#support: samto

[dazzling-thunderclap]

N-Normal? Really?

Is that--is that even possible?

Something twists inside of Gatrie--like a young girl twists an apple-stem, singing the alphabet to find her one true love's initial.

In the next breath, his eyes are welling with fresh tears. They burn him, all that soft tissue, and his breath is hitching in his throat--!

"Heh," he forces out a half-laugh, "y-you must be teasing."

But Samto is... handsome. Even if that's not something Gatrie would have ever said, even if it's not something he'd ever let himself think...

It's true. And there are--there have been plenty of true things that Gatrie never really understood. That he's just figured out how to live with.

Can a man like Samto... can men like Samto's plenty of comrades... can they be something Gatrie can just live with?

He doesn't know. He sniffles. He crams all manner of acrid memories back down his throat.

Gatrie lifts his beer and swallows it all in one shot. He wipes away a tear.

"I... don't think I want to be at the tavern anymore," he says, wretchedly.

"Will you walk me home?"

a million things i can say — but baby, i'll wait some longer

[emblemxeno]

Being a little bit of a Fe Gameplay Centrist but I feel like while yes it can be very fun to break away from the meta optimal gameplay and play with whatever units you want, or challenge yourself to use the worse units, across the older games of the series, the units typically considered bad and unoptimal are meant to be the active punishment for losing a unit.

"Oh you lost Gilliam, here's a new Amour Knight, her name is Wendy and she's level 1 so you have to work to get her back up to the level of the rest of your army, enjoy the consolation prize"

This also applies to the Mercenary recruited at the same time as Wendy who was also in the video that started the discussion. He's a worse Dieck because he's meant to replace a dead Dieck.

I think the way that most people play the games nowadays has shifted from how the game was originally designed and balanced around. Most people getting into FE, especially the older games, are likely adults who are more skilled at the games than when the games first started being played by children and teenagers. Most players are unlikely to actually lose units outside of bad luck or are likely to reset the chapter to keep a unit, which inherently makes replacement units not only statistically worse but also mentally worse to train up and use from a casual perspective.

"Why would I train up Wendy if Gilliam is a higher level and doing the Armour Knight role just fine"

This isn't even getting into the actual inherent weaknesses of certain classes, Armour Knights often don't actually have that much better defense than Mercs or Cavs to make up for their lower speed and movement, in the GBA games there aren't a lot of maps that allow them or Archers to really play to their strengths.

I can't speak for everyone but if I'm playing one of the older games, I'm going in with an intent to use specific characters, I kinda know who my endgame team is going to be. I may be choosing to use Samto but I'm also able to recognize that Samto as a character is meant to be "Navarre but if he was a loser" if someone else had a full army and was asking me who they should train looking for advice, I wouldn't in good faith say Samto when Navarre is right there.

The thing about every character that's not the first to be recruited in their class is they're intentionally designed to be compared to the first, and they will almost always lose that comparison. Either because they have worse stats, or a lower Weapon Rank or no Support progress because the older unit has been in the army for a few chapters.

I think this is something that the modern(Awakening onward) do much better, we don't see many replacement units, and the ones we do get are normally the child characters who are meant to be better than their parents and customizable, which still punishes the player for losing a unit. If you want the Fujoshi you need to keep Niles alive. Other early-midgame recruits tend to be new classes or if they do share a class, it's the personal skill that defines them as unit because they're recruited at a point where the player is intended to be reclassing. Even the mid-lategame clearly meant to be Classic Mode filler characters have the clear disadvantage of having less Supports. Love Say'ri and Tiki and the Khans to death but they're clearly designed to be filler slots for a low army number.

All of this is to say that both sides are right, there's a lot of fun to play outside of the extremely optimized meta for a single player game and the FE fandom is extremely toxic and annoying but also I don't think it's wrong to look at certain replacement characters and play around with rebalancing them through a more modern lens because they'll never match up to their contemporaries because their contemporaries were supposed to be dead, something that never happens anymore.

Gilliam and Wendy are from two different games, you have made an error, therefore opinion is invalid and you are cringe /s

But anyway being serious, that is a gameplay philosophy that has come and gone and come back again over FE's lifetime. It's certainly the core of FE's design in the earlier games (I'd argue up to and including FE6 tbh, though book 2 of FE3 is a weird case), but other games kind of played with it a bit. FE8 having sprinkled trainees in various points, Radiant Dawn having a ~quirky~ vision of balance, Shadow Dragon's replacement generics, and the FE13/14 child mechanics are all variants of this same philosophy IMO.

I do agree that with every subsequent title, unit viability gets a bit more broad, though sometimes in a "anyone can be good, but these ones are best at being good" way, like how Hinata is a pretty solid unit, but he's in the same game as Corrin, Ryoma, Scarlet, Oboro, etc. Still, even with this con, I think it's healthy for there to be varying quality while still having the potential to be useable for endgame.

So yeah, there's merit to both sides. What matters most when discussing this is to just, not act like a dick lol.

Thanks for the ask!

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[fe-aesthetics]

samto/f!kris moodboard?

Of course! These two had one of the best supports in New Mystery, imo.

- Mod Kris

[dazzling-thunderclap]

And then the strange man is touching him, stoutly on the shoulder... Gatrie almost quivers with the feel of it, the certainty. Nothing like the way Theophania had touched him, always a little reticent, never quite sure it was a good idea...

Fuck, he'd tried to convince her, really gave it his all...

He sniffles. It's just the slightest bit simpler to bear, when someone's touching him like they actually want to.

Even if it is a man. Even this man, laced as he is with roguishness...

What would people think? It's not as though the tavern's empty.

But Gatrie hasn't got the heart to care. Any port in a storm, that's something people say. Right?

He's so busy tripping himself up like this, tangling his threads, that he almost misses what the roguish stranger says. Sweet things, honeyed things. Things that swirl and coil inside Gatrie's embattled chest.

Nice name. Handsome. Pretty guy like you...

The people in this pub... they can't see what's happening, the light that's flickering inside of Gatrie's body. The stranger can't see it, either. So it's okay.

Right?

Gatrie sniffles once more, shakes his head as though to clear away the storm-clouds. Half-smiles, wet and faint like the tiniest rainbow.

"You're sweet," he mumbles. "Really, I... I bet the girls go crazy for you..."

a million things i can say — but baby, i'll wait some longer

[dazzling-thunderclap]

Samto. Gatrie will remember that—it’s a dashing sort of name, well-suited to such a colorful rogue. The kind of man who mends stranger’s hearts in taverns, who lays his strong warm hand over their shoulders…

The kind of man who commands the gaze of—of everyone?

Wetly, Gatrie blinks—but even through his red eyes, their tearful ache—even now, bereaved as he is, Samto is handsome. And bold—bold eyebrows, bold jawline, bold enough to say something like that? Here, out in public?

In the pub?

Gatrie colors, though it can scarcely be seen against his ruddy, tear-stained face. He giggles, anxiously, “you mean…?”

You mean men?

His throat works. He can’t swallow, can’t go on speaking. Nothing but soft, fluttering laughter, for far too long a moment.

His heart is thrumming, sprinting, doing little flips. To think…

“Hah,” he murmurs, exhilarated, catching at the coattails of his voice. “I-I’ve never met that sort of man before…”

It’s a lie. He has. But—but here, in the world washed clean with tears, it feels new.

No, Gatrie’s never met a man like Samto. Not like this.

a million things i can say — but baby, i'll wait some longer

[dazzling-thunderclap]

A sniffle. His name feels rotten in his mouth. Can barely spit it out, what a desperate failure of a man he is. Can’t keep a woman happy. Can scarcely keep himself from cleaving to the sweet lilt of the stranger’s—the strange man’s voice.

“‘M Gatrie,” he mumbles. There’s a surname, too, but the last time he heard it was when—was when Theophania renounced it. So he doesn’t say.

Just sniffles. His hands are hot with spilt emotion—he clutches at his mug of beer to cool them.

He lifts it, and takes a sip, and grimaces. Hiccoughs—it tastes terrible, but this is what men drink when they are full of sorrow. Gatrie heaves a ponderous wet sigh.

“Only… I don’t want other girls… I want my Tiffy, my Theophania…”

Only Theophania doesn’t want me.

Gatrie stifles a sob, and shakes his head. Takes another pull at this awful, awful beer.

“She’s not even—she’s not even with some other man. It was her brother, who came and brought her home…!”

There is nothing, then, but to hunch over his beer and wail.

“She’d rather have nobody than me!”

a million things i can say — but baby, i'll wait some longer

[dazzling-thunderclap]

Gatrie lifts his head slowly, like the stem of a flower as it comes un-wilted. Like he's been watered after a long, long time--only he doesn't stop sniffling. His eyes are red like roses, like the wildflowers that he once picked for her--!

Again, Gatrie sobs; whimpers right into his savior's handsome face. But--isn't it thrilling, to have someone care what's wrong with you?

People say Gatrie is prone to hysterics. But this time, this time his world is really, honestly ending.

And someone actually cares why, which is...

"Hi," sniffs Gatrie. "Thank you... You're sweet, I just..."

The words are acrid in his throat. There's nothing but to cough them up, right here in the stranger's lap.

"My wife," he croaks, "my Theophania, she--she left me."

And he dissolves into his weeping once again.

a million things i can say — but baby, i'll wait some longer