lioness-ofgod

[therummonster]

here's another thing of Champagne and Benny just kinda vibin. ft an au i caused, and one i actually created.

{harpy benny au}fun fact: champagne can absolutely fuck up anyone in his work place, which he often feels tempted to do so. mostly cause they experiment on and traumatize his patients.

[ilaiyayaya]

Ngl I Just Wanted To Complain About Arthur That's All This Is Really About

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest Chapter 10 is like, so bad but also like so good but also like I fucking hate it but also like it's so good but also like. There is not a single map in the entire Fire Emblem series that I think about nearly as much as Chapter 10 of Conquest, I cannot think of any other map that lives rent free in my head like this piece of shit. I'm not even replaying Fates right now, just sometimes Conquest Chapter 10 just pops up in my brain and I spend 3 hours thinking about it.

When I play Fire Emblem my playstyle is generally super defensive, I like playing on the highest difficulty most of the time and I REFUSE to ever let any units die so like, why would I ever want my defenseless healer or my shitty low as fuck accuracy axe-user to be anywhere near danger, and this map is like the perfect counter to that type of playstyle. It's a super well-designed map, like it's really good, but I hate it so much, it's super early in the game, in Fates the first 5 chapters are a prologue shared between all 3 version, so it's effectively only the 5th chapter of Conquest, and so you don't have a lot of units to choose from, and those units are still pretty weak. I think by Chapter 10 of Conquest you can have 10 units I believe? you get 3 more a few turns in, and those new units are really good and make the rest of the map a lot less stressful, but it's still pretty bad even with those. The whole point of the stage is defending a 4 tile wide gate, but while you would probably assume this means it would be good to play defensively, absolutely not, enemies come in large waves from all sides and if you don't play extremely aggressively you will get overwhelmed within 1 turn. This is really hard to do on this particular map at this point in the game because of the available units, 1 of them is a healer that cannot attack (Elise), 1 is a dancer that technically can attack but does so little damage that she's only really useful for finishing off enemies with like 1 or 2 hp (Azura), and 1 is an optional trainee unit that is probably still too weak to do any more damage than Azura (Mozu). So basically you have 7 actual damage-dealing units to fend off large waves of enemies coming from 3 directions. The worst part is that of these 7 remaining unit, half of them were not at all made to be defensive, 1 is an archer that can take 1 or 2 hits (Niles), but obviously since they're an archer they can't counter attacks from one space away, 1 is a mage that will die in 1 hit (Odin), and 1 is a maid that really is meant more for healing than damage (Felicia), but she can at least do some debuffing and a bit of damage, still dies in like 2 hits tho. That leaves 4 units at the start of the battle that can actually reliably be put in the center of combat without instantly dying AND EVEN THOSE 4 KINDA SUCK AT THEIR JOB, the only truly outstanding unit is Effie who is a fantastic armor knight, whichever spot you place her at she can pretty much solo if you've leveled her even a little bit since her introductory chapter. The other 3 are Corrin (the protagonist) who isn't necessarily bad, and the exp they get from constantly being attacked is really good since they're a required unit for the entire game, but if you haven't levelled them enough by this point they can get overwhelmed pretty easily, another is Silas, who is potentially as good as Effie, but I personally rarely plan to use him long-term, so I usually don't level him a ton before this chapter so he's really weak for me, that's entirely my fault, but like, that valuable exp, I gotta give it to my other more useful units I can't just waste it on someone I'll drop later. The last of the available units at the start of the chapter is Arthur, Arthur is possibly my least favorite character in the entire series, I hate his character, I hate him in gameplay, I don't like his design, there is nothing about Arthur that I like, but you need to use him in this chapter AND HE'S FUCKING USELESS, he is the prime example of axe-users never being able to hit anything, even if you level him a decent amount, he isn't very defensive so he dies pretty quickly, he doesn't do much damage, and it wouldn't even matter if he did do decent damage because his accuracy is laughably poor, I have literally had attempts of this map where I have had him miss every single attack within the first 5 full turns, which is more than enough to kill a run and pretty much require a reset, he is useless, I hate him, I'm not talking about him anymore, fuck Arthur, hate that guy.

The first 3 turns are by far the hardest part of the map, dealing with the first few smaller waves of enemies and setting up your initial walls before reinforcements get to you is strangely enough a lot harder to deal with than the much larger waves of enemies that arrive in later turns, mostly because after turn 3 you get 3 more units and they are all very good. At turn 3, you get 3 extra units, Camilla, Beruka, and Selena, without these 3 this map would be a fucking nightmare (even more than it already is), Camilla alone is extremely strong and can solo most enemy units as long as they're not bow-users, and the other 2 help a lot in picking off every enemy that isn't already being walled off by Camilla or Effie. As the map goes on each new wave of enemies gets bigger and bigger, so it definitely does maintain it's difficulty throughout the entire stage, but once you've gotten a decent foothold after the first few turns, the rest becomes way more manageable. It's still hard, very hard in the 2nd half of the stage, 100% still nightmarishly difficult, and extremely frustrating if you do fuck up and now have to redo nearly an hour's worth of progress, however, whenever I play chapter 10, like 90% of my resets happen within the first 3 turns, those first few turns are brutally difficult, and if you don't simultaneously push the enemy back far enough, and create a good enough wall in the beginning, you will not make it very far once enemy waves start getting bigger in the 4th turn and beyond. It's such an interestingly, and also somewhat frustratingly designed stage, like in most Fire Emblem stages, once I get into a difficult situation I go "hrmm how do I get out of this situation hrmmrmrmrmr" and then I figure it out and I go "yipee!" but in chapter 10, if you make a mistake, and you realize you've made that mistake, it's probably already too late and it's just going to snowball into a much bigger problem within a few turns. I love resetting on turn 9 because a pegasus knight slipped by and killed Elise oopsies.

The way I've been talking about this makes it sounds like the most frustrating, least fun thing you could possibly ever experience in anything ever, and like, yea it kinda is, but it's also weirdly like, really fun??? Like, I feel like there aren't a ton of maps in any FE game that feels quite like Conquest Chapter 10, there are plenty of maps where you have to defend a point, but I don't think there's any others where you have to defend a point, while not playing defensively at all, because if you just sit there and let the enemies come to you, at least one is going to slip by. Like I said at the start of this, I play super defensively in Fire Emblem, I like to minimize risk of any units dying as much as possible, but the best way to minimize risk in this map, is to do the exact opposite as in most maps and just throw all of your strongest units directly into hordes and hope they don't die. Yea it's annoying, yea it's really fucking hard, yea it's really frustrating to reset like 30 times before getting past the 3rd turn even once, but like, it's fun frustrating, it's refreshing, I like it, but I also fucking hate it, fuck this map it's too well designed.

I had like, a lot more things I was gonna say about this map, but like, I forgor a lot of my points l had to go to work mid-writing this and so all thoughts evaporated from my brain and were replaced with PSO2 thinking gif and Soleil brainrot.

It's so sad that Chapter 10 happens too early to get Soleil, really it's probably the biggest actual objective issue with the map, unfortunately an issue shared between many early Conquest maps, if only the devs had the foresight to make Soleil available in Chapter 1, truly a major blunder. God why did they fucking write Soleil so poorly like fuck, her supports are impressively bad, like even for Fates she's written poorly. Soleil truly is the Conquest Chapter 10 of Fire Emblem characters, see I didn't just start talking about Soleil for no reason, there was a reason, it's called circular narrative, yea, yea that's what it is, I'm so good at this writing thing frfr.

[lieu-rey]

first meeting

[akelafang]

Noble: When I'd heard that Prince Consort Merlin used to be a peasant I'll admit I had my concerns but he is quite the proper gentleman. He's polite, respectful, always uses the proper titles, he's- Arthur: Mad at me Noble: Excuse me, Sire? Arthur: He's mad at me. He only ever puts on this performance of being the perfect consort when he's mad at me, he knows it drives me crazy Merlin: Is there anything you need from me before I retire to my chambers Sire? Arthur: You can tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it and you can go back to insulting me

[ghostember]

great leap

[morguekisser]

Guess. ❎

I’m a firm ghoul and poison hype men believer. They definitely go to raves.

The joke behind the tramp stamp is it’s the Bible verse people often use to refer to homosexuality as a sin.

[nikoisme]

doodle

[3cheerzforvenom]

Like, how are you not?

[therulerofallpotatos]

It's cool when Merthur fics go in depth on homophobia of the time plots but also if there is any medieval setting where you can have the King just decide to say "fuck social convention" and do what he wants its THE ONE WHO USED A ROUND TABLE FOR HIS KNIGHTS

We're pretty used to the concept by now but I dont think we always appreciate how batshit insane Arthur is. Or how crazy it is the amount of unthinkable stunts he gets away with. the magic was secondary to aurhurian legends when the real fantasy was a King who would and could radically change the system that kept the lower classes powerless and unseen

[sunnibits]

so how about part 41 huh

[xgermankittycatx--commsopen]

uther doesn't approve of bottom!arthur, but nevermind the relationship with his manservant

[ALSO, thank you guys so much for all the love in the last merlin meme redraw, i really didn't think it would get that much attention!! :00 so thankyaa <3 you're amazing]

i'm so glad my parents don't follow me on tumblr

[shishkaleshaya]

I realized I didn't post this picture here, and I'm very proud of it actually!

I really wanted to rip Micah's head off

[marf244]

Finally played and finished Red Dead 2, my heart is now broken so I drew some lads

[mx-paisley]

My Arthur Lester with an updated design yipee!!!

You may notice the moon theme, WELL! i had this idea of incorporating a symbol i assigned to malev characters into their designs. Arthur is the moon, John is the sun and Oscar is the star.

@teafromthemicrowave gave me the idea of arthur and john being the sun and moon and then I added oscar to be the star. This is the greatest thing ever ash you wont understandddd THANK YOUU FOR THE IDEA

The scar on his cheek, neck and his torn hear resembles a crescent moon shape

The buttons on his coat are different phases of the moon

The chained pins on his tie, represents the three. Notice how the star (oscar) and sun (john) are only linked together thanks to the moon (arthur) ...thats the best i could explain i hope that makes sense

Bonus sketches

Forget-me-not collar pins anyone??

the glasses is not new, in fact my very first drawing of arthur have glasses!! I removed it when i realized he can't have had it but now that @percymawce-arts also interpreted him to wear glasses, I felt comfortable to have glasses for my own Arthur's design again now too 💞

[hobgoblinbard]

All caught up on the latest episode & now I just have to be delulu for a month to stay sane :)

[morguekisser]

Get in loser for the— JOY RIDE!