Djunna

Best wishes to all rail workers, they're a vital part of society and they deserve their rights.

He can do it. I believe in him.

Do not do this. Do literally anything but this.

This next orange will FIX me. You're a genius. The next unit that takes damage is getting dragged to the Dragonball style healing vat.

"Ryoma will wait patiently for 25 turns before attacking," is the funniest thing in any game I've ever played, so I must thank fates for that. I think the games are playable, but there's certainly no need to play all three. Obviously the story has tons of problems, which is unfortunate, because it had a lot of potential to say something about the nature of family (with regards to family you choose to have vs family you are biologically related to). The game self sabatoges itself at every possible opportunity in order to make the game more lecherous. The axis that the game spins around is Corrin's relationships with their siblings, those that they grew up with and those that they are allegedly biologically related to, which could have been an interesting conflict had the game not instantly retconned this so that you can S support all of your siblings. The family dynamics could have been so much more interesting than they are. For the Norian family, I for the most part like their writing and think that they read as a group of siblings more-so than the Hoshidans do, mostly because they're messier. They tease each other. Xander is an interesting character who could have been made more interesting, his central conflict is not just about feeling the burden of being the crown prince, but also about seeing your father, who you still cling to desperately as your father and king, continously abuse your siblings in front of you. Xander and Camilla both present themselves as these protective figures who want to take care of Leo, Corrin, and Elise, and shield them from the alluded to and presented cruelty within Nohr, both in the courts (as is constantly alluded to and discussed wtih Azura's backstory), and at the hands of their uncaring King/Father. I honestly think Xander and Camilla should have been challenged more about this congnative dissonance that they both display (although Xander moreso). You want to be a prince that protects your family and your kingdom, yet you constantly fail to care for your sibling who faces the brunt of abuse from your father. Sometimes, especially in conquest, it feels like the siblings fight to protect eachother and be a real family in spite of their father and nation's cruelty, which could have been beautiful had the game actually committed to portraying these characters more realistically given the situation they've been placed in. Instead they bent over backwards to make Camilla super creepy and make Elise look and act as young as they possibly could while still making it possible to S support her. I have less to say about the Hoshidan family because only Hinoka and Takumi feel like actually fleshed out characters to me. Ryoma is just the standard samurai-type character and Sakura is just the standard shy-girl trope. Takumi is the only one who I feel reacts to Corrin's reintroduction to their life even somewhat logically or realstically, and I think Hinoka comes the closest to being a character genuinely impacted by the kidnapping of her younger sibling. That's a traumatizing event to go through, especially as a kid. Fates constantly sets up these intensly emotional storybeats such as losing a sibling or having an abusive father and then refuses to flesh it out at all, because why would you want your game about family to be about family? Additionally, I feel that IS wants to write stories where there is no clear good guy or bad guy, and they attempt to do so but end up falling back into a simplier story line each time. Playing as the badguys is fun, consciously choosing to do the wrong thing can be fun in videogames because there's no real consequences. I think the Hoshido/Nohr conflict forshadows Three Houses in that there's the idea that you could pick one side because you think they make a better argument or because you think there's better people on that side, but ultimately they do design one group to be goodguys and one to be badguys. Nohr is objectively in the wrong, but the game still wants to pretend the conflict is more complicated than that. Hoshido is obviously intended to be the "correct"/heroic choice, but it's by far the blander story. I'm still playing through revelations as I write this so it's not a complete review, but these are some of my thoughts.

I love seeing how different people interpret the usage of vulneraries/concoctions/various healing liquids. In some people's works I see them having the characters drink vulneraries while others have them applied to wounds. What's your interpretation? Is there anything in the games you consider to be concrete evidence of the consumption of vulneraries? Do you think it differs per game?

Finally, some good discourse on fire emblem. It is pretty weird that they have a roundtable model for the class session scenes and refuse to reuse it anywhere else.