#alcryst is so easy to draw

[only-lonely-www]

Alcryst sketch 🤗

[quartzhearted]

(Alcryst is 3-4 years old)

There's one old family portrait in Brodia Castle that always confuses Alcryst whenever he sees it. He recognizes his father's face, of course, but the man next to him remains a complete and utter stranger. Alcryst secretly calls him Rockbert, because it's sad to think of him being nameless all his life, but the truth remained out of reach.

Until today, that is! Father holds his hand as they walk to the kitchen, all according to Alcryst's plan. Once they pass by that painting, the young boy digs in his heels and announces his theory. "Dad! Is Rockbert my grandpa?" He points to the stranger in the picture for emphasis.

"ALEXAND!" morion drops his sword and runs so quickly he trips over himself. his heart beats in his ears and blood drains from his face; there's no color that suits his brother worse than the deep crimson that pools around him now. as usual, when the scouts came running into brodia castle to warn of incoming elusian reinforcements, morion and alexand grabbed their weapons and made for the field. this war against elusia has gone on for longer than any previous, and it's concerning; what of the brodian people? what of the loved ones that go off to battle, never to return? and what of those who come to replace their ranks? alexand himself was troubled by the sheer force elusia pushed with and had refused to sit back and watch utter slaughter when something could be done. he led the front and sent morion to the rear. morion wasn't a fan of staying behind, but he knew that his brother gave him the assignment for a reason. fending off pegasus knights was no easy feat, but morion had just obtained a hand axe for the express purpose. his throwing arm wasn't all that accurate, but when he could land a hit it was an almost instant kill. perhaps, morion thought, his brother ought to get something like this for himself. but after picking off a fleet of the airborne soldiers, morion heard no fanfare. all he heard was the sound of distress, screaming brodian soldiers tumbling over themselves to get to a certain place. he couldn't understand at first; what on earth were they so afraid of? as a soldier ran past him, morion grabbed him by the collar to stop him. "what the hell's all this about?" morion had growled. "you're not runnin' off scared, are you?" but the soldier had news that shook even morion's constitution. "it's-- it's prince alexand! he's been shot!" and now morion kneels over the corpse of his older brother lying face down on brodian soil, watching as he still bleeds pitifully from the thousand arrows rising from his back. how had this happened? how could he have not seen archers among the ranks, ready and waiting to take out the pillars of brodia's army command? how could he have let the future king of brodia down? his brother, the respected king-to-be, lies here, not even knowing he rests in morion's arms. he doesn't know how morion weeps with his head tucked into alexand's broken armor, cries never rising above an audible pitch. why did this have to happen to them, when their father neared the end of his reign and alexand had readied for his beginning? morion wasn't ready to lose his brother like this. he never was.

...

of course alcryst would ask a question like that. he's only a child. a child who never knew his uncle nor the rule that he'd promised, and a child who only ever sees happiness and plenty of love from his mother and father. death is not a concept here, and morion does not want to be the person who introduces it.

instead, he takes the question humorously and pats alcryst's head. "rockbert? now there's a name," he chuckles, though his gaze draws mournful along the portrait. every day he wishes he could see his brother again. there are so many things he wants to tell him.

"his name is alexand," for 'was' would bring too many questions. "he's your uncle. you guys haven't met because he's gone on a long, long trip." he hates lying to his kids like this, but alcryst is much too innocent to know about the fact that his father is not without his own stormclouds.

he doesn't want to get too far into the fib because it'd be too much to untangle later. for now, he begins walking again, taking alcryst with him. "but we can talk about that later, kid," he sighs, suddenly feeling very, very tired. "your papa wants a snack and a nap."

[kayarine]

Tried drawing a chibi Alcryst. It's my first time drawing a chibi, so I picked an easy pose to practice simplifying his design.

I also practiced sketching with minimal erasing, so I built the drawing upon the rough sketch. (I still erased around the mouth b/c it looked weird)

I think it looks pretty OK for a first time. But the leg armor was difficult, so it looks kinda messy...

[rafent]

"Rafal..." Freshly roused from sleep, Alcryst's eyes lay on the pale Fell Dragon lingering near his cot. Likely visiting someone else, his mind reasons, though that doesn't stop him from calling the dragon to his bedside. "I have a question, if you can answer it..."

Am I Corrupted? and Can you control the Corrupted? get confused with one another, resulting in an entirely new question: "Can you turn me into one of the Corrupted?"

If he's not already. Alcryst is tired, and he hurts. It's easy to think of it as his body protesting its current state: alive rather than dead, as he should be, as he experienced. That's a reasonable conclusion to draw, right? But the longer Alcryst dwells on it, the stronger his despair grows. "I should be dead," he confesses. His voice cracks and wobbles. "I should be dead, but I'm not. It's not right..."

Combing through the infirmary for his sister, the first person he recognized slowed him to a stop; most notably, with a question. Rafal drifted closer to Alcryst then, pallid and wordless as a specter, if not equally intrigued by the desires of the living. The other's weary condition spoke to trying times, absent of the vitality he once used to argue with the Fell Dragon. The spirited Alcryst briefly contended with at tea could not have been more different from the one before him now. Even so, seeing him bestowed the knowledge that those saddled with sickness had at least survived. Other discoveries were far less welcome.

In a closing of distance, the ticklish ends of his hair touched the prince's cheek as he loomed over him. An onlooker at distance might assume he was tending to the injured - the damaged and the astray. His fingers curved over Alcryst's shoulder, thumb pressing collar bone and weighing down the delicate bone, pressure followed by an ever so tactfully worded theory in the ear:

"You are delirious with pain, Alcryst. Or with the residue of sickness. For fear of worsening the condition, the sensitive period following one's awakening is undoubtedly worth rest and recovery."

Between the trenchant dismissal cloaked in these words and the soft Brodian throat his grip seemingly compromised, some short eternity fed the contact and allowed every word to sink. Everlasting, unrelenting, until at last there was an end. He released him after a moment, half a mind on the disturbed wanderings of Alcryst's chosen direction, another on the trembling voice he heard.

Ultimately, he understood the unseen plight and reluctance to accept reality; in the end, Rafal also thought his saved life undeserved. ". . .To live where death was expected is not wrongness but fortune. Conserve your energy and reflect instead over your blessings, not the dangerous topics beyond human understanding."

Then he stepped back in readiness to leave, to end this chapter of his own selfish accord. Even if the other should dislike his answer or possess more to say, he would not hear of it. Protests were not worth hearing to him on the topic of Corrupted; and what could Alcryst do to deny the dragon - pursue him, only just freshly awoken? Bestrew the infirmary with his clamoring shouts and attempts? He shot him an unbothered look and turned away.

[skelezomperman]

Some random Thoughts the first

Here's some random thoughts about Fire Emblem that I'll post here since the Opinions Thread on Reddit is a bit late. Negative first, then positive.

Firstly, I've said this before but I think that the biggest casualty of incest being discussed in Fire Emblem is that it means that people cannot treat a brother and sister being affectionate to each other normally. Every time they do so much as share an embrace, you are sure to see someone claim that there is some kind of romantic undertone. I really, really just hate this. Can we just...not?

Secondly, there's a pattern I've noticed, a sort of temptation to get addicted to looking at other people's bad takes. It is certainly not hard to find people saying things that objectively make no sense, not especially on social media sites like Tumblr, Reddit, or Twitter/X. Sometimes it is so funny that you have to say something to someone else. But at the same time, it's easy to fall into this addiction to looking at bad takes. To make it a full-blown habit of spending so much time at looking at terrible things said on the Internet is extremely unhealthy! I am not saying this to laugh or to proclaim myself as better, because I too am guilty of gossip. But we are called to greater things than circlejerking off other people's faults.

---

We are honestly blessed to have so much talent in our community. Obviously, there's artists, but we also have talented writers, talented cosplayers, talented translators, talented analyzers. I see it when I see the subreddit, I see it on Twitter, I see it on Tumblr, I see it on Discord. My talent is nowhere near the talent that other people have. I can't draw, I can't really speak Japanese, and my creative skills amount to some middling writings. So to everyone who has this talent, I thank you for all you've done, and if you want to use your talents to enrich the community, I say go for it! I support you.

Have I mentioned before that I like Ivy from Fire Emblem: Engage? I will spare you the details of my months-long angsting with the fact that I like her. I've said repeatedly before that I would not die on a hill defending that character, but for once I'll say that I appreciate her. I appreciate that she isn't one-dimensional (contrary to popular belief, ghosts are not mentioned in every support she has). She's adept at maneuvering around many different people, whether it's with Alcryst who clearly still has bad feelings about what happened in Chapter 10, with her sister whom she wants to support despite the enmity between their mothers, or with someone like Mauvier who is in a similar situation to her. Yes, the worldbuilding in Elusia rings hollow just as it does throughout the game, but I still felt that she was fine with regards to fitting into the plot, perhaps more-so than any of the other royals in the game.

(In general, I think my enjoyment of Engage increases when I turn away from looking at posts where people say they dislike it. Then I feel less bad about liking Engage even if it went against a lot of what I was wanting out of future Fire Emblems.)

One last thing is that I want to just say that I like how many little things there are to discover about FE4. I'm in the process of building a group of docs comparing the various translations of FE4. It's been three years since I went through the work of putting together a script for Project Naga, and I'm still finding lines that I never knew existed. Who knew that there's actually a line for if you seized Lubeck (first castle in Chapter 5) with Byron somehow still being alive? Or that Ishtore's boss dialogue changes if you fight him before killing Liza? So many little details to appreciate from this game even if it does show its age.

[egittae]

Though the answer didn’t surprise him in the slightest, it still brought a small, saddened frown to his face. For much of Garreg Mach indeed, the Abyss and the Wolves were simply a thing of legend, this secret place where the scorn of Fódlan crawled into to hide from the world and enact evil, criminal deeds in phantom light. Not too different from a monster living under a child’s bed, or a fantastic creature supposedly hiding in the woods waiting for unsuspecting travelers. “Well then, allow me to tell you the truth at least.”

“They do exist, indeed. The Abyss is a location in the belly of Garreg Mach, a town like any other.” He would however, not give information on how to access it. Not until he could be sure that Alcryst wouldn’t go in there to disturb the abyssinians or worse, draw in unwanted attention- the Abyss was tolerated, at most. That balance was delicate. “It is a place not for people who reject society, but who have been excluded from it one way or another. Individuals who suffer prejudice and persecution on the surface and simply cannot live among you all because they would either suffer on the streets or be locked away or even killed if spotted.”

A sigh. “Of course, there are criminals here and there, those with less than stellar reasons to hide from the world, I will not deny. But the majority of those in the Abyss are simply individuals with more will to live than society is willing to deal with.” Lambert admired them all. People who have gone through hell and back, living in horrid conditions, but still fighting every day and refusing to give up. “The Ashen Wolves on the other hand is their only chance at getting a minimum of education. Since they do not receive official lectures from the Church, it is up to those like me and my fellow coworkers to give them the closest we can get to a school-like environment. The Wolves themselves are the main defensive force of the Abyss as well.”

Brodia…so this boy was from Brodia, just like Diamant and Morion. ”Your reasons for becoming a knight under the Church’s banner are noble indeed.” Elyos was the continent Brodia was located in…interesting. “Haha, it almost reminds me of my own homeland, where youngsters are all encouraged into knighthood as soon as they are able to.” Emphasis on ‘as soon as they are able to’. While his memories of his own life were muddy, he did remember a lot regarding what Faerghus was and how it operated, for some reason. He was thankful for that.

But then came the part of the conversation where nervousness started to bite at his heart. It would come at one point or the other- interrogations. He couldn’t scowl at Alcryst for it, he was just doing his job- but that didn’t make things any less anxiety inducing. Not when his own mind didn’t want to cooperate.

“There it goes…I am afraid that my response will not delight you much, but I will be as honest as I can.” Lambert placed his hands on his hips- rather than crossing his arms. He refused to let himself seem small or cower under this pressure, even if he desperately wanted to turn his head away from those questions. It wouldn’t help anyone if he just ran away. “I suffer from an awful case of memory loss. I woke up one day not knowing where I am or who I was, and even now I cannot possibly tell you anything in detail regarding my past.” It never felt exactly easy to mention it- to remind himself that he held onto scattered pages of his own biography, the book still very much lost.

He looked to the side, smiling despite the troubled frown on his features. “You have no idea how isolating and disorienting it feels to walk among all of you when I have no face to show to the world, much less a past to hold on to. I would be having this conversation here on the daily which…I believe would not exactly improve my condition.” He then shook his head. “Not that I feel pride in hiding away either, but if I am to live as a phantom with no face, then I shall at least do so in a place where my status is overlooked rather than seen with suspicion, and offer whatever aid I can to those who need it in the process. Society took their identity, I simply lost mine somewhere.”

Finally, he actually crossed his arms- his frown becoming slightly more severe. “Harbor distrust of me all you want, but I ask of you to at least show compassion to those of the Abyss. I assure you most of them do not wish to cause harm, as they have more problems than food on their plates to deal with."

@starrook

wolf in lamb's clothing