#- then she cannot be afraid.

[egophiliac]

starting off with an amuse-bouche of some of my initial favorite bits! y'all, this update was WILD.

[vaguely-concerned]

fun detail I only put into context after seeing the post-fade jail romance scenes with all the companions: lucanis is the only one where rook is surprised when they realize he's there as he starts talking, because they didn't hear him come in haha. (Bellara and Neve knock before entering, like relatively normal people fhsda. Harding's scene starts in medias res but from the staging my vibe is that she and Rook entered the room together. Taash walks into the room ahead of Rook. Davrin comes in through a door left open for him -- Rook is standing with their back turned but they clearly expected him, they just smile a bit and don't seem surprised. Emmrich of course takes you to the Grand Necropolis for the top goth hookup since Mary Shelly fucked on her parents' graves, the man quite simply never misses.)

lucanis has also closed the door behind him without rook noticing. old assassin habits die hard I suppose lol. he totally still accidentally jumpscares the others without meaning to all the time because he moves around quietly when he doesn't think about it, I know this in my heart. I wonder if he was just... looking at them for a while before he spoke up.

[mrmeepsmadmind]

i love when ppl draw bumblebee like the happy little creachure he is but also i love when people draw bumblebee like he's had 500 beers in the last 1 hour and still the pain won't even ebb

[gunsatthaphan]

🏳️‍🌈!!!

[mysweetsinfulobsessions]

The softness of Caitlyn with Vi during this scene makes me feral

[teehee-vibes]

Finally started listening to Riptide, new hyperfixation just dropped

[gothemme]

oh vi the person you couldve been

[trappedinafantasy37]

POV: Your evil murder kitten's mask has slipped and you can see how deep she is drowning in fear and paranoia.

[tevos]

imagine the woman you're dating letting slip the L word by accident and you're just not there enough, not yet ready, to say it back but you promise her you will be (it won't take that long) and you beg her to be patient with you and you kiss her and you go to bed sleeping beside her and you think everything is okay, and the next morning you leave her at breakfast with secret plans in mind to spoil her for her birthday, but the next time you hear from her she tells you she's leaving the country right now immediately and don't contact her she'll call you tomorrow. like. fuck 🥹

[ratatatastic]

quite honestly i think they both have their fingers stuck like that...(x)

[randomnameless]

Why do the FEH devs insist on ignoring Nabatean lore so much?

I recently had a surprisingly cordial discussion on redshit with someone about the "nabateans = colonisers" take, and one of the main points raised was that the game was purposedly foggy around Nabateans/Sothis/their story because it would obviously favor a certain narrative (and thus make another narrative look, uh, not that marketable anymore).

To be honest, we still ended up with a product that had a lead go "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and yet that lead is still marketable enough to have raunchy cipher cards and 5 FEH alts, so I actually wonder if, while pissing on that lore had that purpose, it was ultimately pointless since Supreme Leader can still sell goodies despite her incarnation in FE16.

And not only Supreme Leader - but the entirety of WC where we basically have 70% of the cast crying/complaining about their "mixed blood" or lack of and basically adding their 10 cents to the "this race and its blood is the reason why the world sucks".

I mean, can you imagine Sylvain selling any goodies and alts if Flayn replied to his "wah wah people only are kind to me and want to fuck me because I have Nabatean blood :(" by some uncharacteristic "good for you, I have to hide my ears, had to dye my hair, have to lie about my family because if the truth is found out about my identity, I will be hunted and vivisected like an animal and harvested for parts by people who call my kin abominations - just like what happens in the game where the same people who call my kin "abominations" ally with a classmate who calls me a creature and pretends I am incapable of human feelings based on my race".

FE Fodlan's main selling point is its cast of students, for various reasons, but even if I tried to kid myself, Nopes and FEH made it clears : students are the main selling point.

If you spare more time and attention to the Nabatean plot/lore, the students either grow from "likeable" to "despicable" or worse, you won't gaf about them because yeah sure, Hilda might be upset because people expect things from her due to her crust, but it would feel like a "peanut" compared to Seteth's irrational (granted, it's not so irrational since GW exists) fear that Flayn's newest friends would dissect her if they learnt she was a Nabatean, and being conflicted by finally letting her have human friends and form bonds she crave, or protect her due to the trauma from the genocide of their species.

Don't get me wrong, I love peanuts, I mean, not everyone can have a tragik of loaded backstory!

And yet, given how this verse's DNA is "can you fight against the red emperor who uwus about you", they had to add copious amounts of Earl Grey to their games so there's no clear-cut factions :

The "Your alien blood and its influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command" vs "I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

is turned to :

"Your alien blood Crests and its your church's influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command"

"I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

Sprinkle with the cast's hammering here and there that the "reforms" might be needed - but never develop on what they are - and add a few baseless and groundless takes as a toping (basically everything Claude says about tolerance and the general "isolationism/foreign policy" stuff) and you get FE Fodlan where the Red Emperor's war isn't seen as the catastrophe it is in the other entries from the series!

Now, for FEH...

FWIW, the F!F!Billy's trailer had them try to explain that Sothis was a bit pissed about her slaughtered/massacred children when Nopes never gave any reason about why she was pissed - maybe on Billy's behalf bcs Jerry's dead, but come on, she would indeed deserve the medal of the worst parent in the franchise if that was the case, since Billy can murder her daughter without Sothis taking over ! - but given that they cannot write/go against the source game those characters are from.

They tried a bit, with B!Supreme Leader and Hegemongard's FB, but then it stopped (because she had no "new unit" released since then lol) and I can understand why : Hegemongard came out before the Supreme Emblem, and Hegemongard hates dragons who are seen/perceived as gods by some of their human followers. Come FE17, and now Supreme Emblem accepts Alear because they are "one of the good ones". We can come up with HCs and details and talk about what are emblems or if Hegemongard's views were only hers at the end of AM all day long... But imo, Doylist wise, it still feels it's a retcon because the devs from the main games tried to scrap and remove the most "controversial" traits she had.

For the other characters... Well, you see what Marianne is in FEH (but even in her base games), she's one of the few characters who reacts - in a way - to the partial history about relics and demonic beasts and all... only to give sad uwus to Maurice.

FE16 (and Nopes) refused to have any "student" character react to the Nabatean lore/reveal, about what are relics and all. There are no lines, Claude shared some knowledge in the explore section of VW's last chapter, but we don't have anyone muse or think or even talk about what are relics, what are crests, and what kind of fuckery their ancestors or the ancient humans of Fodlan did.

With that in mind, FEH can't do much : either they write Marianne in a retcon-y way like what happened for Hegemongard (and they're not afraid to piss on characterisation, look at Lyon!), or they flanderise her "character" and develop her around 3 lines she had in the game in her paralogue, and continue to give sad uwus about Momo when he was at best a guy who slaughtered and murdered so much that he abused the Nabatean turned into a relic to the point where he turned in a demonic beast even if he had a matching crest, or at worst, had been part of Nemesis's piñata party in Zanado and was something of a genocider.

Tldr :

Why FE Fodlan never gaf about Nabateans : earl grey + the marketable cast has to stay marketable and you can't sell peanuts at the same price you'd sell swordfish

Why FEH dgaf about Nabatean lore : they can't afford to retcon characters + they have to sell peanut alts with the same seasoning they had in their base game.

For what it's worth though, I think FEH is more daring than the base game(s) given how they gave more lines and screentime to Rhea - through her different alts - than GW. And they even designed her Halloween!alt's lines to piss on some of Claude's assertions, while the various FB involving members of the church also - indirectly - reply to some accusations thrown their way in FE16 when, FE16, never gave them an opportunity or lines to explain that those takes were full of dung.

*"but random, maybe she doesn't know that the crests she often decries is "dragon blood"!"

It's highly debatable, especially given what she and Hubert throw to Billy in CF - but even if she doesn't, Doylist wise we still have a character who, knowingly or not, says "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and who is never called out on her prejudice. That's more of an issue regarding the general writing though, she has to be a red emperor and took pages from Ashnard's book, and yet, the player must still feel bad and want to romance her, so her mindest/goal cannot be looked at too closely, because, I guess, even the devs thought it would be difficult to romance her (thus sell goodies!) if more light was shed on the "blood from this race corrupts our people" schtick -> which in turn would also make characters whose backstory and gimmick rely on "crying about crests" be way less likeable, thus marketable and able to sell goodies.

[littlefankingdom]

~ Batman: Detective Comics (2016)

The way he runs to her and hold her, ready to hunch over and protect her with his body... For him, she is his daughter.

[crimeronan]

I'm rereading Chapter 2 of why did love put a gun in my hand and the bit where Hunter says "It's just his temper, he doesn't mean to do it" is making me so sad. I'm used to thinking of Hunter as the character with the most accurate read on Belos in this AU but even HERE he doesn't seem to realize how calculated the abuse is. 😟😟😟

i went back to remember what the full context for that bit is and ough. god. yeah. it's a gut punch:

hunter is Certainly the character with the most accurate read on how violent and dangerous belos can be. but even so, he can't conceptualize the level to which he's been manipulated....

when belos hurts HIM, that's just fulfilling a mutual contract between them. sometimes belos needs to hurt somebody and he can't help it and he and hunter both know it's best if hunter takes that on, right?? no need for anybody else to be involved. keep it in the family

hunter saying "i know how to talk to him" because talking to belos on luz's behalf has always worked Before, because belos wants it to, because that's the best way to keep hunter loyal...

"he's still the same person he's always been, he doesn't want to hurt you at all" with the implication of "he DOES want to hurt me and always has, but that's all right." boy.......

if hunter had a truly, TRULY accurate understanding of belos, then he would have either run away with luz or smuggled her out of the castle ages ago. because he would understand that he really.... has no control. over the amount of danger that luz is in.

instead he needs the belos situation to be one that's self-contained, as long as hunter keeps playing his role. if he controls the situation then he can keep luz safe. and consequently it's also his fault if luz gets hurt. because hunter is supposed to do Anything to keep her from getting hurt.

that is his Job.

[thebirdandhersong]

Lol

[witchtwig]

Rio: Named, Denied

I've seen a few people theorizing that the reason that Agatha never calls Rio by her name to her face during the run of AAA is because that's not the name she used call Rio. (The only time she uses the name is during the morgue scene, and then it is spoken to Billy, not Rio.) And I think it is a fun consideration, but I feel the answer is a lot simpler.

Agatha spends most of her time during the show denying Rio's personhood. She cannot make that mistake again. She cannot allow herself to view Rio as a person, allow her that vulnerable part of her heart. At least, outloud she cannot do that.

She denies Rio's heart. She denies her scar. She denies her name. She even calls her a "bad boy" to write off Rio, to joke around and not really acknowledge what their relationship was (because in a lot of ways Rio is the opposite of a bad boy--she's the laws of nature, she's puckish and fay in her behaviour certainly, but she is a rule follower). She can only afford, for her own heart's sake, to see Rio as Death.

And it is interesting then that Rio's name is Rio Vidal. A name that means River of Life, because acknowledging that, beyond even her own fear of allowing Rio back in--it is also acknowledging Rio isn't simply Death. She is The Green Witch, she is the cycle of all living things. She is (99.9% likely) the other parent to Nicholas.

Agatha in her sensitive, guarded heartbroken heart cannot let herself see Rio as a person--when she does, when she listens to the scar story--she immediately allows herself to embrace her love again. She is still so deeply in love with Rio, but she is so afraid of it.

But yeah, those are just my thoughts. I still have so many thoughts about Agatha, Rio, Nicholas, and Billy especially that I eventually need to sort out (including all of the textual nods in the series to Rio and Nicholas' connection/Rio as the other parent).

[comradecowplant]

SHE ADMIT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!