I’d hesitate to call any of FE14’s routes a “story”. More like a blissfully naive/self-destructive genocidal romp across the world.

They are unquestionably separate stories in the sense that each of them is a mutually exclusive “what-if” scenario (hence the Japanese subtitle) following from a single starting point. At least one of them – Birthright – is generally acknowledged to be competently written albeit pretty standard fare for FE, and given my own preferences in narrative for this series I’m willing to cut the other two a little slack even if their plots are hot garbage. I like FE stories that diverge from the typical story of “country of main lord gets invaded by foreign country, lord must travel the continent recruiting allies in order to defeat the main antagonist, something something dragons and/or other supernatural entities.” Conquest makes you the invading foreign country which really deserved to feel more awesome than it does in practice, whereas Revelation throws out the whole binary politics from the start (or at least it claims to) and runs on the power of friendship and tedious map design. FE14 as a whole is the “you tried” game to me, whether I’m talking about story or gameplay or queer representation.

You know, now that I think about it it’s a little odd that I often compare Fates to the Oracle games from The Legend of Zelda, two separate games marketed and sold together that can be played independently or in combination for the full story – and yet while when I was doing my Zelda ranking I had no qualms about ranking the Oracle games separately when I’ve contemplating doing a similar series for FE I just can’t see myself breaking up Fates into its separate campaign. I don’t know what that says about how the fandom has agreed to treat the game or how I prefer to critically approach it, but it’s an interesting consideration.

(Incidentally, neither Awakening nor Fates would be at the bottom of said hypothetical list. Kind of lower middle is a good place for them, I think.)

what if the subs were, like, paralogue characters

markoftheasphodel:

deetvar:

markoftheasphodel:

deetvar:

Janne, Tristan, and the Freege subs would be incredibly troublesome with this approach given their backstories.

Alternate timelines. Easy-peasy.

Hell, have a whole “bad timeline” with subs. It’d be DLC tho and you know it.

I don’t want to fork $15.99 to play with statistically inferior units that were free 20+ years ago.

Neither do I but it’s now their business model. Blame Awakening

If Echoes is anything to go by they’ll come with supports that are at least as good if not better than the ones in the base game. That’ll be mostly what you’re paying for.

Finished season 5, wasn’t good but also wasn’t bad enough to merit hate-watching. The overall structure is a mess; the first thirteen episodes are a very long coda to season 4 (with lots of undisguised padding – there’s about three episodes in there that aren’t tributes or gimmicks of some kind), and then the last seven are this formless thing in New York that really only has Rachel’s story as a foundation, I suppose? No true PSA episodes – not even the one that opens with a joke PSA for STDs, funnily enough – but that’s not enough to save it either. More thoughts:

  • Not one but two Beatles tribute episodes. It must be said: I do not like the Beatles.
  • They didn’t completely drop all the plot points of the season 4 additions in the rush to shove them out the door, so this begs the question: what happened to that catfishing plot? It gets a suspense-laden multi-episode treatment at the end of the past season, and then absolutely nothing comes of it. But instead there is time for a plot about – wait for it – a Puckerman being too horny to wait for sex and needing to fuck his way through the entire cheerleading squad.
  • I don’t buy claims that the quality of the show’s last two seasons would have been more consistent had Cory Monteith not died. The only thing Finn still being alive would have added would have been that fantasy of Rachel’s where she comes back to her hometown after making it big to find Finn teaching at their high school. That wouldn’t have salvaged 90% of the messiness in this intermediary season.
  • I still don’t know if depicting Becky as both sex-crazed and evil is a clever subversion of the inspirationally disadvantaged character trope (which Glee has already used elsewhere) or just a source of cheap exploitative laughs. This has always been true but has become more notable in later seasons.
  • Tina went from being a background prop to one of the most overdramatic and overacted roles on the show. That’s quite a feat.
  • Kurt continues to the bring the prudery, getting angry that Blaine looks at porn instead of turning it into a group activity like every gay couple I have known and/or slept with. Said porn also pokes a hole in Blaine’s newfound insecurities over Kurt buffing up to twunk status; if you’re looking at frat bros you like the muscles. Points though for finally giving Klaine some actual conflict that they can resolve without soap opera melodrama or (a lot of) singing.
  • Blaine’s socialite subplot seems promising but ends on a cop-out. Also, either the writers can’t think of anything actually salacious or New York society genuinely is less interesting than New Orleans society (which I could easily believe) because in my own time around elderly people with bottomless sums of money I picked up a host of far juicier gossip.

Incidentally, isn’t the main showrunner of Glee also the guy behind American Horror Story? I’ve held off on watching the New Orleans season of that show out of a combination of disinterest in horror as a genre and low expectations, and Glee’s scant references to anywhere outside New York, Los Angeles, and various unremarkable locales in the Midwest don’t inspire me much on that score. (Kurt and Blaine are “hate-watching” Treme, Kurt says: “Needs more zydeco.” Someone on the writing staff clearly needs a musical geography lesson.)

I finished watching season 4 of Glee, because yes I’m still doing that. I think I’m in the minority here, but I actually hated it less than season 3? Reasons:

  • This show has always suffered from a lack of focus, so splitting the action between two cities doesn’t make all that much of a difference.
  • The season’s inevitable PSA episodes were still stupid, but they weren’t stupid in a way that personally enraged me for the most part. Most fans seem to hate the school shooting episode for its insensitivity, which is apparently just one more thing I missed the boat on by attending Catholic school. The stuff about sex workers and cheating was all predictably prudish, but I get that having everyone impulsively blurt out their every tiny infidelity for no logical reason makes for some good cheap drama and segues into musical numbers.
  • All the boring new kids being near-replicas of the characters they’re replacing is positively meta in its commentary on how boring these people are.
  • Klaine and Brittana breaking up is irrelevant in hindsight, and Blaine in particular is significantly more interesting when he’s not with Kurt. He actually has a character now rather than just feeling like empty wish fulfillment or a blank slate with a new defining character trait every episode (my favorite of which is the one where he’s obviously sleeping with his brother). It’s when Klaine get back together and the show becomes obsessed with making them into the flawless poster couple for groundbreaking representation that they lose me again.

Now wasn’t this about the time when Finn’s actor died? I suppose I have that to look forward to, which is a shame since that one scene where he assaults Brody in a hotel room was so thrilling and creepy and stalkerish that I legitimately can’t believe they tried to pass it off as romantic. Alas for what could have been a screwed-up swerve on the predictable headlining het romance.

« Nous défendons une liberté d’importuner, indispensable à la liberté sexuelle »

I normally stay away from contemporary politics, but I found this article in Le Monde (the contents of which are summarized and discussed in English in this article from The Atlantic) intriguing and intimately relatable in the ways that news from France so often is for Louisiana in spite of the language barrier. The essence of Créole womanhood is bound up in this thesis – flirtation and sex are tools of empowerment within a patriarchal society – and it’s behavior that I’ve taken to heart in my own sexual relationships* after the examples of female relatives and other acquaintances, who triumphed each in their own understated ways against men who belittled, harassed, or assaulted them without the need for censorship or public shaming.

This is a cultural divide, and it’s recognized on both sides as such. These Frenchwomen deride the recent demands for a fully sexless public life as puritanisme, a word practically synonymous with “Anglo” and the correspondent horror and shame of sexuality, and The Atlantic writer sums it up in one confused parenthetical:

“To have power as a woman in France, apparently you have to act as if you don’t have it.”

Of all the weapons I’ve wielded in the social and sexual spheres to protect and advance my interests, none have been so powerful as the appearance of weakness. It disarms would-be tyrants and endears me to my prospective lovers – and naturally perplexes a people who have yet to grasp the fundamental truth that public life by its very nature necessitates a certain degree of deceit.

*Statements on my own behavior are here complicated by the fact that I am not female, but as I was encouraged by my mother and others in my life to approach the topics of sex and relationships from a distinctly feminine perspective one might say that I’m selectively gender fluid (even if I never use such terminology to identify myself as I’ve no need for it). If anything, it’s a testament to the culture in which I was raised that I’ve never associated femininity – either my own or anyone else’s – with genuine weakness.

« Nous défendons une liberté d’importuner, indispensable à la liberté sexuelle »

I’ve not interacted with you much, but have seen you occasionally on my dash. So for the sake of something that you can actually answer but I guess unexpected, how about Greil/Petrine?

I’m about 70% sure this was actually canon in Chapter 7 of PoR in the way of violent sweaty hate sex. Don’t really see the appeal or the opportunity otherwise, since Greil was married when he left Daein (and based on his wife Petrine really doesn’t seem like his type) and then dead after that chapter.

Okay trying to think of something unexpected but viable is hard. Lukas/Luthier?

I was thinking more along the lines of non-FE ships since I’ve dipped in and out of a bunch of other fandoms at one point or another, but FE has crack to spare.

I can see them bonding easily over being <insert anachronistic neurodivergent term(s) here>, but what I can’t see is either of them generating any kind of sexual spark. Even romance seems kind of out of the question since I don’t think Luthier could offer the kind of validation and intimacy Lukas is looking for and…who knows what Luthier likes, aside from magic and cats. Maybe they can start a book club or something.

Jill/Micaiah

That’s so cracky I’d never so much as considered it. It makes a strange amount of sense though with the whole navigating awkward age gaps with quasi-incest thing they’ve each got going on with their canon pairings. The biggest obstacle to this pairing seems like it would be that I see Micaiah as one of the straighter women in Tellius. At least Jill’s got those Lethe and Mist supports.