#they're literally in the same story i know the solution is to draw them actually interacting

[cookinguptales]

Hello, i hope you are having nice day/night! I have a question, i have tarot card as well but I can’t read them well or make connections, how can i do that better ? I hope it is not a silly question. I just want to know how to get better at reading cards <3

Oh wow, y'all are fast. lmao

I guess it depends on what your goals are. For me, I'm coming at this from an academic/historical POV so I spent a while learning about the history of the Rider-Smith-Waite tarot, some of the occult ideas being referenced by the cards, etc. (I also learned about other major tarot decks, but I don't usually use that while doing readings.)

You really do not have to do that, though. If you just want to know about the generally accepted meanings for tarot cards, there are tons of books and web sites that will help you learn. It's good to keep in mind that cards don't generally have just one meaning. Sometimes their meanings are complex, and sometimes different people ascribe different meanings to the same card.

One other thing here is that, while the same card can have many meanings, often the creator of the deck has a specific meaning in mind, when it comes to modern decks. Many modern decks come with a small booklet that explains the choices they made. You don't have to use this book, but knowing what the creator intended can help you know what each card is supposed to mean when there are a lot of options to choose from.

So... once you know what each card means (or at least what your options are) then you do actual spreads. Again, there's no one right way to do this. There are a lot of very common spreads, like a Celtic Cross or a Horseshoe, but this doesn't need to be complicated. You can do simple three-card readings like I do, or you can even do a reading with just one card. I think the secret here is just to have what you want out of this spread in mind before you start. If you're doing a three-card spread, does each station (place where the card is put) mean something? Is it a past, present, future situation? A problem, cause, solution situation? Or do you just want to bring the cards you draw into a cohesive whole?

When I do readings on tumblr, I usually just do a basic three-card draw to make things simpler. Then... well, again, this can be done however you want to do it. For me personally, I think about the three cards and how they could be assembled, then I almost kind of write a story about those three (or more) elements coming together. I guess you could say I kind of write tarot fanfiction for each person I give a reading to, lmao. In other words, if all three of these sets of themes/events are to be fit together, how would I fit them together if I were writing a story, if that makes sense...?

I think about human nature, or at least my understanding of it, then I try to think about a reading that makes sense. Sometimes I think about the literal meaning. Sometimes I think about the historical allusions. Sometimes I think about vibes. It's not an exact science or anything. I just kinda write down whatever makes sense to me.

We have fun here. :')

But again, it doesn't have to be like that! You can go as literal or as metaphorical as you want, as simple or as complicated. And... honestly, a not inconsequential amount of this is just vibes. How do you feel looking at these cards? Does this feel positive or negative? Going with your gut never hurts in a situation with no wrong answers.

As far as psychic readings... Well, I'm not psychic, though I have done ethnographic research with people who... I guess I'd say at least genuinely believe they are. I can't say that I have strong feelings either way on whether they're right. (That wasn't really my concern lmao.) So I guess I'd say... if you want to try and exercise your ESP, really lean into those gut feelings. Know the basic meanings of the cards and then listen to your own intuition. What do you think this card is trying to tell you? How does that interact with the other cards on the table? Is this a message from something larger than you, or you assembling your own subconscious psychic intuition into something consciously comprehensible? Are the cards guiding you, or is your power guiding the cards? Things to consider, I suppose.

Altogether, though, I would just say that tarot is a living tradition, and there are no hard and fast rules. Buy the decks you like, use them how you like. The "meanings" of these cards change drastically depending on the historical period, where you are, and who's interpreting them, and your ideas do not matter less than anyone else's. Some people don't even bother learning the "right" meanings! They just go off vibes.

Honestly, I'd say to just start researching commonly accepted meanings of cards, read the booklet that came with your deck, and start doing it. Do all kinds of things. You'll eventually find the method that feels right for you.

[scholarlygaming]

Social Media as an Artist in 2025

Okay, it's time we have a preliminary talk about things. Including, well, why I'm here in the first place. This is gonna be long, as you can probably already tell...

As you may or may not know, I'm both a programmer and an artist, in the sense that I have put a lot of time into developing my skills in both places for their own merits.

The goal, of course, is to put them together, but suffice it to say, I am a person who's kinda split between two worlds who, well. Let's just say, have a "love-hate relationship" a lot of the time.

I want to use computer science and graphic design to create worlds, tell stories, and make the world better.

I don't think I've publicly said this? But the main character of the story I'm working on now, profile photo girl Katie, is very much in the LGBTQIA+ community. And, I am too, to an extent, as a cursory glance at my profile will reveal.

As an artist who, if we're being honest, doesn't have a super large following, I kinda need social media to exist. At the very least, "getting more people to know I do art things" is an important goal worth prioritizing.

So what am I supposed to do now?

Yeah, I need to at least consider the possibility that I will need to at some point vacate the two social media places I really rely on. But... I don't think I really can, yet.

I would like to not have to use Instagram, but there's really no alternative. For people who would tell me to apply to Pixelfed, yes I have, and I would like to try it out, but it doesn't do videos, and for someone who's literally taking two classes about animation, that's A Problem. Plus it's maybe a bit too categorized for how I'd want to use it. Cara doesn't support videos, either.

I would like to not have to use Twitter, but I'm kind of stuck with it. I see Bluesky as a valid alternative, but there are a lot of problems that there need to be solutions to before I can actually use it.

I think this is worth discussing in specifics, so:

1. The Discovery Feed is Unusable

Because of the way the site shows posts to you, the discovery tab is basically unusable unless you want to sift through a lot of posts about politics / random garbage.

I do care about politics stuff in other ways and other places, but when I'm scrolling through my main tab, I want to see rhythm game anime girl drawings, find people doing other drawings, learn about things occurring in the electronic music/rhythm game music community, and follow the people involved in the games/culture groups I care about. Or at least something related to my hobby-type interest. None of that is scrolling through 100 completely random people I have no personal attachment to going in and voicing their opinions on every single current political event they feel like.

I've tried the filters, I've tried the "show less like this," neither works, I've been hitting these buttons for hours to basically no change. I'm sure they stop a decent chunk of the posts I don't want to see, but some portion of posts are images (many being literally just text screenshots of other social media/news) or ones with a different word than usual/a misspelling, and the amount of people interacting with them means that they're going to be thrown to the top of the discovery feed for everyone.

If it's not politics, it's going to be completely random cat photos/other pop culture stuff that's not my thing, and Bluesky is equally resistant to stopping doing that too.

I believe the flamingo head-in-sand approach is unhealthy, yes. I'm not advocating that. I believe that the kind of stuff being talked about needs to be addressed. Honestly, for the people who read my description of "see 100 random people you probably generally agree with voice their opinions on current political events" and get excited, yeah, it's good that there's a pretty big community for that now. Again, I do care.

But for me, there's a point where seeing more of the exact same reaction to the exact same thing just is... well, meaningless, other than just being stressful to read.

It's important to be able to step up to politics, but it's also important to be able to step back. On Bluesky, you cannot do that without losing access to pretty important features, and it sucks.

Of course Twitter is going to have other, arguably more importantly worse issues with politics-related discourse, but I have to say: if you don't want that, at least you can actually control what the discovery algorithm gives you. I spent like maybe an hour kicking all the vaguely political things off my feed when I first made my account, and that got rid of nearly all of it. Now, it's been months since I've seen one.

My experience with Twitter is that I can see all the rhythm game stuff I care about, all the associated art I want, follow all the associated people, and learn about new events and creators. I just have to delegate the politics to somewhere else.

Simply put, Bluesky does not support that kind of space right now.

(As for suggestions on how to fix this? Make the discovery algorithm less based on just what gets the most reactions, and try to promote accounts related to ones you're following or accounts following who you're following more often. Change how filters work to allow you to block portions of a word. Ideally, have some way to use OCR to get text from images and apply filters to that to stop the "I will take a screenshot of the news I don't like to complain about it" posts. And, lastly, have a setting so that if the replies to a post overwhelmingly contain filtered words, to filter the post automatically too.)

2. Low Discovery In General

I guess I could consider going without a discovery feed and just going off followers, if I'm mainly going to use the account to post stuff myself. Issue is, that also means that as an artist with a comparatively small following, Bluesky probably just isn't going to go anywhere in terms of getting new people.

I'm certainly not the only person who's having these issues with finding communities I care about. If I'm having a hard time getting Bluesky to put posts on my feed from established public figures, then there is absolutely no way anyone's gonna find me on there without me getting really lucky I guess.

It doesn't help that "go without a discovery feed and just look at posts of people you're following / find other feeds" is usually the only real advice given to everyone who's having issues with their discovery feed. Which certainly helps the user experience, but then comes with the question of "well how do I get on those specialized feeds in the first place?"

There's also the fact that Bluesky still has less users in general, which is more than relevant enough.

Look, sometimes I've just gotta scream into the void even if it is a void (case in point this), and I'm not like trying to make perfect engagement posts. But in the end of the day, I am an artist, and I have limited time to do self-promotion things. Trying to keep up with another social media is a time investment, and I've got to pick and choose what's worth it.

3. The Community Isn't There

And lastly, to be blunt, the rhythm game community just hasn't moved over. Most rhythm game official accounts are only on Twitter. And most of the art and fandom is still only on Twitter / compartmentalized into Discords, actually. Same thing goes for the music community surrounding rhythm games.

And, well. As long as I'm spending a couple days a month repeatedly refreshing arcaea_en at 6 PM, I kinda need to keep the account that lets me do that.

(Why might this be the case? Well, the push to Bluesky is international, but America is really the origin. Right now (well, at least in November 2024), 52% of Bluesky's traffic is from America, compared to 7% from Japan. By comparison, Twitter has 100 million American users to 70 million Japanese users.

And it's impossible to ignore: there may be a lot of Western fans, but rhythm gaming is really an East Asia+Japan-led culture.

Some of the bigger artists are moving over/posting to Bluesky in addition to Twitter, such as Camellia, so I hope that this is something that'll happen eventually. But I get the feeling it's probably going to take a while.)

--

Again, none of this is an argument for me not using Bluesky at all. I think it's a good idea to have one to crosspost to, if nothing else for redundancy in case Twitter gets even worse and for people who still want to be able to follow without having to use a platform that they consider makes their lives worse. And, again, I would love to not have to use a platform that's causing people those kinds of problems-

-but I feel that at least for me, it's necessary. Not having a Twitter would essentially lock me out of the community I really rely on.

I feel the same way about Instagram, if not more so because I kinda already have decent numbers on there. In an ideal world I would have been building up the others too, but I didn't, so here we are. It also solves a lot of rough problems with the types of media I use. I guess I could go without, but that would be throwing away a decent step up at this point, which is certainly not ideal... (There's also the small fact that I kinda have to keep it for a class for points, too, which certainly makes the decision easier-)

Now, do I want to reduce my reliance on these platforms? 100% yes, I want to be able to drop them if things get from bad to worse very quickly. Ideally I'd want something more direct+personalized, like maybe a mailing list? I guess building one of those wouldn't be a bad idea-

Part of that involves using my other accounts more, so I will be trying to do that- though I can already tell, being consistent with these kinds of things this semester is going to be hard. All of my classes are doing the "constant pressure" class technique, and I've had basically no energy lately, so I am gonna need to push through both of those-

I guess all I'm saying is that my solution to "what am I supposed to do" is "well, what I can." And that's gonna be how I'm gonna have to get through all this.

Likewise, if you're looking at all of the things going on with social media and finding yourself in the same spot? I think what you really need to do is be honest with yourself and think about is "what can I do about this."

I think Bluesky is a great solution to many of people's problems with Twitter, but it's certainly not perfect and it comes with many of its own problems, and I think saying it's the only good solution for everyone is disingenuous. It's like Linux; sure, if you put the work in, it's probably gonna be better than Windows, yeah, but you are gonna have to do that work to get your basic functions back, and there are some use cases that it just will not be good for.

All of this is to say, I use Arch BTW :hikarii:

...Anyways, yeah I'm not sure how to end this other than "not a stupid joke" so yeah. I hope you found this interesting at least, because I felt I needed to say it. (Seriously, this post has been in my back pocket for like a month...)

[marmota-b]

Thanks a lot for chiming in!

Species is an interesting flavour it didn't even occur to me to consider, despite the fact the most direct inspiration for this was Star Wars fic and the first time I started noticing it was in Narnia fic. 🤣

It also occurs to me it does sometimes happen in the sort of books I know when the hair colour is in some ways considered a defining feature... meaning it most often happens to redheads. 🤔 So now I also wonder if this might, to an extent, be a cultural thing.

And writing for yourself goes a loooong way towards explaining it! I have rather exacting standards myself, and it's very much "writing the fic you most want to read" for me, so writing for myself includes doing my best because otherwise I just feel lukewarm about it. But fanfic, as a rule, doesn't have to be that way; other writers will have other "writing for yourself" preferences, of course. And I sort of keep forgetting that.

Upon further reflection, I did realise "avoid repetition" was probably part of it. I think what puzzles me in fics and what feels like a specific fanfic vernacular is when the hair colour itself becomes a repetitive character ID - I forgot to stress / did not realise the importance of that in my original post.

Trying to figure out how the writers I love deal with the problem of repetition, I come to the conclusion that teachers often overstress that as a rule with a simple substitution as a solution, at the expense of restructuring the whole sentence as a solution. I think? I think the reason a lot of classic published writing (and the sort of writing I personally try to draw inspiration from) doesn't feel repetitive despite literally being so with things like character IDs and actually using "said" much more often than teachers like, is that the sentence structure itself isn't repetitive. The repetition feels less repetitive when it doesn't keep happening in the same position is a sentence, kind of thing. And in things like character IDs, repetition is actually a good thing because... character IDs help the reader make sense of what's happening. They're literally there to identify the actors in the events. If you have to keep stretching your brain just to figure out who's being referred to, the text can become too dense to be an enjoyable read you become engrossed in; you have to keep stepping out of its flow to consciously puzzle it out.

It's not like you can blame the teachers for not advocating sentence restructuring, it's sort of an advanced case-by-case-basis technique that's hard to put into a rule, but... well, I do rather blame them for sitting on "repetition!' like hawks. Once they've made "don't repeat youself" into a rule, I suspect at least some of them often are on a lookout for it even when it doesn't harm the text at all and a forced variation does. See above about certain kinds of repetition actually giving the story something to grab the reader's mind with. It also depends a lot on what kind of text exactly it is - if you're aiming for something poetic, you probably have more room for that kind of exploration of language than with, say, an adventure story where you need the action to flow smoothly.

It did give me a big lightbulb as to why I may be more naturally inclined the sentence restructuring way myself:

This insight is brought to you by language learning and translation being a NOT 1:1 process that often requires restructuring a whole sentence... It's the level you reach once you stop relying on a dictionary and start thinking in the foreign language. And it also happens when you need to say something in a foreign language and can't for the life of you remember the word you need, or it's missing from your vocabulary to begin with... I'm a native speaker of a small language using English online, including in my fic writing. I still vividly remember an instance years ago when I literally couldn't find an adjective I had in mind in English because it doesn't exist in English and I had to rework "Subject-to be-adjective" into a verb-based sentence, "Subject did a thing that shows something about them". Which is, of course, on the whole a less lazy way to put things (even if in that particular case it was extremely annoying because the to be-adjective phrase was actually being used in direct speech to praise someone so it made perfect sense there).

I think all this trained me into automatically thinking of "how do I say this differently" a bit more often as "how do I put this sentence differently" than just "what different word can I use here". And when I say automatically, I do mean at this point it's not even a fully conscious process.

Obviously synonym searching still happens a lot, I think that's a writerly constant everywhere. 😆

P.S. Oh! And obviously you can also keep using pronouns in a long string of sentences if you keep referring to the same person / keep alternating between characters with different pronouns. Again, that's literally what pronouns are for.

I wonder if this is a thing about fanfiction writing as a world unto itself someone else has noticed / raised before...

You see, one writing trick I didn't learn from books that I see a lot of fanfiction writers doing is referring to characters by their hair colour when their name is known. Just as their default ID inside the text.

I don't do it, and I'd love some insight as to the whys if you do.

It's something that always rubs me the wrong way in a fic, when it suddenly decides to say e.g. "the blond" instead of "Luke", especially if currently basically in his POV. Logical POV is kind of a big thing for me, and I think it rubs me the wrong way because when you do that you're quite often basically using two competing POVs in one sentence - describing what a character is feeling and seeing but then referring to them by a very external descriptor. I certainly would not refer to myself by my hair colour anytime soon, not even when writing about myself in 3rd person. I don't think about people I know that way, either. Based on my own attitude, I assume it's not something you do with a known person, so I'm very puzzled as to why fanfic writers do it with characters they know very well. It most often gets applied to the main / important canon characters. I just don't understand!

(P.S. And, just to clarify the intention of this post - it rubs me the wrong way, but I'm not necessarily dissing it outright. I also find it fascinating as an aspect of fanfic writing as a world unto itself, as prefaced, which is why I went and wrote this. It's like, a specific fanfic vernacular.)

[angel-archivist]

Ive drawn her a kajillion times i miss my wife 

[loregoddess]

I'm curious, what would your ideal FE be?

And do you have any particular FE concepts in mind?

Hmmm, I've been thinking this over since you sent it to me, and it's hard to say because there's a lot of things I like that I dunno if they'd actually work together, if that makes sense? Mostly I just have a lot of thoughts about things I'd like to see in a FE game, which I can write out. Under the cut bc, length (it is Very Long, I'm so sorry). Also fair warning that I'm kind of rambling with some direction and organization, but this was all very train-of-thought while I wrote.

Like, ideally, my first thing would to be to get rid of all gender-locked classes. They're absurd. Fates got the idea right by getting rid of them, honestly (although I think women should be allowed to be butlers and men maids, as a treat, even though I know those two classes were literally the same class w/ different aesthetics). I don't have any specific wants for which classes should appear, be added, or be dropped really, just so long as the classes make sense for the overall story (Fates once more takes the prize for having the most narratively-appropriate and creative classes). I would like to see some really weird classes though, like the wolf riders in Engage are Very Cool bc wolves, and I want more weird stuff like that. Give me people riding skeleton animals, or giant bugs, as well as bears and moose and all manner of creatures that actually exist. I mean heck, historically camels and elephants were used as mounts, and we've yet to see either in FE. I also want more diversity and creativity in the infantry classes. Again, whatever fits the aesthetic and themes of the story, but I feel like we only get a handful of really weird infantry classes every now and then if we're lucky. Mounting/dismounting should be a permanent mechanic as well, there's nothing more satisfying that sticking a flier in archer range and then having them get off their flying beast.

Also weapon durability should stay gone, I hate weapon durability so much. Although I do like how combat arts and spells worked in Echoes and Three Houses, but like, the mechanics need to be tweaked. The easiest solution would be to simply have like, an attack power meter or something similar that characters could draw on to use combat arts and spells. Also, rather than locking combat arts to specific weapons a la Echoes, have is so that each character either has unique combat arts (and spells), or that they can learn combat arts and spells from specific weapons that they've "mastered" by using a certain number of times in combat, which they can then carry-over to a different weapon.

I also liked how 3H allowed any class to use any weapon, but I think this also needs to extend to magic, so that magic can be used with any class as well. This would open up a lot of opportunity for the player to really experiment mixing and matching classes, weapons, and magic with different units, which I think would be a lot of fun to play (based on how much fun I had with similar mechanics in 3H), and offer a lot of replayability for the sheer madness of trying new things with new characters. This will also do away with a lot of "I love this character, but their stats suck and they're nigh unusable" that sometimes occurs, since the player could theoretically just try out different combinations until they got something that worked (RIP to all the people who said Ignatz wasn't a good unit, I ran him through the thief/assassin line and gave him some magic, and he was a crit machine by the time I landed him in mortal savant, I want more madness like that honestly).

Obviously, having an AP pool would also require mechanics that replenish the pool during battle, which could be any variation or combination of skills, specific actions taken on the map (resting on a specific tile, attacking normally, etc.), or even adding in a special staff. Speaking of, staff durability has to go too, I'm so tired of needing to buy staffs. Also, I know a lot of magic in FE is either "a single spell stored in a tome" (most games) or "spell that character can personally gain access to" (i.e. Echoes, 3H), and like, cool beans, but I think, ideally, I'd want like, actual grimoires or other sorts of magical foci (crystal balls, wands, scepters, magic cards, the possibilities are literally endless). Either the magic weapon allows units more powerful magic attacks (if units had magic specific to them), or "taught" the unit specific types of magic (i.e. a Fire Grimoire might teach a unit fire, elfire, and bolganone, or something along those lines). Also, I want there to be a magic triangle the same way weapons get a triangle, although how that should be arranged (for both) would vary based on what types of weapons and magic the game actually contained.

Aside from what I'd like to see out of classes and battle mechanics, I don't have too many other things to wish for. I really am one of those rare "actually I really do play the game for the mechanics" FE fans. I'd want an interesting, and consistently written, story, mostly. Engage actually hit the story notes perfectly in my opinion, all the characters were about equal in their characterization--even the women were as diverse and interesting as the men--unlike the rampant sexism in Echoes or the uneven characterization depth of 3H, or the unrealized potential due to :too many characters" in Fates; Awakening was fine too, but Engage really polishes the support-based characterization to a shine. So I'd want more of that, like, even if a character is a side character, they should have interesting supports that build their characterization, and I want every character to be about equal in their writing (I know protags obviously get more attention, and that's fine).

Generally I feel like the model for supports is fine, although I think it'd be interesting to have group supports of 3+ characters to contrast the one-on-one of the current support model, just to really add more depth to the characters outside of what they get from the story. Also, while I liked that there was a lot more platonic supports in Engage, I really do miss seeing different paired endings, so I'd honestly bring back S-ranks between non-protag characters, but like, maybe not too many, if that makes sense? Awakening and Fates' supports suffered a bit from the "every man and woman can S-rank every other unit of the opposite gender bc of the child units", whereas I feel that limiting character supports per character really helps to focus the writing in a stronger way (Echoes and Engage did this the best, although I will give kudos to 3H for its unique take on supports, although the roulette of paired endings was...not well-implemented at all). But I also want there to still be a lot of platonic supports, I dunno. Mostly I just want well-written and interesting supports.

Supports aside, the only thing I'd want from the main story--aside from "well-written, consistently written", would be to Not Do whatever the writers were trying to do in 3H. It's my unpopular opinion, but (for as much as I love the characters and gameplay) the story writing just isn't that good or consistent in 3H. Fates, even with it's shitty localization, is more consistently written, and more strongly written, than 3H. FE has never actually been about war a critique of war (go to MGS or like, Triangle Strategy for that). FE flourishes narratively when it's a little goofy, and completely earnest, and focused on a few key narrative themes. I dunno what I'd want to see specifically for those themes, because I enjoy all sorts of stories, but yeah...(although to be fair, FE would probably fail as a cosmic horror story--or as any type of true horror--so I wouldn't want that I suppose, despite loving cosmic horror). Also, no split-timelines, multiple routes, etc. Just one storyline. I don't hate how Fates and 3H use multiple storylines, but...I prefer a singular story arc.

The music has been really good for basically every game, so I'd be fine with the current composers being allowed to do whatever they please. Now the art direction...I have a lot of conflicting thoughts because, on one hand, I know why a lot of the things I have personal beef with exist from a production standpoint (almost everyone has one of like, four body model types in Engage and it drives me insane bc there is NO body type diversity, but also for the modelers, it was probably more cost-effective to just have a handful of models for each class to swap out character heads and palettes for class changes, but I still hate the lack of body diversity, but I also understand why it would be easier, but...and so on).

That said, if we are talking what my absolute ideal would be, I just, really, really want diverse character designs. I want many different body shapes and sizes, I want lots of different skin tones (and please enough with the nigh grey-skinned characters), I want people to have actual noses and more than one or two nose shapes, I want crooked teeth and wrinkles and other "allegedly unflattering" physical appearances for characters who aren't evil, and just, I want the character design to really push beyond the whole "aesthetically pleasing based on the current sense of what is considered aesthetically pleasing" that I've seen in...too many media. Also enough with making all villains "ugly" (or the weird "big tiddy evil lady" trope, we've moved beyond demonizing women by making them sexy femme fatales), like, as much as I love the cartoonishly evil villains, sometimes the caricatures are just, tiring and uninspired. Honestly, Heroes is pulling more weight in the "interesting villain designs" department (as well as Kozaki just pulling all the weight in trying to have more diverse designs for women for Heroes), and just, we need more of that in the mainline games.

Also, for as far as like, animations and cutscenes and stuff, I feel like Engage made a lot of progress with it's pre-rendered cutscenes (they're back to being on par with the animations for Awakening and Fates, which had the best pre-rendered animated cutscenes of the games I've been using as examples, in my opinion), but the in-game cutscenes reverted back to the characters standing around in a circle talking a la 3H. We'd never get something like Sumia punching Chrom on the screen in either 3H or Engage, and that's a real shame bc the 3D models do look a lot more complex and pretty than the little polygon people of Awakening, Fates, or Echoes, and yet the in-game cutscenes don't do anything with them. Again, I get that from a production standpoint, having a handful of stock animations for body language and then setting the characters in a circle in a skybox to talk is easier and less-intensive cost-wise, but damn does it really suck the life out of the story at that moment. If it wasn't for the stellar voice acting, then scenes would really fall flat I think. So yeah, more character design diversity all around, better utilization of 3D assets.

And that's...where I think I'm gonna call this a post. I don't have any particular concepts for a hypothetical FE game, partly bc any time I think, "I wish this narrative device or type of story existed" I just end up taking it and turning it into one of my many personal original project ideas instead. Which is...probably why I don't have a lot of AU ideas ever, bc part of me figures if I'm gonna change that much from canon, I might as well just make up my own thing entirely and be bound by no rules except my own. But since I can't see myself getting into game coding and trying to make my own game anytime soon, I can at least think about the types of things I'd like to see in a FE game, though they may never come to be.