#tellius icons

[the-blue-sandglass]

Some icons for FEH's Halloween banner this year!

[jerrom]

titania: do you want to talk about that question you asked before? not as mercenaries but as family

ike: no

[serenedash]

something something, big strong blue guy and small magic tactician twink this is how that works right

[DO NOT REPOST/REMOVE COMMENT]

[slyfire]

lesbian nephenee icons~

feel free to use these icons without credit.

all media used are from official sources.

i hope you enjoy them!

[laguz]

I ENCOURAGE EVERYONE TO BE BISEXUAL NAESALA. didnt mean to yell my bad

[caelin-ismycity]

Okay, since this blog is alive… top 5 (or top 3) Fire Emblem villains? Just askin’

oh brother this blog's on life support and i only vaguely remember FE antagonists BUT i will try my hardest to look in my brain

in no particular order:

orson

oliver

ashera

petrine

black knight

[fiery-emblems]

The other day I drew an idea for "what if branded could transform", but really I just wanted to design a dragon. In reality I think you could take the idea way further.

What if you were to take the idea of branded being half laguz way more literally?? Basically I think it would be cool to have more of a half transformation resulting in what are basically monsters from myth and legend. Of course, I continue to have an interest in a story where the branded are the main characters and the heroes so, making them look like monsters but actually be good guys is fun to me!

The first and most obvious version of this idea would be the half human/half wolf (werewolf). I don't think they would lose themselves like werewolves, but they are the most iconic animal human hybrid design!

The next most obvious design would be half human/half bird (harpies). I think its important to really push the animal aspect and not just make them sexy sexy mostly human things. I think it would be fun to explore the design differences between hawk harpies, raven harpies, and heron harpies.

The cats are the hardest ones to design imo because there aren't that many human/cat hybrid monsters in mythology that aren't also mixed with even more animals. Its probably fine to just follow the example of the wolves and do were-cats though. Still cool!

For dragons I actually think there are a couple different directions you could go in. For this idea I basically went with your standard high fantasy/DnD demons and devils. There's only one half dragon in Tellius but this is another case where it would be really fun to design different looks for red, white or black half dragons since the ones we see in canon have slightly different builds and horn designs plus the different skin colors. (I would go with different skin colors like tieflings. The whole idea is for them to look like monsters and I think dragons should be scary!!)

The other idea I had would be for half dragons to be oni? Basically the same design sensibility but you would lose the wings. My reason for this idea is because oni are cool dragons in Tellius are kind of seen as this terrifying force of nature that could destroy everyone if they wanted to, which is kind of what oni are as well. I think it could work nicely.

[elite-4]

>be me

>"what should i draw for my ikesoren zine piece?"

>thinks about the intimacy of bleeding out in front of your lover whom you'll outl - anyways... @ikesorenzine is opening leftovers on 4/20! missed the chance to get a zine featuring this iconic tellius duo? now's your chance to mark your calendars!

[aokozaki]

One of the major problems with Gacha games being incentivized to spit out new alts of popular characters is how goddamned overdesigned they become to look "newer" and "stronger".

Like, Fire Emblem Heroes recently showed off a Resplendent Black Knight. The Black Knight of Tellius is already a goddamned iconic design, with elegant simplicity, and this Resplendent design is working so hard to incorporate Ashera's feathery cloak, and red radiant flames, and a billowing cape to resemble Resplendent Ike.

And for what? Something that looks more visually busy and cluttered than the fucking coolest guy in the whole series?

[arkus-rhapsode]

Let's Talk About Fire Emblem Supports: A Discussion on the State of one of Fire Emblem's Iconic Mechanics

So I'm sure if you are someone who is keyed into the Fire Emblem community, something that has been discussed for some time is the current state of the support system. Arguably Fire Emblem's defining feature which in recent years has almost come to eclipse other facets of the gameplay.

However, with that has come some pretty noticeable backlash. Lets back it up for a second.

This is not going to be a "This is the right way to do this and if you disagree you are wrong" post. This is me as a long time fan of the franchise giving my honest opinion on how I feel about these aspects of the game and why I think they are the way they are and what I think could be improved and what I think works as is. I don't think Fire Emblem or InSys are gonna go be "diluting" themselves if they don't make these improvements, nor do I think someone who has different interests in how the support system should be implemented is wrong. I'm just a fan with an opinion.

So Fire Emblem's support system has been with us since FE4 in a primordial state, but its modern day form really started in FE6. While entries after that varied in terms of things added to it, it was around Awakening with the franchise on dire straights did making it so every character could support and marry for their prime future baby. This pairing mechanic brought on a bunch of new fans that enabled them to get a bunch of character interactions that resulted in loads of content for fans to then take into transformative properties. But the thing is that a lot of Awakening worked in context. What was assumed to be the last FE means its flaws were less evident and were built with the child mechanic in mind.

Now, Awakening's supports are seen as okay supports plagued with a bunch of redundancies due to the fact that one character interacting with everyone character can only produce so much dialogue. That and each support's length could also lead to loads of padding. The child units were also discarded after Fates basically proved that the mechanic without some proper context can feel more intrusive. But that still leaves us with games with many many characters and a lot of interactions.

The criticism of modern FE Supports can vary but the general points are

Too many characters

Too much repetition in interactions

Length of each support

Separated from the events of the narrative

The supports themselves are just poorly written

This is also not ignoring the ways this has been shaken up like Shadows of Valentia's use of memory fragments, the base conversations of the Tellius games, the monastery scene of Three Houses etc. So any discussion of how these support systems could be improved often calls back to other variations of the support system. And that's at least how we will be trying to examine FE's support system, using its other systems and variants for reference and comparison.

So firstly, I think the stance people take on this will actually be different depending on what aspect of the game you value most. If you are a gameplay fiend your focus will be more on integrating supports into the gameplay the way a Persona game might. If you are a more narrative fan of Fire Emblem you would more take the stance that the supports are relevant and reactive to the plot. And if you're a character fan, you likely want the content of the supports to be plentiful but endearing to the characters. So I want to at least establish that where you fall on how supports are implemented will be of personal preference.

As this is my post, my personal stance is Fire Emblem is a narrative game with supports acting as ways to elevate the characters. As such, that is why I feel confident in saying that I am personally not a fan of the idea of making every FE character support relevant to the narrative. The narrative is important to me, but critical world building and character motives shouldn't just be buried in the supports or battle conversations. I shouldn't need to play with certain character combinations to find out vital information for the plot you are writing. In my personal opinion, the best remedy for this was the creation of the base convos. These were interactions the played out when certain conditions were met at certain points in the story.

This had allowed for a lot of side characters to feel as they had some relevance even if they weren't plot relevant. To contribute to how far along this journey has been and how a map scenario may relate to them. A small version of this was done in Garreg Mach Monastery where each chapter would allow for Byleth to walk around the hub world and speak with characters who would provide their thoughts on the previous chapter or what might be coming in the next chapter. These weren't as long as base convos, much shorter. But it still gave the idea of everyone contributing a new insight. That said, as much as I think base convos are good in games like FE9, they should not be a replacement for the current support system but rather an enhancement. These I would consider as narrative moments that often hinge on events that happened in the narrative. With character commenting and interacting off of it. But I feel that if we were to remove the support system and only have base convos we would be distancing a lot of the casual fans of FE who want to see characters interact, but not always as serious. And because FE is often a war story franchise, the tone of base convos are often serious in subject matter.

With Engage and the implementation of the somniel and even walking around defeated battlefields, I actually really would have liked base convos to be implemented this way. Perhaps after a battle you may be able to walk around a camp and see an indicator of who you can talk to about an event that just happened that would trigger a more fleshed out cutscene. I say camp, because while I appreciate the monastery, but one of the issues I have is that it is a stationary location and makes FE not so much a journey but rather just able to fast travel to certain conflicts. Making the world feel smaller and repetitive.

Most likely than not, you will not unlock every support in game on your first try. This to me adds replayability and an incentive to grind with characters you may not regularly use. However, in the case of base convos, unlocking them often hinges on them just being alive at the time. So if you were someone like me who impulsively starts over even on casual mode to not lose a character, when you see all base convos, you have seen them all. You can only walk around the Monastery and ask Sylvain what he thinks about fighting Miklan only so many playthroughs before you just don't bother. The replayability will then come from difficulty spikes and not character or story incentives. So I do believe base convos should return but as an enhancement not a replacement.

(Some may suggest that one could implement a support system lock like FE3H did with its time skips, but that suffered from an issue of not accounting for everything interaction when the time skip happened. So it actually feels very bizarre to watch Ashe and Petra have a lunch time excursion in Faerghus when the country is apparently under occupation. So I think weaving supports with narrative dependency for some supports but not others will actually be more confusing.)

In fact I daresay, supports that are disconnected could actually add levity. Mia and Ilyana's support is almost completely comedic, and it feels more endearing than watch the two of them brood over Daein and Crimea.

Speaking of repetition, lets talk about support redundancy. This is part of another issue in FE's supports which we will get into, but let me at least try to establish what people mean by redundant. I find saying FE characters are "too anime" rather lazy and dismissive. At their core a lot of side FE characters are stock characters with some limited traits. So when you hear Sully talking about working out, or Rosado's obsession with cute things, or Raphael loving food, a lot of the supports they have can come back to or revolve around these topics. And when you have games with the other issue of many many characters hearing them have these convos around these topics again and again can be very boring.

Some could say that this is an easy fix by simply reducing the number of characters. Focus more on say the size of a persona cast. Well the difference is that FE is a tactical RPG with permadeath while Persona is an RPG with a focus on time management. The smaller sized cast benefits the player in ways that help them interact with every character, but not having to worry about one becoming unplayable after you spend a lot of time on one. FE however as a tactical RPG where the mass amount of characters is so you have options to solve strategic map scenarios. Reducing the number of characters to only plot relevant ones would be very difficult. Hypotethically, if we reduced Engage to the characters who have to be around for the plot that only leaves you with Alear, Vander, Clanne, Framme, Mauvier, Veyle, Alfred, Ivy, Diamant, and Timerra. Not exactly a plethora of options for making interesting maps.

Now InSys seems to have begun implementing changes to this already. No longer are we going full Awakening or Fates with supports. Supports are much more limited in scope but not quite as anemic a line up as Shadows of Valentia did with who could support who. 3H and Engage have honestly made far more strides in lowering the number of supports and honing in on who may be relevant for a character to interact with and who outside of that circle could they interact with. Three Houses often relies on the house members each being to support each other with maybe one or two students from other houses or the monastery staff. Engage seems largely to focus on characters from countries having the same interactions with a few from others. This is a good thing, honestly if we were to get a remake of Radiant Dawn, I would love for something similar to be implemented between the Ike, Elincia, and Micaiah casts with some crossover supports when you get to the back half of that game.

So if this is already something InSys is improving, why is it something people are still critical of? Well I think what some may miss is that even if we compact a cast to more manageable interactions, that still leaves the interactions themselves.

Remember how I said Fire Emblem characters are stock characters with some limited traits? Well that is often done with identifiability. When you meet L'Arachel as a holy women but she has a snotty attitude or Sylvain the noble who hits on every woman, its done so you can recognize this character. But when you get into their supports, you often see that there might be reasons for why they act this way or it makes them more fleshed out and rounded characters than how they may seem at face value. This is where I think some Fates fans will often argue that Nohr's cast is very compelling in their supports even if the game's narrative had made many come off as one note. But you can see the flippside with Engage where its supports are more manageable, people didn't think supports were elevating the characters in ways that you had known them. That's not to say all of them, Yunaka is a stand outing how her supports both inform her as a non plot relevant character but also endear her to the audience. This to me is a sign that supports will ultimately be cases of writing. And there can just be poor writing and utilization of characters. This can also hinge on context as well as 3H has recruitment of characters far different from any FE game and just hands you your house with the expectation your interactions with them will make you learn more about them rather than just playing and recruiting on a quest like some may want.

I may have been a bit snide to Shadows of Valentia as even by the account of wanting less quantity of supports, I still found it almost too small. But even then some of the supports are the best in the franchise. Particularly Python and Clive's. But I don't think this was good because SoV had less character supports, I think it was good because the writers had looked at this pairing of characters and what each one was about and what depths could the reveal about each character. I would very much like to see that for a majority of supports.

Last point is length, and honestly we've seen this improved with games like 3H. Some supports can just be short. In fact some people can have only two support chains. Honestly, just doing more of that would've probably led to less issues overall and hope for that to cut down on padding.

So with all this in mind, what is my final take away. Well I ultimately think it comes back to what I usually want out of a Fire Emblem game. The narrative should be all there in the campaign with characters arcs for plot relevant characters, but the supports should be used as a way to enhance these units. Adding dimensions to characters who ultimately don't factor into the plot as a whole. I think 3H did make a lot of these improvements particularly because it was made with the social aspect in mind with that game practically carried by all of its characters and their depths. But I did feel as the narrative of 3H had suffered and wasn't all that tight. Post Engage, I think we are seeing a system I'd like to maintain, but I think what was lost was some of the added depths to cast members that supports can provide as well. Yes, Engage was made with a lot of celebratory fun in mind so it wasn't all that serious, but it would be nice to get more Yunakas and Pandreos in that case than say Ambers. Another aspect is the pairing, and I really hope that pairing characters without the need for child units returns as well.

I am all for the return of base convos like FE9, but I don't think it should be a replacement. Again it is another form of enhancement not replacement for supports. I think completely junking supports in favor of the base convos would be a bad idea especially with newer fans of the franchise. Overall, FE supports I feel are where they should be, but there are plenty of minor tweaks that could be implemented, if just more utilization of the characters beyond their face value.

[puffballcat]

Tellius dragon designs you will always be iconic to me

[jerrom]

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

this is Fates DLC related, so most of y'all might not know what I am talking about but like those who got that DLC that gives the Vanguard class when you beat the map go look at the DLC's icon at the Outrealms Gate and answer me this: why the fuck is it just a sprite of Ike on a bright cyan background???? like the other DLC icons had more effort than that why did they have to do the Tellius related DLC so fucking dirty??????

.

[slyfire]

lesbian fiona icons~

Princess [Name]. Your beauty always leaves me breathless. Not with envy, mind you. If you need my help…

feel free to use these icons without credit.

all media used are from official sources.

i hope you enjoy them!

[theia-eos]

So, what about Tellius in particular got you hooked on it?

TL;DR Everything. The Tellius games are very much my comfort games.

I think part of it was definitely the fact that the worst years of my life, so far, were from 2002 to 2006, and those games came out in 2005 and 2007. The messages of the games, the way Micaiah, Ike, and Elincia deal with their tremendous burdens without losing themselves, was something I desperately needed at that time in my life. Honestly, playing through those two games did more for my mental health than therapy was (recommendation: find a therapist who is a good fit for you. I have one now. She is amazing).

Beyond that, the world is just so interesting to me, there's so much to it and the characters feel very well written. Soren's adaptation from his childhood, Reyson and his combative personality, Jill unlearning her prejudices against the laguz, Shinon and Janaff's relationship, Skrimir's growth as a wiser leader. All of the character writing hits pretty hard, honestly, and there are no moments I can recall where I feel like "there is no way an actual person in that situation would say or do that," and the trauma responses felt both pretty accurate and treated with respect, not as over-top humor that falls flat. On the writing, there is just so much lore and so much to think about and before those two games, I'd never seen games with such world building or thought out characters before. I'd read books like that, of course, but to have this intersection of visuals, music, writing, and interactivity was truly captivating to younger me.

Speaking of the art, I've always loved the CG renders and how much they draw me into the world. I used to draw a lot more back when I was playing the games for the first time, and that style is something I very much used to want to emulate. The music is iconic to me as well, in that I can hear any song from the game and remember the feeling and image of the game when I was playing it and hearing that song originally, I can't do that with full game soundtracks normally. For years, I would play the galdr songs to soothe my anxiety, calm my mind and get to sleep.

The Tellius games, and Fire Emblem as a whole, are games that my spouse and I talked about a lot while we were younger and just beginning to date, and our mutual love of the series is very much a cornerstone of our relationship. My spouse has a very lovely singing voice and would sing the galdr to me if I was struggling with my mental health, or do the funny voices used for reading the scenes to lift my spirits when I was feeling down back then when the games were still new.

[inthevoidzone]

apparently I don't have an askbox

sent in my messages: you don't have an askbox for me to drop this in anyway list 5 best fire emblem dancers TOP FIVE BEST FIRE EMBLEM DANCERS. Dancers, or "refreshers" are my all time favourite Fire Emblem class. It was really hard to whittle it down! In descending order. 5. Lene Great storyline, strong relationships with other characters! I love Lene's softness, her connection to Ares and their sweet & sour dynamic, the way she begins as an outsider to Seliph's cause, and her *iconic* green and purple redesign from the TCG. Especially juicy with Sylvia/Levin and their delicious parent/child conversation. 4. Reyson Whatever my overall Tellius feelings, the bird tribes storyline is great. Reyson's whole concept -- an obligate pacifist raised among fierce warriors -- is delightful, and his ties to both bird kings are great. I love the way he admires Tibarn and resists his own peaceful nature, and who doesn't love a beautiful bitchy twink? 3. Sylvia Lene's mum also made it on the list. Sylvia is in so far over her head. She reflects the major Act 1 theme of "history happens to you while you aren't looking." When she joins the army, she's in her pay grade. By the end, she's SO far out of it but keeps doggedly pushing on with girlish determination. I especially love Levin/Sylvia and how she represents freedom and escape for him. 2. Nils Nils is very special to me. The characterization I love with him is how grown up he is, how mature. He wants to be the one to protect his older sister. He sees himself as an adult and has all these dark feelings of bitterness, jealousy, frustration, and longing all going on t once. The push and pull between missing home, loving Ninian but hating humans, and wanting his sister to be happy creates an impossible dilemma for him. It's great. 1. Ninian Oh SHOCKER it's the queen, here on top. Ninian is one of my all time comfort characters. I adore her. She rewired my brain. I love her beautiful, delicate character design, evoking frost and deep snow, but my worship of her aesthetic pales in comparison to her story. The anguish, the guilt, the self-loathing, the heart-beating-in-your-throat hope and the crushing despair, the tragic twist and the happy ending, it's all flawless to me. The sight of Eliwood bridal carrying her into their ending never fails to fill me with joy. She is my everything.