#but i dont even think owain would be the most interesting scene

[sieglinde-freud]

if awakening ever gets a remake in the next twenty years or so my number one want is same sex marriage + still having kids but my number TWO want is a scene after lucina’s judgement where whoever is robin’s kid confronts lucina. bc like from a player’s stand point, or really even just from robin as a character, its really easy to understand lucina’s thought process, sympathize with her, and forgive her. but if you’re one of the future kids, you came back in time to save your parents (and the world i GUESS), and your friend decides that your parent, yours specifically, is expendable, thats kinda fucked up!! her thinking is valid and potentially correct from a logical standpoint, but looking at it from like morgan’s perspective, it might feel selfish or unwarranted.

but my other thing is, unless robin’s second kid is lucina (or they dont have one), i think using their other kid over morgan would be more impactful if only because morgan lost their memories of the past and doesnt have as strong of a connection with lucina as say, someone like gerome or cynthia does. if its chrom!morgan then yeah, theres the connection, but otherwise wouldnt it be fucking wild to see the perspective of someone who went back in time with their friend who promised to go back and save the world, only to find them pointing a sword at your fucking dad? literally insane where is this confrontation. number three want is fix chapter two’s map design

[someobscurereference]

im hoping i dont sound super rude here but why do you like modern au fics so much? i typically prefer canon settings, or if the setting of a work is in our world, for there to be some fantastical element to it - something like your modern trio au. i know a lot of people like modern aus but to me theyve always seemed kind of boring in comparison.

As a reader, I don’t necessarily love Modern AUs more than any other AUs, I think! (Although there are a lot of subsets within the genre of Modern AU that I am partial or not so partial to that exist as well. For example, Coffee Shop AU or High School AU? Meh. Don’t care very much. Soulmate AU that takes place in a modern setting? Oh, let’s go!) Fantasy and horror are my favorite genres, so I also agree that I love reading fics where there is a “fantastical element” to it. (Like, the reason I love Modern Trio Living In Nohr AU is because I get to let the Trio react to all the wacky magical FE stuff exactly the way I, a modern woman living in the year 2020, would react, and that’s fun to me). 

As a writer, things are a bit trickier. Modern AUs make things easier on me in a lot of ways because I don’t have to worry about writing dialogue a certain way all the time. (For example, I don’t think there’s a huge difference between the way FE Fates characters talk and the way modern characters would talk--at least not compared to other fandoms that might have to talk in Ye Old English, I think--but when it’s not a comedy, I make an effort to make Canon Dialogue sound a little more formal and in-line with what I think the game dialogue sounds like. Canon Retainer Laslow talking to Xander The Crown Prince would sound and act different than Laslow The Regular Guy who works at a dance studio and ran into Xander, The CEO Dude But Not Literal Royalty he’s getting to gradually know. There’s less barriers there, although perhaps some new barriers that would be neat to think about too. When I write canon and have to keep canon events/dialogue style/dynamics in line, it takes a bit more effort on my part. Which is not too much extra effort and it can be really rewarding to explore those things, but a lot of my unfinished fic has ended up being canon setting stuff because fic plot in general can already be tricky, especially if I’m trying to balance that other stuff on top of it. When I write non-canon compliant stuff, there’s not as much pressure to be. Well. Canon compliant!) 

(Also. Big confession here. I love Owain/Odin. He’s my absolute fave. But!! I hate writing his dialogue so much because it’s often so off the wall and dramatic, and I feel I often pale in comparison to his canon dialogue. Like, the reader can tell I’m trying too hard, and I can always tell it isn’t exactly correct. So I often use any excuse to get out of doing it. But that’s such a big part of his character! I can’t just avoid it! I’m lucky because whenever canon setting Leo is in a scene, I can use the excuse that he makes Odin talk “normally” with him. With a modern world, I get a little more leeway with that, and I use that excuse every chance I get.)

tl;dr When I change the canon setting to a modern setting, I get to tweak behavior and dialogue so they’re easier on myself as the modern person writing it. (Also, excuses like cars or phones come in handy a lot.)

Additionally! It’s not that I love writing Modern AU as a default. But!! A lot of tropes I really enjoy fit into a Modern AU setting easier than canon setting for me. 

For example: Reincarnation AU! I’ve written a few of those and enjoy them greatly. While a Reincarnation AU could absolutely happen in a canon setting--say, 20 or even 100 years post-canon--I feel like I would have to account for a bunch of gradual changes that happen over time, in that case. What does Nohr look like in 20 years? 50 years? 100 years? What does Hoshido look like? How has technology changed? Who is in charge? What do inter-kingdom relations look like? Do people remember the war as it actually happened still? Why would Trio be reincarnated in Nohr instead of Ylisse? Why would Nohr native characters have been reincarnated in Ylisse vs Nohr? I think these questions would be fascinating to answer! But I’m also... very lazy sometimes, OTL. And sometimes I feel uncreative and unsatisfied with my own explanations/justifications for things. If I want to write Reincarnation AU, it’s just way easier on me as the writer to make it a modern setting, even if I’m missing out on other interesting concepts I could be exploring as well. This holds true for other tropes I like to write as well.

tl;dr2: As a reader, I like to read a variety! As a writer, it’s often easier on me to write a modern setting rather than a canon one. I like writing canon stuff a lot too, but I feel like I often have to juggle a little more with them, and that’s why most of my unfinished work is in canon settings.

If you’re not a fan of modern AUs, however, there’s nothing wrong with that! It’s just not your cup of tea.

I hope that makes sense! :D

[sieglinde-freud]

so the way endings in awakening work is a bit off if you have the gay mod because it reads single people normally, but married people have the man’s ending read, and then his wife just. attached. and so that alters which ending you see for both of them. unfortunately, that means if i have f/f pairs, which most of them were, i dont get to see any because none of them were read. and at least with the second gen, i did almost entirely f/f pairs, which dont show up, or m/m pairs, which had nothing written, so. everyone please give it up for gerome and cynthia, the only second gen ending i got to see!

😭😭 good for them!!! anyways unorganized final thoughts under cut so i dont have to make a whole other post for it

awakening lunatic sucks! but project thabes makes it suck a little less. in all honesty i had a lot of fun, awakenings a good game to revisit, and finding a way to make it challenging while being able to use my favorite units (awakening second gen) ever was awesome. normally having all 13 (or 14 in this case, with both morgans) would break the game, but lunatic kept the enemies strong, so it didnt matter what my units had. i actually got overwhelmed a lot 😭 HUGE difficulty jump between hard and lunatic all i’m saying. and then the games like “hey now u have lunatic+ if that interests you” NOOOOO THANKS.

anyways. here are my top three guys according to the medal thingies at the end

im so proud of them :3 of all the kids really but yeah these three were huge standouts. virion actually got a change in the mod where one of his subclasses was swapped for myrmidon, so yarne got to inherit astra which was actually insane? it procced ALL THE TIME so. that was crazy. chrom!inigo and fred!cynthia are always good thats not new but they were really clutch in the last few chapters. i had them both hopping around classes for most of the game bc thabes redoes skill progression so. IT TOOK CYNTHIA SO LONG TO LEARN LUNA. ITS FROM WYVERN LORD. GOD. she went through a LOT of classes yall dont even know. also honorable mention to marc and morgan, the best rallybots ever, and dancer lucina, who was outserving everyone she was in a scene with. my girl.

like ok serving cunt on the back of the god youre about to kill? get it girl!

anyways so for second gen pairs i did: lucina/f!morgan, owain/m!morgan, inigo/laurent, yarne/brady, severa/kjelle, nah/noire, and cynthia/gerome and you know what. i think i have a great taste. a lot of these were born from being unable to do other pairings but thats ok. i liked how it turned out. though i was gonna do nah/noire anyways because they were actually like. an insane duo. honestly im surprised noire didnt get a medal thing bc i feel like her nostanking with nah backing her up got me out of so much shit. maybe its because i didnt see her ending… oh. oh wait thats probably it. well. anyways.

i think awakening is not a properly balanced game, nor are the maps made for a difficulty like this. towards the end game especially, the maps are just. flat. most of them anyways, and they just become really repetitive and bland and boring. and despite this being the game with the tactician character of all the time, they dont really allow you flexible strategies, because if youre not pair up stat stacking, you will die! and that sucks. mid game is alright, but the last arc is really weak and kinda dampered my whole experience. im glad i did it, but i wouldnt actually reccomend it to anyone unless you like to play like that (which is totally fine! its just not my thing). definitely requires some solid planning as well. all in all, not the worst fire emblem ive played but… well. im not doing it again. ok anyways heres inigo mouthing off at grima