Kori

You're probably right that they wouldn't do it (not without switching Deirdre and Julius's places, or replacing Julius by Ishtar and pretending that as his girlfriend she fits on the banner), but they should, even with FEH's terribly limited writing we'd be bound to get some interesting (in any of the "funny", "touching", or "tragically ironic" senses) interactions from this set-up. 😄

That would be hilarious. Which combination of (i assume) Sigurd, Deirdre and Arvis would be the Duo hero (or let's go big, a trio for maximum awkwardness)?

Tormod still not being in the game is ridiculous. 😔 Even as a seasonal-only, he would have slotted in the Hatari banner easily (and still counted as someone not from there, since it's what they like to go with for these themes - he and Nailah could have compared their respective deserts). I'm still waiting for Nasir to get in (and would give him a vote, and be tempted to give Tormod one too, if not for Soren's last year results showing there was a chance to win and not just to place well), so I feel you here. Gotcha, and you're right about that. Overall, the other three are more popular (for many reasons, one of which being their games' success), but in the context of FEH, Soren is certainly doing better, and even if I'm very happy with the Valentine banner, we're well overdue for a good M!Robin alt that is Robin. (He, too, could have fit on this banner, or could have been on the plegian one as a chance to get in touch with his country of origin. Missed opportunities, all around.) She SHOULD, and I wish she'd have been. Plus a tiny Jill, if relevant laguz would have been too old and Sanaki/Tormod/Sothe too young.

He got a good alt because it was Tellius's turn on the children banner, yes, and I didn't expect him to get another one in the same year (especially now, sigh), but i think for a lot of people the voting isn't "because they need alts", specifically, but to show popularity and, hopefully, get good treatment for their faves out of it. Getting alts is a sign of good treatment in FEH, yes, but personally, I'm voting less because i want "more alts", but because if he gets alts I don't want him to be saddled with the throwaway art or skills, and because getting the win does mean something (in terms of popularity/"the fanbase is here, we still care about this more than about the latest waifu"), and in hope that he will stay on the radar as a "liked character" and benefit for it (merch if they do merch that include more than the lords like that one tome pouch at that one expo, no less focus than in the original games if they remake Tellius, that kind of thing). CYL may be FEH-focused, but it's still the only popularity contest we have for the franchise. In the same way, I voted for Dorothea last year less to get her an alt, and more in the hope that when her base version would get in, there would be more thought put into it than just "boobs sell, we can draw her like her plegian alt and slap watever on her". Of course, we've seen with adult Tiki last year, and arguably we're seeing with the current banner that reads like a targeted reaction to two of last year's scores, that ultimately they do whatever they want, so... (Replying because this was prompted by reading your post, but this isn't me taking offense at it or really disagreeing, and I hope it doesn't come off aggressively; it just made me think "true, but it's not the same" and i felt the need to unpack that reaction a little.) Oh, true, another missed opportunity here. A Merric alt that isn't just due to "Archanea is doing the kids banner" would be nice, Wendell is still missing, and I like Yuliya.

So do I, and I hope that people realise by now that a seasonal doesn't replace what a brave alt (or, for units that aren't in a position to win, a good CYL score) can do for a character. There is no real reason for this to be an Eirika situation, except for the argument of giving other characters a chance to shine, but with Soren's presumed CYL competition being Byleth and Felix who are from most recent game and extremely popular 3H, well, that'd be a bit dishonest. (Yeah, Felix only exists in FEH as one meh alt, but again, i hope by now we know when they're intentionally sitting on potential banner-sellers... something something Lysithea in 2020 something.) It would be a good fit, and he should really be in by now. On the other hand, maybe it's too similar to what he would naturally have, and they will use him as one more unit with a movement-boosting gimmick but one that they can put on a regular banner, since he doesn't need the excuse of a seasonal to be able to do that. 🤞

Yes, yes, you live in the fantasy world where Dorothea is actively Hated-with-a-capital-H by so many other people who definitely exist, we know. How did you get internet there?

Another GronderWarrior posting solely to hate on Dorothea. Why don't you get a blog, write a big rant on the real reasons you hate her so much, and stop spewing your bile here? Might do you some good. Anyway, I'll be team Dorothea, and then Santa Knight if she loses to the power of moe being easy to like Annette's big fanbase.

And I wish them all to get better soon. ❤️

They had differences in the same-gender s-support options for Fates (Rhajat's is rather sweet, for Rhajat), but the localization went for the copy-paste route, and they're worse off for it. In general, I agree with the point that gender shouldn't have to radically change a support (we certainly don't need a rehash of the stupidity that were F!Robin's supports with Chrom and unrelated Lucina), but in practice, acting like it has zero impact to the point that you can copy-paste supports from one gender to the other doesn't always work.

Adorable! possibly my favorite spin on that theme so far, though some were very good. 10/10 would resubscribe for her.

I wasn't really thinking of it that way, but now that you mention it, yes. Here's hoping, Micaiah is there for the RD representation, after all.

Ike as well, though he's confirmed. Considering how they wrote him in Fates, and how the only recent example of them writing him again is Heroes which tends to be middling to boring, I don't trust them to do him well. And even if they did, he's not really interesting to have as a peripheral part of a big cast who will say two lines occasionally or when everyone else does it - he's serious, to the point, and not much of a talker, so there's a risk he's just going to end up sounding boring unless they let him get some sarcasm in.

Purple lady who may or may not be named Abby does look like a likely option. Maybe Alfred too. But to be honest, I'd rather see the characters have these with each other than with Alear. (And definitely not with the Emblems. Hopefully they'll be off-limits whether S supports are in the game or not.)

Having the in-house members speak out when something happens was a step in the right direction on paper, yes, but it did end up sounding somewhat generic in practice. The examples you propose for a Binding Blade remake would work, imo, precisely because they're a select choice of a small group of relevant characters, instead of 8 people of which half feels like they don't really have more relevance than "I'm in this class" (or at least that relevance isn't well used). Echoes, who tried its hand at making your party feel like a group too, chose a few characters to focus on even in your starting party, and that's part of why it works. (Could it have made the effort to at least include your entire starting party of 3/4 people plus the lord? Probably, and I wish it had, even if they had to drop some later and go from "Gray&Tobin&Kliff&Faye" to "Gray&Tobin and Clive&Lukas", for example, but I get why it didn't try to handle all of these at once.) Personally, I'd like to see more done with base conversations, they did a great job for Jill. This, though, would be good. I've read 3H did it for some supports, but I would love to see it have more of this kind of effect. Anyway, people who insist on hating on Dorothea are the real ones who don't develop or change or grow (she does change), get better soon.

Seiros should have been a brawler, and I wouldn't mind at all if they rereleased her to fix that.

R.i.p. Goldoa, I thought there was a chance for one more TT or demote representative... Ah, well, hi Nils. The disrespect to Naga, though. Demote and they managed to make her already terrible outfit even worse. Sure, that's the appropriate seasonal to bring a ghost, but not if it's to treat her like this. F!Corrin has a very nice hat, and her art is getting close to tolerable, glad they changed artists. Pleasantly surprised to see Duma&Mila, at least, but not enough to go past the free pull. Deghinsea rerun, here we go.

Setting aside the fact that we know they can adjust the dialogue when they think a character's gender should affect things (if Awakening doesn't count as an example because M!Robin and F!Robin are different characters on a mechanical level, there's still the tactician's gender causing minor dialogue changes in Blazing Sword), "there is no such thing as a 'male' or 'female' personality", "gender affects some aspects of characters' lives and how they develop as people", "IS isn't interested in telling that kind of story in depth", and "the problem with the avatar characters/the characters they want the player to project on (phrased this way to include Alm) isn't that they don't commit to a gender, but that they don't want to commit to anything that could rub someone the wrong way lest it stops them from appealing to the largest possible audience" are all true statements that don't contradict each other. On Alear, I'm getting used to the hair (but not the boob pockets.), but I agree that "you are a divine dragon that people have been waiting to wake up and already admire" is not a promising start if one doesn't want a game full of empty praise. Here's hoping they'll at least be endearing enough to make playing as them enjoyable. (Oh, and i wonder if their japanese name is confirmed (though it must be, the info must come from somewhere), because if it is, then IS doesn't know how to write Lueur.)

Correct for Zestiria o/ I understand where that comes from for Kirby and GTA but they're not what I had in mind.

Might be a stretch as I haven't reached the endgame, but TWEWY? Life is strange God gives you a phone and sends you off to (eventually) kick their problem child's and fanboy's ass. I'll try: Baby star of the local legends refuses to stay in bag Much less shepherding and more archeology nerding than the job's name would suggest Prison break, arson, theft, revenge, homicide, kidnapping, but no underage drinking / Criminals (and one goodie-two-shoes) who all adopt the same child together stay together

Framme, her brother, and what little we saw of the dancer-looking brown-skinned girl. Vander isn't bad either. F!Alear's boobs pockets disqualify her instantly for me (i will probably still pick her, but with more eye-rolling than i'd like), and most of the other girls don't seem to fare much better in terms of outfit stupidity, so here's hoping the clothes changing mechanism has good options. Speaking of which, Citrinne looked nice too.

Edelgard has more narrative importance than the other two lords, in that she is important even when you're not playing her route (sometimes in ways she shouldn't be - her theme appears in tracks that seem like they're common to all routes, but it would feel wrong to me to hear it when i'm viewing a support on Azure Moon), and they definitely leaned on that for Three Houses' early marketing. But since the game is out, they've treated the three more or less equally, and it's not in their interest to change that with how divided the fanbase seems to be. Byleth didn't deliver on the personality front, and Sothis didn't get the screentime she should have, but if one has to pick one face to represent the entire 3 houses and 4 routes, one of them makes the most sense. (Speaking about the dissonance that sometimes happens between the narrative importance a character has and the screentime they get, Azura should be our Fates representative.) I'd... maybe not welcome, but I wouldn't mind an Engage with four 3H representatives (though even that means a choice of gender for Byleth, unless we just replace them with Sothis, but even that is not ideal), if it meant an Engage with Marth and Tiki and Caeda (and/or Nyna, or Minerva), Alm and Celica, Sigurd and Seliph and Julia, Roy and Lilina (and Guinevere?), Lyn and Eliwood and Hector, both Renais twins, Ike and Micaiah and Elincia, Robin and Chrom and Lucina, and Corrin and Azura (and Ryoma and Xander, sure, okay), but that's either a game where they're nothing more than 2-bits reductions of themselves like (or even more than) in FEH, or a game where Engage's own cast is shafted to let the writers do the legacy characters justice. Making a hard rule of one character per game/universe is frustrating, but possibly the best way to strike a balance between the emblem characters and the new ones. (That doesn't mean i think they will do them justice, I wish Ike wasn't in after how they wrote him in Fates, but one can hope.) (As it happens, yes, and it's exactly what you could expect.)

To be fair, "Ike always looks like that" 😛 But yes, the question of mind control (and of to which degree exactly the emblems are people) is going to be at least a little relevant, though they probably won't call it that.

Kudos to them for adressing money laundering, then, even though it's inconvenient to us. And thanks, I'm not part of those communities so while that tracks with what i'd found when looking it up, I wasn't sure if it was a general issue.

Engage is using FEH as a reference, at least, so who knows. It could go both ways. That would be nice, especially since it's getting harder to go around the limitation. (Or at least, Google Play sems to be catching on that I shouldn't be allowed to make purchases in FEH, if not on the part where I technically shouldn't be playing it at all and that the app didn't come from its play store.)

Finally, Rinka with good art. And Mordecai is free! looks like I'll escape the frustration of reaching sparking level but being unable to buy the sparking pass this time. Now I'd like to see it too, just for that.