer. I'm bad at video games! Some of this is disability and some is just me! I like to play things on easy! So obviously my perspective will be different from someone playing the whole thing on maddening-classic-ironman-nuzlocke-yunaka solo-what have you. Also, I've played FE7-16, along with both Warriors games, played Heroes since day 1, and read/watched other people's playthroughs of 4/5/6. So those are my "qualifications"…so to speak.

Starting off: The graphics, character designs aside, are really very nice. Everyone is much more expressive, things are much smoother and less jagged than in 3h, and the environments and scenery are very pretty. The pre-rendered cutscenes look detailed and high-quality. The lighting is good and fairly dynamic, and textures are crisp and don't have that photoskinned look to them. Sommie is very cute, honestly. You can run around and explore the maps a little bit after battles, and it's clearly just a mechanic so the devs can show off how good the environments look. Honestly, they're very good! Cute, detailed (you can see inside buildings sometimes and they're fully furnished,) and well-designed. There's also some other cute and well-done details around the Somniel. For example, there's a ton of different models for the various cooking meals (I'm not sure I ever saw any reused? There's a LOT) and they look pretty nice considering you only see them for like ten seconds apiece. Also, I do think Three Houses had a prettier interface, but Engage's is much more comfortably readable with its font choices. Minor thing, but a good thing.

The maps and battle system are clearly the focus of the game, and the game continues to throw new things and gimmicks at you without feeling cheap or getting stale. The Emblems being used both by and against you contribute to this, but there's also some single-map gimmicks and returning ones, such as unique boss AI or moves, that add variety. Offensive staves, more varied weapons and maps, lots of fun ways to mix it up within the main story maps. Just the fact that bosses now have multiple HP bars, for example, adds a lot to gameplay and makes every map just feel like a unique challenge, which I haven't gotten from FE for a few entries now.

While the characters overall aren't quite as layered or deep as Three Houses's, some are genuinely very good, and many are likable in spite of that. Honestly, sometimes when Three Houses pulled out the "depth" card, it just ended up ruining a character for me (ie the Gonerils' child slaves that are never mentioned again…). There wasn't anyone in Engage that I hated at all, really, and that was refreshing. No womanizer character, no "racist but they feel bad about it," nothing like that. I enjoyed them a lot, I think they were fun and colorful (if perhaps maybe too literally colorful) and while a few were reduced to gimmicks, they weren't the majority, and nearly all show a lot of deeper motivation once you get digging. Sure, some of them bring up their hobbies too much, but uh, I'm one to talk. I think they were a fun, lovable cast overall, if perhaps not the ones with the most depth, but a good level of depth for what I personally want out of a Fire Emblem game. They also didn't feel clogged up with "filler characters" the way the earlier games sometimes do. You do get a few prepromotes thrown at you in lategame just in case, but no groups of four cavaliers with interchangeable personalities in case you fuck up and kill two. Everyone feels like they have a reasonable amount of characterization and care put into their writing, even the cast's weaker members, and the result is a generally memorable and likeable group.

While the supports aren't as long and many aren't as deep, they all go up to A, and a lot of them are just fun and enjoyable to watch. If you've only played Three Houses, or only like Three Houses's cast, then yeah, they'll feel weird to you, but if you do like the casts of older FE games, I don't think they're any worse than those (and frankly, they're better than some.) They're fun, some are quite creative, and I don't get any of the "ugh, we HAVE to include these" vibes that sometimes came across in Awakening and Fates. Those two games suffered from needing to include S options for almost every M/F combo, and Engage enjoys being freed from it. Characters are paired together because of their existing connections, traits in common, or because the writers just had an idea, and things flow very well. Overall, it feels like a throwback to FE6-10.

This is a personal note for me, but Three Houses felt like the writers had just discovered the concept of mental illness and wanted to use it as a crutch. Engage steps away from that, and for me personally, that's a huge improvement. After so many "hates: herself" characters, so much depression and anxiety that was portrayed downright callously or even cruelly, and the absolute nightmare of a parody that is Bernadetta, it was a relief to not open every support wondering in which way the writers were about to mock me. I know some mentally ill people liked the way characters were written in Three Houses. I am not one of them, and found it awful. I'm so glad they've decided to step away from their "PTSD is sexy, anxiety is funny, listen to characters tell you they stopped being suicidal because of [Player], listen to Bernadetta scream at the top of her lungs as wacky music plays because agoraphobia is a laugh riot" crusade.

The overall "throwback" feel of the game is genuinely nice. I had sort of missed getting to play what feels like a "regular" Fire Emblem. Personally I like it when the game varies formula, but it frustrates me when FE does two extremely similar games in a row (like how Fates tries really really hard to just be Awakening Again), and I was sort of expecting FE17 to be Three Houses Two (again, because Three Hopes is already that…). It was a pleasant surprise to find that Engage overall has its own identity while going back to basics with other aspects of the formula. I don't love everything that came from this (as you'll see below) but there were many things that I really enjoyed, mostly the actual gameplay itself and how fun it was.

As far as the main plot, in a spoiler free version: the idea was good, the execution was off. Pacing is kind of a mess, and the writers fail to give the deuteragonist and other significant secondary characters enough material and screentime to get you as attached to them as they clearly want you to be. This seriously drags down the whole thing. Take the exact basic concept, rearrange the ordering of the chapters and the priorities for screentime, maybe don't fight the Hounds QUITE as many times (it gets ridiculous by the fourth go around and you're still not done…) and certain scenes would hit a lot harder. The emotional core just isn't there because the pacing is so wonky. Parts of the script, animation, and voice acting also fall down at key moments (one character's scream of grief and rage just looks and sounds absurd.) I do like some of the messages, which break up the usual Fire Emblem narrative in key ways, and I don't think it's a terrible plot. It's just another mediocre one. I would personally rank it similarly to Binding Blade or Awakening, which is to say, unimpressive and predictable, but not horrifically bad or anything. It's a bit frustrating though, because I think it had the potential to be genuinely heartfelt, but unwillingness to provide any lore combined with really bad pacing combined with badly distributed screentime leads to kind of a mess. I have more detailed/spoilery thoughts on the plot here, but be warned, I SPOIL EVERYTHING.

The CGs are really well drawn and pretty-looking. Minor but true. The credits are really very nice, I enjoyed them and wish other FE games had something similar. The S-support CGs are not as well done, but the faces are not as, well…Bad as they are in 3h. I'll take it, basically. The rest of the CGs and illustrations are good though! The ally logbook and the little screenshots you unlock of the characters are also cute.

Also Sommie is admittedly adorable. I had to warm up to it but the way it follows you around the Somniel making its little footprint noises? Fucking precious. And hey, if you don't like it, you can just not feed it and it'll stay in its shrine so it won't bug you. Overall, the Somniel is very optional. I don't like minigames (and some of them are too painful for me with my health issues), so I didn't play any of them much, and that was totally fine and didn't slow me down. I personally see this as a plus. Also you can design a cute little card to hand out to anyone you do multiplayer with. With stickers! Lots of stickers!!

…If every aspect of this game had as much care put into it as that card designer, I would be rating it five stars. Alas.

The Bad:

The UI and quality of life features leave a lot to be desired. It is not easy to find or figure out how to do things in this game. For example, you can raise your bonds with Emblem Rings in the Arena area of Somniel, unlocking skills from them that you can then inherit. Great! But, uh...to inherit those skills, you have to go through a loading screen and travel to an entirely different area of Somniel, the Ring Chamber. I've spent a very long time traveling back and forth between the two as I unlock skills. It's a strange oversight, and one that is unfortunately repeated again and again all over the game. The menus are cumbersome, weird, and annoying, and sometimes really frustrating to navigate because there are just too many things going on in a single interface (The ring menu is just not enjoyable to use in my opinion.) Auto-equipping things sounds great until you realize it takes everything off your non-deployed units and the choices it makes are nonsensical. You don't have any kind of notification for support conversations being unlocked, and neither supports nor bonds are indicated as being available from menus either. If you're trying to win over a particular character with a pile of gifts, you'd better hope they randomly happen to spawn into Somniel, or you can sleep over and over until they do, because it's just luck of the draw. There's just a lot of weird, nagging little details that make things very cumbersome.

The thing that really bugged me, personally, is that Engage has no real way to fix up your lower-level units. Thanks to the royal/retainer setup from Fates returning, Engage throws a lot of characters at you very quickly throughout midgame. You can't use them all, so many have to hit the bench. Oh, but that's okay, right? There's skirmish battles infinitely respawning on the map, after all! Well...wrong. The level scaling for those skirmishes is based off the toughest members of your army, and is usually actually higher than whatever story chapters you currently have unlocked. Left Jean on the bench? He's staying there, since every enemy you can spawn for him to face will kill him by blinking. And the levels scale fast. Even sitting out a few maps can be terminal, as it was for my poor Yunaka. No matter how fun you might find some of the characters you skipped, you'll simply never get to use them. The modes in the Somniel are specifically set up to be anti-grind, and have limited uses...or don't gain EXP/supports/SP...et cetera. Weirdly enough, characters will also complain in this game if you don't use them, for some reason, since you can't actually do anything about that. Guess what, Panette, if I deploy you now you're going to immediately be Corrupted food, and there's nothing I can do to fix that.

This extends to every other traditional FE "grind." Other than a few potential exploits people have found, which are very, very slow, there is simply no way to reliably support grind with non-Alear units. Non-Alear units ONLY gain support points with each other by using staves on each other, eating meals or doing arena battles with each other, or...by defeating an enemy on player phase only and only with the units directly adjacent to them. And you can only have one mealtime between every two battles, not endlessly stuff yourself with different duos a la Byleth and Shez. Even with Corrin's support-gaining skill and regular mealtimes and arena battles, supports gain at a crawl. Gold runs out fast and the only way to get more is the miserably difficult, high-level skirmishes.

I have one massive file each in Awakening and Fates in which I have every single unit fully built, all their stats and A supports maxed, and full sets of skills (except for my least favorite units…), from both spamming reeking boxes and the DLC maps, all just for fun. That's not possible in Engage. Awakening/Fates didn't have NG+ because they didn't need NG+. Engage does. In Awakafates, you could, if you wanted to, have a fun, enjoyable postgame/lategame to collect everything and try completely wild combinations out. In Engage, there are a number of skills and builds and abilities that, while cool in theory, are just never possible to try in-game without insanely slow grinding. Finishing the support log is a nightmare ask and pretty much impossible in one file unless you are insanely devoted to having units healing each other with Micaiah's ring in the corners of high level maps for IRL days on end. It’s pretty much impossible to max all donation levels or collect all bond rings, because again, no NG+. This certainly doesn't matter to many players, but it does to me, so that's why I'm sharing. I wouldn't be surprised if we get some DLC maps designed to help fill this in a little, and personally, I think that sucks. Sure, the DLC maps in Fates/Awakening speed things up a lot, but they aren't absolutely necessary as you can still use map battles easily enough. If they add DLC grinding maps to Engage, they will be the only options available. Lame. Even if it’s a free patch, the game currently feels like it’s missing a basic feature. Withholding that for hype or money reasons is just obnoxious.

The throwback paralogues, meanwhile, are…kind of a slog for me. The Emblems make a fairly bland speech about their motivations and then fight you on a map designed to look like various random maps from their corresponding games (and I mean random — some of these choices were far from iconic and downright inexplicable. Why a random beach for Celica? Why is Sigurd on a Seliph map, albeit a well-known one? Why is Lyn's map from FE6 aaaaaaaaa.) While the gameplay on these maps is tight and challenging, that's pretty much where the well-done fanservice begins and ends. Actual characterization of the Emblems is few and far between, pretty much limited to Bond conversations. In the story proper, they're exposition bots.

The Ugly:

Just coming out to say it: God, these characters look so bad. Alear is hideous. The colors are all over the place and clash with each other horribly. The battle outfits are just eyesores (although the Somniel ones are generally improvements, you can't equip those in battle, so what's the point?) The job outfits are REALLY ugly (that sage outfit is goddamn hideous.) Nearly all the characters all have either Boy Face or Girl Face, and Girl Faces all look like they're about eleven years old. The weird medieval/modern/fantasy/??? mashup look doesn't work for me. Every non-pre rendered cutscene had girl Alear making her blank stupid blob face, and no matter what expression she made she just looked really weird. Her design is, for me, simply so weird and ugly as to be distracting at all times. Meanwhile, so many characters like Yunaka, Panette, and Hortensia are just downright distractingly bad looking. I can't take the face stickers or clown dresses seriously at all, and they're not even fun to look at. Orientalism, as usual, abounds in both some default outfits (Seadall is...so bad) and dress-up options. The artist was a poor choice for FE, but I don't think most of the blame lies at her feet — the choice itself was bad, and there's no direction to speak of when it comes to the overall look of the characters. Most of the countries don't appear to have any coherent cultural identity in clothing designs the way Nohr and Hoshido did, for example (barring Firene's passion for flowers and some recurring patterns among the Brodians.) If it weren't for the copy-pasted faces, many of them would look like they came from different games altogether. Even the generic soldiers look awful. It's disjointed and ugly. The entire design team fell down hard on this one.

The Emblems honestly leave a lot to be desired. Some aren't bad, but that blobby girl face doesn't really work for most of the female Emblems. Celica and Eirika's hair looks atrocious (do they have terrible bedhead or something?) and Leif just looks incredibly off in a way I can't quite define. Design-wise, this is a very bad looking game. Which is a shame, because all the animation upgrades now feel completely wasted on terrible designs.

And, of course, Fire Emblem gonna Fire Emblem: the S-supports are just a mess overall. The datamined ages don't appear to be present in the game proper, but based on the under-18s being made platonic in the NA localization, I'm assuming they're still canon. This means Alear is 17 and capable of marrying a number of people in their twenties and above, even in the localized version. To be fair, I think the localizers were fucked no matter what they did here. Leave in marriage to Anna and the game will rightfully be slammed. Take out every romantic relationship and the backlash will be incredible. But where do you draw the line for a 17-year-old dating a 15-19 y/o? There was just no way to win this one, and I guess going with 18 makes as much sense as anything. This is not me defending the original devs, who suck. This is just me thinking about how the localization team really just could not make any good choice here, thanks to the original game's fucked up "lol you can marry anyone" choices. Whole thing is gross all the way around. There's a pretty small handful of characters that are both left romantic and not creepy choices for Alear, so we're back in the same situation Fates and 3h left us in, where all the super popular avatar ships are just weird and unpleasant and people call you a monster for not liking them. Great, thanks a lot, intsys. All of this being said: the game itself really doesn't include these ages, and most people aren't even going to realize they're a thing. You need to go online to even find out. So who only knows why they exist to begin with (Anna etc romantic S-supports still gonna be real bad no matter what, though.)

And no, there's no romance or paired endings between non-Alear characters, just some vague non-explicit implications in certain a-supports, as per usual, because playersexuality is all that matters to anyone anymore. Let's all publish thinkpieces about how FE said gay rights or whatever though! Woo-hoo!

Verdict:

So, all that being said…Engage is really fun. It is also a hot mess and while the gameplay is overall strong, there are certain aspects that don't seem to have been thought through at all. Its greatest strengths are its map design and focus on core gameplay, but its weaknesses lie in quality of life and options for grinding and more casual fun. There's no postgame/ng+/etc whatsoever despite the game really needing it. And the designs look terrible. I personally don't think it was worth the $60 (maybe more like $40), and mostly decided to go ahead and buy it so I could lend it out to the family. Of course, your mileage may vary, but those are my full thoughts on the game as a whole.

Also don't ask me how it ranks in the series overall, it'll take at least a few months before I can form concrete thoughts on that. All I can say it doesn't inspire sheer frothing rage and I will probably play it again. No the best FE game but not the worst either. That's all I got.

Stan Sommie.

#txt #elyos #lace reviews

15 notes · View notes

airlock · 1 year

Note

6, 11, 27!

(pertinent to this ask meme)

#6 - Who's your favorite lord/protagonist?

I may or may not have recently declared a crusade in his name.

(Claude is up there as well also!)

#11 - A character that deserved better?

speaking of which, Claude would have been a prime candidate here, but at least, Three Hopes finally gave him a route that feels like it's his own and not the church's sloppy... firsts. although that route did bring with it a new candidate for this question (they did so little with shahid,)

anyway, god, how does one even begin to choose? I could nominate like half of every female cast from the Kaga era games for one thing. get to the modern games, and you get countless characters who would've benefitted greatly from not being under pressure from being a viable target for the resident customizable protagonist's gaping S-supporting maw. the ones in the middle of the maelstrom are safe from that sort of sweeping problem, but that's not to say they don't have any characters they inidividually did dirty... (Lyn deserved more story relevance, Elincia deserved more time in the limelight in Radiant Dawn, Eirika deserves more respect from the fandom if that counts, and that's just going through protagonists)

anyway, a solid chunk of Awakening's second generation deserved to be in a better game -- perhaps even their own game -- so I guess that's also a big one

#27 - Any fanfics/fan content you’d recommend? (You can plug your own stuff it’s fine)

sneaky creature you are to ask that, considering how much of your stuff I'll rec in a half heartbeat,

anyway, I'm not nearly as avid of a reader as I should be, for being a writer, but here's some of the finest Fire Emblem fanfic that my terrible brain managed not to wander astray from:

Princess of Dawn and its sequels by @wyvern-dork are the ultimate gesture of dedication to a blorbo that I've ever had the privilege of witnessing, let's see, around 80 chapters of so far. y'know, out of the 193 total that are presently up. to describe it only as a novelization of the Akaneia Saga, starring Minerva and featuring Minerva/Palla, would be selling it short. I think the more accurate thing to call it, rather, is the Minerva bible.

not looking for a work that will beautifully gobble up your entire life like that, though? first off all, why aren't you? but second of all, you can still get your Minerva/Palla from the same tap in shorter form: in Blades of Champions, where the two of them are some of the tryhardingest fencers in the whole modern alternate universe

and to complete the hat-trick on recs for this particular friend's works, there's Fingers Through the Sand. in this fic, Luthier dies at war and Delthea's journey to completely mishandle her grief eventually takes her across the sea and to befriend another magical powerhouse with a heart full of grief -- Linde. it will hurt you perfectly while dazzling you with stuff about magic

but lest you think I'm letting you off without another Akaneia rec with lots of magic in it -- as if; here's simplicity by name, the delightful gift I was given for nagamas 2021. it's Merric/Arlen, albeit with some flexibility as to how romantic you read their interactions here exactly, also they're both magnificently trans of gender in there

and I'm not done with the magic yet, or with the ones I've managed to prompt out onto existance. after all, @dornishsphinx‘s May You Arrive at Fertile Phthia dotted that year's FE Rarepair Exchange for me with some of the most evocative (and, at least once, haunting) descriptions of magic I've ever seen. besides that, it also has an intriguing Erk/Nino story largely set after Binding Blade, ie, well after they've both disappeared. it is deliciously detailed, and even has a bunch of Homeric references if that happens to be something you're interested in

while we're at Elibe, @royaltyjunk's the pain in my heart cannot be shared (i really miss you) deserves a mention at the very least because Lyn opening a text convo with Hector with "order bitch" remains one of the most beautifully in-character things I've ever seen for her and it's the first line of the piece- besides that, it's also a modern AU story taking place in our here world, but one might say that it's still about how much Lyn misses the plains.

anyway, let's cap this off with a hat-trick of @queenlua recs, notwithstanding that this tag there is entirely redundant with the other notifications she's about to be getting for this post- anyway, the first one of them is Silent World, a three-chapterer in which Naesala attempts to ruin Micaiah and Sothe's relationship for shits and giggles. it's not quite SFW and it does in fact feature Micaiah/Sothe, but if you're fine with both of those things, then you may join in me suddenly finding Sothe a much more interesting character than you may have originally figured (plus, that Micaiah and Naesala are great characters should require no convincing, but they're still in peak form here, so, that's just Oops! All Interesting)

and here's another three-chapterer while I'm at it -- Where the River Meets the Sea. it's a Claude/Hilda story that doesn't skirt around the dodgy history between Hilda and Almyra -- the opposite, in fact, as that's one of the central themes. the other being that these two are both extremely nonconfrontational people and, sometimes, that's not a good thing. anyway, Lorenz writes a strongly worded letter in this, so, that's the real #1 reason why you should go read it right now

and I'm not done asking you to enjoy Lorenz content either; for that matter, neither am I done with the modern AUs. because summer is miles and miles away is the white whale that I will always be kindly, playfully, yet persistently prodding the author about picking back up someday. it's a Claude/Lorenz story where all the Garreg Mach people are Harvard graduates, Claude is the tech startup bro he was always meant to be, Lorenz hasn't matured quite as fast as he did in canon without a war to light a fire in his ass, and Hilda is great

plus, there's always my own work to recommend, but I take in pride in all the stuff I got to make these days, so, it's hard to pick and choose just a handful. you could always check out my ao3 page and read every last one of them. but to select a few regardless: The Winter Bird is my love letter to all of the Dawn Brigade's obscure underappreciated blorbos; Forests and People features Jamke, Edain, Dew, and probably some of the funniest lines I've ever managed to get into a piece; Building Trust, slightly longer-form than my usual fare, is an ongoing effort to make Catria/Clair happen -- you know, on my part, on their parts, and on Minerva and Palla's parts, with the time they have to spare while they're not flirting with each other -- and if you're in luck I might actually finish the fourth and final chapter this year; and then there's my most recent piece, MozghuzCon, where I drastically exceed my own expectations vis-a-vis story length for a spot of modern AU Bernadetta/Marianne where they're both very transgender, very neurodivergent, and very nerdy.

#ask meme answers #Fire Emblem is tagged in this post #queenlua #whops; not me having to sleep on this post to finish writing all these fic recs #I couldn't spare a word less for any of 'em though. READ 'EM.

8 notes · View notes