#do they just use all of the archanea games ...

[5seraphim]

You may call me... "Marth".

[emblemxeno]

Once again Mr stalker raxy pal posted an ask of yours. What’s crazy about it this time is like? Dude edited it a bit I’m sure? Like? That is so crazy to me that effort is being put into this shit that you’d think these added seconds of time would help him reflect “hey maybe I should stop being a total loser and leave people alone”

Lol.

Conveniently leaving out this tidbit where...

Humans tried to exterminate manaketes after they had just protected them from degenerated dragons. Earth Dragons sucked for their pride and views of humans, but 1) they never chose to actively attack people, they degenerated and went feral, so 2) it's not equivalent to or worse than humans being fully aware of what they were doing when trying to kill manaketes and 3) none of what the Earth Dragons believed nor what they did once they were feral-i.e. not of sane mind-warranted innocent manaketes being attacked.

And the core foundation of the Archanea games is Marth, a human who's not a total fuckbag, stopping the dark cycle of hatred and retaliation. It's why his opposite is Gharnef, a human but also a fuckbag, who does awful things to people (causing both the War of Shadows and the War of Heroes) and uses dragons to achieve those things. It's why a major enemy is Hardin, a human who sunk into despair, sloth, rage, and jealousy due to his connection to Marth and Nyna. The reason why the War of Shadows got as bad as it did is because Camus was tragically attatched to his duty above his beliefs, and Micahlis had selfish, grand ambitions. It's almost like the pattern here is that humans do shitty things in the name of selfish ideals and good humans have to end conflict on behalf of the *remaining dragons wiped out due to aforementioned shitty things* and the other good people.

Similarly, Grima was made by a crazy fuck human who indiscriminately killed and sacrificed people for his own science project, and Loptous would never have even gotten to Jugdral were it not for Gair's power hungry ass.

Humans were also responsible for starting the Scouring and the Ending Winter, revising history to erase the Manakete involvement in Magvel, revising history and oppressing laguz in Tellius, and all of the fuckass business in Fodlan.

The only games that can be argued-though still with difficulty-to support his point are Valentia (which even then wasn't ashamed to whack the people themselves for feeding into their own reliance), Fates and Engage, the latter two he doesn't like, so... I reiterate, do they play any other FE games and not just screenshot stuff from wikis?

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

Headcanon: every world we see in fire emblem actually does have a dragon's gate, or equivalent - some place that transports you to another world.

FE's 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 13, 15, and arguably 4 and 5 (based on word of god but that god no longer has influence on the series and the concept of the dragon's gate didn't exist then) all share the same world and are covered by the one that exists in awakening.

FE's 6 and 7 have one that we actually go to in the main story.

FE8 doesn't actually have one in game, but the demon king emerges in the temple from... somewhere. So. Alternatively the lagdou ruins feel very dragon's gate-y.

FE's 9&10 have wherever ike fucked off to with soren so he can end up in the world of archanea and somehow impregnate soren so Priam can exist.

FE14 has the one that's used to access dlc. Also the 3 returning characters canonically came through it.

FE16 is another one where you have to stretch to find something that works. You could say zaharas but that seems incorrect just based on vibes. You could argue that sothis herself is the dragon's gate because she can in fact travel between worlds. On a meteor.

FE17 has the well. And sombron doing the meteor thing!

So all in all the only iffy ones are sacred stones, three houses, and the jugdral games.

.

[randomnameless]

It's crazy how SoV preluded 3H by making one of the protags have a tremendously contradictory mindset of humanity being better off without gods, while also relying on those same gods to fulfill their goals, the hypocrisy of which goes completely unadressed throughout the game; truly masterful foreshadowing

Who directed FE15?

lol

I've recently tried to think about this "gods BaD" shift in more doylist terms - especially since I've finally played a Squenix game recently and...

FE13 was the FE series last ditch effort, it will either work or end up as the F-Zero series, FE13 worked and FE14 followed suit.

Lolcalisation aside, FE14 had a nice plot and I engaging characters - to some people but not me, different tastes and all - but FE14 and FE13 were still FE games, as in part of the old FE series, aka a niche series. Adding dating sim/interpersonal relationship through avatars might have helped a bit, and yet, imo, it was still the "niche" FE series.

Comes FE15 where we basically have a remake, and can't add the interpersonal thing because Alm isn't an avatar (even if the game spends a lot of time praising his oranges) - how to make the game work? Sure, some weirdo fans of the FE series will buy it, and it was never supposed to sell as much as FE13/14, but if it was a 1:1 remake or just with minor adjustments? It might bomb like the Archanea remakes, and good luck coming after that - will they need another "FE13" to reignite the sales or??

And here I thought about it : FE15 was retconned with the "GoDs BaD" spiel, to make this game more in-tune with what I'd call "traditional" JRPGs where the protagonists often defy a corrupt church and "divine" being.

("Traditional" imo being the Squenix way, because while I didn't play all entries of this series, the Tales series never striked me as being particularly as, uh, vindicative against organised religion, maybe save for Symphonia 1 - Abyss' Church really wishes to help the people even if it is corrupted from within by some dude who doesn't want to let the world die and played by the big bad, Xillia has no church, ditto for Zestiria and Phantasia had Mint and... that's it? - compare this to Squenix's Triangle Strategy and Hyzante being comically EvIl and without any redeeming traits/points when all of the other major parties of the conflict have "token good NPCs" as forced as they are in the game, to make it very clear that they might have done questionnable things like invading and slaughtering civilians from a foreign nation who welcomed them at their wedding, but at least they have "MoRaLs" unlike those bozos in their desert...)

And this "let's make FE mainstream by kicking gods" mentality completely runs at odds with the rest of the FE franchise, and while I know RD basically ends like this bcs "uwu Ike defeated a GoD with the help of another who used the lead of that game as a soul jar and granted him exclusive powers to put her sister to sleep" the morale of RD's story - as seen in the perfect ending but in Ike's speech to Yune itself - is that everyone can and should try to live together, asking Gods not the fuck out to let Humanity alone, but to believe in them just like humans believe in gods.

So FE15 ends as this big, uh, mismatched clash of narrative directions - being a remake it cannot stray too far from the source material and Archanea verse : Dragons and Humans can live together (even if it means dragons must sacrifice part of themselves to do so because fuck them I guess) and dragons can help humans just like humans can, uh, not be asses and not target them because their ears are pointy or when they are weakened...

And we had the new Squenix direction where GoDs BaD and HuMaNiTy fuck yeah, which leads to FE15's hypocrisy : please trust and rely on us Gods/dragons and kindly help us when we're in deep shit, and at the same time "HuMaNiTy FuCk YeAh".

Interestingly, the Squenix direction loses in the post game campaign (the one where we discover Thabes) but is reintroduced in the official (tm) timeline, depicting basically how BaD Duma is and how much of a chad Rudy was, before his very tragic (bring the onions!) death.

But yeah, I agree anon, FE15 was crazy foreshadowing and I guess is part of the reason why Tru Piss has this message "Humanity doesn't need Gods" targeted at... Rhea, aka a Nabatean (while Supreme Leader got there thanks to Sothis' powers!!) because the "Humanity Fuck Yeah" narrative is a staple of Squenix JRPGS, and if FE has to become mainstream, I guess to some devs, it has to copy what sells.

That would also explain why FE16 went so off the rails and forgot the tradition FE series message about coexistence, because what the fuck do you mean by "Humanity doesn't need Nabateans", after parroting for the entire game "Nabateans are to blame for the irrational world we live in" and blame "Nabatean blood" for everything wrong in Fodlan, without ever acknowledging the "evilness that lurks in the heart of men" (who aren't called Dimitri) ?

In a series that, albeit hazaphardly at times (FE8's manaketes feel forced in the lore! and the less is said about Nowi/Panne in FE13 the better we are), tried to push the "coexistence between all inhabitants of the land is the key to peace!" card - this Squenix direction feels all kind of wrong, especially when friendship with the divine beings (dragons) have been a staple of the franchise (Y!Tiki's number of alts, imo, is telling : for better or worse, Y!Tiki is, along with Marth, the figure of the franchise. She is a dragon, and she's a kid who wants to make friends. Sure it brings the loli crowd, but all those dragon children in the different games? They are a direct throwback to Y!Tiki!).

In a nutshell, I'd say the first crack was FE10's writing that made things seem like the Hero defeated a goddess and its subsequent wanking.

But I agree with you anon, FE15's change in direction and retcons were absolutely gunning for that Squenix "GoDs BaD" while keeping the "traditional" FE message which resulted in hypocrisy that showed in the writing but I guess no one really paid attention because FE15 has other issues too (I didn't before happening on FE16... even if I remember wondering why the fuck the game kept on hammering how BaD Duma was when we had people being asses right and left on their own).

FE Fodlan completely ignored the "we can coexist" message - save for subtext you can have where the optional lords who win the war and aren't Supreme Leader can have half/quarter-nabatean heirs through Flayn but her heritage is never ever mentionned in the ending cards - by completely shitting/ignoring the local dragons, they're blamed for everything wrong and don't get their voice to the chapter.

Masterful writing lol

I can't wait for the next game, let it be a remake (pls not Jugdral!!) or a new entry (Engage was developped alongside Fodlan, not after!) to see if IS will continue with the Squenix developments or return to their roots, even if they seem milquetoast, of "humans and lizards can hold hands".

---

NGL anon, during 2020/2021 and the daily "Supreme Leader was right though" threads in SF, I kind of realised that what I took for granted, aka "coexistence between humans and dragons!" being the message of FE in general, wasn't, even in what used to be the most serious board/thing.

FE as a series came to the West through FE7 where Dragons and Humans were at war, but ultimately the cast learns that dragons aren't evil incarnate and the best ending reveals that the big bad went mad because his dragon wife was killed and he tried to reunite with their dragon-human children he hid away for their safety.

So it was kind of surprising to see long-time, or at least not "Fodlan introduced" members of SF parroting the "well they can't live together" by buying the most ludicrous headcanon/fanon arguments you'd find in other series like "different lifespans" - this argument is pretty much non existent in the FE series, and I've never seen it opposed to Miccy's rule in Daien when, as a Heron Branded, she will outlive her citizens, or what, are we supposed to believe that Myrrh shouldn't interact with humans and remain in her forest because she will outlive humans, or is too "different" from them thus wouldn't have the same considerations?

FE13/14 brought the fandom wars of "new fans" vs "old fans", but FE Fodlan? Brought "casual JRPG gamer" vs "FE gamer" which usually boils down to "Supreme Leader fans" vs "everyone else".

Sure, we had the religion hate boner because the dragons in Fodlan verse made a "Church" with catholic imagery which is a deadly sin to some - but the "dragon blood is indeed the reason why everything sucks in the world" being parroted? "Dragons cannot have power over humans because of the sheer inbalance"? What, are you implying Nergal was forced by Aenir to mate with her twice or what? Ninian was oppressing Pherae in the endings where she marries Eliwood, and humans were finally liberated when she died?

Kana is, by nature, someone who will oppress humans because they're part dragon and their blood will bring strife to the world?

So unless IS doesn't fully commit to one narrative - because yes, for all of its flak, FE Fodlan still takes time, when it remembers, to portray Nabateans in a relative positive light when it comes to them as characters and in the general background, it's just that, they're never given a voice when it comes to discussing about the plot - we're bound to have this hypocrisy :

Dragons BaD bcs Humanity Fuck Yeah

and

Dragons and Humanity can coexist and make babies for scalies/monsterfuckers out there because acceptance/diversity is a way for peace.

[hresvelged]

TOA Anniversary Munday

Celebrating TOA and the people who contribute to make our group what it is. Repost, don't reblog. Only fill in what you feel comfortable sharing! Happy anniversary, TOA! Here's to many more years spent together.

Credits to Neffi for making this!

Name: Tiff

Pronouns: she/her

Birthday (no year): December 2nd

Where are you from? What is your time zone? USA; Eastern Standard Time

How long is your roleplay experience? 12-ish years give or take some hiatuses I took and whatnot.

How were you introduced to roleplaying as a whole? I am pretty sure it was due to some friends I had in high school at the time lol. Ironically they wrote on Tumblr haha. I wrote short stuff on DeviantArt before that as one-shot things but we don't perceive that.

How were you introduced to TOA? I saw a promo post for it on Twitter. I was in a multi-fandom rp group writing 3H there at the time but I was intrigued at the idea of getting to interact with more Fire Emblem characters and having a new setting for my 3H muse.

Do you have any pets? No, but I used to have birds when I was younger.

What is your favorite time of year and why? (Season, holiday, general period) Fall because the weather starts to cool down lol. I also like the autumn cozy things.

What is your IRL occupation? Database Analyst.

Some interests and things you like/enjoy? Reading, listening to music, dance, cosplay, makeup.

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? Persona, rhythm games (right now just Project Sekai but I used to be very big into Love Live), and I've enjoyed mystery series like Danganronpa and RainCode.

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: I am saddened to say I know very little about Pokemon asFGHL but I am hoping to change this soon.

Tell us some funfacts and trivia about yourself! (Optional bonus challenge: if you filled this last year, try not to repeat what you said back then!) Hmm. I am left handed, I am one of the fastest typists at my job, and I have had a few ita bags over the years for various characters- Eli Love Live, Kanan Love Live, Makoto Persona 5, and I've started an Edelgard one lol.

How did you get into Fire Emblem? Three Houses was all over my Twitter feed when it came out and so I checked it out! The gameplay looked neat and the story seemed cool. And now I am here!

What Fire Emblem games have you played? I have played or watched playthroughs of Jugdral, the Archanea games, Awakening, Fates, Valentia, 3 Houses, and Engage.

First & Favorite Fire Emblem games: First: Three Houses. Favorite: Three Houses.

List your 5 favorite Fire Emblem characters across the series! Probably Edelgard, Celine, Dorothea, Flayn, and Ivy.

Who was the first character ever to make you go “ooh I like this one in particular” and why? Can be any context and reason! Edelgard lol! I went in 3H blind and I chose BEagles first because I liked her character and I was not disappointed.

Any Fire Emblem crushes? 😳 Hmm not really, but I think Alfred and Diamant are cool lol.

If you’ve played (or are familiar with) the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays? - Awakening: Chrom, still Chrom

Fates: I can't remember orz.

Three Houses: Edelgard, still Edelgard or maybe Hubert

Engage: Alfred, Alfred again or Diamant

Favorite Fire Emblem class? I've grown fond of the Armored classes over the years but I also like Gremory.

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class and stats? Would you be playable? I'd probably be a healer lol and average stats.

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? (Black Eagles, Blue Lions, Golden Deer, Church of Seiros, Those Who Slither in the Dark, unaffiliated civilian, other - for example Almyran) Black Eagles.

If you were an Officers Academy student, what would be your boons, banes and potential budding talent? Boons: Reason, Faith. Banes: Axe, Heavy Armor. Budding talent: Authority

If you were an Engage character, which nation would you originate from? (Firene, the Kingdom of Abundance; Brodia, the Kingdom of Might; Elusia, the Kingdom of Knowledge; Solm, the Queendom of Freedom; Lythos, the holy land of the Divine Dragon; Gradlon, the desolate land of the Fell Dragon) Firene is very pretty and I am slightly bias haha.

How do you pronounce TOA? 🤔(separate letters, to-ah, other?) To-Ah

Current TOA muses: Edelgard, Celine

Past TOA muses? Flayn, Annette, Dorothea, Elice, Yunaka. I think that's all.

If you have past muses, are there any you miss in particular? I enjoy them as characters but I don't want to write any of them right now. I prefer seeing them in other people's hands hehe.

Who was your first TOA muse? If you no longer have them, can you see yourself picking them up again? My first muse was Flayn and I don't see myself writing her again. I wrote a lot of stuff for her both here and the previous MFRP group I was in and I feel satisfied with that.

Do you believe you have a type of character you gravitate towards writing? (If you filled this out last year, has this changed in any way?) My muse type is still the same I think lol! I gravitate a lot towards stoic women- Something about these ladies having a lot of responsibility on their shoulders and, for some of them, a colder exterior but a kind heart.

Do you have characters or types of characters you don’t think you can handle writing, but wish you could? Male muses never stick for me in general. Aside from that, I'm not really sure, but I guess maybe characters who's designs are neat but I don't have their lore as well-grasped.

What kind of scenes, situations etc do you believe you enjoy writing the most? (If you filled this out last year, has this changed in any way?) I enjoy a mix of things! I like fluff as much as I like angst stuff- It depends on the muses and context. I like steering my muses towards certain arcs and I like them developing friendships as well as finding themselves in difficult scenarios.

Do you have any scenario in mind for your muse(s) that gets you thinking “man I hope I get to write this one day”? I'd like to write more AU's! The 3H timeskip AU and Fell Xenologue AU's are two off the top of my head. Otherwise, I hope to explore more of Edelgard opening up about herself and Celine developing more knowledge on surrounding lands.

Favorite TOA-related memories? I enjoyed Fantom Loews and KKE a lot as two lore events that come to mind! I also really have liked every Ethereal Ball interaction my muses have had. The more casual setting allows them to meet both old and new muses.

Present or past tense? I switch around but I've written more in past tense overall.

Normal size text, small text, no preference? I default to small text and bolded dialogue but I change it around sometimes and don't have a preference for other people when writing with me!

Got any potential muse delusions to share? 😉 Not really hahaha. I wouldn't mind trying another Engage character sometime but as to who, I don't know yet lol.

[blaiddllodi]

TOA Anniversary Munday

Celebrating TOA and the people who contribute to make our group what it is.

Repost, don't reblog. Only fill in what you feel comfortable sharing!

Happy anniversary, TOA! Here's to many more years spent together.

(Previous answers here on Raven's blog. Thanks for putting this together Neffi!)

Name: tches!

Pronouns: she/they

Birthday (no year): 22 Dec

Where are you from? What is your time zone? From Germany, but I live in Colorado

How long is your roleplay experience? A few years in 2005, and now my tenure here

How were you introduced to roleplaying as a whole? Uhhhhh probably Yahoo chatrooms if I'm honest, but I spent most of my time in Livejournal communities

How were you introduced to TOA? I found it scrolling the Raven tag and I saw mirae's drop. Didn't join at this time. Then Elf advertised in a mutual server and I was like Hm. Maybe I will.

Do you have any pets? The server knows my beloved Coriander my baby my light my heart. I also live with two GSDs, Ursa and Solo.

What is your favorite time of year and why? (Season, holiday, general period) I love you winter, I love you snow, I love you December, I love you.

What is your IRL occupation? Handwaves IT. I'm helpdesk at my current place, but I've begun learning network infrastructure stuff recently.

Some interests and things you like/enjoy? I like languages and history, esp Meiji Japan and Mughal India. I used to be a lot more active, and I still generally enjoy yoga and rock climbing, but I've accrued some injuries which prevent me from doing this as much as I'd like. Sadge.

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? Final Fantasy, Pokemon, Ace Attorney, Assassin's Creed, Dragon Age, Bloodborne, Witcher, Kingdom Hearts.

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: Ice or Dragon I think; and Gyarados my beloved my friend my partner (although Delibird is a very close second I love that little dude)

Tell us some funfacts and trivia about yourself! (Optional bonus challenge: if you filled this out last year, try not to repeat what you said back then!) One time a drunk driver scraped my ex-husband's car pulling out of the bar and while he was so flabbergasted that it had happened, me and a friend who had just gotten out of the Navy broke into a sprint to chase the girl down for three blocks before she left the neighborhood.

How did you get into Fire Emblem? My father and I were in the PX and I grabbed Blazing because it had just come to the States and it looked interesting.

What Fire Emblem games have you played? All but Archanea and Tellius. I started Path of Radiance, and put it down at chapter 15 when I got busy. I'll pick it back up again I promise :sob:

First & Favorite Fire Emblem games: First is Blazing and favorite is...probably Blazing still. Elibe is just home to me. I really really like Three Houses and Shadows of Valentia though.

List your 5 favorite Fire Emblem characters across the series! Oh gosh. Raven number one forever, and Dima and Berkut are up there. I'll list five who aren't my roster, in no particular order: Hubert, Hector, Lyon, Priscilla, Lachesis.

Who was the first character ever to make you go “ooh I like this one in particular” and why? Can be any context and reason! Wil. Wil was my first favorite, followed by Matthew. I genuinely loved them so so much my first playthrough I gave them everything.

Any Fire Emblem crushes? 😳 Jeralt can still get it.

If you’ve played (or are familiar with) the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays?- Awakening: Another accidental Chrom victim - probably Lonk or Freddie Fates: I genuinely don't remember if it was Kaze or Jakob - Probably still Kaze Three Houses: Claude - Hubert is my favorite S support he's really good Engage: I literally hard swerved from Diamant the moment Pandreo came on screen I don't think anyone's taking his crown.

Favorite Fire Emblem class? I just really like the Merc-Hero line 🙈But I also love wyverns

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class and stats? Would you be playable? Infantry sword. I hate to say I'd be a Navarre archetype but I honestly probably would be. Middling strength and con but workable with attention, decent speed, absolutely ridiculous crit stat. Surprisingly high resistance. I'd be a good candidate for Dancer or Mortal Savant.

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? Unaffiliated civilian, but can be swayed to join a cause after some effort. I tend to keep myself a bit at arms length, and it can be difficult sometimes to get my genuine loyalty.

If you were an Officers Academy student, what would be your boons, banes and potential budding talent? Boons: Sword, Bow Bane: Flying Budding Talent: Heavy Armor

If you were an Engage character, which nation would you originate from? No lie, probably Brodia. My family is full of soldiers on all sides

How do you pronounce TOA? 🤔(separate letters, to-ah, other?) Depends on the flow of the sentence. Sometimes toe-ah, sometimes T-O-A

Current TOA muses: Raven, Dimitri, Berkut

Past TOA muses? Sigurd, Igrene, Saber, Petra, Beowolf, Lyn

Who was your first TOA muse? If you no longer have them, can you see yourself picking them up again? Raven my heart my forever. If he hasn't been pried from my grasp for the last twenty years, I can't imagine what might.

Do you believe you have a type of character you gravitate towards writing? I like it when grief and love carve someone into a weapon. I love rage and deep, boundless sorrow. And I occasionally like when they get a little slutty, I'm not a monster.

Do you have characters or types of characters you don’t think you can handle writing, but wish you could? 🤔Hard to say. I like to think my range is pretty good. I've been writing for long enough that I don't really wish - I just do it. I think anyone could write anyone if they genuinely put their heart into it.

What kind of scenes, situations etc do you believe you enjoy writing the most? I like when the narrator is a little unreliable. I like when there's so much emotion that everything becomes just a little bit fuzzy an indistinct, like they're suddenly underwater and haven't realized they're drowning. I like when the narrative is circular and I can call back five posts, or when I can bookend things - dramatic irony my beloved. I love miscommunication, especially when one person takes something and runs with it (RIP Sigurd you were the king of this and your never-shuts-up).

Do you have any scenario in mind for your muse(s) that gets you thinking “man I hope I get to write this one day”? I've been in an AU mood lately. I want more AUs - coffeeshop AU, horror movie tropes AU, cross-fiction AU. There was an idea that I had that I'd like to build up a bit more that I may drop a call for 🙊

Favorite TOA-related memories? All of Raven's threads with elysia's Priscilla and kanoesa's Lucius 🤲I hold them like this. And unrelated to my muses I to this day can't get over And Now All Of TOA Knows You Tried To Kill Ryoma.

Present or past tense? Past. I use present tense pretty sparingly, and almost exclusively for one-off asks. Feels weird though.

Normal size text, small text, no preference? No preference. I use normal size out of laziness. The most formatting you'll get from me is italics for emphasis or for thought patterns.

Got any potential muse delusions to share? 😉 One day I will app Sommie and everyone will have a heart attack. You think I'm joking? You think this is a game?

[pale-flower-of-darkness]

i did it. and it has proper grammar. i hope. also it has key art in it. for flavor.

fe casts ranked by continent not including elyos cuz dont know enough about them.

9. Tellius

I am going to get crucified for this take but I don't care. I hate the story of Tellius. Nothing about it interests me. FE9/10 is the first time in the series where I was actually endeared to a grand total of 0 members of the cast. I seriously don't know what else to say. Like I don't think I would feel this strongly about Tellius if it wasn't praised as the best this series has to offer. I would genuinely just see it as a mediocre story with decent world building and forgettable characters.

Also if you do like Tellius, I am very happy that you could connect with something I couldn't. I mean that, the fact that people like something you don't should be a good thing. Most of the time. To be perfectly honest I am very picky and snarky when it comes to fantasy media because I dislike when people use simplistic metaphors for complex real-world issues.

However, I know that there are people who like simpler fantasy with more clear metaphors. It exists for a reason. There's an audience for Tellius 100%, but that audience is not me.

8. Valentia

So. What can I say I like about the Valentian cast? I like Sonya. That's about it? Yeah... I think FE15 does a good job breathing life into these characters but the problem is that more-so than any other game, this cast is riddled with misogyny. I won't get into it in this post because it's a very layered issue, but out of every original playable female character, only one of them is independent and doesn't marry, she gets turned into a witch in her epilogue. Sonya deserved better.

7. Archanea

Archanea characters don't have personalities but they get to be higher then Valentia and Tellius solely because they don't annoy me as much. I can point out what I don't like with the other casts. Like, I don't like that Danved is the only black character in the franchise and he looks like that. I don't like that Shinon doesn't really have a reason to be an asshole other than he's just an asshole. I don't like how Leon is one of the only gay characters in the series and he falls in love with a straight man. I could go on. What can I say about Archanea though? Nothing really. There's nothing there to like or dislike about the characters. They just exist to exist, and they exist to be cannon fodder. That's really it.

Tiki is neat though.

6. Ylisse & Valm

Ah yes, the game where every playable character has an annoying gimmick. Listen, say what you want about Awakening's cast, at the very least they're all memorable. I have an opinion on most of the Shepards. In theory, it works. Everyone can make an impression on the player, and it can make you want to learn more about them just from a line with a lot of personality. In execution it's just really annoying. However, I still find myself liking quite of few of them. The children especially, probably because their gimmicks are more subdued half the time.

5. Nohr/Hoshido

Same thing as Awakening. Most of them have an annoying gimmick. Keyword: MOST. I think it's way worse with the kids, which was a much, MUCH better call. If I had to spend time with the pickle guy in the main story, I would just drop Fates entirely. I'm being so serious.

4. Fódlan

Three Houses has the best written cast. It also has the most written cast. You could say the non-lords have gimmicks and I'd agree, however because the way it's set up those gimmicks aren't on full display in every one of their non-support lines. They aren't annoying because they're written like people, ya' know? Think of your acquaintances, you probably only know one thing about them. Hilda is lazy, Caspar is brash, Marianne is self-deprecating, Ashe is nice, etc. However just because you don't know them very well doesn't mean that's all they are, it's a big part of who they are but it not always on display. Three Houses does a really good with its cast in that regard and I think that's why so many people gravitated towards that game in particular, you really are getting to know your students and are beginning to care about them. Three Hopes does worse with this but it's a spin-off. What did you expect?

3. Jugdral

I think I've cemented myself as someone who knows jack-all about Jugdral, and I honestly intend to keep it that way, (even though I know it pisses off FE4 fans and I don't like making people genuinely upset, just like haha silly upset) but. But, but, but. I DO know stuff about FE5- and my verdict is- for a game with absolutely no character writing, they really do make you care about these characters. Unless it's Kane, Alva and Robert. I'm not kidding you, I genuinely LIKE Osian, even though he has like 10 lines if that. I genuinely LIKE Tanya, even though she only has like 3 lines that aren't about her dad or her boyfriend. I fucking LOVE Mareeta, because she GETS LINES. I also love Salem, his design is rad and 'Ruining Moomin' has endeared me to ex-cult members. If any Kaga game deserved a remake with supports, it was FE5.

Also I like Tine. I know very little about her but her theme hurts my soul and what I know of her backstory upsets me in the same way Jaffar's lack of backstory upsets me and that's a good way for me to attempt to adopt a fictional character.

2. Elibe

"But it's just an Archanea rip-off! How can you like the cast of FE6 and not the cast of FE1/3/11/12?" SHUT UP. SHUT UPPPP. THAT'S THE POINT. Everything about Elibe is supposed to subvert your expectations based on what you know from previous games. Does the lords father die? Nope. Is the creepy shadowy figure lurking behind the main antagonist controlling him? Nope. Is the woman who's in love with the main antagonist in love with him because he secretly has a heart of gold? Nope. Are <blank> dragons inherently evil? Nope. Even Roy having red hair is a subversion. Red is often treated as the opposite of blue, ya' know? The cast is full of Archanea expies to make you THINK it's a rip-off. However, if you forgot, the cast of Archanea is full of damn pawns. There is nothing to rip-off other than appearance, role and a vague idea of what their personality is. The cast of FE6 isn't bland. You just haven't looked past how the early game is purposefully full of expies. I'm not apologizing for this one. If you think FE6 has a boring cast I will fight you.

For FE7, everything you could say about that cast has been said. They're incredibly strong in their own right and connects pretty well to FE6 even though the story didn't. Nino and Jaffar are my all time favorite Fire Emblem characters for a reason.

It also has a trio of preteen boys with contrasting personalities and if you've been on my main you know I have a weakness for that dynamic solely because of Ed Edd n' Eddy.

1. Magvel

Hey, look my most obvious take since the time I said "Magical Mystery Tour" is a better album then "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!"

I want to get one thing clear, it does not take much for me to like a cast. The one requirement is that every character is involved with a story for a reason, Scared Stones is the only FE game where that's done correctly. Everyone you play as has a reason to be in your army, and everyone who opposes you has a reason for that too. Even the characters that are otherwise pretty bland have a role in the story somehow, even if its very minor.

I could honestly gush about this cast till the end of time but thats boring. I'll just say that FE8 has the best axe guy duo and the best red/green cavalier duo in the franchise.

[fevotinggauntletreal]

Year of the Dragon Opening Round - Match 3

(pictured: haaa, let's go one by one... a Wyvern Lord's mount from Awakening; a wild wyvern from Mystery of the Emblem; a Malig Knight's mount from Fates; a Dragonmaster's mount from Radiant Dawn; a Wyvern Knight's mount from Genealogy of the Holy War; a Wyvern Rider's mount from Blazing Blade; a Wyvern Rider's mount from Three Houses; a Wyvern Knight's mount from Engage; and a Wyvern Knight's mount from Sacred Stones.)

you can still see like one little bit of the arena backdrop, ain't that something and a half

associated lore under the cut

wyverns are a staple of Fire Emblem worlds, almost always figuring as the war mounts of the renowned Wyvern Riders. sometimes, there's substantial lore behind it; other times, yeah, there are just huge flying lizards that people ride into battle, what are you gonna do about it?

a point of note is that modern fantasy tends to distinguish "wyverns" from true dragons, characterizing them specifically as two-legged, broad-winged, pointy-tailed, serpentine beasts. this distinction is first of all ahistorical, but in the context of Fire Emblem it's also the subject of some translation oddity. in the japanese text, wyverns are usually referred to as "flying dragons", and are not otherwise radically distinguished from other dragons in most settings where they appear. this also accounts for them having largely appeared as regular four-legged dragons in older titles, although newer titles have increasingly designed them to look more like the ideal "wyvern" form. it's likely that the "wyvern" terminology stems from Blazing Blade being the first internationalized Fire Emblem game, and Treehouse not quite wrapping their heads around the apparent contradiction of "flying dragons" still appearing in Elibe after the Scouring was supposed to have driven away all the dragons.

archanean wyverns are one of the dragon clans that once reigned supreme over Archanea. none are known to have survived the degeneration of dragonkind, but feral specimens thread the skies from Dolhr to the Mamorthod Desert. of particular note is that humans enslaved by Dolhr have managed to tame the bestial wyverns in the island and use them as war mounts; this proved crucial to a successful slave rebellion which led to the formation of the kingdom of Macedon.

jugdrali wyverns inhabit the rocky wastelands at the southern side of the Thracian peninsula, and have become the feared steeds of the Thracian mercenaries. their existance is odd when considering that the Jugdral games take place in the same universe as Archanea, but before the degeneration of dragonkind earnestly kicked in, and the fact that dragonkind doesn't generally dwell in Jugdral is an important factor in its backstory. it is thusly hard to tell if Jugdral's wyverns are at all supposed to be of a kind with Archanea's.

elibean wyverns are the only dragons generally known to have remained in Elibe after the Scouring (although other exceptions abound, such as the denizens of Arcadia). they used to fly over the entire continent, but since the Scouring, they've been confined to Bern, where they're used as war mounts.

the "wyvern knight mount" that appears in Sacred Stones marks a very odd point in the flow of the idea of what exactly our here wyverns/flying dragons are supposed to be. the English version of the game never distinguishes it from the original wyverns, despite it looking blatantly different. in Japanese, though the class that rides them is called "Wyvern Knight" (unlike the usual Dragon Knight that tends to get localized as Wyvern Rider), they are in text referred to as a term that could be translated either as "snake dragon", or "evil dragon". this is, in fact, the same term that would appear in later games and be translated as "Fell Dragon"!

the malig knight mount is described as an "evil dragon" that the Malig Knight is able to tame, and the japanese name of that class, "Revenant Knight", implies that they are undead dragons. to the best of my knowledge, though, nothing else is established about these mounts, including the extent to which they are or are not of a kind with regular wyverns.

and now for a lightning round of continuities where the most depth that wyverns get is being associated with particular locations: magvel wyverns are typical of Grado; tellius wyverns are ridden by the senatorial guard of Begnion, although a substantial force has defected to Daein; ylissean wyverns are typical of Plegia, and Rosanne in Valm also houses a substantial wild wyvern population; nohrian wyverns are, well, typical of Nohr; and although fódlanite wyverns are not typical of any particular region, the neighboring Almyrans are considered masters of wyvern warfare, and have in particular refined the art of wyvernback archery.

[aurheatum]

toa anniversary mun day

under cut

Name: 

Nel, i mean it’s Sarah technically, but once you start getting multiple notes in the mail with Nel on them I think it counts. Nelfes works too. I respond to most anything tbh

Pronouns:

she/her or they/them

Birthday (no year):

Dec 6th Saint Nicholas Day : )

Where are you from? What is your time zone?

Chicago. CST [GMT-5].

Roleplay experience:

Over ten years, started on Neopets and other forums. Moved to Gaia Online and then Tumblr indie space some time in 2011.

Got any pets?

Baby boy

Favorite time of year:

Springtime or Autumn

Some interests and things you like:

I’ve always been super into mythology, all of them. I used to think that Carl Jung was onto something with the collective unconscious but then Anthropology and the reality of multilineal evolution ruined that for me (college will teach you things); but that’s alright because humans their ability to create and interpret their surroundings with equal parts love and fear is still pretty cool.

Some funfacts & trivia about you:

-Agnostic but i work in an occult library (it’s pretty quiet; the new age bookshop across the street has all the events)

-One time on Gaia Online I was kicked out of an Okami RP bc I didn’t make my posts aesthetic enough, and I thought it was just the most heart wrenching thing -I’m not sure what people stand to gain back in Ye Old Runescape luring new players out into the wild and PKing them but I was gullible enough to follow some other players at like 7 yrs old and this would have happened to me if i wasnt SUPER good at clicking my mouse and running out of there. Surviving such a harrowing experience made me think i was truly invincible.

-I was supposed to write my final paper for my Japanese Buddhism class on… surprise, Japanese Buddhism but I really wanted to talk about Kenji Miyazawa’s writings instead so I spun it through a lens of his Nichiren conversion and its impact on his poetry. My prof saw right through me but I still got an A.

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play?

Tales of RPG series raised me as a person so u know. I like Persona 1-2 era SMT though I’ve played Nocturne and IV as well. What else? Okami, LOZ: Twilight Princess, farm sims and visual novels. Genshin, on and off.

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon:

Psychic; wooper family (clogsire im so glad u joined us)

How did you get into Fire Emblem?

My neighbor would bring over Path of Radiance so I could play it on my gamecube with my own save back in the day

What Fire Emblem games have you played?

Tellius duology. Sacred Stones, FE 13-16; currently doing Blazing Blade. Archanea one day.

First Fire Emblem game:

POR

Favorite Fire Emblem game:

Tie between 3 Houses and Radiant Dawn

Any Fire Emblem crushes? 😳 

It’s rhea okay. I wont lie and i wont pretend it isnt evidence of my spectacular taste either

If you’ve played the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays? - Awakening: Tiki (first S support was olivia bc i wanted a pink haired kid)  - Fates: honestly i’d have to revisit, i know i first married niles as m!corrin - Three Houses: I married each lord on their route tho it’s much funnier if you dont i think (First route was Crimson Flower but I saved at the split so I could marry Rhea first lmao) - Engage: Saphir 🥰

Favorite Fire Emblem class:

War Cleric or Qi Adept

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class?

I’d be the mage you have to drag around and treat with baby gloves only to learn like a single good spell I think

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation?

Leicester Alliance tbh

If you were an Engage character, which Emblem would you Engage with?

Based purely on mechanics bc i love them all prob Soren dlc, Sigurd, Celica, and Lyn.

How did you find TOA?

End of 2020/beginning of 2021 I was really trying to get back into rp but couldn’t get into the various systems on discord. One community that I was trying was affiliates with The Officer’s Academy and an active tumblr community rly caught my interest. The rest is history!

Current TOA muses:

Rhea 3H, Micaiah Radiant Dawn, and miss Hortensia engage

Who was your first TOA muse? If you don’t have them anymore, could you see yourself picking them up again?

This blog right here! I put her down for a bit and probably will again but. It’s not like she ever leaves, instead of brain there is Rhea u see (i bear this burden so u do not have to)

Have you had any other TOA muses?

I played Sephiran for a hot sec and Ingrid for around a yearish iirc. Both very fun

Do you think you have a type of character you gravitate towards?

Not really? I need to be able to connect with them on some level obviously, and I tend to prefer characters who have like a clear childhood or background for why they are That Way. Micaiah was actually p difficult for this reason but being able to really shape her based on what little we know also made me ever more fond. ♥️ I love to stare at pegasusknight and serenesforest supports pages late at night tehe

What do you believe you enjoy writing the most?

I don’t particularly plan ahead but I really love when threads reflect past character development whether in a thread with the same muse or different. TOA extended universe… I’d like to do that more I think but first I have to actually make a support page huh? Since Rhea’s back she’s made more bonds though and that makes me happy.

Favorite TOA-related memory: Definitely Unlocked 2021! It was my first event after really starting to warm to the TOA community and i was an awe of the scope of the events. The mods thought this far ahead?! We can do this?! Every event since has just been even more fun but the surprise and intrigue i felt then really stayed with him

*How do you pronounce TOA?

Toe-uh. Like Dee-En-Dee. you know.

Got any delusions that didn’t see the light of day that you’d like to share? 😉 

I think I mentioned I muse Hubert before, and also that I can't really seeing myself maintaining a blog for him? So other than that, no. I do think Nimh could be quite a bit of fun though *laughs*

[wishiwould]

Too explain a bit about the fic if its alright. Of the Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and Blade of Light and Mystery of the Emblem cast, only Marth and Elice were good guys and regulars, as well as to a much lesser, extent Jagen.

Marth had a different personality, though to be fair this was based off long running Smash headcanons.

However Elice as nothing like Marth's older, motherly andkind sister, being a spunky and immature tomboy that is much younger than Marth. An early picture revealed Callistohime designed her after a picture of Sheeda (now localized as Caeda, the name is either Persian or Gaelic) from an anime picture. She found out Elice was older, Sheeda/Caeda was Marth's love interest & didn't like it, but lightly designed Elice to look different from Sheeda.

Whilst Callistohime didn't bash Caeda/Sheeda in the fic, same for Merric Marth's best friend & Elice's love interest, they weren't included & she made negative comments about them sometimes.

Similarly Jagen went from Marth's fatherly and elderly vassal to a man not much older than Marth without a fatherly relationship.

Basically every other character with an FE name that wasn't evil was a nothing character, usually a red shirt.

And every other one of Marth's allies or friends was a villain and the only one that was important was Navarre, whom, is depicted as a pure villain.

Unlike Zelda, Fire Emblem is almost always a story about multiple characters & there's alot of important & sympathetic central characters from all sorts of kingdoms in Marth's games.

Similarly none of the Kingdoms in FE matched & outside of Altea/Aritea, were just background decor or just a place that the villains were from. Like Akaneia (Archanea in the localization) is the most important kingdom in the games, the sub-franchise is known as Akaneia & there's also a game with Akaneia in the title.

Altea is a small place even though its Marth's kingdom, you could compare it to Link coming from Kokiri forest, but Hyrule is central. Marth says at one point, Altea is nothing without the other kingdoms.

Similarly whilst the antagonist forces rule Akaneia in the second game, you could compare it to Ganon taking control of Hyrule & its military in games like "A Link to the Past". In Time Cannot Erase, only Altea was important & Akaneia only showed up in the first part as the enemy.

But people get very attached to fictional characters, which is why so many FE fans, especially of Marth's games got upset. I guess think of it like "Impa", "Malon", "Linebeck" and "Ruto" being the names of villains in a fanfiction labeled as a Zelda crossover, I suppose?

I feel besides some hearsay of the anime, I think most of the info on the fanfiction was based around Marth's trophy in Melee and to be fair there, Marth's trophies in Melee & Brawl are very badly translated. I do wonder where she got the character names or decided to use them though? And several of the characters did show up in the short lived OVA.

BTW, one of the videos critiquing the fic is still up on youtube if you want to read it? This one is focused on constructive criticism and not any attacks to be clear. Its called "Callistohime Rant"

Hey Nonnie,

I've really enjoyed the exchange we've had so far, but I have to be honest: rehashing the details of CallistoHime's fanfiction is actually a bit triggering ^^; In the literal sense--it brings me back to those times, and brings back symptoms of anxiety I haven't really experienced since then.

I do appreciate the opportunity you gave me to apologize, and to hear your apology and explanation! That was nice. And, even though it's a liiiiiiiittle close to triggering territory, I'm actually fine hearing about other FE titles and things like that--or anything else under the moon!

...Well, maybe not ANYTHING else under the moon. For full disclosure, unfortunately Zelda in general and Zelda fandom in particular does still trigger me, and it's hard for me to read fan-fiction because of my experiences with Callisto.

All this to say, whether on anonymous mode or not, I'd love to keep speaking to you! But not about Callisto's fanfiction.

[iturbide]

Wait what all did Naga do aside from the Tiki thing?

Naga has done a lot of things across the various Archanea games! the Tiki thing is the big one I take issue with, but it's not the only thing she's done.

A (Reasonably Comprehensive) List of Naga's Achievements:

Led the Divine Dragons in the war against the degenerating Earth Dragons after they refused to become manaketes and became feral. At the end of the war, she ordered the Earth Dragons be sealed in the Dragon's Table and appointed Medeus, the prince of the Earth Dragon tribe and its only embodied survivor, as its guardian.

This one is a mixed bag. On the one hand, she went to war to protect both dragon and humankind, since the rampaging Earth Dragons probably would have caused unfathomable damage and potentially wiped out the other tribes and Archanea's human population if left unchecked. The Divine Dragon tribe was nearly wiped out in the war, which shows just how potent the threat was.

At the same time, appointing the last survivor of the defeated tribe to guard his peoples' tomb for eternity feels pretty callous. Medeus was the only Earth Dragon who adopted a dragonstone and become a manakete, which is why he didn't degenerate with the rest of his tribe, but living with the constant reminder of his peoples' death, watching mankind abuse and oppress the remnants of other dragon tribes after what they went through to ensure mankind's survival...it's not too surprising that he eventually snapped.

Fearing that Tiki might degenerate despite her power being sealed in a dragonstone, consigned her infant daughter to a magically induced coma and entrusted her to Bantu's care, along with the dragon-slaying Falchion.

This is the one that gets me. Falchion's original resting place being the same as Tiki's has Implications along the same line as giving Duma a Falchion before exiling him with his sister. There's only one reason to put those two things in the same place, especially since the Binding Shield used to seal away the Earth Dragons was hidden elsewhere. Also, Tiki's sleep was supposed to be endless: she wasn't supposed to wake up at all. Bantu eventually took pity on her, after a millennium of lulling her back into that sleep when she woke to nightmares, and let her experience the world.

Following the destruction of Thabes, fought both Duma and Mila for nine full days and eventually emerged victorious; as punishment, exiled both of her former friends to another continent, gifting the Kingsfang Falchion to Duma before their departure in the event that they should degenerate.

This one reads as an attempt at mercy. Duma attacked Thabes and in three days reduced a bustling human city to rubble, and Naga was pretty understandably horrified by that. When she tried to punish him, though, Duma's sister -- who had not been involved in the Thabes incident -- came to her brother's aid to try and save him, though she wasn't able to tip the balance in the fight and eventually both were defeated.

Given how recent and raw the events at Thabes were, I would not be shocked if humans -- survivors of Thabes, people of nearby settlements, anyone aware of what had happened -- were clamoring for Duma and Mila's immediate executions. And that makes sense: Thabes was gone at that point because Duma decided that humans were too powerful, so what would stop him from doing the same again, to someone else? But those were not just Naga's allies, they were two of her closest friends. How could she bear to kill them? Exile seemed kinder: it put the humans' minds at ease, since Duma would not be a threat to them anymore; but it also let her friends survive, even if she would never be able to see them again.

Along with eleven other dragons from other tribes, granted her blessing in the form of a blood pact and the Book of Naga to Heim of the Twelve Crusaders, allowing them to oppose the Loptyrian Empire and its emperor Gair XVII -- who, in actuality, was the Earth Dragon Loptous possessing the human who inherited his bloodline.

Again, this one's a bit of a mixed bag. Loptous escaped the downfall of the Earth Dragons, not by becoming a manakete, but by making a blood pact with a human and separating his soul from his body and binding it in a book: the Loptous Tome. Anyone who inherited his unHoly (Major) Blood would, upon coming in contact with the Loptous Tome, become his new vessel, allowing Loptous to found an empire and terrorize the humans he loathed over the course of seventeen generations in about 200 years before Naga realized what was up. Something needed to be done about him, absolutely, and Naga rallied eleven other dragons make that happen.

But what she made happen...was giving her Holy Blood to a human, along with a powerful weapon in the Book of Naga, before leaving everything in the hands of humanity. She probably thought this was the best thing to do in the situation: when dragons get directly involved with human affairs, it tends to end badly (see the whole thing with Thabes). So she gave humans the power to help themselves. And because of that lack of direct involvement, it took another fifteen years to bring down the Loptyrian Emperor -- during which time a lot more humans suffered, including the innocent people who were living in the Empire and who were forced from their homes and oppressed by those who came after.

Gave her blessing to the First Exalt of Ylisse to seal Grima, and a millennium later unlocked the true power of the Falchion so that Chrom, descendant of the First Exalt, could oppose the Fell Dragon after their resurrection.

Again...kind of a mixed bag? On the one hand, we're told that Grima would have destroyed the world if they hadn't been sealed away; on the other hand, it did lead to a thousand years of conflict between the eastern and western nations, including at least one attempted genocide on the part of Chrom's father which he dubbed a 'crusade,' thus implying a religious connotation and making it highly likely he did it in Naga's name.

Naga's not perfect, but it's also complicated. She did a lot of good, but also caused a not insignificant amount of harm, up to and including putting her infant daughter into what she'd intended to be a permanent magically-induced coma which has left Tiki dealing with what amounts to magically-induced narcolepsy a full 3,000 years later. But she did it all because she thought it would cause the least harm to the fewest people. And I respect her for doing the best she could.

[tinnictheguardian]

Ideas for new Fodlan Fire Emblem games

Okay, so Fire Emblem Engage is out, and it's set in a whole new World. However, it should be noted that Fire Emblem has released additional games in the same world entries apart. Notably, the worlds of Archanea, Jugdral and Valentia are all connected and set on the same planet but are thousands of years apart. Also, Fates and Awakening are set in the same world at the same time, just on different continents.

So while I think that the chances of us getting a DLC for either Three Houses or even Three Hopes that continues one or more routes is less likely, it is possible we can get more Fire Emblem games set in the world of Fodlan. This is in keeping with how IS has operated in the past, and the world of Fodlan is popular enough to warrant a second look.

So here are my ideas about when in time new Fire Emblem games set in Fodlan could take place.

The War of the Eagle and Lion

This is the most obvious period in Fodlan's timeline given that, based on the information we have FE3H, Loog and Kyphon used special weapons and soldiers provided by the mysterious tactician Pan. So Pan is your ready-made protagonist for an FE game. They were supposedly from the TWSITD, and it's made very clear that Loog and Kyphon were NOT used relics because the Church had their relics and only returned the relics to the Kingdom families after they became independent so they had the fighting strength to stay independent from the much more powerful Empire. So the potential FE game could have its own gimmick that's not relics.

Furthermore, the game set during the time of the War of Eagle and Lion would have at least two returning characters: Rhea and a youth Jeralt, who is pretty much confirmed to be from Faerghus and joining Rhea around that time initially as a bodyguard and then joining a knight of Serios when she shared her blood with him, thus giving him his crest, in order to save his life.

Other characters, such as Aubin, who we know lived long enough to share his blood with Yuri so as to give him his crest, would have been younger and potentially a unit you could play with. I don't expect to see Flayn because she was still sleeping or Seteth because Jeralt confirms he never met Seteth until his return to the Monastery. But the devs could maybe give Macuil and Indech non-beast forms and have them play a role... there are options, is all I am saying!

The story, in this case would be as linear as Engage because we know how it ends, Kingdom becomes independent from the Empire.

The Almyra Tales

Claude has the potential to live in all four routes and leaves for Almyra in all four routes. While he only gives his relic to Dimitri explicitly. You could just add a few lines of dialogue to explain why he doesn't have his relic at the beginning of a story about how Claude Khalid works with plucky Almyran tactician to secure the throne of Almyra.

IS could do this would out confirming a canon route for FE3H and have the potential to having branching stories because this isn't the past. Three Hopes Character Shahid would, of course, be able to make an appearance in this game.

Saint Serios

Go back in the time to help Rhea fight Nemesis or side with Nemesis and bring about a what-if world... I frankly don't see this one being on the cards because I don't think this would be of interest to the general FE fan. It could be a great Warriors edition because fans of Fodlan would pick-up a title like this to see what the world was like when Rhea got her revenge. It's also not a time which has a built in protagonist because we know Seteth was the tactician. But then again, would anyone cry foul if IS created random character X to be the protagonist of such a title?

Distant past/Distant future

Awakening and Fates was set 2000 years after Shadow Dragon, Gaiden etc, while Genealogy and Thracia are set 1000 years before Shadow Dragon, Gaiden.

Now we all know that Fodlan is that FE3H is a post-apocalypse world where in the distant past, humanity was much more advanced. Ballistic missiles advanced. So if IS wanted to bring FEH Niðavellir style mechs, or revisit the steampunk idea they were exploring for Awakening in the world of Fodlan. They could potentially set it in the distant past of Fodlan, when Sothis was alive and walking among mortals and humans as a whole had a lot more magi-tech.

Alternatively, we could have a game set in the distant future of Fodlan and it could be science fantasy plus sword and sandals like Harvestella or like they did with Awakening and Fates, just stick to more medieval stuff.

The game I want but won't get

So I did list these ideas roughly in "most likely" to "least likely" and this is the least likely but the game I want the most. That is, just acknowledge Azure Moon as the canon route, which means that almost all the characters, except for Hubert, Jeritza and Edelgard, have the potential to live. Just assume they all lived and procreated and you get to play with the kids.

You can import your saves from FE3H into the new game and the child characters have different stats based on who you S-supported, Awakening style. Also obviously if you played classic and didn't recruit/save X, you don't get X's descendants. But if you start a new clean game, the world assumes all characters were recruited, maybe you can some default S-supports or it's implied they all married off-stage characters and the child units therefore have default stats.

This incentivises new players to go back and buy FE3H, without making it impossible for this FE instalment to be a persons' first FE or at least first Fodlan FE.

As for who would be the enemies, well I heard some devs say that with Engage, they were exploring the idea of FE as not a war game but an adventure game. So just send the kids on an adventure!

Alternatively, given that homunculus technology exists in Fodlan, just bring back Edelgard as a homunculus and build her a faction with what remains of TWSITD, Impedial royalist + a Foreign power that aims to topple United Fodlan.

As I said, this is the most unlikely but it's the one I would want the most.

[emblemxeno]

This ask is going to be kind of long, but your platform is really the only platform where I feel comfortable having this conversation. You don’t have to post this if you don’t want to, I won’t feel any sort of ways about it, but I’ve got to get this feeling out of my system. The way the fandom treats Fates compared to the other games in the franchise, makes them completely unbearable. I don’t think I can forgive the fandom for it even if they did somehow start giving Fates its overdue credit. Treating its fans like shit for almost a decade is unacceptable. I don’t know how so many people can justify their behavior in regards to this game. The fans of this game have literally done nothing to the fandom other than love it unapologetically, and we still get condescended to about it. You dare offer your opinion about a take in the series and it’s like, “You’re a Corrin fan, you have no right to talk about anything.” I have never seen a group of fans that have to literally HIDE the fact that they cherish a game in order to appease its larger community, it’s so disgusting. I don’t care if I’m being harsh with this ask because I have witnessed and dealt with this condescension for years. I don’t care to spare any feelings at this point, and I think the fandom certainly doesn’t deserve any of our grace either. Calling out the elitism, cliquish behavior, and hypocrisy is the right thing to do no matter how much some people soften/normalize these issues.

Hope you don't mind me posting this anon.

It's certainly an unfortunate situation. While Fates has its problems--I say this as a diehard fan--I agree in that it's in a singular situation where it's just met with derision initially and only given praise in backhanded manners. Think "Fates sucks but it does have great X and Y" and including an obligatory compliment towards Conquest. Which, don't get me wrong, Conquest is fucking amazing in the gameplay department, but half the time I'm just like... all right, I think you're just pretending to like anything of Fates just because you feel obligated to like one of the most acclaimed gameplay centered entries in the series.

There was just the perfect storm of controversy and unmet expectations that people had towards the game: the woefully inaccurate conversion therapy accusations, the romance options, the sales model of having multiple versions, the story not being liked, Corrin not being liked, the cast being seen as tropey, the fanservice hatred, etc. Its reputation from pre-release to nearly a decade after release is just a swamp of negativity.

And, in risk of sounding defensive and deflective, Awakening did most of this first. Awakening used being gay as a constant punchline especially in DLC (but people are reclaiming that now as something to be praised cuz of course), Awakening had problematic romance options (Nowi, any of the children but especially Nah, Donnel, Ricken, and Lissa are still underage, Aversa is technically your sister and she's written in the M!Robin support to tease that aspect, Tharja in her entirety), Awakening's cast was the de facto tropey cast before Fates, its story was criticized for the same things Fates was (poorly explained lore and world, pacing issues, convenient plot devices, pandering to a previous game, and had its exclusive issue of being inconsistent with Archanea's lore), Robin was criticized for being an all loved player insert with too many powers/importance, it started the oddly designed armor designs for fanservice reasons, and while it didn't have multiple versions, it was the first game with a ton of paid DLC.

Don't get me wrong, I love Awakening to pieces. But that game started pretty much everything Fates gets shit for. Yet it gets retrospective love or at the very least a pass cuz... Fates does it worse/more and because it was gonna be the last game in the series? Wouldn't it be fair then, to give slack to Fates for following in the footsteps of the most well received and successful game in the series by replicating it while trying to improve on what some felt were lacking? But I guess at that point, people think it utterly failed in improving on the story and characters so :/

I think you have a point regarding Fates fans as well. We're pretty much the only FE fans that get unironic negative labels, at least by casual aduiences. Apparetnly we're "coomer, porn brain freaks who don't know what good games are." Though, that's about it in terms of the elitism thing, otherwise I think it's just fans of older games being out off by the direction newer games have gone, and most make no distinction and criticize all of Awakening, Fates, 3H, and Engage. Still, Fates fans are the ones getting the most accepted flak.

To end this off, let's be honest: If Fates is the example most people give of the worst game in the series, FE fans have it pretty fucking good lmao.

[gascon-en-exil]

What do you consider the best FE games in terms of gameplay?

Bearing in mind that my parameters for what constitutes good FE gameplay are very different from those of pretty much anyone else who talks about this online:

Replayability and completionist goals like support logs are very much a part of gameplay even if most people disregard them.

Fun unintentional metas

Notably, these are the only games that I can fully enjoy even without cheating (not that they wouldn't be even more fun with cheating).

FE16: 100% completion, I have a playlist all about it, and alongside my favorite ships it's the best thing to have come out of this game in my opinion.

FE10: The game forcing stat points on level ups (at least +1 in combat, +3 with BEXP) as well as the battle save feature makes it feasible for units to cap all stats without grinding or using a bunch of stats boosters...which is good since they're finite here. It's also a lot of fun for draft runs with all the army switching.

Better with cheating, good replay value

FE4 rises above the other Kaga games by virtue of its eugenics babies, which really add to the replay value as you try out different combinations. There's also, unexpectedly, a charming smallness to its overall limited inventory and fewer chapters.

Not a ton of replay, but more interesting gameplay than below (esp. with cheating)

Basically what it says. None of them have universal support logs so that concern isn't there, but they can be fun to replay with different characters. FE5 especially though needs cheating, because I'm not a masochist.

Whoever designed the GBA support system should be ashamed

...Yeah. Good games, but the grind is miserable especially in FE7. Also, FE7's ranking system is awful and annoying although I can't fault it for that as it originated back in the Jugdral games.

Postgame is just a grindfest, but at least it's fun getting there

To this day I still haven't finished all the supports and bond conversations, mostly because I lost interest. There's just too much to collect or achieve postgame and almost no incentive to do so. As many have said though, the gameplay is fun and dynamic - yes, even on Normal.

Play it once (or play the remake) and that'll do it

FE6 would be up with the other GBA games if it had a support log, but since it doesn't there's no reason to get supports aside from the stat boosts. The Archanea games and Gaiden all feel small and outdated now, and there's not much point to going back to them. I ranked the DS remakes below the originals because while they're more up to date they also have more annoying features, like unlocking paralogues in FE11 or Kris in FE12.

Oh my God how did the support log get *worse*!? (Apotheosis meta is alright at least)

Grinding out every variable parent-child support line is a nightmare, and there's no sense of accomplishment because they're so repetitive. The gameplay is dull as anything, and while this is a game for min-maxing that will require lots of grinding. At least Apotheosis exists as a goal for that.

See Awakening, but somehow even worse except for the maps

(Note that this is FE14 in its entirety, not just Revelation - no idea why so many of these tier list makers break up the routes of Fates as if they were separate games)

Much less completionist-friendly than FE13; the support log is even bigger with even more variable parent-child lines, growths are lower and it's harder to level infinitely, and there's no serious postgame content to work toward. The maps are fun and I appreciate what they were going for with Phoenix mode even if no one else does, but there's a reason I haven't come back to this game in years and it has nothing whatsoever to do with moral outrage or nitpicking over plot holes.

[randomnameless]

Speaking of unification, the end of FE3/12 was so disappointing. FE1 ended with each country still being independent, which was perfect. But no, the sequel had to do a 180 so that Marth could rule over all of Archanea.

Especially since it comes with a...disturbing trend of putting female rulers back in their place: Minerva, Nyna, Sheena...

Like you would seriously want me to believe that Minerva would be happy to settle in a convent? But guys, she wasn't competent T.T. She couldn't rule like Michalis and it ended in an internal crisis.

But Sheena didn't want to rule. She just wanted to live as an "ordinary happy girl" UwU. Yes, Archanea gave us the wonderful Shiida, but Kaga's sexism shines here.

The worst thing is Michalis' ending in FE12. They wanted to keep him alive, fine, they did the same with Camus/Sirius after all. But he either gets to rule over Macedon again (so it means that there were no consequences for his actions unlike in the original game) or conquer another continent.

Perhaps they wanted to show that it realistically made no sense that an ambitious man like Michalis would give up on his dream, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You can kill your father, be a tyrannical ruler, but don't worry, you will get your throne back or you will either get to conquer a whole new land. Yeah!

I would have made more sense if Michalis was the one to give up on everything and perhaps become a monk if they wanted to show that he was trying to atone. After all, he dies in the original version. It could have shown that the old him was indeed dead and that he was now going on a different path, thanks to Maria.

Yeah :/

The sheer fact that Michalis wasn't kept dead in the remake sort of pisses me - why keeping him alive after kind of saving Maria ?

Was it to have a "good end" where no one dies, or because you'd feel uwu for poor Michalis who :

Murdered his dad, had his youngest sister kidnapped, fought against another sister etc...

And as you said, what kind of message this leaves that he gets to survive to conquer other lands, after the mess he did in Archanea? Was it a joke or just to piss on the original writers ?

So between Kaga's sexism and the "but earl grey" nonsense from the "modern" devs really did a number of FE3/12 to me lol

The only character I can "realistically" see abandoning her throne is Nyna, because of the guilt she must feel regarding Hardin's fall but then I'm always reminded at that person @crushednugget found that said Nyna is responsible for the war in FE3/12 and I'm just...

[skelezomperman]

Have you ever considered part of the reason that Altena's writing is rather garbage is that she is part of an oppressed group (Thracians) and all the stops are pulled to make the oppressors (the Northern houses) look to be as equal or even good in the narrative?

FE4's narration straight up says that the people of Thracia WANT to be ruled by the Leonster houses AGAIN (implying this was the case before), when we know this not to be true and very unlikely for Thracians to want this. We are never shown what New Thracia looks like aside from the people being unified. But it's worth asking ourselves, unified under whose terms? Arion steps down, and Leif gets to be King. I don't think Leif would be a bad king for Thracians, but it's hard for an oppressed people to simply accept the same oppressors willingly even if they had a change of heart.

FEH Altena focuses more on her Leonster identity and simply calls out Travant for his "savage" nature. Travant, despite his flaws, is engaged in a war of liberation against his oppressors. His cause is just, and that is quite literally all that matters. The Aed Massacre and every single act of violence Thracians perform against the North, while tragic, is nothing compared to the mundane violence Thracians undergo every minute of every day for the past few decades now. If not for how incredibly loaded the word is, I'd be pressed to say it is a genocide.

Altena's character in FE4/5 exists as it does because she's "one of the good ones" and serves as a collaborator to make us forget the righteous cause of the Thracian people in favor for a nebulous negative peace where Thracians and Northerners just sit down and get along rather than any real restorative justice.

First of all, I want to compliment you on being willing to ask tough questions about the Jugdral games. I don't entirely agree with your assessment but I'm happy that people are willing to look at it with a critical eye. It's necessary to be willing to do this in order to be honest. For the rest of the answer I'll go through each of your points individually.

I actually have an unreleased essay about viewing Jugdral through an ethnographic lens which I'm planning to release later this year as part of a larger work. I won't summarize the entire essay but I don't personally think the developers intended to make a serious effort to portray prejudices in the Jugdral games. FE5 sheds more light on the relationship between the North and South of Thracia, but in FE4 I feel like there wasn't much thought put into portraying Southern Thracians as "oppressed."

Moving on, there seems to be an inconsistency here. FE4 Chapter 8 says that "the people" wish to be unified under Leonster, but FE4 Chapter 9 says that "[Southern] Thracia's people hardly offer Seliph an eager welcome." I wonder if Chapter 8 is referring to the Munster District rather than the peninsula as a whole but I couldn't find anything to support that theory of mine. I do agree that Leif's ending is not "happily ever after" and he will have difficulties unifying Thracia even with the Thracian-raised Altena being an asset to his effort. That said, I don't want to single out Leif or even FE4/FE5 for this. Most games just say "the lord ruled happily ever after" and don't go in-depth into postgame worldbuilding issues that may crop up (e.g., Marth needing to consolidate power after every other ruler in Archanea abdicates). I do see Altena as someone who would advocate for the Southerners under a unified Thracia and help cater to them rather than someone who imposes the North's rule, but I admit that's headcanon. I'd also note that FE5 does go out of its way to have August teach Leif about the suffering the Thracians go through - to me, this leads to the idea that Leif will make good on the mistakes of his father and grandfather.

It definitely does look bad that Altena calls Travant "savage" in FEH, I'll agree there. I do want to make a point that Travant is the only non-generic Thracian who really does this "savage" behavior (not counting generic bosses like Coulter). Arion does continue to fight Seliph after his father's death but that's because of him being stubborn and indecisive more than any wish to harm innocents. In FE5, Arion also acts as a sort of white knight to save Tarrah from being captured by the Empire. Then we have Dean and Eda who outright join Leif's army with Arion's consent no less. The brutality of the Kingdom of Thracia is more about Travant personally than it is about the nation at large in my opinion. I don't think the game really shows all Thracians as being bad. If my memory serves me right, the only person who says prejudiced things about Thracians as a people is Quan with the "hyenas" comment - not Leif, not Dryas, not August, not Lewyn, not even Finn.

Let me finish at your central point which is that the games look over an oppression by the Munster District and goes out of its way to make Thracia look bad. I can't say I agree with this point; in fact, I think the game does quite the opposite. Even in FE4, Lewyn delivers a lecture in Chapter 8 to mention the poverty that Thracia suffers. FE5 goes out of its way to create more worldbuilding to add justification to their animosity towards the North with the food embargos. The point of Travant is that the player is supposed to feel bad for him while still rejecting his brutality. FE4 is very on the nose with that narrative. I think it's fair to think that he isn't a complete villain; he still wants what is best for his people more than anything else. But I can't just say "he was justified because of what the North did" and leave it as that because that erases the central conflict behind Travant as a character. The player is supposed to ask whether his senseless violence is justified and it's supposed to be an open question. You can't make Travant out to be a bloodthirsty villain nor can you say that he was in the right because Quan was worse; you must retain that complexity behind Travant in order for the character to work. And that complexity does exist! It's simplistic, maybe, but FE4 and FE5 at least make an effort there to show both sides of this question. Maybe you could argue it shouldn't be pushing one answer but at least it goes more in-depth there.

As for Altena, I personally have a much bigger problem with the perceived lack of agency with regards to Arion than with her participation in the Thracian worldbuilding. The worldbuilding could be perfect but I'd still have a problem if the relationship with Arion was the same. But thank you for providing me the opportunity to answer.