#4) her grandfather. was extremely op when he existed

[sweetearthandnorthernsky]

morinel is. such a fun character because i'm never sure How op is too op for her

[misedejem]

I wrote 75 headcanons about Kannao

25 for Kanji, 25 for Naoto, 25 for them as a couple

Why?

Why not.

 Kanji Tatsumi

1.     He does actually need glasses, but he was hesitant to ask for contacts, so he spent most of P4 struggling to see until Naoto brought up that he looked like he was having a hard time. He wore contacts for a bit, but eventually he just stuck to glasses.

2.     The scar on his head was a source of speculation for the other members of the Investigation Team for years, because he never cared to explain, resulting in some very wacky theories. Eventually they found out it was just from a fight with a gang member, but considering he got it when he was twelve, the story is still pretty interesting.

3.     He hates mentioning medical stuff to anybody, but he’s prone to fainting spells out of nowhere. Thankfully, it never happened in the TV, which several members of the IT very angrily said to him when he blacked out in front of them one day.

4.     He’s the spitting image of his father, only with shorter hair. He could never let it grow out for that reason.

5.     He’s the only one from the Investigation Team B to go to college. He studies textiles and trains to become a teacher in Tokyo. He ends up being an art teacher at a middle school.

6.     He’s actually pretty good at literature and humanities subjects, though he struggles applying those skills in a school setting until a teacher who hasn’t given up on him yet helps him through them.

7.     Rise forced him to take dance classes the minute he moved to the city because he was ‘super good at it dammit’. Ditto the drums. He can sing too, but she’s not allowed to know that.

8.     He actually just tends to go along with Rise’s plans a lot, partially because he knows her well enough to know stopping her is futile, and also because she understands his tastes very well once she learns what they are

9.     He doesn’t dislike the way he used to dress in high school, but it wasn’t quite him. It needed more cuteness, and softer colours, which is how he started to dress once he graduated high school.

10.  The black hair and glasses stay forever, but when he’s sewing, he still wears his hair pushed back. Yukiko gave him a hairband for it when she noticed him growing slowly more irritated with it getting in his eyes.

11.  As well as his nose and ears, he also gets an eyebrow piercing in college.

12.  He manages to make a small group of friends in college, with his course being the perfect way for him to find likeminded individuals who applaud his skills rather than shunning them

13.  Kanji is the best cook in the Investigation Team. His baking skills, especially, are exemplary.

14.  He has an online, worldwide store where he sells his plushies and the occasional drawing and outfit. He’s semi-fluent in English by the time he graduates college, so when Naoto travels abroad sometimes he goes too and hits up the conventions.

15.  Ann is his go-to model once they meet. He helps her with outfits for a college final once and they work together so well that she sticks with him.

16.  The reason Koromaru dislikes him is that he can tell he’s kinda rough with physical affection. He doesn’t realise it for the longest time because nobody points it out. He is really good with animals otherwise though, and he’s also really good with kids.

17.  He’s a back-up fighter for the Shadow Ops should they need him, by virtue of being married to their resident detective.

18.  The main reason he keeps training his body though is actually because Chie is determined to beat him at arm wrestling one day, and he’s too proud to let anyone win without a fight.

19.  When Naoto’s cat, Mochi, had kittens, he got to name the one they kept. His name is Pocky. He has a little leather jacket that Kanji painstakingly crafted one night when he couldn’t sleep.

20.  He needs a lot of alcohol to get drunk (which makes nights out with the IT interesting for him, given that the others are all serious lightweights)

21.  If you give him a life sim, especially that one with the cute animals, you will not see him again for days at a time. He’s not huge on video games, but life sims will take over his life

22.  Even if he does retreat into a cave to build a pristine village though, he will still probably emerge with a smooth face because he doesn’t grow facial hair very easily. He can, but it takes a while.

23.  He can’t sleep as easily unless he’s holding something soft.

24.  The easiest time to get him to speak his mind about certain things is when he’s sick and more vulnerable, which doesn’t happen very often. For example, the IT had no idea their jokes at his expense bothered him until he confessed it while extremely out of it on cold medication one time. He doesn’t remember saying it either, but he did notice they were more sincere with him after that.

25.  Everybody in the Investigation Team ends up facing their Shadow again in their adulthood, but by the time Shadow Kanji returns, Kanji has become so accepting of the self the Shadow had represented in the past that he takes on a completely different form. Naoto is the only other person with this same experience.

Naoto Shirogane:

1.     By the time they stop growing, Naoto is nearly 5’1” and they absolutely make it a point to let their friends know

2.     They don’t really know how to look after their hair at all, hence the cap and general messiness. They tend to forget about it until it becomes too long and gets all tangled.

3.     They’re very accident prone, and are covered in a lot of scars from their childhood. The worst one though is one on their back from that time Sho stabbed them at Junes.

4.     One of said scars came from their neighbours’ huge dog biting them when they were five. To this day, they’re still absolutely terrified of big dogs.

5.     They’ve experienced panic attacks for most of their life, though they occur less frequently as an adult.

6.     They resemble their mother more than their father, but the height comes from the Shirogane side. Grampa Shirogane was quite small as well.

7.     They are the only member of the Investigation Team who can tolerate Rise’s cooking. The others suspect potential spice immunity.

8.     As well as piano and ballroom dance, they were also trained in a choir as a child, but fell out of favour with it in their teens. The Velvet Siblings hold a final Theatre Showdown with their guests in 2019, and this is when Naoto fully rediscovers their musical side again.

9.     If you ask Naoto how much those specially tailor-made clothes cost, they will mumble and then change the subject

10.  Naoto returns to Yasogami as a full-time student in third year after Mitsuru enrols Labrys in the school out of nowhere, intent on investigating her motives.

11.  They hold the school’s record for highest graded paper for decades. It was on Sherlock Holmes.

12.  Naoto has written a lot of Sherlock Holmes fanfiction as a kid. The others are aware this exists, but are not allowed to read it.

13.  They don’t attend college after graduation, but don’t have much time to figure out what they will do. The mental shutdown incidents begin the same year, and Naoto decided to help the Shadow Operatives with it as much as possible.

14.  Naoto hates the title ‘detective prince’, and actively tries to shed it. Akechi was a godsend in that light.

15.  They actually hate the media’s attention in general but figured that they may as well use the platform they have for a good cause. They want to be the kind of person they needed to see on TV as a kid, but they very vocally opposed the ‘detective prince’ crap until it ended – which it did quite abruptly when the truth about Akechi came out.

16.  Much of what Goro Akechi likes, he got from Naoto’s indirect influence, from the way he dresses to knowledge of that jazz club in Kichijoji. They’re more of a regular there than he is.

17.  Rise set them up on social media, but they don’t really get how to use it. Their fans discovered it though, so they still have a fair number of followers.

18.  Naoto has a slight friendly rivalry with the people who run a local escape room place. Their goal as a company is to one day leave Naoto stumped.

19.  Naoto doesn’t actually like coffee. Too bitter. Tea is their go-to.

20.  They got a standard-size motorcycle at eighteen but doesn’t drive a car. Yakushiji and Kanji refuse to let them behind the wheel.

21.  After becoming comfortable with their childish side once again, they became openly enamoured once more with Neo Featherman, and have a lot of very expensive figures on display in their house. They even cosplayed at a convention once with some of Kanji’s college friends (though it was difficult to convince them to do it)

22.  Yosuke was paid back all the money the IT owed him shortly after Naoto joined the team and discovered they were mooching from him. Yosuke doesn’t know for certain where it came from.

23.  They adopted a kitten they named Mochi in 2017, who they found abandoned outside a supermarket (in an old box that had contained a shipment of mochi, hence the name). She’s an orange tabby, and she became something of a comfort animal when Naoto was at their lowest.

24.  Their grandfather died from an illness in early February 2017. They didn’t handle his loss well, and they ended up falling into a depression that they never really came out of, though they weren’t able to admit that they weren’t okay. It was an encounter with their Shadow that eventually led to them seeking help.

25.  While they’re still a Private Detective in theory, most of the work they do following the events of P5 are Shadow-related. The Shirogane Agency became one of the Shadow Operatives’ closest allies. Makoto Niijima is currently doing an internship there (they met after the Phantom Thieves helped the SOs deal with another incident in Tokyo in 2018)

Kannao

1.     Naoto ‘came down with a fever’ around the time of the Love Meets Bonds festival that had absolutely nothing to do with their friend Kanji suddenly seeming way cooler than before.

2.     The ‘fever’ got worse when they started having classes together in school, and Naoto agreed to help Kanji with his college entrance exams.

3.     At this point Kanji had kinda accepted his feelings existed, but were unrequited, and that he didn’t want that to interfere with their friendship. Naoto was one of the only people who really got him, and he didn’t want to lose them so soon after building a rapport with them. Little did he know.

4.     Naoto was the first one to eventually confess, once Rise, Yu, Grampa, Nanako, several books and google searches, and a random stall vendor at the summer festival in their hometown had convinced them that the weird feeling in their chest wasn’t actually an illness. They did it in the summer of 2013, at said festival.

5.     They were also the first one to say they were in love. The realisation hit them one day as they were watching Kanji play a cute life-simulator game in his college dorm.

6.     While they’re no longer awkward around each other all the time, there are ways they can still make the other very flustered. For example, with Naoto, it’s any time Kanji is wearing a suit.

7.     They got married at Christmas in 2019. Kanji had a proposal planned. Naoto misread the vibe and proposed early and spontaneously on the day he had planned to, though he still got to go ahead with his as well.

8.     Kanji doesn’t really like PDA. They get a lot of people staring at them anyway because of how they look, or because Naoto is recognisable from the TV, and he doesn’t want to make the stares worse. In private though, he’s the more affectionate one.

9.     Naoto accidentally fuelled the rumours that ‘Kanji Tatsumi is in a biker gang’ again when they first started dating by parking their motorcycle outside the textile shop. Ma Tatsumi was quick to tell anybody who questioned it that it belonged to her son’s significant other long before she was supposed to know they were dating

10.  Kanji keeps forgetting to specify which number in his phone is for Naoto’s personal phone and which is for work, which has lead to such wonderful anecdotes as ‘I accidentally hired a private investigator to fix my broken car’

11.  They’re both used to the other bolting upright in bed at 3am because they’ve had an idea for a new pair of socks for the cat, or another hypothesis for a case. Naoto also wakes up quite a bit due to nightmares.

12.  They lived together with the rest of the Investigation Team since 2016, but they don’t get an apartment as just the two of them until the year they get married. It doesn’t take long before there is an entire room in that apartment filled from floor to ceiling with toys.

13.  Kanji is much tidier and more organised than Naoto, even though Naoto isn’t bad, so he’s the one who figures out where things should go. Decorating the house is his favourite thing

14.  They are the unparalleled board-game kings. Somehow, they’re an unstoppable force of nature when paired together for them.

15.  Surprising everyone, Naoto is the more likely of the two to use pet names. They are the only person who won’t be threatened if they call him ‘Kan-chan’.

16.  Before it became common knowledge amongst Naoto’s fanclub that Kanji was their boyfriend, they thought he was their bodyguard. (The Risette fandom had the same idea)

17.  Kanji never helped that rumour die, considering that when the media tries to shove cameras into Naoto’s face, he yells obscenities and gets in the way until the footage is unusable.

18.  They have a daughter in 2025, when Naoto is 30 and Kanji is 29. She’s named Chihiro, mostly because it’s like a phonetic portmanteau of Kanji’s father’s name (Koichi Tatsumi) and Naoto’s grandfather’s (Yasuhiro Shirogane). But also, that was the name of the actor who played Naoto’s favourite version of Feather Swan. Naoto isn’t creative enough to come up with a portmanteau.

19.  They are each 80% of the other’s impulse control

20.  Naoto couldn’t care less that Kanji isn’t the brightest, despite common misconception. The Shirogane family, and the people who work for it, always placed emphasis on a person’s intelligence (hence Yu’s requirement for a lot of knowledge to start the Fortune link) but Naoto is strongly opposed to that mindset. To them, it’s freeing to have somebody around who doesn’t want to be an intellectual 95% of the time.

21.  They are very private when it comes to their relationship, to the point that sometimes even friends or colleagues have no idea what’s going on in their lives until it’s let slip somehow. When Junpei and Yukari – the Shadow Ops Naoto worked with the least - found out they were expecting, it first had to be explained to them that they’d been married for five years.

22.  They sometimes get mistaken for father and son at restaurants until their early thirties, to which point Naoto will make a scene of ordering a lot of alcohol to prove they’re old enough. Naoto can’t really handle booze.

23.  They’re really bad at making face to face announcements about anything big to their friends, so they always find some way to do it elaborately instead. They told the IT they were having a kid, for example, through a series of puzzles put together by Naoto

24.  Kanji loves making couples costumes and outfits, but then gets too embarrassed to wear them

25.  Naoto is a fiend for stealing Kanji’s clothes as pyjamas. They are large and warm, and when they’re travelling for work, they remind them of him. It got to the point where Kanji would pack a shirt of his secretly in Naoto’s suitcase, knowing that’s why his clothes always went missing.

[0-niom-0-blog]

Analysis on Story Progression of GRW

For a while before the release, there were a lot of discussions about which branch in the SBC to take down first. After going through all the missions and reach 100% destruction for three times, I feel like I can make a guess now. I’m open to discussion and I wish people would like to share their opinions on this topic as well... Basically just trying to figure out a reasonable sequence to finish missions. This is a very long post. SPOILER ALERT

General sequence: Influence –Smuggling – Security – Production Main reasoning: 1. Ghosts might want to hide at the beginning to avoid unwanted attention so that they have time to gather intel and resources, some buchones in Influence branch offers such opportunities. 2. Exposing Sueño fast is important. Maybe not a lot of people would join the Rebels right away but more people might ignore the Ghosts’ actions against SBC. 3. Cutting off the Smuggling operations, no money gets in and no product gets out. When those talented, silent and secret smuggling routes no longer exists, an army has little use. 4. Sueño’s actions toward El Muro’s brother and El Yayo are very intense and irrational. It would be understandable if it happens after losing Nidia, since Nidia’s betrayal is extremely hurtful for Sueño. Also, if Sueño cares so much about his image that he has to kill La Plaga, it is possibly because no one can help manipulate the public anymore. Pressuring Yayo with his family is the second least wise thing Sueño could do, and Sueño might have done that out of desperation. 5. In real life, production is the one aspect that basically no one has any effective solution to. What can you do about a plant growing in its natural habitat... And if SBC’s market share decreases due to the absence of Smuggling, Production is not much of a problem.

Below are speculations about when each buchon might be taken down. It's mainly just guessing and very verbose... Influence: Carzita – DJ Perico – Ramon Feliz – El Chido – La Santera Smuggling: El Pulpo – Antonio – El Gato – El Cerebro – Boston Reed – El Boquita Security: Yuri & Polito – El Pozolero – La Plaga – Carl Bookhart – General Baro Production: Marcus Jensen – Madre Coca – La Gringa – El Emisario – El Wey Influence: Carzita – DJ Perico – Ramon Feliz – El Chido – La Santera The benefit of taking down Influence first is clear. The Ghosts might get more resources and gather support from the general people, as well as finding intels about connections within SBC. For example El Chido offers a lot of names. During the first phase the Ghosts should be trying to hide their operations as they do not have much resources. Two buchones in Influence branch can serve that goal. 1. Carzita holds the connection with a lot of politicians, and politicians are easy to be scared away. That’s an easy target with bonus results, so no reason to wait. Also the whole operation can be blamed on the Rebels, since a lot of Bolivian people are extremely angry that Agua Verde was built into a luxury resort. Ghosts can hide behind that protest movement. The Argentina politician’s scandal could be blamed on his political opponents. 2. DJ Perico is the mouth of SBC, take down him and give the Rebels the opportunity to communicate with Bolivian people is pretty important as a PSY-OP. Both Midas and Weaver know psychology well... Pac Katari knows it too. Having this ability to communicate will make him grateful. Since the Rebels get the most benefit out of this, they are the ones to be blamed. Sueño might wonder why the Rebels suddenly became so confident, but others in the SBC won’t think of USA intervention yet. Also knowing the megalomania of Sueño is helpful in terms of “understanding your enemy”. 3. Poor Ramon. Who is the source that leaks Sueño’s operation though? Bowman? 4. El Chido feels like a random guy. He’s not SBC and is a potential ally. But if he just simply switches side when SBC is still very powerful, it’ll raise doubts. Also, El Chido is just a singer anyway so losing him isn’t that important for SBC as a whole. 5. La Santera is a very weird target so it’s better to be carful. And things always get complicated when religion is involved. Judging from the fact that La Santera has a statue at the Mausoleum, she definitely has some heavy security offered by Sueño. Inside Smuggling: El Pulpo – Antonio – El Gato – El Cerebro – Boston Reed – El Boquita Chronologically, operations to take down Influence and Smuggling might have intersections. Pulpo’s mission might be done pretty early; after Ramon Feliz and before El Chido, Ghosts might be focusing on the smuggling branch for a while 1. El Pulpo comes to Bolivia per Sueño’s request, and Nidia doesn’t like his presence, so he shouldn’t be staying for long. Nidia’s trip to Mexico shouldn’t take long because she won’t just let Pulpo sniffing around at her territory. Window of operation for the Ghosts is small so they have to catch the opportunity. Also, the whole thing is just Nidia’s words against Pulpo’s, and Sueño knows that both of them have personal interests. So Ghosts can hide their involvement. 2.3. Antonio and El Gato sort of have the same level of importance. But El Gato is a known buchon while Antonio is not at the beginning. Problem it, why doesn’t Bowman know Antonio is the boss of Mojocoyo? Ricky mentioned that in his recording “hard target”. If Bowman knows about Antonio and shares the intel with the Ghosts, then it should be Antonio before El Gato, since Antonio is so paranoid he might try to tighten his secrets even further if he sees El Gato being targeted, making it harder to kill him. 4. The Ghosts will likely go back to dealing with the influence department after Antonio and El Gato. Take a break from these filthy slippery geniuses of smuggling and deal with the “angel” El Chido who doesn’t even use a gun... 5. El Cerebro probably learns from El Gato about having a double, and he gathers the intel that staying in Bolivia is dangerous from his fallen colleagues so it’s reasonable that he escapes before the Ghosts can touch him. 6. Boston Reed is behind Antonio because in the intro to Mojocoyo sector Bowman says to visit Mojocoyo before visiting Koani. Putting him in the last since he and Boquita has a pretty solid relationship, also because Boquita’s mission is in Koani... Inside Security: Yuri & Polito – El Pozolero – La Plaga – Carl Bookhart – General Baro 1. First mission of the Ghosts in Bolivia has to be Yuri & Polito. Revenge comes first. Then the Ghosts will turn away and deal with Influence and Smuggling, and when they are back to Security they know that Sueño is aware of their existence, so they don’t have to hide their operations anymore. (So go make some explosions!) 2. The next to fall should be El Pozolero. At this point Sueño should be trying out various methods to eliminate Cardenal’s negative influence. Exposing Pozolero’s would further confirm SBC’s evilness and further undermine Sueño’s operations. Sueño could have try to guide people’s hate toward Unidad since Unidad also delivers bodies to Pozolero, yet at this point after losing half of SBC, every ally is valuable so he wouldn’t do this to harm his relationship with Unidad. 3.4. Defeat two boss to unlock La Plaga. Then go for the training base to cut off Muro’s supply. Nothing to say here. 5. General Baro should be the last in Security branch to be dealt with. The Ghosts need evidences to convince General Baro that SBC is defenseless against CIA. Plus Muro trying to buy off that Unidad officer to fight Sueño should happen after General Baro switches side, like that officer prefers to receive SBC’s bribery while General Baro now refuses... Inside Production: Marcus Jensen – Madre Coca – La Gringa – El Emisario – El Wey Dealing with Production is both easy and hard. It’s easy because the coca fields, the mines, and the factories are fixed targets while the Ghosts can play guerilla. It’s hard because no one can stop coca trees from growing naturally, making it impossible to eradicate cocaine production. Also considering that Pac Katari’s main forces are cocaleros, he is also going to be an obstacle. In fact, saving production to the last is also an effort to maintain the dangerous balance with Pac Katari. To be honest, the narrative sequence in this branch is not important. There’s not much clues for reasoning on this one. Start with Marcus Jensen because Libertad is the urban area, and a school that teaches how to produce cocaine is definitely worth investigation. El Emisario wouldn’t just commit suicide to take blame for his grandfather when he only loses some products; he has to be really desperate and feeling his grandfather’s life is in danger, thus trying to save his family by making the ultimate sacrifice. Putting him at the fourth goes well with the “words of Sueño” video’s narrative. El Wey is in charge of the mining operation; if there’s no cocaine paste his work is nothing. What’s interesting about this period is Pac Katari’s action. Once I was doing a Spotting mission, Pac Katari suggests in the phone call that the Ghosts should destroy less cocaine. Another time I was protecting a Rebel radio, he says the Ghosts let someone lived and there’s rumors flying around. At the end he even turns his back against the Ghosts because he wants to prove that the Rebels can protect the country without the Yankees. It’s pretty obvious that Sueño would be behind the rumor that “Rebels are Yankees’ pet”, since this rumor can help him gain favor among cocaleros who hate the CIA as well as break the relation between Rebels and CIA. Ricky says in his recording that Pac Katari is working with Peruvian Rebels who try to control Peruvian cocaine production. So. At this point, when there are only a few areas left, assuming the Rebel op side mission in other areas are done, it’s prime time for the Rebels. Pac Katari might start to reveal his intentions regardless of CIA’s existence, leading to the final betrayal.

I sincerely appreciate anyone who would real this far thank you thank you thank you so much

I just like the main game so much I need to get this sort out at least for myself

[roxannarambles]

Top 5 Favorite Fire Emblem [The Blazing Blade] Characters

Hey, all! I haven’t done a Top list in a while, so I thought I’d do one for the game I just finished. This is the first and only Fire Emblem I’ve played myself so far, but I do plan on playing more. It seems like such a great series, if this game is anything to go by.

Lots o’ spoilers behind the cut.

1.) Lyndis

This game has three main characters, the young Lords of noble houses that belong to the country of Lycia, a confederation of ruling Marquesses. We first meet Lyn, and her story/campaign acts as a massive prologue and tutorial to the game. The main bulk of the game involves Eliwood’s campaign, where he travels with his good friend Hector and gradually recruits more and more characters into his ragtag army along the way on his mission. This includes running into Lyn again and her joining in on this main adventure.

The trio of Lords are all very enjoyable characters and have good strong chemistry, so it’s a little difficult to choose a favorite. However, Lyn definitely has to be my choice. I suspect part of the reason is that we do meet her first and thus get to know her the longest. You grow attached. 

But it’s more than simply that. Lyn is such a badass. For me, she’s the most enjoyable character to use in battle of the three Lords, and I really enjoyed her story a great deal. She has some interesting depth to her character, whereas Eliwood . . . I’m forced to admit Eliwood is a tad bland. It’s not that Eliwood is bad, but he is so much the ‘hero’ archtype that he lacks much of anything unique or specific to his character. He doesn’t feel like a person so much as he does “hero character! see this is the hero character right here! most important person in the story, yo!” 

Hector has some interesting depth to his character too-- hotheaded and coarse, with poor manners and patience for a Lord, yet absolutely serious about his responsibilties at the end of the day and feircely loyal to his friends. He plays off Eliwood’s polite, well-mannered, even-keeled and peaceloving nature well, but that does mean Hector ends up being a bit more fun of a character of the dynamic. 

Lyndis, meanwhile, comes at this world as a bit of an outsider. She was not raised in nobility; she was raised a Sacaean nomad on the plains, and her identity is very deeply tied to it. She’s thrown into the world of nobility and military politics when a couple knights manage to locate her and tell her of a grandfather and an heirhood she never knew of. Much of her character dynamic is about the tension between these two worlds, as well as her intense devotion to her Sacaean principles and her family and friends. 

Speaking of whom;

2.) Kent and Sain

It feels wrong to not include both of these knights together in the same breath, so forgive my ‘cheat’ of including both in #2. This is because the Caelin knights are introduced to you in the story at the same time as a pair of close friends. Their character dynamic is essential, much like Eliwood and Hector, as they were clearly specifically written to play off one another well. Kent is the stern, straight-laced, uptight knight, chivalrous, utterly devoted to his duties, prim and proper. Sain is his bawdy friend, an easygoing sensationalist and romancer who largely spends his time trying to woo the ladies with his knightly charms. They are the second and third characters you meet besides Lyn, so again, you get the chance to know them for a very long time and you cannot help but become quickly attached to them. 

Of the pair, Kent is my favorite. You might find this odd since I mentioned previously I found the footloose Hector to be more interesting than the more serious and even-keeled Eliwood. But what can I say? I adore Kent to bits. He is serious to an extreme, and there is nothing more enjoyable than a flustered Kent. Beneath all the careful trappings of a proper knight lurks a man of repressed passions and uncertanties, which can largely be discovered if you press him with questions about his fiery devotion to his Lady Lyndis that goes above and beyond his duties. He falls madly in love with her, to his dismay, and even more to his dismay, he isn’t as effective at disguising it as he thought. 

I am obviously one who favors the Kent/Lyndis pairing in the game. I have heard Lyndis/Rath is the “canon” for later stories, but I sincerely do not give a flying flip and this is the only true ending in my mind:

3.) Erk

This young mage dazzles me. It takes quite some time to learn more about him, but his support conversations offer some of the more interesting backstories in the game for characters. At first all we know is that the fellow is sorely cantankerous with the obnoxous cleric he’s stuck babysitting (I MEAN, protecting on her trip to Ostia) and he likes to keep largely to himself. 

We eventually learn he is a shy, studious, introverted mage who loves to study obsessively and pushes himself very hard to improve his skills and do his master proud. He’s very talented, but secludes himself often, and he can be awkward in social interactions, especially with gals.

Again, maybe a big part of my fondness is how early in the game we meet Erk. He’s the first magic-user we meet and when I first met him, I thought the class was so coooool. His character design also looks really neat. Admittedly I also can relate to him a lot, having secluded myself and devoted myself obsessively to my studies for a large chunk of my life. 

4.) Nino

Oh, Nino. I haven’t really spoken with other folks who play Fire Emblem but even I have heard she’s a very divisive character among fans. The main problem stems from the fact she is recruited very, very late into your party with low stats but high growth rate. As such, she is nearly useless in actually adding to your team; there simply isn’t the time to grind her up the levels she needs. 

It’s a shame, too, because her actual character is really interesting. I find her part of the story quite compelling and it’s hard not to like the bright-eyed, sweet, innocent girl who is somehow so joyful and kind while surroudned by so much darkness. She befriends one of the most violent and powerful villians in the game, Nergal’s favorite assassin who was hand-picked and raised specifically for being a cold killing machine.

I realize the only way Jaffar could get a ‘good ending’ in the story is, no doubt, to pair him up to A level with Nino. But I could never bring myself to do it. Nino has already seen such darkness in her life and such tragedy. She deserves to be with someone who can show her true affection for a change, and that’s not something Jaffar would be capable of doing for a very long time, if ever. It’s heart-rending in a way, because I think Jaffar deserves a chance to change and experience some small crumb of kindness and tenderness in his life too, but must I sacrifice Nino’s happiness to do that? Nino manages to bring Jaffar partly into the light, but I suspect if they wed, he would sadly only end up keeping Nino in the darkness-- not intentionally, but it’s hard to overcome a lifetime of slaughter and emptiness.

I dunno man I just want to save Nino and give her a proper mother figure and have her be with folks who can let her live the life she was robbed. 

5.) Legault

Holy wow, I did not expect this one to become a favorite of mine. I played through this game twice-- the first time was several years ago, and from what I recalled, I shunned Legault entirely the first time ‘round. I was well and truly about to do it a second time until I checked Matthew’s stats and compared them to Legault’s.

Oh. Oh, dear.

I really do not know why Matthew got so royally screwed over in the stats department (maybe mine was just bad RNG?), but the difference between his and the other thief’s was staggering. I ditched Matthew without too many qualms. It’s a funny thing; in Lyn’s story, I always liked Matthew. But once Eliwood’s story began, I never could see Matthew as an Ostian spy. Easygoing opportunist? Sure. A . . .spy? I dunno man, as hard as I tried I could never really swallow it. Didn’t seem to fit with his character. Maybe my brain just could never manage to make the switch, or maybe the writing just failed to convince me. So I no longer saw much appeal to his character, to be frank.

I should also note the reason I shunned Legault was due to an overall tendency I had when playing the game to shun pre-promoted OP characters or characters of the same class that rock up with better stats to just invite you to throw away and replace characters you’ve devoted much time to and grown to love. This game throws a LOT of units at you-- far more than you can ever hope to level up and add to your team unless you arena abuse. You’re forced to choose, and I always tended to prefer characters I had known longer, even if their stats may have been a bit weaker (e.g., prefer Florina over her sister, prefer Kent and Sain over later Cavaliers or Paladins, etc.). They had to offer an awful lot before I was willing to add them onto my pre-existing team of regulars. 

Legault is a lesson in why you should give some newer characters a chance. At first I only begrudingly added him to my team to fill the thief role. I hadn’t been impressed by how sudden and quick his introduction to the story had been-- it didn’t leave a lot to hold onto in terms of having an idea of his character. Besides, he was Black Fang, and I didn’t exactly dig their philosophy of vigilantism, self-appointed judges and executioners of anyone they deemed corrupt.

Guys. Guys. I love him so much now. 

I fell in love with The Hurricane slowly. It crept up, without warning, a thief cloaked in the darkness of night. The man has such sass and such style. And holy crap is there a lot of intrigue to his personality and backstory once you start reading support conversations. I love the smug, secretive smirk of his portriat picture, and I loved the enigmatic contradictions he contained. He has a disarming charm and a smooth, silken confidence, yet he also is frequently self-disparaging and dismissive of his own talents or value. He’s made a name for himself as the fearsome Hurricane among Black Fang colleagues and isn’t shy to tell you, but in the same breath can explain how he’s nothing compared to the talents of others. He’s morally gray and often acts like he’s mainly into his own self-interests as a thief, but in the same stroke, he openly admires those with the strength of their own convictions and he clearly holds a sense of justice close to his heart. He acts as though the world’s made him largely callous, but he very clearly isn’t and does care about others. The silver-tongued thief can be secretive yet is also blazingly honest at times, divulging his past and feelings even to those who hold him in great suspicion.

I haven’t even read all his support convos yet, but dang that’ll be fun. (His open crushing on Heath is also damn adorable. Anyone who claims the man is perfectly straight is simply daft and couldn’t read subtext if it was bashed over their heads like a brick, which is exactly what the game offers.)

Anywho, that about covers it for this post. I’ve certainly rambled on enough!

[shineyma]

1st, I am beyond excited and grateful that you took the time to write all this!! I asked for a rant, Amy, you delivered. 2nd, /I/ should apologize because my reply's probs gonna be long. (Half an ask already. Ugh, I'm hopeless, and you extremely polite.) I'd seen Fitz said Deke's the worst to be their grandson, but not that he persisted! GO, FITZ!! Didn't Iain use to say back in S1 that he didn't want FS to happen? I loved him for it, esp when Liz can't seem to do anything other than wax (1/9)

the rest go under the cut because it’s a lot of asks XD

poetic about FS. (Whyyy, Liz?? Seriously, does she talk about anything other than FS?) LBR though, Fitz is #relatable here. I’ve watched 3 S5 eps and seen many spoilers, and Deke’s 95% a dick, right?? I think TPTB might’ve been going for that particular FS brand of determined, unapologetic, do-what’s-necessary but their compassion and drive to protect were always evident even in their “harsher/colder” actions/attitudes/treatments. (I’m missing the right words but you know, right??) /But/ (2/9)

they missed the mark by 100 miles. Anyway. Frankly, Amy, Jemma fighting viciously Fitz’s pessimism and fatalism, esp by putting forth a positive twist on fatalism (for lack of a better word) has rubbed me so wrong for so long. It’s not necessarily ooc?? But it’s also not Jemma in a right mental and emotional state?? (You’re getting a terrible description of what I mean but I’m no good for anything else right now.) Like she’s broken, resigned, fighting for some thing that just happened, (3/9)

that she didn’t consciously choose, it was forced on her through guilt of her own and of others’ making, and through others pushing for it, and she’s sort of accepted it, it’s just part of her life now, vaguely, automatically placed under the “good stuff” category, and everything around her is in chaos, so she just fights for /it/? I don’t know. There’s a difference between “the universe says we’re gonna be together, look at the signs!!” and “we want to be together and we’ll work for it”. (4/9)

About the logic fail, Jemma probs grabbed onto that “my mom told me the ‘right direction’ thing which her mom had told her”, ergo she raised her some, and coupled with the need to make Fitz feel better and the talk with yet another always unhelpful team member (😒), she just went for that stupid line. Does that make it not ooc? Well, /no/. *makes a paper plane out of your last 3 bullet points and shoots it @ TPTB, yelling “TAKE NOTES!”* Amy, in the AOS house we don’t perform surgery to the (5/9)

tune of melodies that calm and steady and help us concentrate. In the AOS house, we perform surgery while conversing on things that test our ability to hold back tears and shouts and shaking and violence, because we’re hardcore. So, the dog thing. @ Hydra WTF??!!?! Yeah, I’m glad I missed that. And OK, can someone finally confirm if Ward shot Buddy??!! It’s getting ridiculous. I say probs nah, because John used to prod him too often for not being cruel enough, but… I don’t know. Also, (6/9)

I’m so glad Ward didn’t attend Hydra’s School for Young Octopi!! I mean, everything does point to that!! :D Teen!Ward busted out at 17 and dumped in the woods, switching to Brett!Ward still in the woods, John alluding to Ward shooting Buddy and finally leaving the woods as the end of his training and immediate beginning of his SHIELD career… If he attended any Academy, that was SHIELD Ops. It’s canon! New Ward backstory! I LOVE IT!! OK, because Hydra has that elitist vibe, I’m imagining (7/9)

more of a posh-secret-club-inside-the-academy kind of thing?? You know, like the actual Piggate scandal with the UK PM, and there’s many a movie too that show secret societies inside colleges etc, whose members are wealthy kids of old families, and their fathers were members before them, and their grandfathers, and they have weird, twisted rituals. You know the kind. Malick, his daughter and the council of people they had brought to meet Hive, they remind me of that. Anyway, I’m still not (8/9)

forgiving Ruby for what she did to Elena, but the dog thing and the Hydra-engineered super-baby thing are something…?? I’d have to watch S5 to pass judgement and LOL NO, I ain’t about to do that. I thiiink I’m done. Man, I hope that was some damn good strawberry shortcake. I’m gonna need all the favor I can get. �� ❤❤❤❤ Also, what’s a strawberry shortcake and why are people discriminating against its physique??? Ah, and why do you use that squiggly line (~) at the end of some words??? (9/9)

Okay! Here we go! XD

First off, I…..go back and forth on Liz’s support of fs. On the one hand, it’s silly to hold it against her; it’s not like attacking her own storyline would be a smart move, either with fans (who for some reason overwhelmingly support it) or with Jed&Mo (who, after all, have made clear that they based fs’ relationship off their own). Sure, Iain got away with it, but look at the way the show treats Fitz vs. Jemma……he’s clearly the favorite. *side eyes aos* Plus, fs being together gets her more scenes with more people (gotta have everyone reminding her how destined~ she and Fitz are after all!!), so it’s understandable she’d like it.

That said….HOW CAN SHE NOT SEE HOW TERRIBLE IT IS? I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

And we could talk about that all day so…moving on!

Deke started out as the harsh/cold/doing what’s necessary to survive in a terrible environment character (he SOLD DAISY TO KASIUS because he was afraid her search for Jemma would endanger the rest of them), but the show kind of….dropped that? And tried to switch him to the lovable moron instead? It’s weird.

As for Jemma’s optimism……I guess I can’t totally blame her. Like, she does love Fitz, that’s clear enough. I personally don’t think she’d have gotten there if she hadn’t been constantly pushed towards him, or if he hadn’t made a big deal of “I can’t be just friends,” therefore forcing her to choose between a romantic relationship with her best friend or NOTHING AT ALL of him, but. Whatever.

My point was, she loves him. And he is CONSTANTLY going on about how they’re cursed and they’re never gonna work out and how ‘doesn’t sound great for the girlfriend’ and ‘I don’t deserve you’ and blah blah negativity. And it is just super not fair to her that she has to forever fight this attitude of his and try to keep him positive about THEIR RELATIONSHIP, something he should be excited and positive about ON HIS OWN. Ugh.

So from that perspective, I guess I can see why she’d cling to this, as evidence~ they’re not doomed and they’re gonna be okay. Good point, nonnie!

And another good point: I’d forgotten about the daughter saying that her mom had said the steps in the right direction stuff! to her That makes Jemma’s logic fail a little less egregious, I feel better now.

Oh, right, silly me. Of course aos is way too hardcore to want to focus on the situation at hand when surgery is underway!

I think the show kinda confirmed that it was Grant who shot Buddy? In 2x21 when Bobbi was trying to talk Kara out of the whole….torture thing that was about to happen, she tried to convince her that Grant was grooming her and that he probably started small and probably was started small himself, and Kara was like “yeah, Garrett made him shoot his dog.” So that probably counts as confirmation.

(But I am all about #denial so I choose to ignore it. Alternate explanation: Garrett was the one who did it but Grant wanted to use the story to connect to Kara, so he was creative with the truth. See? It still works!)

And yep! Garrett said, when he finally got Grant from the woods, that he’d gotten him into the ops academy! Which admittedly was four whole seasons before this mess and probably they didn’t know yet they were gonna give Hydra its own Academy, but why would Garrett make Grant do the dog test in the woods if he was about to go to Hydra and have to do it all over again? Doesn’t make sense! So yes, definitely Grant went to SHIELD Academy.

As for the “posh” sense you get of Hydra, nonnie, you are SO NOT WRONG. Hydra’s Academy was seriously SO prep school vibes, I can’t even fully describe it. They had UNIFORMS, nonnie! Suit and tie uniforms with HYDRA LOGOS on the breast pocket!!!! It was…….ridiculous. Ri. di. cu. lous.

And right? TOTALLY NOT COOL that Ruby cut off Elena’s arms, but I have some sympathy for her now. Some.

And thank you for asking, the strawberry shortcake was DELICIOUS! And it’s not discrimination (XD; I literally lol’d, nonnie, thanks for that)—strawberry shortcake is a dessert with sliced, sugared strawberries, whipped cream, and a kind of cake that’s called “shortcake” because of its crumbly, sometimes crispy texture. It is THE BEST and I’m so sad it doesn’t exist in your life. I’m sorry, nonnie.

ETA: sometimes people use spongecake instead of shortcake when making strawberry shortcake. these people are wrong and should not be trusted.

As for the squiggly line, it’s hard to explain! 

Sometimes, I use it to add a note of sarcasm or mocking. Since tone is hard to convey online, it helps me get my meaning across (and feels necessarily mean, in such statements as “Jemma and Fitz are destined~”)!

Other times, it’s more…..hm…..like a gesture, maybe? Like in my rant I wrote “the glory of Hive~” and the sguiggly was meant to convey a kind of handwave, like “the glory of Hive and all that stuff the Hive-worshiping parts of Hydra would concern themselves with.” Does that make sense?

I don’t know, it’s kind of like the tumblr habit of randomly capitalizing words in the middle of a sentence, you know? Sometimes it’s for emphasis, sometimes it’s for sarcasm, sometimes it’s just because it feels right. I hope that makes at least a little sense. XD

Thanks very much for the conversation, nonnie! Sorry it was such a struggle getting your thoughts to me!