#poor Almedha

[randomnameless]

@zeroabyss replied to your post “Dragons matter, fuck human supremacy!”:

Caneghis does mention how in his youth he would have grown up to be a tyrant in his FB if he hadn’t suffered a humiliating defeat that nearly killed him. Since all Laguz save for Herons run on Strength=Right. It’s why he sent his nephew out to experience battle in RD so he can see that the way Beorc fight and strategy has its own values, and potentially lose to an enemy general if he picks a fight to be humbled by it. It’s why Almedha was over heels for Ashnard since he took that belief to its logical conclusion. At least until she gave birth and her son became her priority.

​Laguz value strength over everything... even if they all respect Herons, who have no strength at all!

Cain was a hothead like Skrimir and nearly died, to cool him down, and yep, he sent Skrimir get some life experience before becoming too obsessed with pure strength...

And yet, as mentionned with herons, why the frick are some Laguz valuing strength over everything if every Laguz is basically powerless against Dragon Laguz, especially Black Dragons? Would they feel threatened by Goldoa, try to start a war against them or??

We still see them (Kings) hold some sort of conference together, so bar the "strongest wins them all" they still are level headed enough to recognise and accept other "weaker" tribes.

It's not that well explained, but iirc Almedha was attracted to the fact Ashnard had "power" and was willing to use it to get what he wants, unlike her dad.

Of course Ashnard's "strength = right" is hypocritical, since he only "won" against Rajaion by taking his son hostage, and threatening both Soren and Almedha's lives, and even then, he had to use Izuka's drugs to, well, drug Rajaion.

So is it "strength" or "strength + a bjillion tricks so you're left at 1 HP and Fiona can mercy kill you" ?

Which is why I usually like the trope of the "evil chancellor mastermind", Lekain by himself is weak as fuck (tfw you're a magic user in Tellius) and yet he is the one who (supposedly, until we learn it was Sephiran, another weak af unit!) pulled the strings to get everything he wanted.

What's strength against magic/tricks/drugs/manipulation and in general, the plot?

[fiery-emblems]

So, Soren is a character who's all full of "what if?" scenarios, which i'm pretty sure is one of the reasons we all like him so much. And of course the biggest "what if?" is "what is Soren had been raised by his father as the Daein prince??"

I've observed that the most popular take on this is poor abused baby prince just waiting for his knight in shining armor Ike to rescue him.💖💖💖

(That's some good stuff right there)

If I'm being honest though I'm 100% sure that if Ashnard had kept his kid around Soren would have grown up to be EVIL. That's not because I think Soren is evil by nature or evil without Ike or anything, but Ashnard's entire purpose behind marrying a dragon was to try and create a monster so a prince of Daein Soren would likely be....a monster.

So! Design under the cut!

My thinking is, Ashnard's kid would be growing up in an environment of "might is right, the weak are meat" but Soren is not very strong so he likely would have been forced to assert his dominance through cunning and daily acts of cruelty towards other people. Imagine a Black Butler type evil mastermind young master...yikes!

This is a face that says "You peons are beneath me and I better prove it or my father is going to beat me to death". Also he has a knife because Soren deserves to have a knife in every universe.

"But OP!" You're saying "doesn't he look a little too....boyish?" Yes, you're right. Imagine though, that if the little prince is being raised by Ashnard, he's also being raised by Almedha. From her perspective as a dragon it must look as though her little baby is aging rapidly. Much more rapidly than is natural to her. So I figure she would end up coddling him to an extreme degree and trying to keep him as baby for as long as possible. Normal Soren makes an effort to appear older than he is, in this scenario it would be the opposite.

Last note on hairstyle: I feel like the long hair is tied to his background as a mage, and I don't remember there being many Daein men with long hair (That seems more like a Laguz thing ironically) so I decided to do the short hair.

TLDR: If Soren had been raised by his parents you would probably end up with a bratty, cruel, genius brained, knife wielding maniac. I picture him being that boss you have to fight like 4 times and you hate him because his maps all have extremely difficult gimmicks.

[elluia]

CYL 8 votes!

Fighting the Tellius drought with a vote for our best pal Ranulf stuck without alts, Lehran who should already have a Mythic by now, Mist who needs a Valkyrie alt/Legendary/other, Almedha who is an Important NPC™, and Elena who simply kickstarted the plot of Tellius and is nowhere to be seen 🙃

Sadly couldn't fit a vote for Boyd, stuck with a child alt when at least Rhys has an alt his normal age :( Still no Dawn Brigade because this game is allergic to male banners.

Threw a vote for Finn who has outdated stats and lacklustre art since his banner, when he's the true hero of Jugdral in every generation 😥 (only half-joking). No alt and no use of his three possible age variants is a crime.

Sorry Leif, but you've got slightly better treatment than Finn. And Sigurd has so many alts he can wait.

And last vote for Mae because girl has the WORST art in the entire game, no alts, outdated refine, and somehow no resplendent 💀 I'm a bit more optimistic about her chances, because there are only guys left in the Echoes roster, so she might get the Sonya treatment...

Btw she won my last vote over poor forgotten Nergal. RIP on the Dread Isle.

With all these votes I couldn't vote for the Engage cast, but I'll wait next year and see who isn't in the game yet.

[finitevoid]

sorens horrors: horribly abusive adoptive parent until greil called cps on him at like age 6 -> repeatidly shit foster care situations because hes branded where greil called cps like 4 more times —> everyone gives up and he settles in a group home until almedha finds him

greil asked him at like age 9 about adopting him and for whatever reason respects the autonomy of a 9 year old (based?) so Alright man go live your life. He really didnt want another kid anyway

its just beorc laguz and branded here. pittsburgh tellius is majority beorc, united states of crimea is a beorc country. But its way more racially mixed than in game tellius countries are. Brashear HS is like 44% laguz 35% beorc 1% branded. The people making the tacos in beechview…. i guess theyre laguz

laguz still look like furries but cannot shapeshift

soren has lived across the southside. soren isnt too big of a fan of beechview because its loud ethnic and his noodle legs cant walk up the hills there (this is the home of the steepest street in the us. driving through beechview is like riding a rollercoaster). Hes the southern hilltops #1 hater. btw almedha found soren and was like Ok im moving here for my son. She is new to pittsburgh and shes trying to be open but kind of hates it. Its too poor for her tastes (she actually likes that theres racist white people)

ike lives in brookline :) he does not have much exposure to laguz outside of school. Laguz kind of avoided him until hs but now hes made a lot of friends :) as he becomes politically aware and eventually ends racism in pittsburgh

ike mist and greil unironically say yinz. Mommy is dead

sorry their mom is dead . Anyway i like your worldbuilding.does soren knows hes branded. insane of greil to respect sorens wishes to continue to endure the horrors in the name of his faggotry. this really says a lot about society

[lycianlynx]

cotton guarding from a cotton scoundrel // kurthnaga + chad

goldoanheart​:

Kurthnaga was having a bad week. 

First of all, getting sent to the middle of nowhere in Hoenn was a bad recipe waiting to happen. Especially when you were expected to bring back a well-trained pokemon. Yeah right, there was no way that was ever going to happen within a month. Kurthnaga had spent years training both of his current teams, and he was expected to just grab a random pokemon off the side of a road and return with it in a month? That would never be plausible in a million years, even for the best of trainers.

Second, the Swablu he had managed to find was a complete and utter terror, both the rest of his team, and to him. He didn’t know if it was just a brat or if it didn’t like him, but he didn’t know much longer he would be able to handle trying to train it if it kept running off like this.

Not to mention, it sure is a little scoundrel. Always sniffing around to try and steal pokeblocks from other trainers when he had tried so hard to make his own to fit to its tastes. Well, to be fair, he did understand that point. He wasn’t the best at making them, and usually had someone else make a huge store of them for him before he set off on another one of his journeys. Usually, Almedha or Ena. But he hadn’t been so lucky to be able to catch them during a time that they were free before he had left this time, so he’d had to rely on his own skills. Which were… certainly not adequate enough to please Swablu.

He sure hoped this would at least end up being worth it once he could manage to wrangle it. He had only caught it because he knew that it would eventually evolve into a dragon type, and he did need another addition to his gym team anyway, but if he had known it would be this difficult, perhaps he would have ended up making do with something else. 

Arceus, he needed to find that thing before it got itself into too much trouble.

Trudging through the tall grass, his ears perk up at the sound of a somewhat distressed Swablu, and somehow he knows at once that the little bastard is causing problems for somebody. He stumbles out of the grass to find someone and their Zangoose, Swablu perched on top of the person’s head, cotton and all. Oh, for fucks sake. 

“Excuse me but…” He points at the Swablu - he really needs to give that dumb bird a name - even though the person enveloped in its cotton probably can’t even see him. Hopefully they can still hear though, “I think my little mischievous Swablu has decided to cause trouble for you. Did he make any damages? I can pay you back somehow if he did.”

What a bad week indeed.

Did he make any damages? Boy fucking did he. Chad’s head turns fruitlessly towards the direction of the voice, his hand blindly patting at the mauled piccnic blanket, before giving up and setting to prying the little bugger of a bird pokemon off his head. As grateful as he was that he didn’t get skewered by Zangoose thanks to Swablu, the amount of fluff on his head was starting to get really annoying.

“Look, just,” Fingers wiggle under Swablu’s claws, pry them off one by one, transfers their grip onto gloved hands, instead. “Hold on, gimme a second.”

Just a few more seconds until Chad’s poor head is free of fluff and he can properly survey the absolute mess that is his break spot; Cups flung everywhere, bowls tipped over, the blanket utterly mauled by claw marks, Zangoose sitting to the side sulkily, her hands utterly swaddled in cotton and useless to even attempt to help. Nik is pushing some of the cups back together. At least his backpack’s essentially unharmed, but Lucius isn’t gonna be happy about the blanket…

… Ugh, whatever. This is his fault, anyways, ‘cause he couldn’t get Zangoose under control; She’s practically wild and more his friend instead of his Pokemon, but his point stands. The boy’s eyes scrunch shut as he takse a deep breath, counts to five, then lets out a defeated sigh. He’ll replace the damn thing himself, but the berries that went into the Pokeblocks are another matter…

“… It’s whatever. Noone got hurt, I think.”

He’s serious. It really is whatever, he can gather those again some other time; And it’s not like they completely went to waste. Swablu sits in his arms, surprisingly content, probably basking in the smell of berries perpetually sticking to the boy. Brown eyes squint down at him, irritated and defeated and understanding all at once. “You better have enjoyed those, you jerk.”

Swablu bites the leather of his glove in response. “Hey! I’m not gonna even think about giving you more until you behave!”

[boundlesshart]

Almedha approaches Claude, holding a small pie. "Thanks for offering me the corn, even if I didn't like it. To pay you back, I brought you this! People seem to be smashing these in each other's faces. Do you know why? It seems like a waste of food to me..."

“Pie?” It’s offered to him like a gift, not thrown at him like every other pie over the past few days. Claude was lucky to avoid the mess that apparently happened here yesterday–he’s heard whispers of casualties at the hands of Nino from the Black Eagles, how even Hubert had been dragged into the drama, and something about one of the professors.... dueling students to the death?

“Beats me. Poor pies...” This one looks especially good, syrupy blueberries nearly bursting past the woven pastry on top.... “Thanks, Almedha. It’s in good hands now. The only place this pie will go is in my stomach.”

[ridell-crimea]

omg you poor Fake Fan. not to worry I know all the deepest lore. So in regards to whether Greil would know about Soren, you said Tauroneo would not know him or Almedha because he was kicked off the team when Ashnard became king. However, Almedha was with Ashnard before he became king, as proven by her having witnessed him kill the previous king. And I never got the impression that the Riders would live with the royals? Sure Ashnard talked to Petrine and BK but that was during a campaign. (cont)

 Aw man i think tumblr might have eaten the continuation to your ask (? the next one is about stefan, unless that’s what you meant and i misunderstand)

 Hmmhm, i get where you’re coming from, but i’m not sure almedha being with ashnard before he became king would be relevant in whether or not tauroneo should know her since... well, tauroneo served the previous king, not ashnard himself - unless you assume a rider would know everyone in court or something, in which case yeah, maybe, but i still can’t see him ever gaining ashnard’s trust.... idk

When it comes to the relation the riders share with the royals, i certainly don’t think they live together, but... It’s more of a situation where he likely wouldn’t gain anything from actively hiding his concubine/son from 4 people who are dedicated to serve him, and from a strategic standpoint, having people who know all the facts could come in handy in case an emergency arises. if he felt confident enough to let the riders assist him with his plans for the medallion, for example, i wouldn’t consider it a stretch if he told them “hey, i may or may not be trying to raise a dragon child for Personal Reasons so if some royal from goldoa shows up and asks whats going on let me know so i can get his ass” at the very least..... it just wouldn’t surprise me, that’s all

Like? You know? It genuinely saddens me that both territories had so little exposition i didn’t even realise they weren’t the same place until now :^( I assume the extended script probably talked about them more + i probably missed a lot of things in the game, but still i think they deserved more lore or smth....sad! but yeah i’d like to see some nailah|stefan solidarity. they’d have a good time together i think

Not at all! im a baby to this fandom and i honestly don’t know shit, but if you wanna tell me about it, i’m listening  👁️

I wasn’t aware but it makes sense! I knew greil wasn’t technically involved in their first meeting but i just assumed soren meant, like, in general. It doesn’t really surprise me though, the localisation took lots of liberties but this one is pretty sweet so it can stay 😔

(and @ your other ask yeah i had their A support in mind but youre making me reread their B support.... ugh. stuff that gives me the urge to let soren have parental figures)

Shrugs, I don’t really go there so i can hardly argue - but if anything i’d say soren isn’t the easiest character to write, and depending on how you played the games you can miss a lot about him, so it definitely doesn’t help. I assume that’s why it must have been worse in the earlier tellius days (the half-complete characterization before radiant dawn released, the REALLY specific conditions to unlock some of his convos, or just the general lack of info if you don’t support him with ike... etc)

But yeah, i wouldn’t personally “complain” about it because it’s not something i’m involved in in the first place so i can’t say i know, but it’s just the general vibe i get from some of these, but i may just happen to be very picky so that’s on me then ✌️

Imagine taking feh units at face value and not just cherrypicking whatever elements you like to ignore everything that doesn’t feel good........ you’re really brave because i couldn’t 😔 however that’s true i think he should be allowed to live glove free now! he’s just going to some festival to have a nice time he REALLY deserves a break. I genuinely hope there’s no medallion in the FEHverse since yune just roams freely, we really don’t need this man to go on a killing spree yet again....... 

Anyways you got me looking at his page on feh’s website and i totally forgot about this illustration it REALLY hits me. This is the cutest shit ive ever seen so im bringing it back as a thanks for making me look at it again. i love mist im going to cry

Three times a day i think about this list of unwritten supports. just IMAGINE if we could have had those i don’t think i’d ever need to play any other fire emblem game after that 🥺 It’s honestly a shame for every character introduced in RD aside from the few ones who were relevant to the plot, i really wish we’d been able to know more about them. Anyways thank you for doing the lord’s work, if you ever feel like sharing your convos i’d definitely be curious to see what you came up with 👁️

[ask-frederick]

demesejha replied to your post: [Top 10 Worst Parents in the Fire Emblem...

All of this is true up until ashnard. Pelleas isnt his son. Soren is.

{OoC - I know, but Soren’s past gets seriously fleshed out when you replay Radiant Dawn. Before Soren joined up with the Greil Mercenaries, he actually had some history with Ashnard. When Ashnard married Almedha, he was hoping that his son would be gifted with awesome dragon powers. After Soren was born and it was discovered that he was a simple Branded and not a dragon Laguz like his mother, his dad lost interest in him completely. Ashnard used Soren as bait to draw out his uncle, Rajaion, and then discarded him once he got what he wanted. Soren was then raised by a series of people who neglected, abused, and exploited him, turning him into a delightful little angst lord. Poor Pelleas was just an orphan who grew up to be Tellius’s punching bag.}

[burgermiester]

What makes a good NPC (in Fire Emblem or elsewhere)?

To me what makes a good NPC is also what makes a good minor character in any story.  They should have enough personality and/or motivations that they have their own story.  Better yet, show me that story in-game, even if its very short or implied.

To use examples from my asks from yesterday:

Angeal: (ill try to be vague about the things that happen in game since you havent played Crisis Core yet) From the protagonist Zacks perspective hes a mentor and a friend and later a source of difficulty.  But behind the scenes theres a story that is talked briefly about on the side but never seen.  Hes got an interesting life story that feeds into his actions in the game, but its interesting enough to be its own story.  Hes a level-headed man who as a kid was the poor best friend of the wealthy, charismatic, and (even back then) slightly unhinged Genesis and then took on the same role with Sephiroth as a young man when they all join SOLDIER and 3 best pals’ SOLDIER adventures are implied and then he learns the truth and last, the events of Crisis Core happen.  His character has an entire compelling story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, but we the player who are experiencing Zacks story just get the bits that are relevant to our protagonist’s story.

Almedha: A character with much less screentime can still be very compelling.  From our perspective we only get her as something of a broken woman who has had a pretty miserable time of things in recent years, and by the end gets a little bit of peace and hope for the future.  But theres also a very interesting implied story of a willfull, curious, defiant princess who went against her fathers orders and left her home to see the world and theres something psycologically interesting about someone who, even if just for a night, falls for the beefiest, scariest, most insane man in Tellius.  Thats an interesting story there.

Black Mage #56:  Finally, to show that a good npc doesnt even need much screentime, heres this sad fellow from This sequence in FFIX one more time.  In just a paragraph we have a story of self-awareness, friendship, loss, and confusion, and impending doom.  It’s in the game to give us and Vivi the sad truth of Vivis future, but its also an npc who has his own story.

[randomnameless]

Something that really bothers me about the rose coloured glasses vis a vis tellius and fe fans (ESPECIALLY from 3h fans who learned about tellius later) is that many like soren purely because of his main ship (i mean i like ikesoren too but come the fuck on) and jokingly characterise soren as a stereotypical nasty mean limp wristed sarcastic gay man instead of a deeply flawed branded angry at the world and definitely trauma bonded to ike, but micaiah is still absolutely getting raked over the coals over the blood pact and not being ike’s fangirl

Well,

Jokes often involve flanderisation, so Soren being flanderised to oblivion when people joke about him isn't something I really care about, but maybe that's because I'm not really fond of Soren to begin with lol

What annoys me more is when some people try to rationalise Soren's anger and backstory by either pointing at Almedha or Deghinsea being responsible for everything, and I'm like, what.the.fuck?

Almedha's just, idk, I won't call it sexism, but damn - that woman loves her son who is the only reason why she hasn't completely lost her mind over 1/losing her powers 2/being casted away like trash by her "BF" 3/being rejected by her dad 4/thinking her brother was tortured and abused to death because of her actions 5/being separated from her beloved child.

Deghinsea being "uwu bad bcs he's the reason why brandeds are rejected by both beorcs and laguz" is another take I really am not fond of, and iirc I wrote a post earlier this year about it? But to some people who buy the "Crusts BaD" as the reason why Fodlan sucks, I guess they need to have someone to name and pill all of the world's nonsense rather than, well, in Tellius' case, realise that the worldbulding and the lore really sucks, to the point where the duology touted as the most "against racism" of the franchise, is pretty much way more racist than anything Tru Piss can throw us (yes, because in Tru Piss we have characters rejecting coexistence, in Tellius, it's the world mechanics - whenever a Beorc and a Laguz coexist too much, the Laguz dies...).

As for Miccy,

Just like, imo, Soren gains some "new" attention and "uwu excuses for why he's being a snarky jerk at times", Miccy used to be bashed when FE10 was released (with all the Mary Sue accusation being thrown around!) because she was written to be a sort of foil/antagonist to Ike, and when the party reunited, she was demoted to a "soul-jar" role, let it be regarding the greater plot, or, even, her own backstory!

TBH, for people who didn't play FE10, if Ike is the bestest thing since melted cheese, Miccy, who opposes him, must be BaD and so you can pile everything you don't like on her, hoping to see it stick.

Or even worse, I've seen posts here and there comparing Miccy to Supreme Leader and how misunderstood uwu she is, which is the worst insult poor Miccy ever received since FE10 came out rofl

[anankos]

"Employment to Dragons is, In Fact, Incredibly Unsettling" What inspired you to write the fic this way?

Well, that one was something i wrote for @almedha‘s Manakete Twins au. I thought Rennac was the perfect character for a put-upon point of view (poor bastard is like this in canon too).

Also I might have been projecting a bit, since i’m a big part of vulture culture (although i wear gloves, unlike these gross children)

not to mention writing rennac getting pickpocketed was absolutely hilarious to me.

[randomnameless]

It's also never explained why Soren spent his childhood in Gallia

We don't know day by day what happened to him after his Uncle came to visit, but we know his Best Dad didn't give a fuck about him since he had no scales, thus didn't care about him.

Almedha was... somewhere? Idk if she was depressed like Lehran or not.

And thus, bby!Soren was spirited away, instead of left in a dumpster. Now, how did he end up in Gallia, I don't really know.