#i'm still just as weak as I always was

[epickiya722]

You know what, Sukuna lowkey had it out for Choso since Shibuya. Probably did not like the fact that Yuji had someone, actual family... an actual blood brother that cared about him. He been had plans to kill him, I just know it.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[catboy-jupiter]

i'll be like "i'm a god of writing" and then an hour passes after i post or submit something and i'll be like "i'm so dumb there's so much i could've done better if only i'd waited a bit and looked at it with fresh eyes i would've noticed how much it sucks & what i could've improved that looks so much like first draft material there's so many revisions i could make why i am i so impulsive and overconfident" and then i'll start writing something else and be like "i'm a god of writing" again

[randomnameless]

tbh, I stopped caring about houses that much when I found out that it's an otome/dating sim game with srpg gameplay sprinkled on top. In other FE games, you either gather supports by pair ups or by having units standing against one another. And mechanics like cooking in Fates were done to get some more stat boosts. And even if the avatarization of the game started with New Mystery, Robin and Corrin feel more like customizable characters than an avatar for the player.

In houses, Byleth is like every typical dating sim protag, that does not speak and the few times they do is by having the player choose options that may raise heart points with a character or lower them, you have to find lost items and when you give them back you gain heart points, you have to give them gifts to gain heart points and cooking now doesn't give you any beneficts in battle and only works for, you've guessed it, getting heart points. And let's not kid ourselves, tea time is like the "dates" in otome games, in which you can spam gifts till you raise the affection to the max. The only thing that distincts those points from the otome ones, is that those are necessary for proficency and for unit classes.

Heck, we even have a ring to give to the chosen blorbo in order to get a special custom made cutscene, when in pasts games getting an S support gave you a broken unit to deploy and a little blurb of text during the credits. And of course, calendar/day systems are also common in these tipes of games too.

People complained about awakening and fates for turning the franchise into a dating sim, but 3Houses is literally one in and of itself, and yet is praised as peack FE experience and as peack srpg.

(I could also argue that is because of this otome nature why the characters are "tell don't show" with their given trauma, unlike in pasts games when it was "show don't tell" (Nino, Reison, Camilla, Leif, Soren...))

Well,

When you put it like that, it becomes obvious that the other games (FEH, Engage) mentionning Fodlan are stuck on the uwu monastery part of the part 1 and not the, y'know, events happening that will lead to part 2 because as you said, the SRPG aspect is just "sprinkled on top" lol

However, the "pair up your units and build their relationships!" has been a non gameplay mechanics for decades now (FE4's was a gameplay mechanic, it had no support convos - FE6 added the support convos and gave a small gameplay boost but it didn't commit and we had no endings, FE7/8 had endings, FE9 had convos but FE10 removed them and yet had endings depending on the pairs, etc etc) even without avatars.

Then we entered the avatar era and if it added the "my waifu and my bae" shenanigans, FE13/14 were still more centered on the story aspect that on the "dating sim" aspect, as in, even if you could raise affinity with a character by doing X or Y, it wasn't really coded in a minigame - came FE16 which you analysed perfectly : tea time, gifts, eating, S-support CG, etc etc.

That being said, FE is a RPG, meaning it has characters : you play FE for the solid gameplay but you also build characters, and imo the best way to develop and write characters is to interconnect them with other characters, and/or with the plot/lore.

Sure, Arden functions as a wall/tank. But through the 5 lines he has, you learn that he is part of a group of knights, has friends who often tease him but is relied upon by those people and takes pride in that, he'd also like to find a wife someday and has self-esteem issues.

Is he as developped as, say, Xillia's Alvin? Hell no! But they're characters from two different genres, Arden has those 5 lines that puts him above any "generic" armor.

(I find it interesting how UO and in a way, FE11, gives you the opportunity to play with generics instead of playing with named characters, in UO generics will turn out to be better since you can change their growths, but they're generics. Do you want the RPG of the Tactics/Strategy aspect?)

So, I'd say that support conversations are important, I love Saias and Ralf to bits, but I'm sure I'd love them more if they had more lines. And since support through battle can be a chore (hello FE GBA and trying to get Bartre and Karla's supports when she joins 2 chapters before the end!), I initially welcome any way to grind those supports faster lol.

However, it can quickly spiral in, well, the otome mechanics we have in FE16 - if you want to build support then why not have an entire mini-game for that, and meals and chorals and whatever else?

It's all about finding balance between developping your characters without turning your game in a dating sim or what I'd call "playing the sims and pairing those dolls with those other dolls you like".

Still, let's not kid ourselves, nowadays the "dating sim" aspect of the series is, while decried by some, very popular - and FE is first and foremost, a series that has to sell.

3H is not peak SRPG not peak gaming experience or even in FE gameplay that'd be FE5 but I can't ignore the fact that its dating sim aspects might be part of the reason why it's still very popular.

[suddencolds]

~

[sysig]

VUXPet (Patreon)

[wavebiders]

Thinking about how most of the time when you have the option to stay quiet during a companion quest you get approval for letting them handle it and sometimes even get disaproval for talking over them

And then with Shadowheart's quest speaking up with Viconia not only gives a +5(while *keep silent* gives nothing) but also if you don't do that she will look genuinely scared when Viconia asks you to hand her over

[yuckydraws]

(Click for better quality)

Healing & Growth

(gif made by my friend @robanilla-arts is below - slight warning for flashing! Thanks again, Rob!)

[polux-aka-hyakunana]

The tragedy of having my hands full of work until at least next week and suddenly remembering how much I love and miss Lies of P while living my Geats fever because I need stalker!Riders injected on my veins to keep living

[miabrown007]

going crazy about kaz brekker hours

[i-am-just-a-skeleton]

i really want to talk to someone, i don't care who or about what but i feel like if i don't i'll start going insane, i've been accidentally ignoring all my friends not that they've tried to contact me either but that's fine they're busy and it's not like that's something they really do anyway it's just that i can't see them in person anymore and it kind of just feels like i don't exist because No One talks to me and i barely respond anyway if they do and i Need to get better at staying in contact with people because if i don't i'll just move away and probably never talk to them again and i don't want that to happen but it Will if i don't do something and it Sucks. this Always happens. every time i start to be friends with something they leave or i leave or we just drift apart and then it's over and i've never had a single person stick around and i never Do anything and i feel like i only exist as a person inside my head and nothing i do ever really affects anyone else and i'd really like. if just for Once i could get out of my own head enough to really connect with someone. and then actually manage to keep them around

[front-facing-pokemon]

[llycaons]

every few months I feel like making a post like 'physical weakness or disability isn't a character flaw to be fixed in fanon 😭 its not inherently feminist for women to simply punch good! making jyl a powerful fighter but affording her no inner life, opinions, personal goals, desires, or internal conflict is doing her a greater disservice than incorporating her physical weakness and her knowledge of her own status as aspects of a fully fleshed out character living in a particular setting and interacting with other characters.'

[icewindandboringhorror]

recent things

[todayisafridaynight]

brother was talking to me about how if you almost die from an extreme-temperature-related incident then your body is just forever fucked towards that temperature and that's why i think kiryu and saejima are weak to ice. i dont know why aoki isn't like that too but ignore that statistic everything else tracks.

[sysig]

VUXisms (Patreon)