Shoblongoo

…there’s so many good ones… If I had to pick one and only one favorite? Naesela. He fills the Magnificent Bastard archetype better then any character in the franchise, and is what every Magnificent Bastard should aspire to be.

Good Topic. Some good responses and some not so good responses. …my thoughts… So first of all; one of the really cool things they did with the new games is introduce the idea of multiverse theory to Fire Emblem, with the lore behind the Outrealms and alternate timelines in Awakening. So now we can retroactively apply that to the older sagas, like Tellius. Where we have always had these alternate paired endings and solo endings and fanshippings--the kinda-sorta-not-really psuedo-canon of FE fluff that we love to have fun with. And what we can now do is say without contradiction: -There is an Ike that settles down later in life to marry in the traditional way and start a traditional family -There is an Ike who is completely asexual, and just devotes his whole life to training and fighting and random acts of heroism -There is an Ike who is gay for Soren -There is an Ike who falls for Lethe, starts a new branded bloodline, and has to live with the consequence of forming an interracial family in what even after the events of FE10 is still a very racially divided and bigoted place to form an interracial family. (this one I find most intriguing, and is my personal headcanon) Somewhere in the Outrealms is a timeline where each such Ike lived and died and carried out the events of the Tellius Saga in his own way. As to the question of what type of father and husband Ike would be, in the timelines where he becomes a father and a husband. I feel like we can largely extrapolate that from his conduct as a mercenary commander, since he pretty much regards the Griel Mercenaries as his family and treats them as such. …from that… I don’t get the sense that Ike would be a particularly passionate husband or doting father. (as opposed to, say, Hector) But he would be: -loyal -protective -stern with his children -deferential to his wife (that is to say, he would not accept the patriarchal role of “lord-Husband” or expect his wife to listen to him because she’s the woman and he’s the man; he would see her as a partner in the truest sense of the word) On that last note, I don’t think Ike could be with a meek woman who would expect him to fill the role of lord-Husband. He would need a strong, willful woman who challenges him—i.e. a Lethe—someone who he can in fact truly regard and rely upon as a partner in the truest sense of the word. And that, I think, would be the driving dynamic behind their entire relationship.

...you don’t have to be a country with low cost of labor and no protection of worker’s rights to benefit from free trade. That merely gives you a competitive advantage in the low-skill manufacturing sector--one sector of many. But the first rule of economics is division of labor. The idea that it is horrendously inefficient for everyone to do everything and live self-sustained by their own efforts and exertions; everyone should focus on becoming skilled at doing one job and doing it with the skill and efficiency of a person who performs only that job. Then meet the totality of their needs by engaging in commerce with other persons doing other jobs. Classically: …the farmer produces food, but does not sew or forge. …the seamstress produces clothes, but does not farm or forge. …the blacksmith produces metalworks, but does not sew or farm And by all engaging together in the stream of commerce; they collectively produce more food and clothes and metalwork at a lower cost (and to be enjoyed by more people) than if they were each on their own trying to self-sustain their own households by growing their own food AND sewing their own clothes AND making their own tools and weapons. That is the foundation and guiding principle of what we have come to call “economy.” Generally, if you are engaging in the stream of commerce—if you’re making money off a marketable good or service that you specialize in producing, and buying from entities that produce goods and services you do not specialize in—you are better off for it. The only people who are not strictly better off under such an arrangement are persons who have not developed a specialization in providing a marketable good or service. …The same principle applies to international trade… You look at countries like Germany. Japan. South Korea. Taiwan. First World democracies with strong protection of worker’s rights; they are doing phenomenally well in international trade. Japan has developed a reputation for producing home electronics of exceptional ingenuity and quality—people will go out of their way to buy their gaming systems, cameras, televisions, and computers from Japan. Germany has developed a reputation for excellence in mechanical engineering. People will go out of their way to drive German cars. …then you look at a country like America... And there isn’t really anything we specialize in doing exceptionally well anymore. (Our largest productive economic entities are military contractors and pharmaceutical companies. We make guns, tanks, and pills.) Once upon a time in another century, we enjoyed competitive advantage in coal and steel. We did very well in international trade because of it. And we have populists today running around telling everyone: “We’re going to put the miners back to work! We’re bringing back coal! We’re bringing back American steel!” As though the way forwards is backwards, and the problem is that we haven’t beat that dead horse long enough; not that we’ve failed to innovate and find a new competitive advantage for a new century of commerce. …like…I’m sorry…we deserve every pounding we’re taking in international trade and every job we lose to East Asia, if at this moment in history we’re still electing leaders who tell us “We’re going to get this economy running again by cutting R&D for renewable energy—waste of tax payer money, what a scam—putting our miners back to work is going to be so great. America is going to be the world’s #1 producer of coal.” Imagine for a moment an early 20th century business that sells horse-drawn carriages, and develops a thriving business as the best carriage store in town. The store owner becomes very rich. Along comes this hot new thing called the automobile. The store refuses to stock and sell automobiles. Business starts failing. The store owner is presented with the opportunity to start stocking automobiles and turn his business into a car dealership. The owner says to himself: No; that’s a waste of money. I got rich selling carriages. And he not only refuses to stock and sell automobiles, he hires more carriage-makers and pays them to make more carriages, and opens five new horse-drawn carriage shops to compete with Cadillac and Buick and Ford Motors. …that’s sorta where America is at right now… An unfortunate side-effect of being the world’s premier superpower for so much of the 20th century is that we’ve romanticized the history that got us here. And we’re making some really silly, really retrograde choices because of it. While the rest of the world is moving forward.

I'll throw another anecdotal account on the heap--this was my experience as a pain management patient. About a year back, I had a relatively minor surgical procedure. Nothing too bad. They applied a local area anesthetic during the surgery. Afterwards the doctor comes up to me and says: “When that anesthetic wears off you’re going to be in a lot of pain. I’ll give you something for that.” I tell him its fine. I’ll take Tylenol. He tells me: “No you don’t understand. When that anesthetic wears off you’re going to be in a LOT of pain. You’re going to need something stronger then Tylenol.” …he gives me a fifty (50) pill bottle of Vicodin... I tell him I don’t feel comfortable using opiate painkillers. I’ve seen lots of people become addicted from short term use and I’d like a pain management drug that doesn’t carry a high risk of chemical dependency. I ask him if he can write me a prescription for medical marijuana. He tells me medical marijuana is not approved for therapeutic use in acute pain management after surgery; that he’s giving me the standard treatment and everyone uses opiates after surgery, and its perfectly safe as long as I use as instructed. “Just don’t take anymore than 3 a day” he tells me. “One every 8 hours.” …so I go home with a fifty (50) pill bottle of Vicodin... The anesthetic wears off. It hurts like hell. I take a Vicodin. It feels…amazing. Just great. An overwhelming sense of calm and relaxation and blissful tingly I-want-to-feel-this-way-all-the-time in every corner of the body. I take another pill 8 hours later, as instructed. I take another pill 8 hours later, as instructed. And I didn’t even realize what I was doing…but by the 3rd Vicodin…I wasn’t taking the pill because I was in pain and needed pain relief. I felt GREAT. I was taking the pill because it felt so good that I reflexively wanted to keep having that feeling of calm and relaxation and blissful tingly I-want-to-feel-this-way-all-the-time. On day two of my recovery from the surgical procedure, I had a moment of clarity where I realized what was happening and what I was doing. These pills weren’t just making my pain go away. They were making me never want to stop taking them. …I was five (5) pills into a fifty (50) pill bottle… And I have no doubt that very nasty things would have happened if I had finished that bottle. I didn’t finish the bottle. I drove into Philadelphia, where marijuana has basically been decrimininalized by city ordinance and carries all the penalties at law of a minor traffic ticket. I contacted an old college buddy. Procured a one week’s supply. Went home. Flushed my remaining forty-five (45) pills of Vicodin down the toilet, because I wasn’t going down that road. Spent the remainder of my recovery period self-treating with cannabis. Had some minor itching and stinging and general discomfort around the surgical site—I wasn’t all happy-tingly to the point that I couldn’t feel ANYTHING like I was on Vicodin—but nothing worse than an old scab or a mosquito bite. My pain was well-managed. And I never had that sense I had on the Vicodin of So Great. Need More. Now. At the end of the week I had no more pain, no nasty drug habit, and I was back-to-work the following Monday without complication. …that was my experience with opiate painkillers. And in my practice representing persons who get on these pills after a car accident or a slip-and-fall and defending criminal defendants who eventually wind up turning to heroin I see the same story playing out time after time after time. These people go to their doctor. They’re told opiates are the standard treatment for routine pain management and loaded with opiates. They get hooked. And when the pills run out, they turn to doctor-shopping and hard drugs. The doctors—fine—I can buy that the doctors are just following the industry standard, and doing what they do because they know that if they DON’T follow the industry standard and they get sued, failure to follow industry standard is grounds for liability. I get it. You do the best you can in a bad system. I can’t believe that the Drug Companies didn’t know this, when they applied for FDA approval and certified that their drugs carry low risk of dependency. And marketed these drugs as the gold standard for treatment excellence. Something there doesn't smell right.

Free trade is only a "bad" thing if your economy is uncompetitive. For all the flag-waving bluster from conservatives--when you say "We need to restrict deals like NAFTA and TPP, because they are hurting our economy." What you are tacitly stating is "We do not have the innovation, productivity, or skilled workforce to thrive in free-market competition on a global scale." ...and this is perhaps the greatest self-contradiction in conservative thinking... On the national level, its all laissez-faire and unbridled competition and individual responsibility for success or failure. You compete in the free market. If you work hard and make good life choices and develop a marketable set of skills, you do very well for yourself. If you fail--well it must be because you did something wrong, since people who do the right things succeed. Don't go blaming "the system" or acting like a victim or expecting a handout or special assistance. Its your fault--work harder, make better choices, and lift yourself up by your bootstraps. On the international level, globalism is bad. Free trade sends jobs overseas and screws the American worker. And its not because America has made any poor policy choices on healthcare or education or the like of a kind that would make our economy uncompetative--no--we did it right. The "American Way" is great. We're failing even though we've done everything we're supposed to do to succeed because we're victims. The whole system of international trade is stacked against us. Everyone is treating us so unfairly. The problem is trade deals; we need to get out of these terrible trade deals. It is self-justifying, misconduct-excusing, shallow-minded, on-the-nose hypocrisy and deflection of the highest order.

Ginger Noire. Ew.

Then all the poorly written characters around Corrin would look even more cartoonish. What if Caeldori time travels to the World of Awakening + takes the name "Cordelia" before banging Severa's father, and Severa time travels to the world of Fates + takes the name "Selena" before banging Subaki? thereby setting in motion an endless loop of I'm my own grandma.

lol thats why the rest of your axe users are shit

...who else are you going to give it to? -Camilla (doesn't benefit from it until the endgame--stomps all over the midgame without it, and kinda drops off toward the endgame anyway to the point that by the time she needs it "give it to someone who is already good" will generally entail giving it to a berserker instead) -Beruka (alternatively usable berserker who needs a second seal to get into the fighter line--otherwise a subpar wyvern knight in a game that gives you Camilla) -Charlotte (i.e. faster, squishier Arthur with worse join time) -Characters that pick up axes as a secondary weapon after promoting or reclassing (i.e. aren't going to have the weapon rank to even lift the club when you want them to be using it without eating arms scrolls, and already have other weapons to use against the sword and tome users that trouble axe-wielders) Realistically--you're going to be giving it to Arthur, Beruka, or Charlotte. (i.e. whosoever you choose to be your berserker of choice on a given playthrough) And the Dual Clubs job is going to be tricking out your berserker for weapon advantage against tome and sword-users. ...Beruka is actually a pretty damn good berserker, and if it wasn't for the fact that she needs that reclass seal to get off her wyvern I might give her the nod over Arthur. As is, I'd put Arthur at consistently the most usable of the 3.

...Oswin with his low speed, luck, and res could get critted and one rounded by every thunder sage in FE7. He was stll one of the best units in the game. You can have a weakness to magic and still be a good unit. Arthur's magic vulnerability is even somewhat mitigated by the dual club. And I know I've talked about it a few times, by I can not emphasize enough how much the availability of the club in conquest from chapter-10-on helps him stand out (reverse weapon triangle utility is so nice).

lol well of course Arthur going to suck if thats how you're playing him. That's not how you play Arthur. You open with Arthur as your first move vs an enemy mob. Dual Club if you need the weapon triangle advantage or Tomahawk if you need the range or hammer if you need the armorcrushing..otherwise Killer Axe. You don't DEPEND on him critting. But you play out the rest of player phase based on whether or not he does. (the player error that makes berserkers unreliable is using them late in player phase, when the rest of the squad doesn’t have adequate moves left to play around bad rolls of the RNG + you miss out on abusing their game-breakingly overpowered dual strikes) …you make sure to leave Arthur in a position where units placed next to him can use him as a dual striking partner THEN what you do—and this is where the real magic happens, where berserkers as a class are busted-good, and where Arthur is particularly absurd—is you move in the rest of your attackers around Arthur. Trade with him before attacking to make sure hes holding the Killer Axe, if he didn’t end his combat holding the killer axe. And now what you're doing is effectively spamming Arthur’s high-strength 4x crit damage 80% crit hits as secondary attacks coming off of your dagger throws and javelins and the like. just like that…a 6 damage hit from Silas or Niles against a healthy Master of Arms is lethal damage. You do this multiple times a turn. Now you’re not “depending on crits.” You’re fishing for them. And in whatever number they just so happen to come up—you’re very rarely going to be getting less then 1 per turn—they clear out mobs that much quicker. Bersekers are nuts in this game because they break dual striking. (among other reasons) And Arthur is one of the better Berserkers in the game. He's good.

I trust IS to have enough reverence for FE7's writing to not go down that road. But I'd even be cool with a new Gaiden chapter or two of Mark-centric fluff. ...you know there's that very-strongly-hinted Mark origin story from the Awakening DLC and accompanying fan-theory. That Mark & Morgan are Robin's twin children from the future and that the time travel fucked up when they made their jump back with Lucina--both of them got their memories wiped--but Mark's time travel fucked up so badly that he passed through an Outrealm Gate and wound up on another world. Where Lyn finds him unconscious and without memory, and then a new story begins. If they just very briefly touch upon that and handle it as an isolated sub-plot, the way they handled Kishuna. If for no other reason than to confirm or deny 'yes...this is canon.' I think IS would have a lot of very happy fans.

Why? Playable Mark is literally the coolest thing they could do with an FE7 remake, to add more content and give it a more modern feel while also staying true to the core story and gameplay. There's also precedent for it in how they handled Echoes. As in an otherwise very faithful adaptation of Gaiden's gameplay, one of the few new things they did was add new playable characters.

I have no problem with FE7 doing a remake where Mark is a playable avatar-character, with supports and facetime and dialogue. If they handle it with the same level of tact and maturity as the rest of the FE7 story, that would actually be a pretty cool addition to the game. For the love of God--just don't go the Fates route. Where every character has to fall in love with him and the whole plot revolves around jerking him off. ...like a romantic support chain with Lyn would be fine...there's an established relationship there and you can put some damn good writing into it. But don't turn the entire cast into his harem. FE7 is too good to be reduced to Waifu Emblem. Other than that...Maybe throw in a "Lunatic Mode" while they're at it. After Lunatic Awakening and Conquest, the intensity of HHM just doesn't hold up like it use to. And modernize the support mechanic. Such that you timely build up supports over the course of a normal battle from characters fighting near each other, and don't have to click [end turn] 50-80 times after clearing a map just to hit to hit C Rank. (in retrospect, that was the silliest part of the game)

Gross.

i know right? I hate having fast, hard-hitting, bulky units that crit 80% of the time and only ever lose to bad RNG.

That's a fair description of Arthur, IMO. The weak early game holds Arthur back just enough to make him an A Tier unit, IMO, because with his start time, if he was as consistently useful from the moment you get him as he is once he gets going, he’d be S-Tier worthy (i.e. this is why I think Effie should be S-Tier. You get her on the first chapter of conquest. She’s immediately going to stand out as one of your best units. As long as you keep using her—and there’s no reason not to—she’s never going to drop off. There’s never going to be a point in the game where Effie isn’t an amazing frontline tank + murderer of squishies. Then she gets even more abusable when she promotes and learns wary fighter. I really want to hear the argument for why Effie does NOT deserve to be S-Tiered as one of the best units in Conquest, but thats a topic for another day) …back to Arthur…a few more things to note… 1) His weak early game can be somewhat mitigated by immediately dropping his [gamble] skill, and reequipping it only after he promotes to berserker + gets his killer axe. +10 crit / -10 hit @ base 78% hit + 6% crit is kinda janky. +10 crit / -10 hit @ base 92% hit + 65% crit? Yes sir. 2) He joins in the same chapter as and makes an optimal pair-up partner for Effie. Effie will give him some much-needed early game bulk, before his macho man growths start to kick-in, while Arthur will very often buff Effie’s already great strength to a level that turns 3HKOs into 2HKOs and 2HKOs into 1HKOs. 3) Briefly mentioned above by another poster and bares repeating—Arthur’s pair up bonuses are nuts. His berserker pair-up is like +7 str / +4 Spd, or something stupid. 4) While some of the early game chapters are unkind to him, he still finds sufficient opportunities to grab the EXP he needs to take-off between Mozu’s Village + Ft. Dragonmaw + The Sevenfold Sanctuary + Palace Macarath. On the more troublesome early game chapters where Arthur has a hard time sticking around and finding opportunities to grab kills, he will always still be good as a pair-up bot for physical units in general and Effie in particular. In any event; he should always be ready to promote sometime around the Ninja Ship or the Den of Betrayal. And once he promotes, he is going to be one of the best units on your team. 5) Conquest gives you a Dual Club on Chapter 10. This is a great boost to the general viability of axe users on the route—they are the only class with access to a weapon that reverses weapon triangle and are deceptively versatile because of it. (all the other dual weapons are only available in Birthright and Revelations, or via DLC) At the time you get this item you have three potential users: Camilla, Beruka, and Arthur. (and a bit later, Charlotte) Camilla is the best unit in the game with her thunder and basic axes—she doesn’t need it. You are wasting a weapon that could make another unit much more dangerous by giving it to her. …Beruka starts with D-Rank Axes and can’t even use the dual club until she levels up a weapon rank… That leaves Arthur—if you’ve been using him and putting weapon rank on him for the past 4 chapters—as the wielder of the club. And without competition as the wielder of the club or unless you use charlotte, put a weapon rank on Beruka, or for some inexplicable reason decide that Camilla isn’t already good enough at murdering things. …and with that its almost like Arthur gets a little mini promotion-before-his-promotion; once he has the club he picks up a ton of utility that he previously lacked and is suddenly contributing much, much more to the team. The availability of the Dual Club in chapter 10 helps him so much, I’d go so far as to say he’d be B-rank without it. (to reiterate; I think he's worthy of A Rank) But its available. And this is Fates, where weapon durability is unlimited, so from-there-on-out its going to be available to him for the rest of the game. …You will of course eventually recruit other viable axe users, who want to use the club. But by then Arthur should be a berserker with a killer axe and a tomahawk; at that point hes finneeeeeeeee. With or without the club. I’d include the availability of the dual club in Arthur’s viability in the same sense that we include the availability of the Flame Shuriuken in Felicia’s (not a perfect comparison because Felicia is at all points in the campaign the ONLY one who would ever want to pick up the Flame Shuriuken on a typical playthrough--without obscure children or gimicky reclassing--but u see what I’m getting at)

I know its generally frowned upon to consider availability of stat boosters when tiering characters, on grounds that using a stat booster on any one particular unit comes at the opportunity cost of not being able to use it on any other units. And any unit can use them. I do feel however, for the above-cited reason, that it is appropriate to consider the availability of goddess icons when tiering Arthur. For the simple reason that Arthur is without competition as a character that receives a significant and immediately noticeable spike in performance from the use of goddess icons; no other unit is going to suffer from not getting the Goddess Icons you feed to Arthur, and there is no real opportunity cost to giving Arthur every goddess icon you come across. …concerning Elise… It really does not matter that she has low skill. Her hit rate is only going to be unusably bad if you give her high Mt, low accuracy tomes. But her magic is so good she doesn’t need them. You can send her out with only the lowest mt, highest accuracy magic—she’s still a nuke. …add in a set of skills that passively buffs the rest of your army just by hanging around… …add in staffbot utility on a horse… …add in her early availability and lack of competition… Elise’s tiering is perfectly justified. Even if you never get her tomes above E rank and just wind up using her as a healer + passive stat buffer, she’s going to low-key be one of the most useful units on your team.

Saber with a Blessed Sword can pretty much solo the upper half of the map. Notably dealing with the gargoyles, the bonewalkers, and the 2 cantors that summon them. From there--1 remaining cantor summoning zombies with (7) attack supported by a handful of units in the south is not particularly hard to overrun.

Think its fine, tbh. In the Laguz tradition of authority isn't a thing to be born into. It is a thing to be earned by those who demonstrate that they are the strongest, Ike is without contradiction in being this mercenary of common birth who resents the actions and attitudes of aristocracy AND himself being a leader among men, who for all-intents-and-purposes commands the respect and the standing of a Lord. Ike very much follows the Tibarn ethic of Can you can beat the ever-living shit out of me. No? Right then--fuck off, with your phony sense of power and entitlement before I smack it out of you. I have authority--fight me if you want to know the reason why. ...not so much a thing of dissonance in the sense presented by the OP... But rather--and I've said this about Ike before, I find it to be one of the more interesting aspects of his character--that Ike, a beorc, is more closely aligned with the ethics and attitudes of the laguz. And frequently appears to be more comfortable around them, more embracing of their ideas and social norms, and more sympathetic to their plight then when dealing with his fellow beorc, who he more often regards with distaste and suspicion.

Small point of correction--the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry owns the American healthcare system (the former being the reason why we have this convoluted scheme of intermediary financing as a barrier to access; the latter being the reason why we have permissive use of "side effects may include discomfort, severe bodily injury, and death" pills for everything from muscle cramps to unhappy thoughts, but hit a bong and the law says you've committed the "crime" of unlawful use of a controlled dangerous substance). The AMA doesn't do fuck-all.

...when the Clinton's were in the White House, it was literally a high crime and impeachable offense to lie about getting a blowjob. The about-face is unreal.

On a scale of 1 to Gheb: Not Gheb / 10

...so that Congressman out in Montana just pled guilty to assaulting that reporter from The Guardian. Sentenced to 180-day "deferred" jail time (i.e. never happens if he completes the rest of his sentence without incident) , 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management and a $300 fine along with a $85 court fee. "My physical response to your legitimate question was unprofessional, unacceptable, and unlawful. I made a mistake and humbly ask for your forgiveness." He says, now that he's won his seat. ...now of course the night before the election he was telling his supporters it was all the journalists fault, and that he was just protecting himself from being harassed. Ladies and gentlemen--your public servants.

okay...that makes sense... Mostly agree with everything you posted there. Disagree that capitalism makes it EASIER to get to an undesirable system of oligarchy, such that this is a disadvantage of capitalism when weighed against the alternative of socialism. Oligarchy in socialism is just rule by political monopoly rather than rule by corporate monopoly. But the effect is the same (i.e. a handful of elite special interests acting to promote and protect their own wealth, to the detriment of the general public). But it is a problem to which socialist systems are no less prone. And whereas a well-regulated capitalist system can, as you say, mitigate the moral hazards of corporate oligarchy through antitrust law and forced break-up of monopoly powers. Breaking a political monopoly is a much trickier thing. (See North Korea)