#mostly after they completed their own parent speedrun

[ancha-aus]

RealAge AU Drabble - Parentalbond Dust

I am back :3 Another drabble for the RealAge AU (Thanks @spotaus as always for starting this treat by treating me to the first prompt that got this ball rolling)

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Remember how in the last drabble I uploaded i mentioned those parentalbonds? (honestly if you read my drabbles in order these before things won't make ANY kind of sense... anyway!)

I had been thinking about how all of them bond with they new tiny boss and finally settles on how. The question then was. Who goes first?

I decided to go in order of who bonded with Nightmare first :3

So, big surprise. Dust. (everyone was surprised by this)

Warnings as always, unedited and unbeta'ed. We are here for a good and fun time.

Slight warning for Ghost/hallucination Papyrus being rude and mean and intrusive thoughts.

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Dust can admit that Nightmare is fast. Dust is just faster, by a lot.

As soon as Nightmare shifts Dust has an arm around him and drags him back to his side.

Nightmare glares at him, and it would have been terrifying and effective.

If Nightmare wasn't tiny.

Fuck DUst is still not over how TINY his boss is now.

Can Dust even still call him boss? That would be weird. Kiler tends to call Nightmare Tiny Boss now but Dust isn't quite set on a name yet.

Nightmare grumbles nad glares to the side once it becomes clear once again that Dust isn't going to get intimidated.

Nightmare glances at him before crossing his arms as he looks to the side "This is stupid."

Dust nods "I agree." Dust did not want to be here just watching Nightmare and keeping him from wandering and getting lost.

A cackle and then a whisper Really? First kidnaping and now keeping him a prisoner? How low you have sunk. Keeping a child captured and locked away.

Dust's hand forms a fist as he tries to ignore the muttering. They just need Nightmare to see he can trust them. That is all. That takes time. The chackle just chackles on.

Nightmare shoots him a look "It is stupid. I don't need supervision. I am fine on my own."

Dust goes to nod before blinking and shooting him a look "Yeah no. Nice try. I am staying right here."

Nightmare looks beyond annoyed but it is justified that one of them watches over him. Mostly because Nightmare had already managed to almost escape three times.

Look, it has been an hectic week since they euh... found Nightmare again.

Even more laughter that no one else hears Oh? That is what you call it now? That is what you call stalking a child? Following him everywhere? Finding out where he feels safest and surprising him there? Hah! Found! You are a liar and you even lie to yourself.

Dust glares harder at the dark wall as he pulls his knees up and leans on those as he watches the wall, still being a physical barrier between Nightmare and the door.

Nightmare glares at him but Dust just keeps glaring at the shedwall. Waiting. Hoping one of the others will come to relieve him of this babysitting duty. He hates it. He feels useless and stuck.

A huff Wow? Really? You decided to capture him and now you are annoyed you have to watch your prisoner? And even better the one you captured was the one to save you before? You really are thankless and impossible to please. You will never be happy or content and you don't deserve to feel other of those things.

Dust takes another deep breath. He needs a distraction. But what?!

Dust takes out his phone and scrolls through what he has on there. He sees a few movies and gets an idea.

He needs to wait while the others get supplies anyway. Cross is getting information about the multiverse, Horror is getting them food and Killer is getting them overall supplies.

Which means they should still be busy for a while.

Dust pauses as he shoots Nightmare a look. Nightmare had just been sitting there staring at his own feet as he wiggles his feet a bit. Distracted for a bit.

Dust grins as he reaches for Nightmare and quickly grabs him.

Nightmare immediantly freezes for a moment before glaring "What?!"

Dust grins and just turns him around and his old hoody that Nightmare had taken and stolen ages ago. and as Nightmare has his arms crossed he puts the hoody on him. He yelps but Dust doens't give him time to try and get his arms in the right sleeves. Instead Dust ties those together.

He thinks for a moment before grabbing his scarf and using that to tie up the slippery skeleton.

Dust takes a step back to watch his handy work and can't help but snort.

Nightmare looks shocked down at his state. The hoody already making it harder for him to move and now the scarf kept him even more from moving. The problem was. With Nightmare just being tiny and looking like a babybones... He looks plainly adorable. Fuck Dust kinda wished he had made a bow instead of a knot but he has a mission.

Dust nods and looks at Nightmare "Don't move. I am going to grab some food." He turns and leaves the shed.

It should take Nightmare at least a little while to escape that situation. And Nightmare hadn't tried another teleport after he butchered the last one and got them all thrown into a river. Which means that Dust doubts he will try another one soon.

Dust follows the road and by memory finds the pizza place they walked by not too long ago. He only has to wait for a little while before a delivery boy goes by on bike. He kicks off the guy and snatches the bag. Dust is already in the bushes again before the human has time to form a completely sentence.

Dust has to take a bit of a longer way back to make sure he doesn't go over the road. But as he cuts through backyards and gardens he can't help but feel a bit anxious. What if Nightmare escapes? How is he going to explain that.

By the time he is by the shed again he is close to shaking. He opens it and snorts as Nightmare seems to have fallen over. Less funny is the fact he has almost wiggled his way out of his trappings.

Dust puts the bag to the side and silently joins Nightmare's side "And? Is it working?"

Nightmare freezes before a mutter "I hate you."

That.

Dust isn't sure how to explain how much that hurts.

A sneer Really? Are your poor feelings hurt? By just that? What? Are you sad your so-called boss finally hates you? After all the disappointment and betrayal? And yet you feel sad? You truly are nothing but disgusting and disapointing trash.

Dust ignores it as he pulls Nightmare back upright and undoes the scarf binding and unknots the sleeves. Dust has already helped Nightmare with getting on of his arms into the right sleeve before Dust realises what he is doing.

Dust freezes and Nightmare ignores him as he quickly finishes dressing himself. After which Nightmare glances at him with an expecting look.

Dust instead just sits down on his spot on the ground. Opens the bag and fishes out the food. Oh nice. two pizzas instead of one. He lays both open near him before spotting some weird shake things, three of them. Dust shrugs again and places them near them. Next he grabs Nightmare again and pulls him right by his side as he opens his phone and scrolls through the movies.

Dust very quickly realises he deosn't really have movies without a high rating on his phone.Dust isn't even sure how far Nightmare's mind is at the moment.

Dust knows that Nightmare knows who they are. But Dust doens't know how old Nightmare is mentally at the moment. It isn't like Nightmare is sharing any of that information with them at the moment but Dust thinks he is at least a child again. He just also still has his adult form's memories and that is causing a bit of a disconnect.

Dust sighs and looks at Nightmare "Do you like horror movies?"

Nightmare shoots him a suspicious look before answering "I don't dislike them. They can be..." a frown as Ngihtmare thinks for a while before answering with some difficulty "interesting."

That was another thing that is slightly adorable. Nightmare is trying to still speak like he used to before but it seems that some of his knowledge has disappeared after regaining his true body.

Dust nods as he puts on the horror movie. It is one he thinks is okay even after seeing it four times. And only one of those four was because Dust had wanted to watch it.

He presses play and the movie starts.

Nightmare at first tries to keep his distance but it is a matter of time before he is focussed fully on the movie.

Dust grabs some food and eats it. He makes sure it push some towards Nightmare including one of the drinks.

The movie plays and they watch as some dude bro guy walks through the froest. Shouting about how he isn't scared and to come get him!

"... Why?"

Dust blinks and looks at Nightmare. Nightmare stares at him.

Dust looks back at his phone and the now paused movie "Why the guy is screaming? Mostly he is stupid?"

Nightmare frowns beofre looking away "No. I mean... Why.... this?"

Dust looks at the pizza and his phone "I just wanted to watch a movie?"

More frustration on Nightmare's face before he sighs. He then just looks back at the phone with a resigned expression. "okay."

Dust hates that. No. That isn't right. Nightmare doesn't give up and certainly doesn't give up getting answers to questions he has. Dust doesn't press play and looks at Nightmare "What why?"

Ngihtmare glances to the side. To all their things. "You don't... want to be here... with me. Why..."

Dust frowns "I told you? To make sure you don't escape."

More frustration on that tiny face and Ngihtmare looks away "it's not..." another sigh "whatever. When will you kill me?"

dead silence.

Dust turns sharply "What?!"

Nightmare shrugs "I figured... I wanne know."

Dust stares at Nightmare "What the hell? No we don't want you dead?! Why would we go out of our way to find you just to hurt and kill you?!"

Nightmare sits very still before shrugging again "it is the normal thing... normally."

The book. The fucking story. Fuck! He is a fucking idiot!

Nightmare is a child again! Nightmare is in the middle of his fucking trauma! To him the trauma happened days ago! Of course he thinks they would hurt him. That is what always happens.

How long has Nightmare thought that was the only reason anyone ever came to him? How long had a six year old have to fear the sound of someone approaching.

Dust looks away "We... aren't going to kill you... or hurt you." but... why would he beleive his words? Why would he believe anything any of them say after they arleady betrayed him once?

"okay."

It didn't sound like an okay in the way that he heard and believed what Dust said. it was an okay in the sense of a child being afraid to disagree.

Fuck.

Dust isn't sure how to... how to fix this mess. The mess he had partly created. He isn't even sure this can be fixed...

Dust glances back at him and speaks quieter "I mean it... we aren't going to hurt you. We don't want that." wait... he never... "I am sorry."

a long silence but he forces more out "we shouldn't have left. I shouldn't have left. I just... figured it wasn't my place anymore. I was wrong. I am sorry i left you." and it won't happen again.

Even just saying those things. Apologising. Dust feels lighter. It feels good. He needed Nightmare ot hear that Dust now realises.

Ngihtmare doens't say anything about it but does relax a tiny bit next to him. A very very fragile and tiny show of trust and Dust wants to grab it with both hands but he does't know how!

For now he turns the movie on again and makes sure the babybones is near him and eating and drinking.

Dust isn't even watching the movie anymore. He just listens out in case there is anyone who will try to hurt Nightmare or tempt this uneasy peace they have managed to create.

THe movie plays on and Dsut suddenly feels a weight against him. He turns and stares. Because Nightmare is asleep while leaning against him. Out like a light.

It doesn't even surprise Dust. As Dust doubts that Nightmare slept at all in this last week. Maybe even not before they took him with them.

Dust can't help but notice the very dark marks under those sockets. clear sighs of lack of sleep.

Dust moves slowly and carefully as he picks Nightmare up and puts him in his lap. Fuck he is freezing. Dust wraps his own hoody around him and it helps him relax.

He is safe. He is asleep. And while getting Ngihtmare to trust them again will be a long time and healing will be even longer... For now Dust is happy with his arms full of babybones.

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[96percentdone]

okay so I reread Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne in the middle of the night, which completes my Tanemura Trifecta of youth (1) SDC, 2) Full Moon, 3) Kaitou Jeanne). Like. I read basically anything I could get my hands on of hers until about like. idk. 2011-2012? I don't think I ever finished sakurahime. But I liked these ones the most, in that order, and it still stands.

Honestly Kaitou Jeanne is mostly a hot mess with some interesting ideas that's executed not very well executed most of the time. Lot of telling not showing. Lot of wack pacing and sudden forced romantic subplots. Noin also exists and I literally can't stand him at all and anything that comes with him everything about him is horrible I am not sorry get him out of here. But the strengths it has is with Maron and Chiaki for sure, who are delightful to watch interact, or just Maron's personal journey. A lot of the other ideas are good even if the execution is a bit sloppy. I think if it was redone it'd really slap and it'd just have a tighter grip on what it wants to say.

Full Moon is like wack pacing central oh my god that first volume feels like speedrunning three volumes worth of content. Ya girl had not figured that shit out after Kaitou Jeanne or Kyouko and it shows. Uh but most of the romantic sideplots are compelling in their own right. Sometimes the character subplots are better than the main one? (Moe and Fuzuki....) Not really a criticism, because there's still a fun dynamic with Takuto and Mitsuki, but the thing I always liked about Full Moon first and foremost wasn't the romance but the conversation about grief, and loss, and death. That's the stuff that always sticks with me, and it's definitely the strongest part. Full Moon has a lot it wants to say about dying and compassion and choosing life, and I think of Tanemura's works, its the most cohesive in that regard.

And SDC is...everything happens so fucking much over there. There are tiny hints of Tanemura's compulsion for everyone to get paired up which really only rears its head in the last chapter with like bit panels, and there are a few small instances of things being told and not shown, but to be completely fucking honest this one wins the fucking PRIZE for pacing and foreshadowing and like. Show don't tell. People (including myself) used to dunk on the twist of Maora being the postman coming out of left field but actually on the reread....the clues were ABSOLUTELY there the ENTIRE time starting in chapter ONE. Stellar execution. Even scenes that feel like they're going to fast are revealed at later points to have much deeper meaning and implication than we could fathom the first time around, (this post is good at talking about that w/ regards to chapter one's confession), and reveals are timed precisely when they would hit HARDEST.

But also SDC has the craziest shit i've ever read in my life in there. Ushio's storyline is extremely messy, mostly because it features Senri, who is like Noin 2.0 and I hate him and I want him to die, and literally literally if you just took him out and replaced him with a guy her age it would be vastly improved it just would. Maora and Maguri's romance and individual character journies are extremely fun and cute, and I overall like it, but y'know a better job could be done unpacking the gender stuff for sure. It's an earnest first effort, but definitely might have needed some workshopping. AND WHATEVER THE FUCK IS HAPPENING WITH KAZUHITO AND MAIKA DEFINITELY NEEDED WORKSHOPPING TOO BECAUSE HOO BOY. I'm not a Kazuhito hater I just think what she clearly wanted to accomplish over there is not what it actually reads like. It would not be impossible to do, but it doesn't entirely work correctly in its current form.

Which is a little. Unfortunate. Because SDC is in large part about family, and while I think Haine's relationship with every member of he convoluted family is really interesting and well done, the relationship among the Kamiya parents just kind of makes it a lot harder to accept. That said the family shit with the Togu twins is incredible, showstopping, iconic, 10/10, and Takanari is still the best love interest in one of these ever of all time FUCK you fight me. I just think it's good. Even with its problems.

[immacaria]

Love Wins

  I speedrun this so I could try to publish it today. I wrote this for your birthday, @vassar177, (In my timezone it’s still it, even though its 11 pm) and I hope you enjoy this. Once again, happy birthday and I hope that you enjoyed your day very much!

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  Jiang Cheng hummed in his sleep, deciding whether it was worth getting up or not, if it was worth facing the world once again after yesterday. He was feeling absolutely drained after all the fights and screams that filled his day, it was yet another horrible fight between his parents that pulled both him and his siblings into their turmoil without caring that they no longer were in their lives. His sister had tried to appease the fight, tried to do what she always did but this time it was too harsh, too sharp and angry for her to actually do something and Wei Wuxian never actually stepped into them, knowing that it would only worsen everything. So Jiang Cheng did it and pushed his siblings away from the front line. 

  He screamed and pointed fingers, let out what he actually thought about both of them, let out all the times when they dismissed him too quickly, when he only served as a pawn in their fights. Not only that, he pulled all the times were Jiang Yanli had to play mother for two children while being a child herself, all the times Wei Wuxian took the blame for things that were no one’s blame, all the times Jiang Fengmian was too quick to put him in a pedestal and Yu Ziyuan even more to pull him out of him. Told them, no, screamed at them how they let their own children grow up craving for something that they would never have, their approval, and how they had no right to keep pulling them into their fights now. 

  Jiang Cheng hadn’t realized he was crying until Jiang Yanli stepped in and pulled him away from their father, who he was grabbing by the lapels of his shirt and too hadn’t realized. His mother had fallen silent, watching him with wide, shocked eyes that later he knew would turn into something dangerous and aggressive. So he let her pull him away from them, from their old house and their parents, away from the fight and the thunderous expressions. All the way home, Wei Wuxian tried talking with him, distracting him from all the dark thoughts running on his mind, but he paid him no attention, focusing on burying the fight and the thoughts the deeper that he could. 

  “Oh, fucking shit.” He growled, throwing his blanket aside and getting up. Well, now all the thoughts were back and his sleep, completely gone. To worsen everything, today was Saturday, the only day that he and his boyfriend, Nie Mingjue, had all to themselves, and he was being a horrible company even to himself. He stepped into the shower and thought that maybe he could ask for Nie Mingjue to come only tomorrow or, better, next week, even if it seemed cowardly on his part. “Why is life so fucking hard?” 

  Sincerely, if he could just order a pizza and retreat back to bed to watch all the Studio Ghibli’s films that Neftlix could offer, he could call it a day happily. And, at the same time, the only thing he wanted was to bury himself into Nie Mingjue’s chest and never leave again while the man talked about his week and Nie Huaisang’s antics. As the water flow turned cold and shocked him awake, Jiang Cheng decided that fuck it, he wants both and he wants it now. 

  So, he texted Nie Mingjue and asked him to come over sooner if he can and ordered their favourite pizza, brushing his teeth quickly and sliding into comfortable clothes that consisted of a grey sweatpants he stole from Wuxian and a green jersey he stole from Nie Huaisang, who had stole it from Nie Mingjue. After a little cleaning around the apartment, he settled back into his bed, burying himself under his fluffy blanket and mindlessly scrolling through his social media. The pizza arrived quickly and he put it on the bedside table, seeing if Nie Mingjue had seen his message and reading that he was already on his way and bringing smoothies! 

  Gods, he loved his boyfriend so much! 

  The moment Nie Mingjue stepped into his living room, which wasn’t even five minutes after the pizza arrived, Jiang Cheng practically materialized in front of him, hugging his middle and burying his face on his chest. Nie Mingjue chuckled and the sound danced into Jiang Cheng’s ears and already made him relax a little bit more. They kept hugging for some time, just breathing into each other and letting all the stress of the week fall off their shoulders and disappear. Gods, he really did love his boyfriend. 

  “You know, you are the perfect height for me to rest my chin on your head.” Nie Mingjue whispered against his hair, stroking the middle of his back. 

  “Fucker.” Jiang Cheng chuckled, face happily buried and with no intention of moving. “The pizza is getting cold.” 

  “Who is the one holding me back?” He said, starting to move awkwardly and slowly. Jiang Cheng didn't do much to help him, too content to let him pull him. They got to his room sometime after and Nie Mingjue sat on his bed, dragging him with him under the covers while he started Nie Mingjue’s favorite Ghibli movie, Tonari no Totoro, and brought the pizza closer to them, snuggling under his arm. 

  The second movie had already started when Nie Mingjue quietly muttered against his head, chin still resting on the top of his head, the son of a bitch. 

  “Do you want to talk about it?” 

  “About what?” Jiang Cheng said, ignoring that maybe one of his siblings had snitched what happened yesterday to him. Wei Wuxian, probably. 

  “The fight you had with your parents.” He said, starting to massage the side of his forearm. 

  “It wasn’t really a fight.” He sighed, because they were past the phase where Jiang Cheng hid things from him. “Well, it was, but I mostly screamed at them and told them how horrible they fucking were.” He started, pausing the movie right when Howl sent the soldiers walking away from Sophie. 

  “You didn’t.” And there was laughter in his voice. “Oh, I wish I could have seen Madam Yu’s face.”

  “She was shocked and I think, for the first time in his life, Father actually noticed how much I took from Mother.” He tried to hold back a chuckle, sitting up to face him. “Shijie had to drag me away from him.” 

  “Fuck, I really wish I was there. I could have filmed everything for our enjoyment later.” He laughed, loud, thunderous and head thrown back. 

  “I don’t think Mother would have enjoyed you filming the whole fight.” Jiang Cheng crossed his legs, still trying to hold back a chuckle. But the thought of Nie Mingjue walking around the three of them, trying to get the best shots and saying ‘Yes, yes! More anger! More screams! Wonderful!’ was making his job very hard. 

  “I think it would have been a wonderful video. Your brother could even play it at our wedding under the name of ‘That one time that Uncle actually saw how awesome A-Cheng is’.” He moved his hands in an arch as he said the title of the video and Jiang Cheng felt the laughter choking on his throat as he stared wide eyed at his boyfriend. 

  “Wedding?” He whispered, trying to breathe. “You… You want to marry me?”

  “Well, yeah. Not now, maybe, even though I would be fully happy if we married now, but one day I want to marry you, Wanyin.” He shrugged, turning to look at him and, fuck, Jiang Cheng thought that maybe he was suffering a heart attack. “What? Is there piz--” He started, before he was attacked by Jiang Cheng suddenly jumping on him.

  “I love you so fucking much.” He muttered against his lips, arms around his neck. “You sappy.” 

  “Your sappy, and, with luck, forever.” He chuckled, moving his head to the side to let him hide his face there. 

  “You don’t need luck to stay with me, your idiot.” Jiang Cheng swatted at his chest, huffing a breath out before returning to his later spot, pressing the play. 

  “I love you too, my soul.” He kissed the top of his head, resting his cheek on it. “Even more because you’re the perfect height for me to rest my chin on your head.”

  Gods, he hated his boyfriend so much. 

  Actually, no, he didn’t.

[gascon-en-exil]

Three Houses 100% Completion: The Joys of Spreadsheets

The idea that someone like me would ever write a gameplay guide to any Fire Emblem title is somewhat ludicrous on the surface. While I’ve finished nearly every mainline game in the series I also freely confess to being a filthy casual except ironically I ignore Casual mode because resetting/rewinding after death was ingrained in me back in the GBA era who only plays these games on their lowest difficulties, ostensibly because I find the lower challenge to allow for more flexibility in how I pick and develop units. This is of course entirely true, although it’s also no surprise that from a completionist perspective FE is much more approachable when you can make it as easy as possible. For most of the games 100% completion is nothing more than filling out a support log, music library, and other features of an Extras menu, and while there are certainly some tedious times to be had with that - I hope you like popping out the same kids over a dozen times for that many generic parent-child supports in Awakening and Fates - none of it is what anyone would call challenging. Shadows of Valentia has in-game achievements, but the worst of those involves weapons with low drop rates so it’s otherwise a manageable endeavor to get them all.

Three Houses, however, is something else altogether. In a stroke of brilliance that may presumably not be attributed to the developers who expected most people to only play through the game one time, this is the first in the series with a New Game+ feature. This allows you to carry over much of your units’ development over multiple playthroughs, and to catch up instantly where you left off by spending Renown to buy skills, supports, class masteries, etc. that you’ve obtained in previous runs. Thus it is possible to build up a NG+ file over many runs in which all of the game’s forty playable characters have all of their skill ranks maxed out and all their available classes mastered - or at least available for purchase. That’s how I’m defining 100% completion here, and I’m delighting in a very nerdy way to report that not since The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask has a game so tickled my love of efficient scheduling and careful management of available resources to achieve such a substantial goal. I wouldn’t call it hard per se, not in the same way as the built-in difficulty of Maddening or any number of self-imposed challenge runs, but there’s a lot of planning that goes into something like this - to say nothing of how well you need to know the relevant mechanics.

EDIT: After a lot of playtesting I’ve made quite a few updates to this guide, so some of the information here may now be outdated (or less efficient, more like). See here for the updates.

Parameters

New Game+ saves your units’ progress over multiple runs in its journal, although as this is limited - you can only see the progress of units currently in your army, and because of how availability works in this game you’ll never be able to see them all at once - I strongly recommend keeping a separate log of your own. Other than that the only other way the game records your investment is the timestamp on save files, and while that might be helpful if you’re interested in speedrunning this it’ll probably take around 300 hours minimum though so why bother I find it more useful to keep track of how many times you’ve run through the game. The least number of runs needed to fulfill this achievement, and therefore the number to shoot for as a goal, is 29. Why 29? That’s the number of characters who can be dancers, and of course you can only have one dancer per run.

29 runs sounds long but generous on paper. After all, when I did this more or less blind over the course of a year and with the DLC coming out progressively during that time I finished it in 35 runs which isn’t that much higher. It’s a tighter requirement than you might think however, particularly as I’m not accounting for the grinding on infinite skirmish maps that Normal allows for. I feel like the challenge, such as it is, of something like this comes in the form of plotting everything out and knowing how to use the limited time and resources the game gives you as effectively as possible, and grinding throws that out the window. I admit that during my first time doing this I did have to grind out some stubborn skill ranks with skirmishes in the last chapter, but optimally that shouldn’t be necessary and you should be able to work to avoid that.

I’m not including the support log, music library, or event library (i.e. the Goddess Tower events) as points of consideration. Strange as it sounds to exclude what is often the only draw FE presents for completionists, all of those save to the cartridge and not to individual files and are therefore irrelevant to the concept of building up a “perfect” NG+ file. None of them are particularly difficult as it stands - most S ranks can be bought with Renown after you’ve filled characters with enough furtive gay thoughts for the same-gender Byleth, the Goddess Tower can be save scummed, and for the soundtrack you just have to remember to switch the audio to Japanese at a few points to get every track - so I’m going to overlook them. I am however assuming DLC content, and that you already have a completed file of Cindered Shadows on the cartridge. Most notably this allows you to recruit the Ashen Wolves and access the DLC classes, but it has a very important third benefit I’ll get into a bit later.

Also, a final note on difficulty: this guide obviously assumes Normal (Classic vs. Casual is basically irrelevant with Divine Pulse). You might be able to do something like this on Hard, although I’m not going to attempt it. Maddening is completely out of the question, as you have to level every single character through suboptimal skill ranks and classes, both for themselves and in general.

Routes

Regardless of what you might think of all the controversial discourse surrounding it, Crimson Flower is by far the worst route for unit development. It’s a full three/four chapters and three/four calendar months plus one week and weekend (contrast CF Chapter 13 vs. non-CF Chapter 12) shorter than the others. Of the remaining three, Verdant Wind marginally edges out Azure Moon as the longest route as it has one extra instruction week and free weekend in the last chapter...because Dimitri and Edelgard take that entire week for their parley in AM. Silver Snow’s last chapter is as long as VW’s - but it infamously skips out on an entire calendar month (four free weekends, three instruction weeks, and the Gronder rematch) because your army is off having a drug orgy or something equally unproductive. 

Still, despite this objective evaluation running through VW 29 times isn’t a possibility. This is mostly because all of the routes except SS have exclusive units who have to be accounted for, and also because other units have small but significant availability advantages on certain routes. On top of the perk of not having to spend Renown to recruit them, students in a route’s affiliated house get to appear in Chapter 1 (the mock battle) and non-CF Chapter 13 (the infamous bandit hunt map right after the timeskip). Seteth slightly favors SS as he appears in Chapter 13 in place of your house leader, while conversely Hilda, Catherine, and Cyril should be avoided on SS as they’re not available until much later than they are in VW and AM. Then there are, again, the route-exclusives: Claude for VW; Dimitri, Dedue, and Gilbert for AM; and for CF Edelgard, Hubert, and....ugh.

Do you hate Jeritza for his weird voice acting, terrible characterization that spills over onto all of his support partners, and the same tone problems from which all of CF suffers? Prepare to hate him all over again as a unit, because Jeritza single-handedly makes 100% completion in a timely fashion much harder. Not only does he have the worst availability in the game at a mere six chapters and essentially four calendar months, unlike his fellow Part 2 exclusive Gilbert he has skill weaknesses - and one of them is in authority, which as I’ll get to later is even more annoying. Compounding this, Jeritza being locked to CF means you have to run CF far more than you’d like, giving him a disproportionate share of time and resources in Part 2 at the expense of whoever’s being used alongside him. This is why a Gotoh unit just doesn’t work in conjunction with FE16′s core design philosophy.

With this in mind, my theoretical plan - and note that some of this guide is indeed still theoretical, and I’m plotting it out as I go along based on my first time through - for a 29 run 100% is 8 runs of CF and 7 of each of the other routes. This sounds counterintuitive in light of the objective ranking of route length, but Jeritza really is that much of a headache.

Cross-Run Planning and Renown

One of the most important points to maximizing efficiency for 100% is knowing what carries over between runs and what does not - or in other words, thinking more in terms of the overall goal of maxing out your units than of the individual needs of each run beyond what’s needed to finish the game with no deaths. This being Normal mode of course that’s not a high bar to clear, but it’s still worth noting that many of the traditional parameters used to measure the development of your army in FE outright do not matter in the grand scheme of things. This includes your units’ levels and stats, money, and your inventory. 

Money isn’t too hard to come by particularly with auxiliary battles, increased earlygame money with auto-leveled professor rank (see below), and other sources. Stats only matter to the point that you have enough of them to finish the game, and standard leveling, certifications, and the +1 stat booster drops from auxiliary battles will take care of that for the most part. Getting specialized weapons and equipment can occasionally be useful, but it shouldn’t be a priority especially lategame when you’re not going to have much time to use what you get. In any case the quick pace of these runs means it’s unlikely that you’ll have much material for forging/repairing beyond the basic buyable ores, so forged silvers are usually the way to go unless you feel like breaking out a brave weapon or Relic or something similar if you need a really powerful hit. As for levels, other than the stat boosts they only matter insofar as different class tiers have different benchmarks for certification. The highest of these is 30, so after that point levels are all about the stats. That said however, with Normal experience being as high as it is your units will likely end the game in the 40s or even 50s, especially with the EXP boosts from the saint statues.

This brings me to Renown. Renown is the main resource for 100% completion, and is in fact what makes it possible in the first place. In a new game you can only spend Renown on restoring the saint statues, and while this is very important to do in your first two or three runs for the boosts it adds to EXP gain, skill points gained during instruction, and most crucially of all class mastery EXP (by far the top priority - drop 2000 Renown on the Saint Cethleann statue for this as soon as the statues become available in Chapter 5 of your first run) later runs allow you to spend Renown on the journal in Byleth’s room. This is how you save and continue progress on skill ranks, as well as how you can instantly max out your professor rank at the start of the game which is crucial for getting the most out of the monastery. 

Now for some numbers...and here’s where that Cindered Shadows file comes into play. With a completed run of CS you unlock a reward that appears at the start of each run including 10000 Renown (as well as the very useful Chalice of Beginnings accessory - sword and gauntlet users love this thing earlygame). Each NG+ run starts you off with 10000 Renown multiplied by how many times you’ve completed the game, and each run you can get the CS reward again on top of however much Renown you had unspent from the previous run(s). You also get a small amount of Renown for completing battles and quests around the monastery, although this is minor compared to starting your second run with a minimum of 20000 Renown, your third with 30000, etc. By the last few runs you can expect to hit the cap of 999999 Renown, which is more than you could ever reasonably use at a time. So what to spend it on?

The saint statues: Each has a one-time cost of 10000 Renown to fully restore and can be done incrementally. This costs 40000 total and should be finished no later than your third run, because as mentioned almost all of the bonuses granted by these statues are absolute necessities for a fast 100%.

Professor rank: On the first free day after choosing your house, complete Sylvain’s quest to eat in the dining hall to instantly level up from E to E+ professor rank. After that it takes 4000 Renown to max out your rank at A+, easily manageable from your second run onward with the CS reward. This gives you ten activity points in exploration, seven instruction sessions, three points on battle weekends, the ability to assign up to three adjutants in battle, more flexible dining hall options (both neutral and liked dishes will restore full motivation), and access to master classes and high-end forging as soon as you unlock their other requirements. It’s an essential expense for every run.

Skill ranks: The value here is obvious, but as it costs 500 Renown per rank it’s important to be sparing and only spend on what you’ll actually be using in a particular run. The exception here is Byleth - see their section.

Supports: Mostly unimportant unless you’re recruiting a student from another house (just make sure to get these Byleth/student supports in a previous run first) or if you’re running CF and not using either Byleth or Edelgard in which case you’ll need to buy the Edeleth C(+). Supports cost 400 Renown per rank which is fairly cheap, although if you’re doing cross-house recruits it’s best to spend 1200 to get their A in which case they’ll always agree to join your house when asked. Note that non-student characters whose recruitment is dependent on Byleth’s level can have that requirement lowered with supports, but this is unnecessary - again, see Byleth’s section.

Class masteries and Crests: Ignore these. While the gameplay bonuses can be nice none of them are worth spending Renown on, especially in earlier runs. The class mastery menu is however what you’ll use to keep track of which classes units still need to complete, so bear that in mind. Incidentally, unlike the skill ranks menu the classes don’t update until you clear the game, so you’ll have to check your units’ status screens to see which classes they’ve mastered on the run you’re currently doing.

Abyss: Finally, Abyss has a few one-time Renown costs for its various facilities, similar to the saint statues. It’s only 8000 Renown to unlock everything (although for some of them you’ll have to wait until Part 2), but honestly only the pagan altar really matters at all so it’s not a huge priority. Generally speaking the weapons and equipment purchasable at the altar aren’t worth the Renown cost until you get multiple runs under your belt and have resources to burn, but Master Seals and Abyssian Exam Passes may be an exception as they’re limited in availability otherwise. Optimally though you should plot out your classes such that you shouldn’t have to spend Renown on seals.

Last but not least, a word on battalions. Battalions do carry over in NG+, as do their levels. It’s therefore important to build up a guild of strong max level battalions early on, mostly by completing paralogues. Assigning these to units in the earlygame gives them massive stat boosts, to an even greater extent than equipping silver weapons or high-level spells - which unsurprisingly come with serious weight issues early on, so best to stack with battalions for more OHKOs and better defensive parameters.

Building Your Army: Active vs. Classroom Units

It’s common knowledge for the games in the series (except FE5, because Fatigue is weird like that) that it’s rarely worth it to use all the deployment slots available to you, and that concentrating your resources into a smaller number of units will yield better results. This is true of FE16 as well, and I’ve determined that the best active army size for 100% completion runs is 5-6 units. This allows space for everyone you’re training to get the attention they need at the monastery and in the classroom, and it also dovetails nicely with how many runs it will reasonably take for each unit to master all of their classes. As I’ll go into in more detail later, it’s best to split each unit’s classes into four groups, and 40 characters x 4 = 160 which when divided by 29 runs works out to 5 active unit slots for about half of the runs and 6 for the other half. As regards composition, a core of two or three of the route’s house units and/or Byleth is important for Chapters 1 and non-CF 13, with the remaining slots free for the Wolves, non-students, and if absolutely necessary cross-house recruits although these are not optimal owing to the support costs. Recruitment should always be done as early as possible; this isn’t Maddening where it’s important to consider that auto-leveled growths sometimes make units better if you wait to recruit them. For the Wolves and students from other houses (except Hilda in SS, but don’t use her there) that means Chapter 2, with the non-students coming in at various points up through Chapter 13.

As is the case with every FE though you’re also going to have units in your army who you’re not using. I recommend recruiting everyone you can on each run except for cross-house students, for this reason: units not in your active army, hereafter called classroom units, can still be trained...in the classroom. Simply setting their goals appropriately when you first get them is all the effort you’ll need to put into them passively gaining valuable skill experience that can be put toward runs where you will use them, and between skill ranks and classes the former are going to take considerably more time and effort overall to max out. This is because class certification never asks for anything higher than A in a skill, but there are three additional ranks beyond that. Also, skill weaknesses are a thing, and while they cease to matter to class mastery once a unit is certified they’ll continue to be a problem on the long slog to S+. The thought of individually assigning classroom units goals may seem daunting, but in practice there’s a priority to skills that helps out considerably, as follows:

Authority: top priority for several reasons - it grants access to high level battalions which as mentioned makes earlygame a joke, it’s the only skill that can’t be leveled as an adjutant meaning that once a unit maxes it out they can be comfortably leveled in the back full-time, and it’s the skill that matters least to the class system so maxing it out won’t lead to any awkward situations, ex. a unit with S+ bows still needing to master sniper

Authority can be comfortably pushed to S+ solely in the classroom and rarely needs to be focused on as a goal by active units (Jeritza being a notable exception). The skills below however should only be raised up to A, A+, or S to allow room for some active training, and should be switched once a unit has reached a benchmark around that point so as to have more skills worked on overall. Also worth pointing out - it’s generally easier and more efficient for classroom units to train only one skill at a time.

Heavy armor: everyone who isn’t Edelgard only has three classes that boost it, and of these classes (including Edelgard’s) the only one without terrible movement is great knight

Flying for male units: except for Claude they have just two flying classes, although since wyvern rider and wyvern lord are pretty much the best physical classes in the game this isn’t as much of a hindrance as it is with heavy armor

Brawling for female units: there are only three unisex classes that boost brawling apart from f!Byleth’s enlightened one, and two of these (fighter and brigand) only give +1 putting a lot of pressure on war cleric to compensate

Skill weaknesses: this is where it gets more individualized, but as weaknesses slow down a unit’s progress in both the classroom and on the battlefield it’s very helpful to build up a good base when they’re not being actively used

To use Dimitri as an example, on AM runs where I’m not using him I would first max his authority, then boost up his flying or heavy armor (these two, or brawling and heavy armor for females, are about equal in priority and should be attended to with skill weaknesses/proficiencies in mind), then the other one, then either axes or reason as those are his weaknesses. If you want to really break it down bows, brawling (for males)/flying (for females), and riding take precedence over the remaining skills for having fewer classes, and faith is slightly more important than reason for the same, er, reason, but realistically classroom units aren’t going to be getting that far without much more substantial active growth taken into account.

Active units on the other hand can afford to be much more dynamic in what they learn during instruction, especially as they’ll be motivated to receive private instruction. Ahem. One thing to note is that if an active unit is working on a budding talent it should always be instructed enough to unlock as soon as possible, even if you plan on leveling the skill passively/in battle afterward. Gaining a proficiency really does pay dividends, and sometimes the ability is useful too. Group tasks are also important to keep in mind, and ideally you should plan each run to have at least two active units training the same movement skill to take advantage of the weekly boost.

On Byleth

Byleth is in many respects a special case. I frequently rail on their defects as a flat self-insert who makes every story they’re in worse because it has to accommodate their wooden presence, but here I’ve really only got good things to say. It should be pointed out that the journal treats Byleth as one character despite the gender difference, which is good as the male and female versions do not have to be worked on separately. Byleth can’t gain skill experience from instruction, but instead they gain it from faculty training which costs activity points but is on the whole a faster process. As noted below faculty training is the primary way of dumping excess activity points during exploration, because maxing out Byleth’s skill ranks is very high priority. Units receiving instruction get an extra +2 to their base skill growth if Byleth has a higher rank in the skill, hence it’s in everyone’s best interest for Byleth to max out their skills first. This is also the big exception to the rule about spending Renown only on skills you’ll be using in a run; Byleth’s ranks should always be topped out as high as you’ve gotten them at the start of the game, to give this bonus as often as possible. Admittedly you won’t be able to do this earlier on as it costs a hefty amount of Renown to get all of a unit’s skills up to S+, but in later runs it will pay off considerably.

Something else to consider about Byleth is their level. There are three reasons to level up Byleth even if they’re not an active unit in a run: recruiting non-student characters, the Proper Conduct Tournament, and making them less likely to die instantly if they get attacked in battle lategame since they’re force-deployed on every chapter map and paralogue. The highest level required to recruit anyone is 15 (if in AM or VW doing so in Chapter 4 gets you Catherine, but this might be unfeasible and it’s not a big deal if you have to wait a chapter for her), but you should aim for 20 by Chapter 8 in order to win the tournament. These levels are entirely manageable with Byleth soloing the Prologue and then spending the rest of the time as an adjutant, or playing a minor support role when they’re force-deployed (I favor giving them the Stride gambit personally). For the tournament I recommend certifying them as a fortress knight first for the massive DEF boost and then certifying and changing to swordmaster because they’re required to use a sword and therefore appreciate that class’s abilities. Winning gets you the usual quest rewards as well as a free brave weapon, not to mention the inherent humor of the game itself mocking people clutching their pearls over the teacher/student relationships. 

What Matters and What Doesn’t at the Monastery

Learning how to streamline exploration is a key component to keeping these runs fast-paced and cutting down on real time spent. Bluntly, a fair bit of what goes on at Garreg Mach is irrelevant when you’re thinking on a cross-run level. Here’s what actually does:

Quests: should be done all the time as they increase Renown by small amounts, award resources and some inventory items, and in some cases unlock monastery facilities or other features like the White Heron Cup. Most of them also don’t take very long to complete, and once you’ve run this game enough you’ll develop a good rhythm for the quests in each chapter. Quest battles are also worth doing - see the calendar section.

Dining hall: the best way to increase your units’ motivation for instruction. Fishing and the greenhouse are for the most part wastes of time since you don’t need to manually grind out professor rank (important note: except on your first run, where it’s probably better to do them) and the rewards from them are either negligible or, in the case of the greenhouse’s stat boosters, can be replicated with auxiliary battles. However, you should get enough resources for meals from quests and such to be able to carry you through a run without much trouble, and if you do start to run out note that you can also buy poultry and wild game from one of the vendors.

Choir practice: comparable to group tasks for the faith skill, and as with those you should preferably plan to have two active units leveling faith each run to take the most advantage of this. Byleth also gains both faith and authority from choir practice, so you can make use of that as well.

Lost items: usually more trouble than they’re worth to remember where they are and when they appear, but technically they function as one-time liked gifts if you want to restore motivation without eating or spending money on regular gifts.

Faculty training: how Byleth raises their skills outside of battle. This is the main dump for activity points in earlier runs once the dining hall and sauna are taken care of, but it’s important to note which characters increase which skills and to spread your training out accordingly. This is a major reason why you should recruit non-student characters even if you don’t plan on using them, because they’re more reliable sources of this training than the student characters even into Part 2. Obviously once Byleth has maxed all their skills this can be dropped from your task list completely.

Special vendors: unrelated to activity points, but once you do the quests to unlock the NPC vendors and Anna’s secret shop at the monastery it’s important to stock up whenever you’re exploring since you can’t buy this stuff from other menus. Important items are gifts if you lack the activity points to feed your active units, Smithing Stones for basic forges and repairs, Arcane Crystals lategame for magic weapons if you’re using any, meat if you’re running low on dining hall provisions as mentioned, and Master Seals from Anna once you’ve exhausted the free one plus the five you can buy from the regular shop menu.

Saint Statues: see the above section on Renown.

Sauna: also starting in Chapter 5, provides an important boost to skill gained during instruction or faculty training that month: +2 for refreshed or +4 for very refreshed. Getting very refreshed is more a matter of RNG than anything as there’s only so much skill involved in this minigame, but most of the time you can at least aim for +2 on all your active units. This should always be done the first free weekend of the month, but if the sauna decides to be finicky with a unit and deny them a boost you can try again on a later weekend.

Mark Your Calendars

You’d think that the in-game calendar would be the centerpiece of my mania for scheduling and thus this entire guide, but in actuality it’s quite simple. Events like saints’ days and special meals cost you nothing to attend, but who joins you is totally random from among your current party so there’s no guarantee the associated boosts will go to characters you care about. Birthdays are negligible, but if you just have to have teatime for whatever reason it’s more efficient to do so in honor of a character’s special day than by wasting an activity point on a weekend.

I find that the most efficient way to spend your free weekends is that all but the last of each month should be used for exploration, to pick up and complete quests, recruit new characters, raise motivation for instruction each week, and do the sauna on the first weekend. The last weekend, the one before the chapter battle, should be used for battling. What kinds of battles depends on what’s available:

Quest battles should be gotten out of the way, especially those that bring new vendors to the monastery, but they scale poorly with your units’ levels and are generally very easy. A prominent exception exclusive to CF is a quest battle where you can only deploy Byleth and Jeritza, which Jeritza should always solo because he needs all the favoritism he can get.

Paralogues are hit or miss overall. Some are absolutely necessary - Sothis’s for a Knowledge Gem (see below), Dedue’s unless you’re completely finished with him and are also a heartless monster - but for the most part it’s up to your discretion. Some offer very good rewards and some have very good battalions to add to your guild, but on the flip side some paralogues are more annoying than others thanks to odd initial positioning, more level scaling issues, and/or fog of war. The cutscenes before each paralogue are also unskippable, so they cut into real time as well. Still, paralogues do have one benefit over every other type of battle available on weekends in that they restore full motivation to their non-Byleth MVPs, just like story battles. It’s therefore possible that if you have a bunch of paralogues available at once (common late in Part 1) you can do three of them on one weekend in place of exploration and come out of it with some extra combat experience as well as three characters with full motivation for the next week of instruction.

Auxiliary battles are DLC-exclusive and are distinguished by a yellow exclamation point on the menu. Compared to regular or red exclamation point skirmishes the enemies in them scale much better with your army (making them the best battles for grinding your units up to 30 for master classes), and they offer bonus gold and stat boosters that can sustain your army in the absence of facilities like fishing and the greenhouse. There are also only about half a dozen of them overall and each follows a quickly recognizable pattern of enemy placement, so they are by far the best source of regular, reliable unit development outside of story content.

Apart from Chapter 2′s month which is structured like a tutorial there is only one major hiccup to how you plan your weekends. If you’re planning to go CF then in Chapter 11 you’ll have to watch Edelgard’s coronation, but doing so takes up all the rest of the month up to the story battle. In order to skip the least amount of content you’ll therefore have to either forego a battle weekend entirely or else do one earlier in the month and accept that not all of your active units will be motivated the following week.

And Now for Some Actual Standard FE Gameplay

Skills may be the focus for long-term goals and development over multiple runs both in active armies and in the classroom, but it’s class progression that frames a unit’s development in a given run and is, relatively speaking, easier to plot out and manage. I say that...but the reality is rather messier than that, which I will prove with a live demonstration.

Before that though, the numbers: each unit can access 35-42 of the 52 total playable classes. As before mentioned four active runs is the number to aim for based on optimal army size, and that number of classes divided by four means that units will be expected to master 8-10 classes per run. One of the advantages to a four-way division is that it allows you to split up classes approximately according to the four beginner classes: each unit will have a myrmidon run, a soldier run, etc. As shown below however, these are very loose descriptions and are better thought of as a framework to aid development than as a set formula.

With regard to class and skill EXP gained in battle, the formulas are a lot more set in stone. Every time a unit engages or is engaged in combat, uses white magic or a gambit, or dances they gain 1 class EXP, increased to 2 with the bonus from the Saint Cethleann statue which you should definitely unlock early in your first run. There are two ways to increase this number further. The first is by equipping a Knowledge Gem, undoubtedly the most important item to 100% completion. You get one in a chest in Sothis’s paralogue, which should be obtained your first battle of Chapter 8 when it’s first available, and another after Chapter 11 provided you don’t let any enemies escape with Crest Stones. Equipping this item doubles the amount of class EXP gained, so 4 after the statue bonus. The second way to increase this the Mastermind ability, Lysithea’s personal ability as well as one in Jeritza’s starting list that he must equip in order to use. It has the same effect as a Knowledge Gem on its own, and if the two are combined they stack additively for a maximum of 6 EXP at a time.

Skill EXP has a few more parameters but is similarly straightforward. When dealing damage or using white magic units will gain skill EXP with the weapon/magic type they used, their movement type if their class boosts one (and they’re mounted in the case of riding or flying), and authority if they have a battalion equipped - and as mentioned, all of these except authority also apply to adjutants. The base depends on the unit’s proficiency in the skills in questions: 3 for strong, 2 for neutral, and 1 for weak. The Knowledge Gem and Mastermind work in the same way to increase this base: 6/4/2 using one of them and 9/6/3 using both. Then class boosts are added to this, with each class boosting affiliated skills by +1 to +3. Putting this all together, the most skill EXP that can be gained at one time is 12, if Lysithea or Jeritza w/ Mastermind equips a Knowledge Gem and raises a skill they are strong in in a class that grants +3 to that skill. Gremory!Lysithea with a battalion and a Knowledge Gem using her favorite meme Dark Spikes on Jeritza’s obnoxious serial killer ass would give her 6 class EXP, 9 authority EXP, and 12 reason EXP - and this is why Lysithea levels so fast.

Now then, to build some class sets. I’ll be using Hubert for this example, and for a different reason other than shameless favoritism mostly.

Logically a unit’s first run should play to their strengths as much as possible, to ease them into development with skills they’re naturally inclined toward. Hubert is a default magic user, so his monk run should be his first. To start:

Noble (this or commoner should always be a unit’s first mastered class because it’s so quick to get out of the way)

Monk

Mage

Dark Mage

...And here’s the first problem. As is contractually required for CF exclusives Hubert is an edgy atheist and is weak in faith, making the expected combination of a monk run difficult to pull off without prior investment as a classroom unit. But wait - Hubert has a budding talent in lances that a therapist could have a field day with, and his most feasible master class is easily dark knight. This encourages something like so:

Noble

Monk

Mage

Dark Mage

Cavalier

Warlock

Dark Bishop

Paladin

Dark Knight

There we go, nine classes which is entirely reasonable for Hubert’s total of 37. For his first run he can focus on reason, lances, and riding, safe in the knowledge that he doesn’t have to max any of those skills here as there are other classes that require them. Looking ahead to his second run, soldier might seem like a logical second pick...but if he spent some time working on his faith as a classroom unit there’s a better run of classes to knock out.

Myrmidon

Mercenary

Thief

Priest

Swordmaster

Assassin

Bishop

Trickster

Mortal Savant

Holy Knight

After this he’ll be done with all reason-boosting classes and should be comfortably finished with that skill, along with having high ranks in swords, lances, faith, and riding as well as with authority probably maxed out as he’s strong in it. Assassin might seem like an odd stretch here, but note that he’s strong in bows so it shouldn’t be hard for him to reach. With his third run it’s finally time to go back for soldier.

Soldier

Armored Knight

Archer

Dancer

Hero

Fortress Knight

Sniper

Bow Knight

Great Knight

Lances and bows frequently pair well together as they converge at the end at bow knight, and bows don’t have many classes overall and pair less with axes or brawling than those two do with each other. Axes are one of Hubert’s weaknesses, but at this point he should have built up his rank in them and in heavy armor to make this more manageable - but since these are far from the only axe classes heavy armor is the bigger priority along with lances, bows, and riding. Dancer seems rather random here, but I looked ahead to which run needed an extra and it’s a pretty flexible class anyway requiring effectively only 8 CHA (or 13 in some cases that will never apply to Hubert). Consider it one last chance along with hero for him to work on swords. And now for the last one.

Fighter

Brigand

Brawler

Warrior

Grappler

Wyvern Rider

War Monk

Wyvern Lord

War Master

Flying is Hubert’s other weakness, but as with axes he shouldn’t be starting from scratch with them. He might be with brawling, but he’s neutral in that skill and has lots of opportunities here to work on punching people to death. I wouldn’t recommend war monk/cleric to do any more work with his faith however, as both it and trickster have halved spell uses which makes them highly inefficient for raising magic levels.

That, by the way, is just one way to go about building these class sets. I went back and forth on a few of my own choices as I was writing that up. The thing about classes in Three Houses is that they don’t flow smoothly into one another, so there’s a lot of room for experimentation with different paths and a lot of variance based on each unit’s strengths and weaknesses.

Finally, a note on adjutants. Smart use of adjutants substantially increases overall unit development as it effectively doubles the amount of skill and class EXP your army can gain from each battle. Units who have 1) maxed authority and 2) are not in danger of falling behind the pre-30 leveling curve (units receive less regular EXP in the back) are prime candidates to be adjutants, and in later runs as more units finish authority it will become more common to have characters who’ll spend the majority of their time in the back. Of course you’ll always need two or three solid frontliners to actually complete the battles, but this is a useful way to play around annoyances like the bad movement of armors or the limited spell lists of most physically-oriented characters.

So About Those Spreadsheets

I know this is a ton of information to handle, and the game offers only the bare minimum for cross-run organization. This is where developing your own system comes into play if you’re aiming for a quick 100%. Personally I decide which set of units I’m going to be actively using on a given run, then plot out and write down which classes each is going to master and which skills they’re going to work on. I also note what skills classroom units will be building, and I keep separate track on overall maxed skills and mastered classes so I’m not dependent on the in-game journal to do that for me.

How rewarding is all this? That depends on how much you enjoy breaking down a game like this and really wringing the most of its mechanics to reach entirely personal goals. Just writing this guide has inspired me to attempt a 29 run 100% sometime in the near future, and it would be interesting if anyone else were to take on this excessive, overly meticulous process. I know there are other ways of approaching this concept, and even some things I could afford to improve myself especially for earlier runs as the first time I did this I was still getting a feel for the game and wasn’t playing at anywhere near as optimal a level. All the better for all the plot and characterization discourse I’ve gotten involved in over the past year, naturally, but there’s room to better my game.

And with that I am done...hmm, do Tumblr text posts have character limits? Only one way to find out, I suppose.

[doedipus]

I finally finished moyashimon

it’s honestly one of my favorite anime/manga that I’ve read in a long, long time. there are definitely some aspects of the work that frustrate me, but it’s not quite enough to sour the work as a whole in my eyes. if you’re in the mood for a really chill slice of life series with a lot of well-developed and respectfully portrayed female and queer characters, definitely give it a shot.

first of all, to anyone who’s only seen the anime adaptation, definitely, definitely, definitely look into the manga. some of the best parts in the series happen after the anime ends, esp. the craft beer adventure in volume 8 and american road trip in volume 10. plus, if you’re like me and are mostly drawn to the work because of kei, her involvement in the story only starts ramping up immediately after the anime ends, and she’s essentially the main character of the last 3 volumes. Plus, ishikawa and his team have a lot of fun with the medium that doesn’t always translate into animation.

All in all, picking up the manga is 100% worth your time if you’re even vaguely intrigued by the premise

more detailed thoughts and a handful of good reaction images under the break

I think overall the beer, france, and america arcs are the high points of the series.

The beer arc sticks out to me mostly because of stuff happening in real life during the time I was reading it. Basically, some of my friends talked me into taking a beer tasting class at uni with them. I’d never really liked beer very much beforehand, but it turns out I was just drinking the wrong kinds of beer. I’ll put my life on the line for a good IPA now that I know what that even is.

The beer section of moyashimon has mutou go through a similar process- she starts out by going on a huge tirade about how craft beer sucks and it’s only appealing to pretentious weirdos, and then over the course of the volume, they go over what different kinds of beer are like, how they’re made, etc. It ended up giving me a good idea of what to look out for in the beer class, and it was fun being able to compare what I was sampling to what the fermentation lab crew talked about.

There’s also a pretty cute gender-affirming moment for kei in there, where the gang gives her a women’s costume for the faux oktoberfest celebration the book culminates in. it’s a small plot point, but I liked it a lot.

The france and america arcs are pretty similar and I like them for basically the same reasons. Essentially it boils down to them tying really dynamic plotlines in with the usual culinary intrigue. There’s a real sense of tension to what’s happening in the story, and the food stuff is more directly related to what’s happening in the story than it usually is. In a lot of the other plotlines, the writers have a tendency to frontload all the technical stuff into one or two extended dialogue scenes, which can be kind of hard to get through in comparison

I also found ishikawa’s assessment of american food pretty fun to read through, and a lot of his comments make me want to try out some western restaurants in japan if I ever end up going there. For instance, he has the characters talk a lot about how burgers and stuff are much sweeter than they’re used to them being in japan, and it’d be neat to have a point of comparison for that.

Also the america arc is where kei and marie probably do gay things, which I am very down for

ultimately, I think upwards of 90% of people who stumble upon this series now, 5 years after the last chapter and last episode were released, are here specifically for kei. she’s the strong bad to sawaki’s homestar: you might not know it yet, but she’s the reason you’re here. if you’re impatient and wanna speedrun straight to the part where she transitions/goes full time/whatever, it’s halfway through volume 4 of the manga and episode 10 of the first season of anime. there’s a lot of fun plotlines that happen before that point that really deserve attention on their own merit, though.

I’m a big fan of kei’s characterization. she’s possibly my favorite trans (or trans-adjacent josou danshi, post-colonialism ho!) character I can think of, and certainly the best I’ve seen written by a cis author. being manga, there’s some dumb missteps that happen, but they seem to be mostly a result of the creators not knowing better rather than them just putting her in to gawk at like a lot of other creative teams tend to do. plus, I think a lot of it boils down to localization error. for instance, the scanslation I read consistently has characters and margin notes refer to her as “he,” but like, japanese doesn’t really use gendered language the way english does, so it’s more representative of the scan team’s biases than the writers’.

One of the things I really like about Kei’s depiction is that the author doesn’t try to make excuses for her behavior. There’s no throwaway line in her backstory about how her parents saw three crows and a capybara on the way home from the hospital and decided to raise her as a girl. She’s clearly attracted to Sawaki, but that’s never framed as her primary motive for transition. She just flatly explains that she thought about it real hard and decided that this was best for her. To me, that’s a much more compelling narrative than one where it’s something either foisted upon the character or something they just sort of haphazardly stumble into.

Another thing that sticks out to me about Kei is that she exists in a series that doesn’t construct its cast as a harem around a singular main character or the reader, which gives her much more room for personal motivations and interests. Like, even though I love Luka from steins;gate to pieces, she and the rest of the female cast in that series really only exist in order to be Okabe’s, and by extension, the viewers’ romantic interests. This ends up sort of limiting their ability for character growth because at the end of the day, they all have to remain available and receptive to Okabe’s advances. As a result, Luka can never really call Okabe out for mistreating her because the writers won’t risk making her route or subplot unappealing. The same goes for plenty of other series trans characters find themselves in, and it shows. So many of them are either smug tricksters there to tease viewers or utterly submissive waifs, and often lack development beyond what’s necessary to get otaku motors running.

Since Moyashimon doesn’t use that kind of restrictive casting structure, the author is able to untie Kei’s sense of self-worth from how Sawaki feels about her and allow the romance subplot to take a back seat while the cast works on their various projects. As a result, she ends up being more independent than most other trans characters and her self-confidence is more genuine. She’s designed from the ground up to be a more complete character, and it makes her inclusion in the main story as well as her subplot with Sawaki feel organic.

on the other hand, as punlich​ pointed out in their post, the series does take a couple passes at introducing characters that seem to be designed with the intent of giving the reader an outlet to vent their sexual frustration around kei, particularly marie and madoka. the former is frequently referenced within the work as being a cis palette swap of kei, and madoka is another of itsuki’s proteges who begins insisting that she’s going to marry sawaki shortly after she’s introduced and receives little characterization beyond that. Marie ends up being a strong character in her own right, but the work probably would’ve been better off if they’d given her basically any other design.

at least in my reading of the work, neither is really taken seriously as a preferable alternative pairing to kei/sawaki, since marie ends up being more into kei than sawaki in the end, and madoka just makes sawaki uncomfortable more often than not. it’s a clear step up from works like steins;gate, re:zero, blend-s, or oregairu, where the trans or GNC character is the one who’s never taken seriously to the point of being a joke inclusion more than anything. still, it’s irritating that the creators would feel the need to include that sort of character, given how they’re usually pretty good about not harem-izing their cast.

uh, and speaking of that, fuck most of volume 11. the central plotline for that section is that the school holds a beauty pageant for the cast, which is, uh, wildly out of character for the series to say the least. it’s to the point where I’m inclined to suspect some form of executive meddling. like maybe they were gonna get dropped due to lack of readership and the brass told the creative team to do a dumb fanservice arc or something. they talk in a sidebar about how they changed editors around the start of this arc, so I have a hunch that has something to do with it?  I guess only they would know, though. it’s not like I can read any interviews or anything lol.

there’s still good content in there, and like I mentioned earlier, it’s when kei starts to really dominate a lot of the screen time, which is a big plus. it’s just dumb and out of place.

I also kind of found the conclusion to kei and sawaki’s “will they, won’t they” subplot really unfulfilling. namely, there really isn’t a conclusion to it at all. at the end, it’s clear that kei’s finally become comfortable with her attraction to sawaki, but sawaki is still kinda hesitant about going anywhere serious with someone he’s been friends with since forever. and like, I can get that, it’s sort of a natural aspect of where that arc would have to go, it’s just a frustrating note to end on. it seems likely that they would get together in the future, at least. (and that’s why you should read my fanfics!)

One thing I really liked about the ending section is sawaki comes up with some proactive uses for his superpower. for most of the series, it’s just a vehicle for ishikawa to exposit about his fascination with microbiology and fermented cuisine, which works great with the lower-key tone the series went for. still, the ways he uses it at the end are pretty clever, and it would’ve been neat to see him go on to use it in other ways. It’s frustrating that one of the uses he comes up with involves doing mouth-to-mouth with madoka, however.

I kind of get the feeling that the series got cut short because a lot of plot threads get addressed and tied up really quickly and sloppily in the last four or five chapters, while a ton of others just sit there. idk if it was a popularity thing, or if ishikawa decided to go all-in on maria the virgin witch, or some other factor, but I guess that’s kind of the nature of serial fiction. it just goes on as long as the creators and publishers are engaged with it, and then it’s over and they all move onto something else.

I’m being pretty hard on the ending portions of the series, but honestly pretty much everything not directly related to the beauty pageant or madoka is really solid. I’m just laying it all out there so nobody gets caught off-guard by the jankiness more than anything.

For one reason or another, moyashimon really struck a chord with me, and it’s kind of hard to put into words why. A big part of it is that kei is a character that I feel a sort of kinship with, which is a rare occurrence as a trans person. She feels like a real person that I’d meet through a message board or discord lobby. The rest of the cast has shades of that as well- the students feel like people I could have met in school, and itsuki harkens back to aspects of professors I’ve had, from his weird sense of humor to his rather alarming past working for the military. It’s easy for me to subconsciously insert myself into their fictional friend group. I guess it’s kind of like how people tend to engage with redlettermedia or ensemble let’s play channels like game grumps or super best friends play. Reading about the gang’s antics confers a sense of belonging that I’m perpetually starving for.

Another aspect of it is that it’s just fun to indulge in someone else’s hyperfixations for a while. It’s why sci-fi authors like heinlein and crichton are so influential, and why internet personalities like cgp grey or jon bois are so engaging: they’re really adept at articulating how utterly captivating some concept or ideology is to them at the moment. Somewhere between most and all of what ishikawa has to say about food and microbiology goes directly over my head, but the passion he has for those topics is readily apparent in every jargon-infested, chart-saturated debate he has his characters get into, and I love it. In that sidebar he goes on about his relationship to his editors, he mentions that the top boy editor chewed him out a couple times for basically trying to sneak a textbook into the magazine. It ends up being compelling based on passion alone, even if I only really internalized a fifth of what he actually had to say.

Is moyashimon for you? Ultimately I don’t think it’s really for anyone besides ishikawa himself. But if you’re at all like me, chances are you’ll fall in love with this bizarre and charming edutainment series anyway. If any of this sounds even remotely interesting to you, I can’t recommend checking it out highly enough.

[boundbyhonour]

Magical Victims Unit Tidbits

I’ve been meaning to jot down a few things for a long ass while, so guess who’s just not getting around to it. Anyway, this is for my modern verse plotted out with @youareaservant.

Similar to the Native Americans, elves live in their own sectors with their own laws. They’re still, of course, subject to the overhead laws of the United States, but for the most part, unless there’s some huge infringement, they’re left to their own devices. It should be noted, however, that there are different sectors for different types of elves, each with their own culture and sets of laws. It isn’t unheard of for other elves or even humans to live within the different sectors, but that by no means makes it common.

Moonshadow elves are notorious for their police department -- and for good reason. Breaking laws of lower severity results in the standard jail time everyone expects, but the higher severity cases are simply treated to a house call from a police squad. Fellow Moonshadow elves simply drop off the radar. Outsiders are arrested and to be transferred as per treaties with other sectors and the New York City / United States government, however, they can’t control if a particularly rowdy inmate happens to get to the criminal in question before they can be moved. ( Yes, the police are trained assassins. Just follow their laws and you’ll be fine. )

Police members begin training right out of high school, and finish around the same time a tradition member of a police force would graduate from the academy: around 22 to 23 years of age. It’s largely considered a hereditary position ( meaning most whose ancestors weren’t police and or assassins are refused entry ) but every now and again, if the applicant’s skill is high enough, and exception is made. That doesn’t, however, mean such officers are treated the same after graduation, and most almost never surpass basic ranks.

Runaan himself was from one such assassin family, and so entered into the academy on time and without trouble. It was, however, not something his aunt had wanted for him; she’d groomed him to join her among the sector officials, but the day of his graduation, he announced his acceptance into the academy. His has been a particularly regimented life up until that point, and it was one of the few things he’d really gotten to choose for himself.

Moonshadow elves are also known for being staunch traditionalists -- which translates into their officers being versed in both ancient and modern combat. Runaan himself knows how to fight with dual swords, a bow, and the standard issue handgun. Always expect him to have far more weapons on his person than seems reasonable.

They are also extremely harsh in their endurance and skill requirements, and everyone must pass parkour regimes or be kicked from the academy.

Runaan was and remains one of the only Moonshadow elves transferred from their sector, as most CO’s see them as too violent to be able to handle reasonably. Since he was fresh out of the academy and typically considered mild-mannered, however, he was moved to fill holes in the NYPD forces and immediately partnered with the other black sheep of the force: the dark mage Viren. The two worked pretty harmoniously, and for lack of any other officers with the stomach to work with them, the two are kept partnered for the entirety of Runaan’s career.

A couple of years prior to the default era ( present year ) usually portrayed, ( so about 2017, and after about 20 years on the job ) an incident occurred while he and his partner were hunting down a rogue dark mage. The resulting confrontation incurred a curse spreading up his right arm for which the only fix was to amputate it up to the bicep on site or loose his life. During his recovery, he is forcibly retired from the force, and very shortly thereafter, Viren quits. The two begin a private eye business, with Runaan sticking mostly to the office side of things.

Runaan’s prosthetic is a personal invention of Viren’s, and is, very naturally therefore, a piece of ingenious dark magic whose full list of uses Runaan himself likely doesn’t remember on a typical day. ( Frankly he’s more than happy just to have a working arm again. )

He and Viren have been dating for about 8 - 9 years, but have been deeply rooted in each other’s lives for much longer. As such, they are each a second [or third] parent to the other’s child[ren]. And by this point, Runaan considers Claudia and Soren just as much his children as Viren’s.

Runaan’s hobbies are taking care of the cat ( named Chunk ) he got for Rayla, but instead bonded with him, stringed instruments ( primarily guitar ), piano, and to the surprise of most, video gaming. For his part, he tends to stick with Nintendo games, and will repeatedly play through each one until he’s figured out a great deal of exploits, and can complete a playthrough in an hour. And no, he’s never seen a single speedrun video in his life.

He smokes on occasion. Typically with Viren, occasionally by himself.