Slumber

Clinton's biggest problem was how fake she was/is. Biden, on the flip side, is very sincere... unfortunately he sincerely seems to be an asshole, but we've already elected an asshole in the last few years, so that's clearly not a barrier for people.

He gets very handsy with children and young women.

Yeah, Gatrie definitely blows Brom out of the water in RD. You have to do some work to get Brom anywhere near Gatrie at base. That said, Brom's still a fine unit. There are just obviously better alternatives.

Proofs are not that limited. There's 14 you get naturally in any given playthrough, and there's an endgame vendor that sells them. Starting from chapter 7, you get one nearly every chapter. That said, there's really no wrong choices you can make on who to promote. Asbel should be promoted ASAP, because his class has insane promotion bonuses and are bar-none the best class in the game. Fergus should definitely get it before Brighton, since his Sword rank makes him better in indoor maps, and you'll be hitting one soon, supposing Dagda and Tanya lived. Machua is a solid choice, since she also has a good promotion. Karin, as a flier, is also always a good choice. You also get two very good candidates for Knight Proofs in chapter 8. PS: Don't worry about hitting level 20. The way stats work in Thracia makes it pretty unnecessary, unless you're trying to level someone with awful stats, and promoting by level 15 or even 10 will help you more in the long run.

Radiant Dawn and Conquest have their best showings.

Hard disagree on this one. Julius doesn't need to be another Lyon. Killing Julius needs to be a hard mercy killing because he's completely gone.

It's hard to go anywhere from "Mussolini was cool", which Trump was saying before he was even nominated. That's literally the second worst thing you could say after "Hitler did nothing wrong". This whole presidency is a fever dream.

I'm 28 and voted in the primary. I'll vote in the general election against my better judgement, because I'm absolutely positive Minnesota will go red with Biden running, so I really gotta prevent that even though I think he's a dogshit candidate. The supreme court is too important to just sit back and not do anything. As much as I don't like Biden, if he wins(I think it's a big "if") and he still goes by his "Things will fundamentally stay the same" philosophy, I at least know some of the older liberal judges like RBG can step down safely while he's president. I'm really interested to see if the DNC will throw Bernie any bones this time around. They let him have a hand in reshaping the DNC, what little good that did, for his support last time around. Now that he's arguably an even bigger figure in the party than he was last time, I want to see what they do to court his support. If he gets some say in shaping Biden's platform, then it won't be a total loss.

I think we're overdue for a more magic-focused FE. I also want to see more examples of magic affecting every day life in FE, rather than it just being something for nefarious purposes and combat. For as many comparisons as FETH got to Harry Potter, that's one way in which they could really take inspiration from Harry Potter.

The debates were why Biden was a distant third in the first 3 primaries. The debates impact a lot, but it's short term stuff. There hasn't been one recently enough to stop Biden's momentum from SC and the shit tons of endorsements.

The problem with this is that this only helps Biden and Bloomberg, who are pretty wishy-washy on the issues. If you went to a poll today and asked a Sanders or Warren voter why they're voting for them, you'd probably get an answer on one of their policies. If you asked a Biden or Bloomberg voter, you'd probably get "He's the ex-Vice President" and "Obama endorsed Bloomberg". Biden's coasting on reputation and Bloomberg is relying on sheer presence and misinformation. Bernie gets bumps form debates, while Biden and Bloomberg(ESPECIALLY Bloomberg) usually plummet. So I'd rather have more debates at this point. Now that it's effectively down to 4 candidates, the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate become that much clearer.

I don't know about VP, but he'll probably angle for a cabinet spot.

It's difficult to tell right now. His base seems pretty evenly split between who they support between Biden, Bernie and Warren. If he had dropped out before South Carolina, it probably would have helped Bernie. But now that Biden has some momentum, it's really tough to tell. Ultimately it just frees up some perspective delegates that he might have gotten in the future, but some people are also saying it's just more likely to lead to a contested convention(Which ultimately helps Biden), since more candidates may reach viability with Pete gone. Super Tuesday was going in Bernie's favor before, so we'll have to see in a few days.

Trust me, he was a VERY popular pick going back to probably Melee. For as long as I can remember, it was pretty much K. Rool, Ridley and Geno as the 3 biggest wants from the community. Maybe Diddy and Pit were up there before Brawl, too.

I'd probably be fine having unified infantry classes. Axe Fighter, which maybe if the game has class customization, can specialize in something like Water Walking/Mountain Walking like TRS. Promotion options for the Axe Fighter being Hero, Berserker, Warrior. Sword Fighter, which promotes to Swordmaster, Hero or Assassin. Lance Fighter, which promotes to General, Halberdier and ??? Maybe split Halberdier and Sentinel into different classes. Halberdier wielding Lances and Axes and focusing on offense, Sentinel wielding Lances and being a balanced class focusing on Skill and Defense(Aka the "Aran" class), and General wielding Lances, Axes and Swords and being just a tank. Could probably be refined a bit, but just having those base "Fighter" classes like Thracia did(Barring Lance Fighter) would be fine with me. This way you can have tons more variety within a class for unit growths, and the choice is yours on how you want to utilize this. Are you a weird Ameilia fan who likes fast Generals? Then promote your Nephenee-esque Lance Fighter into a General!

Fridging a character for the sake of another's development is always sketchy. The thing is, though, Awakening is the game that presents said fridging as the actual events of the game. Me saying "Emmeryn should have stayed dead" is not me saying "Emmeryn should have stayed dead so Chrom could grow". It's me saying "Emmeryn should have stayed dead so the game could have been honest". A large chunk of the game before and after the timeskip is built on the premise that yes, Emmeryn died. And Emmeryn having a "death of character, which is just as good" is debatable. Especially since a large portion of Robin's supports involve him helping her regain her memories, which it strongly indicates that she at least partially does. And if you don't pair her with Robin, she still regains an undisclosed amount of her memory. Emmeryn's memories and personality are not completely gone by any stretch in either scenario. The only scenario that the game presents where Emmeryn as Chrom and Lissa know her is completely gone is the one where she's dead.

Yeah, but at the same time, it definitely cheapens some of the development of Awakening. Chrom would have needed to grow into a leader regardless of if they found Emmeryn or not, since Emmeryn was in no shape to lead in the few years following her apparent death, but the core reason Chrom decided to grow up was ultimately built on a falsehood. It's also probably the most egregious example of the support system of the game. The main villains like Gangrel and Walhart not supporting with people besides Robin is incredibly disappointing, but it's hard to say what they'd bring to the table in a few cases. And Yen'fay with Say'ri is similar, but they're secondary characters and again, kinda understandable why corners would be cut there. But Emmeryn having no supports with anybody besides Corrin REALLY brings too many questions to her relationship with people. Chrom and Lissa don't ever want to check up and see how their sister is doing? We don't get to see them ever interacting and continuing to grow with the single person who shaped their lives more than anyone? I am firmly in the "Emmeryn living is detrimental to Awakening" camp mostly for that second reason. Elaborate.

It's still baffling that they didn't ever try to secure the body later. Maybe they did and just assumed some Plegians got to it, but at the same time, Emmeryn's "death" is the sole reason most of the Plegian army defected from Gangrel. The whole thing is weird and relies on some weird logic. Like how Emmeryn managed to make it out of the middle of the desert with severe brain damage. Maybe that's touched upon in her paralogue, but it's not in her support with Robin.

So you think it's plausible that Chrom, Lissa, Frederick and the rest of the Ylissian army saw Emmeryn fall to her death and just decided to leave her body there without checking to see if she's alive at all? Because there's a HUGE hole in the story with Emmeryn specifically about this. They just left her body in Plegia and find her later.

I'm not a huge Pelosi fan, but she's easily the shrewdest politician the dems have. She's smart and knows how to play the game. Her signaling to the party that she'd support Bernie is definitely a big sign that she's at least getting ready for the possibility of President Sanders. She's also probably pretty aware of how devastating it would be to the party if Sanders got the most support from the base, but was then shut down at a contested convention. There seem to be a fair few democrats who think robbing the front-runner of a win would be no big deal... most of them running for the nomination right now. I actually wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of the party expected last night's debate to go much worse for Bernie, when really it showed how strong his base is. It might be one of the factors in Pelosi saying this today.

Bloomberg's performance last night was terrifying. At least two allusions to buying seats in congress is a horrifying prospect for a potential president. He does really seem to think he's entitled to more power just because he's megarich. It's like he is what Trump wishes he could be.

Radiant Dawn had a much more focused vision than Fates and FETH. I think Radiant Dawn's sole issue was probably lack of manpower to put as much content as they wanted in the game before release. I do hope IS goes back to making more focused, streamlined games. As much as I like FETH, there is a lot of mechanical fluff in there, and trying to tackle FOUR campaigns in a single game obviously had its downsides. And I think Fates would have been much less of a controversial game if they were able to combine all of the strengths of each route into... well, one route, rather than trying to focus on one specific thing for each. There's also the problem of IS making each of these routes too different. It's at the point where each Fates route and each Three Houses route is effectively their own game. Even as a megafan of the series who has stuck with the series through its highs and lows, it's really fatiguing to play through 3-4 games with the exact same gameplay mechanics. IS is probably at a state where they could comfortably handle one big, linear story like Radiant Dawn now without needing to cut corners or content.

Fortunately, the way things are going, even if Bernie doesn't get more than 50%, the contribution of Super Delegates won't be enough to close the gap between Bernie and #2. Bernie's huge win in Nevada only serves to add to his momentum, and he's surging in South Carolina, which is Biden's last hope to gain any momentum before Super Tuesday. Warren meanwhile is polling just kinda okay everywhere, and Buttigieg's biggest hopes were in states that already voted. This all changes when people start dropping out, though. Bernie benefits the most right now from the cluttered field, much like Trump did in 2016. Anyway, dropped off my ballot today. I haven't checked how Bernie's doing in Minnesota, so it'll be interesting to see how close it is between him and Klobuchar.

In preparation for Resident Evil 3, I'm currently working through a number of Resident Evil titles that I haven't played in a while on their hardest difficulty settings. Last week I beat both REmake as Chris on Hiking and Revelations 1 on Infernal. REmake was well balanced and fair, if a little tedious as Chris due to his limited inventory. Forgot to rescue Rebecca after making it back to the mansion, so I didn't get the final Tyrant boss fight, but I was saving all of my magnum rounds for it, so it likely wouldn't have really added much if I didn't forget. Revelations is some hot dogshit on its hardest setting, though. A lot of people complain about the non-Jill segments on Infernal because of how hard they are compared to Jill's segments. The thing is, Infernal is tuned for New Game+. I went through it on a fresh save and did it on a vanilla New Game. Those non-Jill segments were the easy parts of my playthrough. That mode is not at all balanced for a vanilla playthrough. Still managed to beat it at a decent pace. This week I'll probably get around to either Revelations 2, RE4 or RE5. I just have to decide if I want to subject a friend to Rev 2 on No Escape or RE5 on Professional.

The increasing popularity and expectations of Fire Emblem probably has a lot to do with this. FE takes up way more resources now, and it's probably a lot harder to juggle Paper Mario, Fire Emblem and the occasional WarioWare game now compared to before Awakening(Also probably why they went to Koei Tecmo to deal with the bulk of FETH development).