#actually Need to draw titania so my players can see her lol

[anoras]

i keep meaning to draw some of the npcs from the campaign I'm dming 🤔

[ladyzerodark]

So just to keep it clear, most of these ships are from crossover aus.  The most used AU is the one I call Rent Free, a mass crossover au that takes the term "Lives in your head rent free" quite literally. (Kinda, they still need to pay rent).  If I mention World's End, that's the setting of Rent Free.

May split this into two posts depending on how long this is.

Also I'm going to just focus on the relationships with EACH OTHER for now.  If there's any other interest, I can delve into their relationships with other people in each other's lives, much like how I did with Sans and Cinder in a previous post.

Anyway.

Let's start with Soren X Durant

Originally, these two were just going to be friends.

While Soren is much goofier and laidback compared to Durant, I found their attitudes meshing pretty well while coming up with ideas for them.  It took a while for them to actually be officially friends, since Durant takes a while to warm up to folks and Soren can be... a lot.

The two met through becoming Guards for World's End's council.  It annoys Durant, at first, because he doesn't fully trust Soren yet (not after finding out about Viren being his father).  But, the way he sees it, his lord, Euden, and Soren's lords, Ezran and Callum, are friends and the two have vouched for the knight, so he can't be all bad.

After some training together and seeing how much his wolves love Soren, Durant begrudgingly accepted Soren's constant offers of friendship (he wore him down lol).  The two of them ended up being partners for the most part, working together during shifts.

Their relationship became more than platonic when I start imagining them as (obviously) roommates.  Soren would wake up Durant by literally bouncing on his bed, Durant would let his wolves snuggle with Soren.  They ended up being more affectionate with each other and just kind of evolved from there.  No big fanfare, just two dudes realizing "Huh.  We're good togther.  Let's try it."

The two have more of that vibe of stereotypical "bromance" and Soren is definitely the more affectionate of the two when it comes to PDA.  While Durant is very quiet in his affection, he's very protective of his partner and will defend Soren with his life.

As far as how this idea came to be, it's mostly the case of: I was into both Dragon Prince and Dragalia at the same time.  Out of most of these, the development just kinda happened.  Like I said before, their personalities meshed for me when having them interact despite being so different.

~

Figures that the next 2nd highest pairs had a fire emblem character in there lol. I'll start with Titania and King Hassan.

Before Rent Free, I was doing a mass mobile game crossover, where the player (my character Dark), was able to summon folks from different mobile games to combat a virus called the "Mad Moon".  Nothing came of it, but it is something like Rent Free's predecessor.

Titania has a very complicated relationship with the concept of death.  It took many people she cared for and loved.  She didn't fear it for herself, but feared it for others.  Being summoned to Askr has been a bit of a relief, as the summoner did everything they could to keep her loved ones safe when she could not.

Meeting the man known as the King Hassan was alarming at first.  For a moment she thought she was staring the grim reaper in the eyes.  It was only when her summoner introduced the two of them that she noticed something about this reaper.

The blue lights, his eyes, were shining with something akin to affection for her summoner, his master, as he called her.

She could tell he was trustworthy.

As the two were considered seasoned warriors, both Titania and King Hassan (affectionately dubbeed Grampa Hassan by the younger assassins) would train the younger fighters and help improve their skills.  Over the course of time, they ended up growing close as allies, though Hassan was clearly drawing a line between them, something that Titania didn't mind.  She knew enough assassins to understand why he did such a thing.

The Old Man of the Mountain himself respected the red haired paladin, watching as she trained future fighters and continued to grow.  He noticed how she didn't mind the aura of death around him, how she could easily tell how much he cared about his master.  In all fairness, he could see the affection she had for his master, her summoner, as well.

He could tell that she would not easily betray them.

Their protectiveness of those they cared for only drew them closer.  An unspoken bond between protectors formed.  The two seek out each other's company, feeling at peace with someone who understands them.

While this isn't the most romantic ships, that wasn't really my intention.  It could very well be romantic, but it would be subtle.  Like for the longest time you see these two just hanging out, then one day Hassan happens to kiss her hand and you're like "WAIT WHAT THE HECK".  I don't think there would be any sexual stuff between the two, the closest to physical affection they'd get would be a hug.

~

Now for Ced and Lloyd.

This ship is relatively new for me, but I still have thoughts about them.  Should also note that while this COULD work for series!Lloyd, I'm kinda basing this off Movie!Lloyd.

Here's my thought process behind them being good fits: both boys have very tense relationships with their fathers, are associated with the color green, have ancestors that are considered insanely powerful, and they are part of some kind of resistance force.  They surprisingly have a lot in common, even with their desire to help everyone.

The relationship might be a bit rocky; Ced has a tendency to hyperfocus on things and ignore others, while not meaning to. Lloyd has to deal with his own depression and fears of being abandoned for what his father had done.  They'd need to have clear communication for the relationship to work, but that would take time and a lot of therapy on both ends.

As far as how they'd meet, it'd definitely be in a school setting.  Lloyd happens to be walking to class with his friends and sees Ced performing magic with an outdoor class and being in complete awe of his abilities.  Similarly, Ced happens to see Lloyd use spinjutsu and immediately grows fascinated by the power. What starts as a "hey I want to learn how you're able to do that" relationship would build into a friendship, which would develope into something more later on.

Again, I'm still very much working out the details of their relationship.

~

Since we're on a fire emblem kick, let's jump to Underswap Sans and Ephraim!

This pair came from a Three Houses Crossover AU that I just vaguely posted about on my art blog but never really got around to writing it. I'm going off memory for most of the bits about the AU, so keep that in mind.

Underswap Sans, whom I'll call Blue for the sake of simplicity, was the son of a merchant in the Golden Deer country (I wasn't gonna use the original countries but I never got around to naming the others) and Ephraim was a noble from (I believe) the Blue Lion House.  The two trained together and became good friends through it.

Ephraim, the attractive fellow he is, gets a lot of attention from everyone in the student body, but he grew attached to Blue and decided to focus on his friend when he didn't want to deal with the flirting of everyone else.  Blue himself knew he felt something insanely strong for his friend, but these two have no idea that they do actually have crushes.

In the Rent Free AU, similar to Durant and Soren, the two meet as members of the Guard and start out as friends.  Blue is the first to get a crush on him, finding Ephraim's dedication to protecting others admirable.  During a sparring match, Ephraim realizes his own growing crush on Blue. Though similar to the FE3H au, it takes them a while to admit it.

~

TIME FOR THE FATE POLYCULE

Ok, so this one is one of my favorites.

The predecessor of Rent Free is where this started, but also happened around the time that RWBY was focusing on Qrow improving himself and making friends.  And then... well that was the end for Clover.

In the predcessor, Qrow came to the world around the time Clover passed, so his emotions were extremely fresh (as was my growing animosity towards Ironwood, but that's something else entirely).  Before he arrived, Verica, of Dragalia Lost, had made friends with with Kibera, of King's Raid, which surprised a lot of people, as Kibera hates the concept of fate and Verica lives by it.  The two of them had much longer to get to know each other and, despite their personality differences, they somehow managed to get the relationship to work.

Seeing Qrow in pain due to his perceived "fate" to be alone, the two decided to help him through it (and by decided, I mean Verica told Kibera they were helping and Kibera couldn't say no to her). Verica offered words of comfort, some physical affection if needed; while Kibera provided a place to get Qrow's more violent feelings out.

The two of tthem grew to be important parts of Qrow's life, a type of support he didn't have before.  They didn't care if he was unlucky or if he didn't want to be close to anyone; they cared about him.

Kibera and Verica were the ones to ask if Qrow would be interested in a relationship with them.  They'd both fallen for him but wanted to make sure he was okay with having more then one partner.  He gave himself some time to think but in the end, he agreed to give it a try.

When Winter joined the team, Qrow was happy to see her again.  The two of them had an on and off relationship and wanted to introduce her to his new partners, whom he had discussed adding her into the polycule, if she was okay with it.  They had agreed, however, that making friends with her came first.  Winter bonded with Verica the strongest and the two spend the most time together when not with the boys as well.

Rent Free is pretty similar, in that Qrow is brought in first before they add Winter, though she and Qrow didn't have an on off relationship.

~

And with that, I am done with this main post.  I am tired lol Lemme know if you want me to get more specific with any of these

[yue-muffin]

I finished Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the first time and wow, am I impressed. Having only played the 3DS era games and started Sacred Stones recently, I came to expect a certain range of quality and reach in terms of story. There are games that I found not overly complex but executed well (Echoes) and ones with a good premise and sloppy execution (Fates). Sacred Stones, so far, is one I find with a simple story done well. I’m not terribly enthralled with it, but there’s nothing there to annoy me either.

Path of Radiance is one of those games that takes the ‘simple/standard FE plot’ path, but the execution is brilliant, filled with both depth and heart despite the story having the same basic beats as many other FEs. I was really impressed with the worldbuilding, the character writing, the gameplay/story integration...

My biggest gripe with Awakening and Fates was that the characters were colorful, but few of them were compelling and many lacked the depth to take them beyond their archetypes. Path of Radiance did a good job making me feel that its characters all had a stake in the outcome of the battles, that they had an actual cause to fight for and didn’t just join the army just because. There is always a bit of contrivance in an FE game, but the quality of the writing can lessen or emphasize that feeling.

The gameplay mechanics change from game to game, and I find it really fun to test out the unique features of each installment and see how they influenced each other. the shoving animations are amazing

People also say this is one of the easiest FE games and I have to say, the bonus exp mechanic is probably why. I love this mechanic because of the way it allows the game to reward the player for taking certain actions encouraged by the story (like wanting to spare as many of the enemy as possible = we’ll give you bonus exp if you do). I, uh, am never doing a stealth run of the prison break chapter again though.

I went ultra vanilla and restricted myself to using only the Greil Mercenaries for this run, and I’ll leave my impressions on this post because half the fun of a FE game is building up your team.

I went with the Greil Mercenaries (+ Mia, because she joins them for the second game) for my first playthrough because otherwise I would have no reason to use both Rolf AND Shinon at the same time and Rhys would just warm the bench the whole game lol. And I was really curious to see Rolf and Shinon’s support line and actually have a use for all of those light magic tomes.

Ike: My Ike didn’t get screwed over in any stat, so absolutely no complaints other than the fact that he refused to proc Aether more than once in the Black Knight fight, making Nasir bail him out at the end of the allotted turns. I supported him with Soren because I wanted to see their support line, and have to say that it worked out really well. I was between Soren and Oscar, but it worked better this way because Oscar was always riding off with Titania at the front and Ike just lags behind unless you dedicate several units + Reyson to shoving him to the frontline. And when you’re using Mist, Rolf, and Soren, that really cuts into the units available for shoving.

Oscar: He, uh, ended up the MVP and netted the most kills in the run. Oscar can become an amazing paladin, but mine was so screwed in the strength stat for much of the early game that I had to abuse the bexp mechanic at the base to ensure he didn’t keep lagging behind. His defenses were super good by the end, and the little damage he did take was mitigated by activating Sol every other hit. Also, I have a bias for calvary units, so. Oscar. Loved him.

Titania: I...I love Titania. I love her character. She plays her role perfectly as the super strong unit who is there to support you in the beginning and falls off a little towards the end. She can still hold her own in the endgame, however, and I have no regrets for relying on her early on. There is so much experience to be had in normal mode that she doesn’t really rob anyone else of it unless you go ham and let her destroy everything. In the end, I gave her Savior so she can help deliver chip damage and save Shinon’s ass, I mean, rescue drop people.

Boyd: Super frustrating and nerve wracking to train, super hard hitter who still keeps you on your toes by the end. He is the most lopsided unit I have ever used (comparatively low defenses, speed, and skill compared to his attack and HP) but he was definitely fun and made sure I didn’t get too complacent. I don’t normally use fighters/axe units in the modern games because their accuracy is shit, their defenses are even more shit, and why bother with the headache. Once you can forge Boyd a good iron axe, though, his performance becomes more consistent. I did keep Tempest on him for a while, because I find it fun to use the skills a unit comes with, but I took it off eventually. It does help in certain situations when his hit rate isn’t so good (having the biorhythm doubled then is helpful).

Soren: I have a bias for this little asshole, lol. He’s a standard mage, basically. Kind of annoying to train in the beginning because he can barely take a hit, his movement is low, and MAGIC MAKES THE EMULATOR CRASH SOMETIMES, but if you can stick it out, you’ll be rewarded in the end with a unit that doesn’t care about how physically bulky any enemy is and can take down dragons with ease (plus, he heals A LOT because of his high magic stat even with a basic heal staff). I will admit, he’s a walking liability if Ike isn’t his support partner and magic in this game is slightly annoying because each element has its own weapon rank. He basically ate all of my Arms Scrolls because he has FOUR ranks to build (including the staff rank) and all of them have their uses, so I didn’t have him concentrate in one or the other. Although he gets weighed down by a lot of tomes because he is a twig, mine capped speed and didn’t have a problem doubling the dragons in the endgame with Thoron.

Rhys: One of the reasons I did a Greil Mercenaries run haha. He’s not a bad healer. It’s just that there’s benefit to training Mist as your main healer for that one fight later on, and having a team with THREE HEALERS is overkill (unless for whatever reason you made one of your mages use knives...). The problem is that while Soren can take a hit and Mist can run away, Rhys can do neither. His magic stat is very good though, and he was objectively better than my Mist by the end except that he wasn’t on a horse. He was really useful for the endgame since I gave him the Purge tome. Finally, he didn’t have to risk his neck to actually fight. I lowkey love his character though. 

Mist: She is so cute, but mine was so screwed in the stats department. If not for bexp, it would have been a nightmare to train her and Rhys at the same time. I early promoted both of them, but getting her to level 10 was hard. Mine ended up getting magic on so few level ups, that I gave her two spirit dusts by the endgame and it was still amazingly low. Her strength stat was 13. 13!! I love the horse, though. Makes her a lot easier to use once promoted. She has no shoving capabilities, though, whereas Rhys (frail, sickly man he is) can shove like half the army. Go figure.

Mia: I love Mia. She can have my heart and run with it. In newer games I tend not to use mercenaries/swordmasters because their movement is kind of eh, their dodge-tank capabilities are not that impressive, and I don’t like relying on crits too much, but Mia was such an awesome addition to the team. It can be a bit difficult to train her in the beginning given her low defense, HP, and strength, but once she gets going, she wrecks things like nobody’s business. Would have liked to do some Wrath combos with her, but mine had Vantage and Adept and that worked just fine with a Killing Edge or a forged sword of some sort. The only issue is her super low strength cap (22?? really??) but the reliability of her crits and/or skill procs make up for that if you can get her past the early game.

Rolf: ROLF. Literally only viable because of bexp. I actually really love how they wrote his character, but what were they thinking by making him join so late, with such low bases AND his strength growth isn’t even that good (40%, less than Oscar’s). All else could be forgiven if his strength growth was at least 50% like his speed. If you can’t actually do damage, there’s no point. Once you pour exp into him like nobody’s business, he can actually be a good unit. I do really like using him, and mine got enough defense and resistance that he wasn’t a liability, but he definitely needs investment. On the other hand, his hit rates were so good that Gamble actually worked well on him.

Shinon: The racist asshole whose only redeeming quality is his relationship with Rolf. I loved their support chain, and actually I do like how the game put him on our team (after giving you a hard time recruiting him) because of how it brings an element of realism makes these characters more human, but yikes he’s potentially worse than Rolf to train because of how long he’s gone for. If you put aside the need for even more bexp to use him, he’s a pretty good crit unit. And he can surprisingly take a hit once trained. I left Provoke on him and BOY he nearly got himself killed in the endgame, but it is pretty nice to draw aggro in order to get some enemies closer for the foot-locked units to kill.

Gatrie: I miss tanks. Newer games make them so much less fun to use because they don’t tank very well (I’m looking at you, Fates...). Gatrie can’t get places fast and only laguz can shove him, but it was fun having someone who can take a million hits and soften enemies up for the others to take care of. He can’t really one round anything because he can’t double and leaves them with a few hit points left (except if he procs Luna) but he’s a worth while addition to the team. Takes a bit of bexp though, since he often doesn’t get as many kills as the rest.

Reyson: Not a Greil Mercenary, but like I was going to pass up a dancer singer who can refresh FOUR units. It was a pain in the behind to get the Knight Ring, but he does make really good use of it. He can also use the Full Guard ring so he can enter certain areas without being murdered by ballistas. I love his bird form, and the fact that frail heron man can SHOVE people who the tiny people in my army can’t (Mist, Rolf, Soren, I’m looking at you). no but really, Reyson’s character is actually really good too, I like him. 

It was, uh, interesting getting through some of these chapters without a flier. Absolutely not necessary to have one, and if it was a chapter where I kind of needed someone, I just used Tanith or Janaff (the Naesala chapter was the only one that was annoying without a trained flier).

I genuinely had no idea who to stick skills on, haha. This was an interesting system where you really had to think about who to give a skill since they’re like old TMs in Pokemon...one use only. I like to have some limitations in the skill system though, unlike Awakening and Fates where it’s a free for all. I just like the more limited set of options.