#all of the Scions are like

[zorritocruzado]

Kima clocking the Exarch two minutes into Shadowbringers like-

[fatedroses]

Two former military elites taking merc jobs perform absolutely hellish battle tactics together.

[haunted-xander]

Do you ever think about how Alisaie's biggest fear is losing the people she cares about? How the very first conversation you have with her alone, a deeply personal one, is about her confiding in you about those fears? Telling you that she hated the state of the world Louisoix died for because, to her, it wasn't worth the sacrifice? She tells you about all the allies she made and lost, who she watched die and could do nothing to save them.

Do you ever think about how Alisaie was consistently one of the first to act, to recklessly throw herself at danger throughout stb? She didn't care (as much) about herself getting hurt, but she'd be damned if she let her friends suffer without doing anything. She has to be fast and proactive, because if she can't protect them even when striking first, how would she be able to when acting after the fact?

Do you ever think about how every time her loved ones are in peril/are in risk of being in peril her heart just breaks? How whenever someone's safety is unsure she panics and immediately tries to contact them/rush to their aid? When Castrum Abania's cannon shot the tower that, for all she knew, Alphinaud was still in, she immediately stops what she's doing and runs to it in panic because her brother was in there and he might be dead.

Do you ever think about how when the Scions start getting their souls yanked to the First, Alisaie reacts the strongest? How, when Urianger and Y'shtola got taken, she fell to her knees shaking Uriangers body, screaming for him to wake up? And when Gaius appears with Alphinaud in the Burn, she immediately goes to fight him (before being stopped by Hien) because this man, who has been her enemy, is holding her brother's lifeless body. She doesn't care that she can't possibily beat him, he has her brother and she's already lost so much in such a short amount of time. She's lost Thancred, Y'shtola and Urianger already, she can't lose Alphinaud too.

Do you ever think about how you are the only one she can fully rely on at that time, but who is also at risk of being taken away? Of how she's so desperate for you to stay, to not be taken away, that Alisaie, who, for all her bluntness, prefers to rely on herself first and foremost, begs you not to leave her? She begs you. Alisaie does not beg. She yells at you to not do something, and she'll scold you to hell and back if you do it anyway, but she does not beg. But this time she did.

And then she ends up being taken away right in front of you. She cries out for help and uses her very last energy to reach out for you. And then she falls limp.

Do you ever think about how, when Alphinaud turns to tell her his plans at the end of Ultima Thule, she immediately rejects it without even letting him say it? She's lost so much and experienced so much grief, not only overall but also just in Ultima Thule. And she loathes to bring that grief onto another. Especially to one who has already lost so much, like you. She hates it. She ends up doing it, yes, but she hates it still.

DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT-

[hazoret]

this is how that one part went right

[raidenfanclub]

A bunch of art from the past 3 months LMAO

[eriyu]

WoL question!

Are there parts of the game's story that your WoL didn't understand? Aetherology, time travel, clones? Politics? Other characters' motivations? Have they come to understand any of it better in retrospect?

[dawnslight-aegis]

10. the wheel of fortune - change, cycles, fate, the unexpected, decisive moments

(others)

[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.

[valeriannnn]

I know little of the Keepers and their cultural norms, but I suppose it should not come as a surprise that matters of grooming and personal maintenance should carry a more pragmatic connotation for those who live in such isolation - or perhaps our friend is simply strange, regardless of his context. I must admit: it was no small comfort to me, in those frigid days heralding the twilight of the Dragonsong War, to discover that our champion did not share our Sharlayan intuition toward personal space. Our more guarded companions don't always share my gratitude for the attention, but I believe that after our long estrangement, even the coldest of hearts could not fail to be warmed by such a gesture.

Wolcred Week 2024 Day 1: Warmth | Home

ok as mentioned in the tags i didnt have time to render a complete scene for this but i found this old mspaint sketch that demonstrates the Vibe. tyagoa just walked up behind him after cleaning up from their meal

[impossible-rat-babies]

vierapril day 24--fear

"it wasn't until alisaie fell in the ghimlyt dark--when they were carrying her body back to the forward camp, and further still to the rising stones--when the fear truly set in. when the loneliness rose up to fill the gaps where the scions used to be, and the crushing weight of it settled in.

[hazelkjt]

Inspiration

----------

With Hazel not allowing her to train until she is older, stating "If I started when I was thirteen then so can you," Perseverance watches from the side as her new mother spars with a member of the Landsguard. Knife in hand, she begins to mimic the motions of the fight as best she can. Thankfully she can tell they aren't going all out, Hazel fighting a bit slower and with less force than when she saved Percy. It was still a challenge for the child to track though. At first Percy tries to match Hazel's movements, but as the sparring match continued her eyes were drawn to her mother's opponent, the Landsguard soldier. She was keeping toe to toe with her mother, her hero. After letting her mind wander for a minute Percy realizes that she was starting to mimic her more instead of Hazel...but she couldn't help herself. She was so quick, so strong... ...So cool!

[fatedroses]

Tank-on-Tank violence.

[haunted-xander]

My grief is not your punishment

[of-the-eventide]

dinner is far better with good company!

auragust 2024 - feast

[the-rogue-mockingjay]

Sometimes it just hits me like a ping-pong ball to the face that afaik, Aymeric is the first person to bother asking WoL what they want for themselves, the first person to even consider that WoL's wishes and dreams might not actually be the same as their duties as a Scion, and

brother I am on the floor crying abt it

"Now that the dust has settled, what will you do? Not as a Scion, I mean, but...what do you want for yourself?"

[starswornoaths]

3. Tempest

Post 6.0, things are changing for the Scions.

They just haven't told all of them yet. So naturally, that becomes an issue.

word count: 1,313

-

“Big things ahead for us, I should think,” Alphinaud chimed happily without looking up from the letter he had brought in to work on. 

“Hmm. Bigger than what we just finished?” Serella asked, her own focus deterred from goldsmithing between his comment and the ache in her ban.

“Oh heavens, I should hope not! Many changes loom on the horizon, but much will feel familiar. It will be nice to go to ground again, so to speak. Not that we should hasten to our next task, of course, but having a plan is preferable.”

There was a peculiar pause there—only a few moments, but long enough that Serella caught the way he flitted his eyes toward her with as little movement as possible. Had she not stopped fiddling with her project, she might have missed it entirely…which she suspected he had been hoping for.

“What do you mean,” she asked slowly, “when you say we will go to ground again?”

That got him to set his pen down, though he kept his eyes on the paper in front of him. 

“We Scions have been talking—”

“—Without me?��� she asked with care.

“Oh!” Alphinaud was startled into actually looking at her when he seemed to realize how horrible it sounded when put like that. “No, not with the intent to leave you out of the discussion, of a certainty, but we thought to bring it up when you were perhaps a bit further along in recovery—”

“What are you lot talking about, then? What’s this plan I’ll find out about later?” she pressed, already thin on patience.

Silence stretched for another few heartbeats, drawn out further by Alphinaud’s resumed refusal to look at her.

“I— well, ‘tis hardly a plan just yet, but…given all that we have accomplished, and how far the Alliance has come—”

“The Grand Company of Eorzea.” Serella corrected him.

“Yes, yes, the Grand Company,” Alphinaud hastily corrected, adding, “though even that name change proves how far they have come. Far enough along that I believe it time for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn to slip back into the shadows. We aim to announce our disbandment upon your medical clearance—”

“Disbandment?” Serella gawked. 

“Not in truth! Only insofar as the official story will tell!” Alphinaud reassured, at last turning to her fully.

Serella wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the conversation, at the way he looked surprised that she might take umbrage with the notion.

“We are an organization that has always worked in shadow in service to the star—”

“Oh come off it,” she cut him off waspishly, “Minfilia called us the worst kept secret in Eorzea before we had even moved to the Rising Stones. If you think for one second we were ever fully hidden—”

“I am under no such delusion.” Alphinaud huffed. “Even if only in principal, however, we were not outwardly acknowledged.”

“Until Minfilia specifically declared that we would be a public institution. To be open and honest with the people we fight to save. And you would undermine that, Alphinaud?”

“The world has changed, Serella,” he sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose, “to even begin to speculate on what Minfilia would do after all of this is a disservice to her memory.”

“And the choice to lie to our friends isn’t? To our allies? After fighting alongside them in the name of truth and unity? When we have only barely started pulling back as arbiters for advanced technologies and mediators between peoples post-Calamity? For what purpose, even? So you won’t be pestered by the things they don’t ask of us anymore?” she asked.

“Not—not lying—well, alright, ‘tis a lie, but one that we feel—”

“We?”

“—is necessary. The city-states will continue to grow independent on their own—”

“You know they only asked us for help when they couldn’t do what we did, yes? That such needs were why the Scions were even founded to begin with?” she pressed him. “I don’t even particularly like the governments we’ve worked with, and even I would not be so uncharitable as to consider them demanding.”

“They did ask much of us—” he began.

She was having none of it, however, citing, “Eorzea was losing to Garlemald when I joined the Scions. Do you even remember that? It was a lifetime ago, aye, but they didn’t even ask us at first—do you not recall how close they came to surrendering? Now that they have the means to combat primals without the Echo and a cure for tempering, you cannot even trust them to restrain themselves from asking needless favors?”

“‘Tis not only up to me—” he sidestepped.

“But you suggested it, I’d wager.” She countered.

When the silence re-entered the room, it was incredulous. Stifling. 

“That…is a cruel assumption,” Alphinaud said slowly, eyes averted.

Unfazed, Serella blanched, “Am I wrong?”

Silence chimed in to answer on his behalf: of course he did.

“I think it more than fair for us to step back from—” he tried to pivot.

“So do that. Assign other Scions to Eorzea’s care if you feel you’ve done your part. Disbanding would displace dozens of our colleagues. How many of us have rooms in the Rising Stones with nowhere else to go? For how long was I one of those colleagues?”

“Everyone would remain on the payroll—”

“But disbandment would require us to scatter. To “keep up appearances” and give credence to the lie. Have you factored in where our colleagues will go? How long will we be scattered? What will happen to the Rising Stones and the Waking Sands?”

“We’re barely starting the talks for this now, I know not what we will do to address these things—” he tried to argue.

“Have you told Estinien?” she asked pointedly. “Does he get a vote?”

Silence once more interjected—of course Estinien doesn’t know yet.

Nor was he an Archon.

“Well…” Alphinaud meandered.

“After all the effort the lot of you used to cajole him into joining, finally reassuring him he’s got a steady place to rest his lance outside of Ishgard, this is his thanks not even six moons on?! And what of the others?!”

“As I said, we’re still working it out—”

“So you’re bringing this to the table with no logistics, no plan, and nothing to act as a safety net for those of us that aren’t Archons?” Serella pressed.

“Were our deaths not enough?” Alphinaud asked, tired. “I care for our comrades’ well being. You know I do. But I haven’t the answers yet.”

“Were any of mine?” she countered. “You got to come along for the full ride once, and that was enough, was it?”

“I know not why this is an argument,” he huffed, throwing his hands up in the air as he added, “I still want to work to help Garlemald—your betrothed leads the charge in that—”

“Which makes it all the more insulting you would have me lie to him. You would leave no organization behind the lot of you, nothing to help future generations, no “guiding light” like Loui—”

“I know,” Alphinaud said in a low voice, “what my grandfather wanted. And I know what we want.”

“And who is we, Alphinaud?” Serella asked again in a matching tone.

Silence’s presence made itself known in the room again. It hummed in her ears, it buzzed in his blood. 

“I think…I should go.” Alphinaud murmured, easing himself down from his chair. “Mayhap we can revisit this once you are better. You’re talking like you did years ago when you thought yourself alone.”

“And little wonder. You talk like you did when you thought to form the Braves. You’ve never seemed younger.” Serella quipped, already leaning back into her pillows.

If his flinch was any indication, Alphinaud understood it as the furthest thing from a compliment, yet silence saw him out of her room.