#harblkun

I read the word ‘gym’ and all context was immediately transported into a Pokemon AU

“A Lucid Nightmare” is too straightforward for my taste when it comes to a story that’s actually about something horrifying. I’d be most likely to use it as a title for crackfic. Say, some older gen FE characters dream that they’re playing the parts of new age FE game characters, and they’re horrified at all the things grumpy FE elitists are horrified at? ww

Salty Ask Meme

I’m going to go with FE on this one, because there is multiple people that stick out to me when it comes to that series, but I’m only going with one. I’m sure you’ve heard my rant before and I’m pretty sure the Mustache Party is in agreement on this.

Send me a ship and I will grade it:

A: I love it

Already did KentLyn so this one is for Sain & Fiora. I’ve always been kind of picky about ships in general and in FE7 it’s easy to be because I feel like there are only a few to pick from that make sense and from those you kind of have to pick what dynamic you enjoy seeing the most.

So with Sain you get a few decent canonical choices, but I’ve always been partial to Fiora. Jokes about her being a “female Kent” aside (because she’s not) I like that overall she’s kind of a steady presence; she has her head on her shoulders! But she’s far from perfect, and that’s one of the things that endears me to her. The game kiiind of dropped the ball with Fiora, I think, because there used to be complaints back in the day about her being “boring.” I don’t actually think she’s boring, but that’s because I’ve had a decade+ to think about her character and what information we have about her.

FE7 was great about introducing characters into the group who had a reason to be there, and Fiora was no exception. She’s complex and honestly if you look at all of her supports + her in-game reason to join the fight in the first place, you get a really complex character! She doesn’t get along with her middle sister and she’s overprotective to an annoying degree with the youngest. And with Farina she really gets loud/shouts! Like she’s not a docile little princess who sits quietly when someone pisses her off; she has a temper. She sucks with money and finances. She’s a sole survivor of an attack that eliminated her entire squadron of knights and post-game I think she hinted to someone (Geitz?) that she was going to go and deliver that bad news to everyone’s family and I always felt when she joined the group that she was literally just looking for a reason to live because she felt so immensely bad about 1) the horror she witnessed, and 2) being the only one to survive it. But man we know she went out of her way to save Farina’s life when they were younger and that family means a lot to her; it really comes across to us that she takes her role as the eldest seriously: this is something I always personally related to, like she tries to police her siblings’ behavior because she feels it’s her job to “raise” them. I think too she wants to feel wanted & needed, like her presence means something--and isn’t there for the sake of just being there.

We actually have more about her than we have about Sain. Sain’s characterization is mostly skin-deep while we get a really good image of the kind of person Fiora is.

But there are things to notice about Sain, too. He flirts but he never does anything inappropriate, and I think we can feel safe in that assumption because his obvious BFF is Kent, who is “virtuous to a fault” according to the game and probably would not willingly associate with someone whose behavior he found legitimately deplorable (let alone questionable). Because of this he comes across as fairly harmless, and a little more like he’s just having fun/really enjoys flirting (and maybe has a genuine interest in things like poetry/music--who knows?). I always felt he liked Fiora because she has the kind of dedication to her work that he admires in other people in general but she’s not without a spark of fun in her; all you gotta do is think he’s probably seen her interacting with her sisters and BOOM: Fiora might be pretty serious but actually, she’s not an un-fun person at all!

Anyway something I always enjoyed about Sain and Fiora’s interactions is that I got the feeling she didn’t think his compliments were at all genuine, when in fact we’re kind of led to believe that Sain doesn’t say things just to get laid. I think he genuinely likes finding things to compliment people on, particularly women, and so when he says nice things about or to Fiora, he means them. I get the feeling in her line of work she hasn’t had many genuine compliments (that weren’t also paired with some kind of expectation), so it’s hard for her to accept them. I mean, how do you know when they’re real and when they’re not? But I think his dedication to his work does come through in their supports enough that she is comfortable enough to even tease him a little (that’s always been my interpretation of their supports).

send me a character i’ve written & i’ll tell you the top 3 to 5 concepts i keep in mind while writing them. [meme]

I don’t even remember the last time I wrote him, but all right let’s see:

Loyal to a fault, but not a fault he doesn’t recognize? He’s aware this is an issue, or becomes aware of it through his Wallace supports. He definitely strikes me as the sort of guy who, once attached to someone, manages to excuse a lot of BS just because he’s so damn focused on being loyal to them. It’s right back to that blind loyalty thing: you can totally be loyal to someone and still acknowledge their faults and go against them. It doesn’t mean you wouldn’t die for them, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Of course, this is mostly in context of a liege/knight relationship and so it’s a bit different when it comes to other people, but he would have a really hard time accepting a trusted companion’s betrayal, I think. To the extent that their relationship might never recover.

Related, but I don’t think he trusts people easily, the only notable exception being Lyndis, and in her case it’s because of blind loyalty to her family. Other people, though, have to earn his trust and he’s just not very good at putting himself in other people’s hands.

When it comes to fulfilling his duty (and others doing their part to fulfill theirs), he follows a very strict moral code. It’s not okay to slack off/goof off/abandon your post/do anything that could put someone’s life in danger/make it more difficult for another person. He’s a firm believer in teamwork, too, but he struggles to let things go because at the same time he has a ‘do it yourself if you want it done right’ mindset. The problem is, of course, that he can’t do it all.