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@Wanderer11037re Carcino: Eirika chooses to stop and listen to Klimt when Innes jumped to accusing him of being behind the plot to trap him, and she successfully prevents Pablo from taking over the country (which would ally it with Grado) as well as rescuing Innes. I feel like it's a good moment for her.

My list is based on character more than practicality, but it felt weird to put characters on it that I hadn't used in game yet. Honorable mention goes to Virion: his supports are excellent and his back story is great, I just don't use archers. S tier characters: they're actually written well. Frederick's genuinely made me laugh several times. Libra and Lonqu aren't defined by their gimmick and have detailed backstories. Cherche likewise (bar a few supports that focus heavily on Minerva) A tier: I really like these characters but they're not necessarily well written. I love Owain's theatrics, and I like Nowi's hidden wisdom (in the supports where the writers didn't lean tok hard into the "childlike" gimmick anyway). B tier: I like these characters mostly. They don't stand out to me, in a good way; they're archetypal but still feel like they've got some depth. C tier: These ones get on my nerves. Henry's weird introduction (at least Tharja explained she was defecting. Henry just... appeared.) and over the top blood obsession is grating. The rest are very dependent on their gimmick and don't develop past it. Ricken and Sully are the best out of this group and probably bordering on B.

FE8 is... it's 18 years old now?! The points you make are interesting. The main campaign is unclear on what Eirika actually knows about combat; she's never been in a real fight, but knows how to use a sword properly; she makes the decisions on what her army should do next, despite Seth guiding her on literally everything else. Becoming trapped in Renvall and her decision to give Lyon the stone both work in showing what kind of person she is, I think. The renvall incident shows her inexperience at the start of the game, and her decision to trust lyon... it shows how much she believes in other people, and values that above things like duty. It would have been nice if she had wins more significant than freeing a village of bandits, I totally agree. She's one of my favourite FE characters. Maybe she could have successfully gotten Jehanna's stone and handed it over to Lyon at the end, along with Rausten's. (I think that wouldn't break the original plot too much...)

I'm not good enough of a writer to tackle political intrigue yet, but Fire Emblem's supports provide more than enough fanfic fodder for me, heh. FE8: - Innes is normally a bit of an asshole... unless he's speaking to Vanessa, who he is very impressed by. What does he like so much about Vanessa? What makes him forget about Eirika? And most importantly: how do they end up together? - Whatever happens in between Eirika/Seth's A support and ending. Rough idea: Seth couldn't bear to think about losing Eirika after loving her, so decided to postpone the relationship. He wouldn't mix his love life and professional life until the war ended. The fear of Eirika dying still lingers after Formortiis is defeated, but Eirika is able to convince him that it's safe now. My other idea was that Seth was afraid of backlash from the rest of high society, but that feels like a weak justification considering most other royal/commoner pairings don't talk about social norms at all. - I want to write about Myrhh or Marisa, but have no concrete ideas yet. The two have a distrust of other people and loneliness in common. FE13: - My Nowi x Tharja headcanon: they travel to the place where Nowi was born to satisfy Nowi's curiosity about her parents. Instead, they find a young Manakete whose parents have died. They adopt her and she becomes Nah. (This breaks game canon in multiple ways. Oops 😄 )

FE8 isn't as easy as people make it out to be, especially if you choose not to do any skirmishes or abuse the tower.

If it's integrated with the story and gameplay properly, hell yeah! Give me a Dragon Lord whose land has been taken over by prejudiced humans, or a dragon mercenary whose old home has been completely destroyed by wars with humans. There's a lot of potential for this.

Set pairings with set children + replacement child units for every other pairing is the way. The children of canon pairings can have the detailed supports and plot relevance that normal FE characters have, while the replacement units are there as blank class-inheriting slates, born to the non-canon couples. I think that would please people like AnonymousSpeed and plot lovers like myself. For some of the non-canon pairings, having a pop up on screen saying "(Character) and (Character) deepened their bond" would honestly be better than the half-baked "conversations" most units in Fates and Awakening ended up with. The writers could spend more time on supports they actually want to include for plot purposes instead, and hopefully the writing quality would go up Edit: I didn't actually answer the title question, oops. It feels more natural to me for children to be attached to their mothers... probably because that's what society expects. I liked that Fates and Awakening seemed to alternate which gender the children were attached to, so I'd probably want IS to alternate it for future titles.