#catherine plays

[dornishsphinx]

Spoilers up to Chapter 6

Celica von Warp Ragnarok Pink Palette Best Emblem

Crimson Cheer, Verdant Faith and…. Alabaster Duty. At least call it Silver Duty, but his clothes are just as ‘azure’ as the others’ are red and green! Ah… (also personal skills based around Our Avatar, sigh… just make them less effective and applicable to a wider variety of unit…)

In any case, I’m really enjoying what they’re doing with clerics being able to make a protected unit around them, especially now that I have two, it just becomes an advancing formation and they can heal each other to let them chain guard the next turn. Plus being effective against ranged! Also backups are fun! Boucheron is pretty forgettable but I like how the backup mechanic works enough that I keep giving him preferential treatment lmao, he currently is Marth’s pet unit. Break is fun as well.

Also I’m really actually pretty enjoying the joke of the fact Yunaka is obviously an ex-assassin and nobody realises it I wish it had continued rather than her immediately admitting it for sympathy points. I’m already a little biased towards her because Micaiah got attached to her - clearly because Sothe reasons.

[ladyxerra]

I know that nobody plays Epic7 but I gotta share this. I finally beat Zio!!!!!!

And here's my team:

(for whoever needs the stat info, I didn't use high end gear, only made sure that STene, SSB and ARas had 100 % crit of all the stats)

[crowleybrekkers]

god keep your ladyship still in that mind, so some gentleman or other shall ’scape a predestinate scratched face.

much ado about nothing (2011)

[lisa-cuddys]

"I do love nothing in the world so well as you."

[misandriste]

↳ endless gifs of lena luthor ✰ 85/∞

KATIE McGRATH as LENA LUTHOR in SUPERGIRL ⪼ 5.14, "THE BODYGUARD"

[elliot-amy]

Catherine Hicks in a behind the scenes photo from Child’s Play (1988)

[paradox-n-bedrock]

[mizgnomer]

Rivals vs. Doctor Who - Parallels

[yrsonpurpose]

Nicholas Galitzine talking about the connection between Mary & George and Red, White & Royal Blue

[chelshiart]

shout out to my siblings for being tolkien-nerds because they make it possible for me, a dwj-nerd, to photobomb their lego rivendell set <3

context of dwj's history with tolkien:

"Tolkien was a different matter. He was just a kind of eminence grise and a legend. You couldn’t hear him lecture. He worked at not letting you hear, because he wanted to go away and finish writing The Lord of the Rings. So he had the very smallest lecture room. First of all it was packed out, so he spoke with his back to the audience and mumbling. Unfortunately he was talking about - meditating on, really - what a plot is like and how it mutates into other plots, and this I found so fascinating that I went back the next week as did one other person. And this meant that he couldn’t stop lecturing and still get the money, which apparently in those days you could if no one turned up - it was a dreadful racket, really. He could have given just the one lecture and then been paid for a term if we’d all stayed away."

 (Quoted from “Interview with Diana Wynne Jones, 22 March 2001” Page 170 in Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom, by Teya Rosenberg et al. Peter Lang Publishing, 2002.)

(source)

[expelliarmus]

[dornishsphinx]

I’ve finally played all four routes of Three Houses, and it only took me until like, 2-3 weeks after the next game in the series came out. Epilogues, untouched by the wayseer:

Azure Moon

Byleth+Ashe (I am convinced Ashe/Cyril would have happened otherwise and I am filled with regret as that became a ship of mine)

Dimitri+Flayn

Dedue+Shamir

Sylvain+Ingrid

Annette+Gilbert

Felix+Bernadetta

—

Crimson Flower

Byleth+Sothis (to be honest, out of morbid curiosity due to events, and poor, poor Rhea, she does not care)

Edelgard+Linhardt (from what I remember, surprisingly and interestingly platonic)

Hubert+Ferdinand

Dorothea+Lorenz

Petra+Ashe

Caspar+Shamir

Hanneman+Manuela

Jeritza+Mercedes

—

Silver Snow (Ashen Wolves + Faculty + gdi I missed the deadline to A-Support Rhea again Run)

Byleth+Yuri

Hapi+Linhardt

Balthus+Constance

Seteth+Flayn

Hanneman+Manuela

Alois+Catherine

Shamir+Cyril

Ferdinand+Petra (apparently so into each other they still got together despite not being fielded since White Clouds)

—

Verdant Wind

Byleth+Singledom

Claude+Flayn

Hilda+Cyril

Raphael+Ignatz

Lorenz+Lysithea

Leonie+Shamir

Marianne+Linhardt

In summation, Flayn likes powerful men and Hanneman and Manuela apparently can’t get enough of each other.

Thoughts on routes and best route order below the cut, along with controversial archetype opinions:

Azure Moon - definitely the best one to start on. Has the big cinematic reveal of who Edelgard is right after Dimitri talks about who she is and what she means to him. It has the least to do with the Agarthans or Imperial motivations. Dimitri’s character arc is cool, and it’s a more personal story about Kingdom characters with cameos of others.

Crimson Flower - then, the other side of the conflict. Gives a bit more info about why Edelgard is up to things, introduces the Agarthans, gives the other side of the central Kingdom-Empire conflict (last chapter in Kingdom capital against a desperate dragon, compared to last chapter in Empire capital against a desperate abomination). Does nothing about the Agarthans other than be like “these are our allies we’re wary of”, slotting it neatly between Azure Moon and the last two routes as an intro to the (Slavic for some reason? I got spoiled for other things but not that Shambhala was covered in readable Cyrillic) Molemen Lore.

Silver Snow - Back to the save point, decide to go against Edelgard instead and see what happens. I mean, I didn’t actually do that, since I wanted to make it an Ashen Wolves + faculty playthrough and wanted to avoid giving Edie and Hubert experience that others could get, but one less White Clouds playthrough is good for the soul. Though it could be interesting playing Black Eagles against their classmates, the Church characters are great and deserve some focus, so honestly would highly recommend focusing more on them. You fight Rhea in the end in both Black Eagle routes, and if they’re close together, you can mark the differences in how she’s treated. Also the Edelgard defeat scene makes way more sense here than in Verdant Wind and is more impactful after the reunion fight animation post-timeskip. It should be seen in context here first rather than being confusing in Verdant Wind, plus, does hit harder if you have sided with her already.

Verdant Wind - You’ve done the surface-level major conflict already, that’s now on the sidelines, it’s time for the ones caught up in the middle (and from outside Fódlan) to demand some lore and then open up to the rest of the world, bringing the routes from the insular and lore-light routes to the lore-heavy one involving the most outsiders.

What I did though: Silver Snow | Verdant Wind. It’s more complicated to put these two in any order since they’re basically identical other than characters involved, so ironically, feels like playing them concurrently is actually better than playing them side by side. They’re way too similar, but at least if they’re played together, you can pick up on small differences more than “ugh, again?”, such as skipping Gronder Field and Claude pushing for info from Rhea where Byleth accepts what’s being said, and food for thought on implications (why does Rhea snap in one and not the other, for example? Did Edelgard treat her worse as a prisoner of war when The Professor takes her side?) Still, I’d put the Nemesis fight after Rhea fight. The opening up of Fódlan and Nemesis getting put down is a more uplifting conclusion than Rhea succumbing, and it’s the point I prefer to have it end on.

Also, Edelgard and Dimitri are a take on Alm/Celica.

Prince and princess of opposing lands. Princess, the “one” surviving child of a haggard-looking king’s consort. Knew each other for a short while in childhood before the princess was taken away again. The Agarthans go on about pitting “the children” against each other, Alm and Celica both have the brands. Echoes came out directly before Three Houses, they added a bunch more fight scenes between Alm and Celica for little reason. Alm is “the jasper lion”, Dimitri is a “blue lion”. Edelgard allies with the Agarthans, Celica… it’s not one to one, but she sure did go along with what the Duma Faithful asked of her. Also I’ve heard things that happen to Edelgard in Three Hopes which tie into some things which happened to Celica in Echoes and not in the original Gaiden which makes me even more suspicious lmao.

Okay, it’s not exact one to one, but the main thing that sparked the notion is they were childhood friends and then Edelgard was taken away, while Echoes was really recent. Three Houses is just wider than Echoes because multiple routes and Claude.

[ladyxerra]

She's slightly outdated but still I can't complain. At least I got a second new ML character from this event.

[maluceh]

prompt #333 for the @marauderswithpalestineproject , also anonymous, “jily as beatrice and benedick from Much Ado About Nothing (1993)”

[lisa-cuddys]

The idiots-to-lovers masterpiece

[wuthering-tempest]

she has a headache...