Medeus

While I doubt they'd do it as well, that would be a pretty neat idea to do for the story, especially if the Duo Heroes were one Light and one Dark Elf team to ideally give us better context on both groups. Kind of jumping in here, but assuming that the places that the story has gone to so far count as their own realm, we've at least seen three: Niflheim, Muspelheim, and Helheim, with Zenith potentially being an analogue for Midgard as our fourth. The next Book seems to be focusing on the Dark Elves, so we're going to Svartalfaheim for certain, and if the Light Elves are included we'll get Alfheim, giving us potentially six total by its end. That means we still have three (or four if Zenith doesn't count as Midgard) others that the story could focus on, with the last one we visit likely being Asgard due to the build-up with Thor and Loki.

Great, so we're going from second best Thor villain to worst Thor villain. Considering we're getting the Dark Elves, I wonder if we'll get their Light counterparts here. They would make for easy allies for IS to use for the story, and one of them could be our freebie for the year.

20,000 Feathers say Lif is on the Farfetch'd banner instead of Shinon.

-Ditch the whole 'hi, we're the new heroes of the month, lets fight!' bit between chapters. With Book 1 it was understandable since it was the only way they could introduce new characters to players that didn't get them yet, but with Forging Bonds now being a thing that's less necessary. If they cut out that fluff I feel the story would benefit from it since it could devote all five parts of a chapter to storybuilding. -Better handled villains, they've gotten slightly better at it between 2 and 3, but we still have them falling into the traps of being either underutilized or just plain generic. They need to both devote more time to them and give them better motivations, particularly if they want us to pull for them once their storylines are done. -Development for Sharena and Anna, Alfonse has gotten better as the story has gone on, but those two feel like they're very auxiliary to the plot at this point. Both need their time to shine as well, so I hope the next book gives them that time. On that same note, better development for the character of the year as Fjorm's story was underdeveloped and Eir's was rushed. -Personal want: Fenrir for a future villain. We now have shapeshifters in the game, but I feel they could be integrated a bit more since we still lack an enemy type for them. Fenrir could be used as a way to introduce that into the game, as well as play around with the concept to form an unique villain from a gameplay and story perspective. -More unique objectives, they were present in some of the previous chapters but for the most part they've fallen off. I'd like to see more options like the defense chapters be used so that it mixes up the gameplay.

Poor Ranulf, beat up by the Black Knight, tossed aside by Skrimir, chased up a mountainside by Zelgius, and now made the steed of a teenager. When will he get the respect he deserves?

Kind of eh on Catria being here as an alt as I was hoping they'd permanently move away from alts on New Heroes banners. Business-wise though, I can see why they did it since as mentioned before Tatiana is probably going to be withheld until the next banner with Zeke and none of the other characters are easy whale bait, so falling back on Catria was a safe move. Anyway, outside of maybe Slique and Conrad (who's a GHB) none of the characters really wow me so I don't really see a reason to pull on this banner. I'll probably save my orbs for the upcoming Farfetched banner in the hopes that Nils and Jill are on it. It's weird to think that Valentia is so close to having a full playable cast already considering it took two years to get another banner. It'll still probably be a while until we get all of them (especially Deen since he's pretty unpopular), but I look forward to seeing this list completed.

Does it make less sense though? Rhea before the timeskip turns into the Immaculate One (which is risky since she's been trying to keep that secret) instead of letting Byleth throw themselves at a large army and then roared in despair when it seemed apparent that you fell to your death and she couldn't do anything about it. That on top of the treatment she gives Byleth shows that she values and cares for Byleth to a great extent and will do what she can to protect them. I don't think the revelation in SS is really needed to make sense of it, the character has shown that she was more then capable of trying to protect them at risk to herself. Plus, she does mention in the VW route that the Progenitor God is her mother as well, so you could take it as her trying to protect the one who she hoped would help her see her lost mother again.

Rhea sacrificing herself for Byleth would honestly make sense in any route that's not CF as even pre-timeskip she was already shown to be pretty devoted to them. She gives them the sword despite Seteth's objections, coddles them when they wake up from their transformation, and then entrusts them with the safety of the church if something happens to her. It's obvious from the start that she places a lot of value on them and would do anything to ensure that they (and the future she wants for Fodlan) survives, so her taking the bullet makes sense either way.

Going to throw a few orbs Sirius and Nagi's way. I'm still saving for the next Farfetched banner in the hopes that Jill is on it, but I'd also like to get at least one of those two.

They could make Medeus green like M!Robin Grima, but I doubt they'd go that route, I feel they'll keep him in their pockets for later. Personally I think Light is what is in the cards, so Mila or Ashera would be my guesses for this month. On the note of Sothis though:

Spared her on a good hunch that fighting her with Byleth would do it. I really like Seteth and his bond with Flayn is cute so I couldn't bear to kill either one of them.

Just because real life only has 5% of the population that is LGBT doesn't mean the game has to only have that same ratio. We're not playing a life sim, we're playing a fantasy game where we're talking to the soul of a girl stuck in our heads while fighting demonic beasts and a advanced evil cult with a magical chain sword, this is not exactly the game to argue what should be reflective of reality. This is especially the case since we have more then double the F/F options that you're suggesting for F!Byleth along with a few other options like PetraxDorothea, so it's not like TH is aiming for that realistic ratio anyway. As for the final point, I have to say I feel it's a little cynical to write off the F/F pairings as just a male fantasy. Whether or not it appeals to straight male players there are many Bi and Lesbian players who do appreciate the options, particularly since (at least as far as they pairings I've read) they're written in a way that doesn't feel pandering on their own. They're just two female characters falling in love, it's not forcing a 'fetishizing' of the characters nor is it only intended to be read that way.

It wouldn't be that much different from what happened with Duma. When Duma gets the dragon form we see in FEH he's almost completely degenerated into a mindless beast and thus shouldn't have access to his manakete form, yet they still use the latter as his base form and he can transform freely. Dedue and Miklan would probably be treated the same way, they shouldn't be able to transform back into their human forms due to Three House's canon, but for the sake of gameplay they would still have access to it to fit into the mechanics of the FEH.

Demonic Beast Dedue would be interesting. There's not a lot of option to get a Demonic Beast into the game and he's probably the most popular option you could go with, and from a characterization standpoint it would be unique since it shows Dedue at his most insanely loyal, so there's a lot of fun you could have with the character. The Flame Emperor would be fun as well, they'd overlap with a certain other character, but there's still enough options that are given for both to play around with that they can stand out from each other.

Not sure how I feel about Sothis being this early, as said before it kind of means that they can't spoil too much about her so her characterization will be a bit limited unless they give her an alt in the future. That or they'll just spoil everything, but I don't think IS would do that considering TH hasn't even been out a week. Anyway, while Red looks appealing, Colorless is just delicious. Mufasa, L!Alm, and more Eir merges? I'll gladly take all of them!

Probably my favorite rendition of Theme of Love, it was a good choice on their part to bring it back for this.

Everyone is free to do as they please in this situation, but I will say personally that I feel it's a bit unfair to condemn the whole English dub just for one man. There are many VAs who have poured their efforts into this dub such as Chris Hackney, Ben Diskin, Tara Platt, Joe Zieja, Cherami Leigh, and so on, and all of them are good workers who seem to genuinely enjoy the work they've done. To ignore that work and switch to the Japanese dub just because of one bad apple just doesn't seem right to me, they likely didn't know a thing about this like the rest of us, so why should they get the same cold shoulder that's only directed at one of them? But that's everyone's choice, I won't force them to do something they don't feel comfortable with, but I do wish that they'd take alternatives that didn't blow off the work of many just for the actions of a few.

More then likely neither him, Cup of Tea, or Nintendo knew about this. The allegations didn't come out and get traction until recently and he likely was cast into the role months beforehand, so they probably didn't even have an idea this was the case until we caught wind of it.

It's not confirmed yet, it's more just concern over the possibility of it being the case then it actually being the case. Thankfully we'll learn soon enough though, the FEH datamine will be done tomorrow night so at worst we should only have a day to wait.

That Lorenz description and twitter title made my laugh. I always loved that about Ben Diskin.

SoV got four banners (two that were paired) across three months, a GHB, and two Tempest Trials and units, remake or not they gave it a large amount of attention. The same could happen here, they could be very frontloaded and have the two back to back new heroes banner and content related to it, but they can also spread out the promotion across the next three months and keep attention on it that way. There's no one way to promote a game with Heroes, it all depends on what IS' approach will be for it.