blah the Prussian

Hey whoa, I haven't reacted to this yet! Do you folks want my blind reactions or not?

Well, I missed a lot, but essentially I cut the siblings a bit of slack; I think they were just paralyzed with indecision. What I don't like, that I touch on with the whole no human villains rant, is that the game basically outright states that no, the siblings wouldn't fight Garon unless he was a slime monster. Claus Von Stauffenburg didn't need Hitler to be a slime monster, dammit! Well, I'm more sympathetic to Corrin than most of you; he's making peace the Roman way: "They make a desert and they call it peace."

Weird. They never did that to me. I don't even think they had it in their inventories.

Well, this is it. The end is finally near. Its been great being an asshole for you guys, and I hope to do it again, but now, we got a King to be significantly more of an asshole to! -Seriously? Just, seriously? This is the design they went for with Garon. This. Oh no, please save me! That isn't scary, its comical! He looks like something out of Monsters Inc! I'm supposed to be afraid of that? Its especially jarring considering possessed Takumi Trump looks suitably intimidating. -So what magic, exactly, was at play to hide Garon's true form? And what kind of demon is this, anyway? What are the mechanics of shapeshifting magic, and if the demon could just turn into Garon, why did he need to posses Garon? -Yes, I am pissed as fuck that, just to rub salt in the wound this game's story has left me, they describe IN DETAIL a Garon that would have made a very interesting, nuanced, and human antagonist, all while I look at B.O.B. over here. Because, you know, all conflicts are secretly started by supernatural forces, right? Its not like humans can fuck things up on our own! Ah man, Hitler? Totally possessed by a slime monster! Stalin? Actually a puppet of a cult that worships an evil dragon! Pol Pot? He was just being used by corrupt senators who want to revive the Godess of Order! Kim Jong Il? Actually a walking corpse being used by his son to revive the Demon King! Hideki Tojo? Well, you see, he actually hates humanity, so he wants to revive dragons to kill us all, because his dad was a dick to him! Ah man, you know Enver Pasha (okay you probably don't but basically he killed a bunch of Armenians)? Huge dick, right? Well, you're not going to believe this, but it turns out that he was actually the pawn of an evil cult who wanted to manipulate him into marrying his half sister so when they fucked they'd produce the antichrist! Crazy, right! It turns out there isn't even a single conflict in history that was actually caused by humans! Thats right, we're entirely blameless in everything! Whenever we mess up its actually beyond out control! Well, that sure is good to hear! I'm so glad that the real world operates on Fire Emblem logic! Well unless we're talking about Ashnard who is the only FE villain in the series who is loyal to no one but his own ambition but then the idiocy that is Radiant Dawn came in and retroactively made Begnion's senate guilty of like all his crimes. -So I don't know if this was bad level design or what, but the easiest thing for me to do was not deploy anyone to any of the side rooms for this level, and then just charge forwards. I was able to easily destroy the enemy piecemeal. Either the level is brilliant or stupid. -Really? Just...really? Garon doesn't have ANY conversations with his children? Not even Corrin? Were the writers on strike or something? I mean, thats probably why the writing is so shitty ("You WILL let us turn in this abomination, you filthy Capitalist oppressor!") but still! -Wow, for someone built up so much, Garon had trouble going toe to toe with my Xander, and Xander, Corrin, Leo, and Camilla working together just crushed him. Well, that was a disappointing final boss! I don't care about how this game ends, so I just turned the game off! Thats it! The game is over! I had a blast playing it and reacting to it for you all, but its over now! I'm done! Finished! Leave now, for there is nothing more to see! ...okay, not really. Looks like its time to crush Takumi Trump one last time! But Mr. Whatever the Royal House of Hoshido is, I just have one question! How did you get past the entire Nohrian army that has occupied the Hoshidan capitol so quickly without incident? TT: DeSTroY... KilL... CoRrIn... Well, folks, its clear that in terms of the war of the plot holes, I've already won! Join me next time as I see just how much more shitty this game's writing can get!

Well, this appears to be harder than I thought. I fire off a new water gun attack at one of the Scatterbugs.

If I were to do BR it would be much more in the Cinemasins style. This is sort of in the Cinemasins style, but the story is bad enough that I generally don't have to come up with stupid shit to nitpick about.

Sadly I probably wont for Birthright, but I might do one for Revelation. I want to take a break from playing FE, though.

Then we're mostly in agreement.

Eh, I guess I'm drawing a distinction between the characters and the story and you aren't. Fair enough.

No, but I didn't realize that the range also applied to Enfeeble. But the game doesn't want you to think that he is deluding himself, the game wants you to think he's doing the right thing, that his actions make sense. If the STORY calls him out for his actions that could be very interesting, but it doesn't. We're supposed to not consider him a tragic figure, but to consider him right.

Since he had multiple staves I thought that the range was for all staves, not just for enfeeble. Conceptual goodness only gets you so far when everything else you do sucks. I wasn't talking about conceptual goodness. Also just because I don't like a character doesn't mean I think they're a bad character. I despise Johann Liebert, but he's still the best villain in anime history.

Yeah, but that only applies to Freeze, not Enfeeble, which is much more dangerous. That bad, huh? To be clear, I know that in the game we're probably supposed to like Corrin. I just think making him in denial is the only way to save his character.

I was more saying that the game makes a big deal that killing POWs is wrong but then they treat killing Iago, a POW, as a big fuck yeah moment. How I think it will end? Garon gets defeated, they all live happily ever after, Takumi Trump probably comes into play somehow, maybe as a boss just before the endgame. How I want it to end? At this point the story has sort of been fucked up beyond repair, but there is, in my eyes, one way to fix it that there is no way the writers wrote. Takumi, who has escaped, has been fully possessed by the whatever, but he doesn't know it. He sees the Invaders, and he decides it is the only way to save Hoshido. Meanwhile, Corrin and co. beat slime Garon, but Takumi attacks with his demon thingies. After Takumi has been incapacitated, Corrin prepares to land the finishing blow, but notices the same shadowy stuff that was on Takumi on him. The ghosts of Garon and Sumeragi come to him, and tell him that he is experiencing essentially the same thing that happened to Takumi and Garon. Corrin, after some self reflection, realizes that, in actual fact, he enjoyed conquering Hoshido, and realizes it to be the influence of the possessing thing. Corrin is then returned to Hoshido, and sees the exorcised Takumi defenseless, and refuses to kill him. Enraged, whatever was possessing Takumi jumps out of Corrin, too, and it is revealed that it was playing both sides, tempting Corrin to do evil with the promise of ending the conflict and tempting Takumi with the promise of saving his country, and then finally tempting Garon with the promise of world conquest. With this revealed, the party gets ready for one final battle, knowing that it cannot give in. After that happens, King Xander grants Hoshido full independence, and vows to make up for Garon's crimes. Thats the only way I can see to fix the story, as we aren't supposed to like Corrin.

Terribly sorry for the wait, ladies and gentlemen. My internet was being an asshole yesterday. In any case, Chapter 26! -Garon spends some time gloating about how he has conquered the world. How long have these two Kingdoms existed side by side in apparent peace? Geopolitical realities dictate that they would be fighting the shit out of each other. It would make more sense if both Empires had just finished conquering their halves of the Chasm and were only now coming into contact, sort of like Rome and Carthage. This is the only FE game in the series, I think, where they don't give you some idea of the geopolitics leading up to the events of the game, and I really dislike that. -If Corrin is going to betray Garon anyway, why can't he just throw the door open and then show his siblings Garon's true form? It seems to me that they'd be relatively open to the idea of fighting Garon once they see his true form, so what gives? -Why is Garon sitting on this throne anyway? Really, lets analyze this, because this plot point really bothers me. So, lets tear into this. Option 1: Garon, for whatever reason, does not know that the throne will reveal his true form. Why doesn't he know this? It seems to me that it would be fairly common knowledge, especially to the King of Nohr. Option 2: Garon doesn't know that he is a demon. I have no idea why this would be the case, but I wouldn't put it past the writers to just forget that Garon was supposed to know this shit. Option 3: Garon, for some UNGODLY reason, actually wants the world to know that he's a demon. I can't imagine why this might be the case. -Wow. Just wow. Iago decided it would be a good idea to outright assault Corrin in front of his siblings, who have been proven to be perfectly willing to protect him with their lives before. Iago really needs to calm his tits and wait. -So the Nohrians caught Hinoka and they only confront Corrin about it now? How long did it take Hinoka to escape? The Nohrians should have found out about it just as Corrin was beginning to fight Ryoma. -So why does the Nohrian army side with Iago here? Has he ever done anything at all that would make him superior to the Royal Family? Wouldn't it be better if Iago was like "hey guys back me up" and the Nohrian army was like "no, fuck you"? Then Iago would be like "Well shit" and it would be a last stand for Iago, Hans, and Garon. -If the Stoneborn attack Nohrian soldiers too, as Hinoka said, why don't they do that here? Why would the Nohrians even risk bringing them into the Palace? -Iago is a moron. He never once hit a unit on my front lines with enfeeble, or used his staffs in any way that would actually have been a threat, rather than an annoyance. -Also, the only way you can find out that all of Iago's staves have 10 range is by clicking his skill; the information is hidden. That is bad game design. -The funny thing here is that when Iago is begging for his life, and says that he was just following orders, like Corrin and co, he's absolutely right. Sure, he might have been more happy about following those orders, but in terms of consequences there is functionally no difference between Iago and Corrin. This could have been another interesting moment, as Iago's Not So Different forces Corrin to reassess his actions, but instead the royals are just like "LOL, no, Iago, we're not like you" and then kill him in cold blood (which, by the way, was a big fucking deal that the Hoshidans were killed in cold blood; apparently being evil means you suddenly don't have the right to a fair trial) when I'm saying "Yes you fucking are like him, you hypocrites!" This game. This fucking game. -Corrin and Azura do what they should have done as soon as they got that mirror thingy and show their siblings. I still want to know why they didn't do that as soon as they had proof (lets go over that: it was already a Diabolos ex Machina that the thing broke, but why couldn't Azura get another one? How did she get this one?). Goddamn this plot. -People have given Xander a bunch of flak for threatening to kill Corrin if Garon is fine, but I really can't see why. Within the context of the rest of his actions, this makes sense. Its easy to see this as a coup attempt, and, I mean, come on, if someone came up to me and was like "Holy shit blah, I just found out Elizabeth II is a slime monster!" I would be like "bruh, the fuck are the drugs you're on?" As strange as it sounds, I have no problem with Xander's actions in this case. -That being the case, why did Corrin at any point risk his siblings turning against him when he could have shown them monster Garon? That would have been completely risk free. Well, the game is just about over. Its been quite the ride through euphoric gameplay and shitty writing, but the end is in sight. Lets see if the writers succeed in one last attempt to piss me off!

Well, that usually happens, at least with history, when I enter a thread, haha. Whether or not that's a good thing is open to interpretation.

Maybe the level designers and music composers were competent, but the writers weren't, and the designers were like "the fuck is this shit" and tried to put together something passable.

If you're familiar with this thread at all you know it is very rarely about gameplay, but rather how shit the story is. There were plenty of good ways to have Ryoma and Corrin duel one on one with a time limit. This was not one of them. For example, what if a trap door was activated, and Corrin was in a basement with Ryoma, and the army had to open the door to the basement? That would give Corrin the chance to run around and evade Ryoma.

In basically any society with concubines, the rank of concubine was second only to the Empress consort in terms of status for women. If they were the lowest of the low that would definitely make them mistresses.

I like to think it is the distinguished climax of my long career of irreverence towards this story.

Is this all versions, or individual ones? Fates is essentially three different games, so its hardly a fair fight with Awakening.

Okay, okay, I concede. However: A Mistress was unofficial, a concubine was official, simple as that. Also, Concubines were sometimes but not always essentially well treated sex slaves, while a Mistress would have to want to be in the relationship. The Ottomans, for example, had entire military units, the Barbary pirates, whose job was among other things to essentially kidnap women from mainly France, Italy, Poland, and Spain to serve as the Sultan's concubines. While they were well treated it was hardly consensual. I don't approve of making moral judgements of the past, but if Garon had concubines in the Ottoman sense that would make him a rapist by modern standards. That being the case, it could have been a deliberate decision on the part of the writers to have them not be mistresses, because fighting for a rapist could be seen as a bit much (then again, so could fighting for a mass murderer, but for some reason mass murder is look away able but rape isn't.)

Yeah, I know. Its perfectly fine if they're mistresses, but it would make very little sense for them to be officially concubines. Also, it wasn't just Christianity that was monogamous, the Romans, who Nohr is based on more than anything, were also monogamous. To be fair the Zoroastrian Persians were also monogamous, but Hoshido is pretty clearly not based on Persia, and when Persia became Islamic they adopted Polygamy.

But monogamy is a major part of European culture. This is because Europe is the continent associated with Christianity, and the big distinction of Christianity is monogamy. Its not as prominent, but that is only because it is the lack of something rather than that something itself.

Well. This appears to be a rather awkward situation. Ah well, nothing for it. Leaping out of the water, I fire a water gun attack at the scatterbug, landing on my feet. I ready my next water gun, and prepare for the inevitable counterattack.

It is absolutely disingenuous to compare mistresses to concubines. For one thing, it was entirely socially acceptable in all cultures where concubines featured prominently to have concubines, so there wouldn't be the mistrust aspect present between the siblings. The reason why Nohr shouldn't have concubines is that Europe was essentially the only continent in history where concubines weren't a thing (I suppose you could count the Vikings and Pagan tribes, but those died out before the Second Millennium). It would be like if Hoshido, based on Japan, did not have Samurai. It just wouldn't work.