#“it's complicated” understatement of the fucking century lmao

[dirtyoldmanhole]

i was clicking around on FE wiki and it reminded me that bifrost exists. aka super legendary 'revive one (1) of your people' staves aka reskinned Aum.

the staff that boss!gunter drops in revelation when you fight/"kill" him. that staff.

why the hell does he have it?

the only other time it shows up in fates is a random treasure chest in conquest near the end (in hoshido), so it's not really tied to the character or a location in an obvious way.

but it's the kind of thing that i can't see anankos giving to him because why help your enemy?

we're firmly in headcanon territory here, but ngl i could see gunter checking out some of the chests beforehand (he does collect some treasure for you if you decide not to fight mikoto two chapters before, so not an unreasonable assumption). he grabs it, holds onto it.

he's obviously not a staff user so he doesn't intend it for himself... kind of begs the question that he knows corrin's going to defeat/kill him and basically has it for corrin to find.

even after straight up betraying corrin he's still looking out for you.

:') p a i n

[reachfolk]

1-5 for the character development questions for Alexandria!

💛 from @korvanjund

this took forever to write cause of course i had waY too much to say omfl, but it was super fun!! tysm for the ask darlin <3

what (or who) would your character die for? live for?

family, family, family!! literally everything for alexi goes back to family. she may be on bad terms with her father's side (understatement of the century, but that's for question 3 lmao), but she would do literally anything for her siblings. protecting them is the main reason she's willing to overcome every fear in her fight against alduin. of course, she's also just as close with her aunt ursula. and she may have... a complicated relationship with her mother and father, she loves them and would do anything to keep them safe.

as for what she'd die for, she's just as dedicated to the cause of freeing the reach from nord control as most reachfolk. it's largely because she sees the reachfolk as an extension of her family. the reach is her home and she's so unabashedly proud of that. granted, she isn't as extreme in her views as the forsworn, but we're not gonna get into the highkey racism in the way bethesda wrote that whole faction lmao.

who (or what) does your character love most in the world? why?

this is such a hard question to answer cause like *slaps roof of alexi* this sweet girl can fit so much love in her. if she like, absolutely HAD to pick a handful of people, it would be her siblings (no, she couldn't pick between them even with a gun to her head, and tbh neither could they). i could literally go on for HOURS about her siblings and why they're all so close, but the tldr is that they're really the only people in the world that Get her. their social standing has always been in a really precarious place given how drastically different their mother and father's backgrounds are, and so they never particularly fit in with most kids from their social class. but they also didn't get very much of a chance to connect with their reachfolk heritage. i won't go so far as to call them outcasts, but they were definitely seen as... different, and there weren't many opportunities for them to feel like normal kids except for when they were with each other. but the other people alexandria is closest to are her aunt ursula, bothela (vanilla npc, the lady who runs the hag's cure), and ophelia from her coven.

that covers it for people, but the thing she loves most in the world is easily alchemy! it literally shows in every part of her mannerisms and shapes the whole way she looks at the world. a huge part of why she's so connected to namira is because she's so drawn to even the most grotesque things in the world, because there's opportunity in all of them to create something new and helpful. it's why she got so close to bothela, bc she's the one that trained alexi in alchemy since she was a kid.

who (or what) does your character hate most in the world? why?

this is ironic considering the first question but literally it's her uncles, thonar and thongvor silver-blood lol. i'm sure anyone who's been in markarth knows that they aren't exactly stand up dudes, but after the whole issue with the forsworn conspiracy came out, she probably had to be physically restrained by her companions to keep her from killing them then and there. she spent a huge part of her childhood knowing there was a target on her back and the backs of her parents and siblings, because there's nothing thonar and thongvor want more than to get rid of them entirely. despite the fact that she had such a fancy upbringing, her uncles were the reason none of them were ever given a real chance to rest. and then there's sooo much to say about how that exacerbated isobel's anxiety issues, which all of her kids including alexi later inherited. alexi literally carries that pain in her genes and she's never been able to get away from it no matter how hard she's tried.

again, this is one of those things i could talk about for ages, so if u wanna hear about one of the many times her uncles actively made an attempt on the lives of her parents and siblings, feel free to send me an ask abt it i'll happily tell u everything. there's like a 30k fic idea there but i have the gist of it all written in my drafts lol.

on top of all of that, she definitely has a LOT of issues with everything they do in the reach. like, ulfric stormcloak gets an honorary mention for this question, and the fact that they support him sure as fuck doesn't help. and considering the fact that she's been sent to cidhna mine and often helped out in the warrens, she's seen the worst of what the silver-bloods did to her people.

what is your character's main goal? does this goal change, or does it remain consistent throughout the story?

tbh this one is also hard to answer bc the game devs of bethesda are COWARDS and they didn't give us this option in the game even though all the pieces were there, but i feel like alexi would almost inevitably join the rebellion to liberate the reach. when she left home, she was still trying to make sense of things, and she just needed to put some distance between herself and all the things tearing her in different directions. she'd spent so much of her life trying to placate everyone that she couldn't figure out what her goal is until she was in a place where she didn't have to think about everyone else.

but no matter what, i think all roads lead to home for her. she may have had a strained relationship with the forsworn (esp when madanach was in prison and working for her uncles in secret), but she'd join when madanach is given free reign to control the rebellion as he sees fit rather than have to bend backwards to satisfy thonar. i personally hc that after that, the forsworn's actions are more controlled and they start to operate less like a disjointed faction of bandits and more like, yknow, people fighting for an actual cause. once she rebuilds her faith in the rebellion, she'd definitely join up.

does your character achieve their main goal? if so, does achieving this goal satisfy them?

again, hard to say since there's no in-game way for this to happen bc the devs were weak, BUT in my heart of hearts i like to pretend that there was a proper questline where u join up with madanach and retake the reach. after everything they've been through, i really hope it'll be canon that they finally are able to liberate themselves. i do think alexandria and her siblings would all do their part to help the rebellion, and their auntie was probably a proponent of the forsworn's rule during the great war, so they're in the clear. i'd imagine the situation is more complicated with their parents.

regardless of whether or not the forsworn are ever able to retake the reach, alexi definitely spends most of her life running around skyrim with the hope of fighting against people's prejudices against the reachfolk. (in the verse where she's the ldb) she kind of understands her role as an essential figurehead to the movement and how she's key to earning the nord's respect. i mean, it'd be hard to argue that they're evil savages when one of their own literally saved every single mortal soul on nirn. so, yeah, i think she feels pretty satisfied with that lol