#things to criticize

[ro-botany]

Offtopic opinions

Awakening is a game that was rushed, and suffered a lot of cuts, but when you pay attention to the history the game lays out, you start to see this rich world they were trying to create. And the plot! It takes a standard "the prince must slay the evil dragon" story and it flips it on its head and uses it to explore cycles of abuse and trauma.

I'm not sure I agree there about the game having a rich world.

There's very little to the world building like Chrom's famous ancestor and Ylisse's First Exalt is just a word for a word copy of Marth without any sort of name. Similarly Chrom's father has no name and the crusade is woefully underdeveloped.

There are also characters like the Hierarch, whom allegedly acted as a mentor to Emmeryn but just betrays her with this big event going uncommented on and the Hierarch having no name, his Japanese name is just the name of his class!

The Taguel are another thing having basically no history outside of things basically copy/pasted from the Laguz and the writers couldn't even get Panne's personal history right; she says in one support her birth mother raised her alongside other taguel, but in another says her mom died when she was an infant so she never knew her or any other taguel.

Compare these all to even the first game having oodles of info on Marth's ancestor and the history of the continent as well as its wars.

Or Orson's betrayal in Sacred Stones to the Hierarch, as well as the long history of the Laguz in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn compared to the Taguel's inconsistent lore that acts as a mere footnote in Awakening.

Also personally I find Awakening follows all the standard FE tropes to the letter without any sort of diverging from them.

...If you find killing vast swathes of virtual human enemies disturbing, then strategy games centered around war may not be the games for you. This is what we call a genre convention. You gotta be able to handle killing the little pixel guys to enter.

Its not that I find it disturbing but more I feel Awakening treats war like a game and isn't interested in explaining why the protagonists are killing people or the ramifications of killing people.

Its simply playing into "kill brown men because they're ugly and rescue the sexy brown women from them."

Like even Genealogy of the Holy War talked about how the cycle of vengeance affected everyone, how its still sad to kill the Loptous cultists as they are human beings and that even the head of the cult, Manfroy didn't start out evil.

Awakening, to me personally, just seemed like it only cared about making the player feel powerful by having every enemy be either forced to fight them against their will or be a piece of crap that absolutely nobody loved (Aversa's storyline goes out of its way to say nobody mourns Grimleal deaths for example), whilst every women around just threw themselves at the player.

(Second debate hour anon ask I got too busy to reply to when it came in; My Bad anon hope you're doin well.)

"whilst every women around just threw themselves at the player" Anon, I can't stress this enough:

This is the game where M/F MONOGAMY IS A STRICTLY ENFORCED GAME MECHANIC I'm. I just. Did we read the same supports? Because most of the Robin supports I remember are like, Robin failing really badly at making soup, or losing stuff, or teaching people funny slang and then regretting it.

All the supports had to be written to believably be building friendships, because you can still A rank characters with each other after they're married. Because of this, the vast majority of supports only pivot into anything even remotely romantic directly in the S support. It's usually not done well, honestly, imo. But either way that doesn't leave room for this like, harem anime AU you're inventing in your head.

"Women throwing themselves at the player" did you read the support where Robin accidentally gives Sully the shits and she threatens to kill him, anon. Did you.

Anyway. It sounds like you're reaching for reasons to object to this game on some kind of moral grounds. You don't HAVE to do that, though. You can just dislike the game for non-moral reasons. Or for no reason. It doesn't have to be that deep.

Anyway to address your other points briefly I mean, uh, with way too many words as usual lmao

I'm not about to argue that the game is perfect in any respect. It's not even CLOSE. I've said before and I'll say it again that there's a lot of unused potential in Awakening, from places where characterization is thin to the massive gaps in the worldbuilding. The way this game treats Aversa is gross as hell and it has plenty racism problems besides. Trust me, I am not unaware of or ignoring the bad and the ugly.

To be honest? It being deeply flawed is what keeps me coming back to it.

If a game is perfect, there's only so long you can gush about how good it is. If a game is GOOD, but FLAWED? You could write a fuckin thesis about it. Hell, I arguably have, the word count on the collection of Awakening-related meta posts I've authored or made big additions to just keeps on jumping.

Yes, Awakening's worldbuilding has major gaps; but what we got was legitimately interesting! Piecing together what we got is fun for me! Filling in some of those gaps by extrapolating from the facts at hand is fun! Headcanoning in the rest is fun!

Sure, some of the characters and relationships are sorely underdeveloped, and there are some inconsistencies in the supports and that sucks. But seriously analyzing what's there is fun as hell! Taking the things we know and extrapolating personality and relationships is a blast! And for the more major characters, what's there is legitimately compelling as hell - the amount of scholarship the mutuals and I have authored about mister Grima faildragon himself is proof of that. As is the fact that we have honest to goodness essays about Validar of all characters. VALIDAR.

I can't really compare it to most of the other FE games, having not played most of them. I can accept it's not the best FE by a long shot. But I'm also willing to give it leeway for how the release dates hamstrung it, I appreciate the clear love and effort that was put into it anyway, and I respect it a lot for the part it played in keeping the franchise alive today.

And to be perfectly frank, it also is a story that I stumbled across when I was in a rough patch, and it helped me deal with the Horrors, so y'know. It's a really important game to me for that reason.

If its flaws are dealbreakers for you I may not be able to change your mind. That's ok!

But hopefully this at least gives you some insight into why I, at least, am so obsessed with it. It's flawed as hell and that makes it capital C Compelling.

[kensatou]

i'll let phie-san say it:

[planefood]

rules for thee and not for me

[perfectlyripeclementine]

calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.

[bixels]

Baffled.

[yudol-skorbi]

its forever missing the twins time again :(

[talaricula]

Things I've seen tumblr memeing about James Somerton doing à la "How did no one see how bigoted he was!" as if those things haven't been a significant part of tumblr culture for over a decade :

Presenting untrue and bordering on conspiratorial versions of (queer or otherwise marginalised) history without any sources

Completely disregarding and disrespecting any expertise on socio-cultural topics/humanities and distrusting academics and historians (incl. acting as if no academics or historians could be queer or marginalised)

Downplaying the role misogyny played in the historical oppression of queer women and concluding that queer men must have been more oppressed than queer women

Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women

Despite nominal trans inclusivity, transmasculine ppl are functionally women when convenient (combined with the above, bi transmascs are functionally straight women)

Despite nominal trans inclusivity (bis), shamelessly attacking, threatening and actively endangering any trans woman who questions them or smth they find important (often by unfairly presenting her as violent or as a threat)

Having absolutely fucking wild and reductive takes about ace ppl, the oppression they face and their place in the queer community

Stating that marriage equality is an assimilationist fight while completely ignoring its direct roots in the horrifying consequences of the AIDS crisis for partners of ppl who died of AIDS

Praising western media creators from the past for queer coding even under censure and in the same breath condemning current non western media creators for being homophobic bc their representation isn't explicit enough

Blaming China for all existing homophobic censoring in western media

Assuming all queer media would be better told by western creators and by western standards

Only out queer ppl get to tell queer stories

Heavily criticising almost all queer media created by women or ppl they see as such (see above points about trans ppl) or involving/starring a significant amount of women for any perceived or real amount of "problematicness", but fawning over and praising and negating criticism of queer media created by and starring mostly or even functionally exclusively men (even when it could be argued that, you know, not involving/seriously sidelining women is a pretty clear example of misogyny which should probably be considered "problematic")

And I'm probably forgetting stuff or there's stuff I have internalised myself and don't recognise as an issue

Like idk but I feel like the takeaway from Hbomberguy and Toddintheshadow's videos should maybe be "be aware of such patterns in your communities bc they definitely exist" and not "this guy is uniquely awful" and I feel like a lot of the discussion I've seen surrounding this has been severely failing at that. Most ppl who've spent any significant amount of time on tumblr prob either have internalised at least one of those thought patterns, have had to de-internalise them, or have had to be extremely vigilant to not internalise them (which is done by, you know, seeking out other sources, which also seemed like an important takeaway from the videos)

[fairymonk]

Percy's Walk of Shame

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF Sun reviews Michael Afton’s art,,

[thatwavephenomenon]

me: i sure hope the crows are not gonna be solely depicted in veilguard as a brave force who 'fight for all' when they are at their core a criminal organization who is known to buy children to indoctrinate them and turn them into assassins, by putting them in overcrowded warehouses and making them fight for scrapes in order not to starve, to later torture those who reach adulthood to finish their initiations and kill them anyways if they dare to try getting out

bioware: i cooka da pizza

[squirrel-stowaway]

oh I love that they included the spirit of travis himself taking over grog to make a strategic decision when the rest of the group is too indecisive and then grog being like “what just happened, I blacked out” after he finishes saying The Smart Thing

[xandrikart]

[floweroflaurelin]

Opal, Twice-Crowned Champion of Lolth 🕷️🕸️🕷️

—

(Billie Eilish’s “you should see me in a crown” playing in the distance)

[justdavina]

Oh .... Such a sexy transgender woman! I can't take my eyes off of her! Those amazing boobies are just hypnotizing! All I want to do is hold her and kiss those amazing breasts for hours. And those sexy glasses ...Don't take those off... Sorry, I'm a pig. Please don't hate me....

[wardensantoineandevka]

This scene was begging for a little audio edit, in honor of certain iconic musical cues, so I took this important task upon myself.

[essektheylyss]

Essek isn't even operating under his own name and is still DEEPLY mad that his annoying little brother is embarrassing him in front of world leaders, I'm OBSESSED