#that should cover it? i think? i tried

[adelle-ein]

engage plot thoughts

Finished Engage, here's my plot thoughts, full spoilers for entire game (my spoiler-light "full review" will be along shortlyish)

So tbh I don't think this is as bad and weak a plot as people were hyping it up to be. In theory the basic idea is actually really good! The issue is like…pacing and how the screentime was divided up. We spend wayyy too long wandering from country to country fighting bandits and then everything of significance is crammed into five chapters.

The plot tries to love its drama but fails to build things up well enough. Veyle only cameos in the early game as a generic Sweet Young Girl, so the big reveal — while it would have been predictable no matter what — just doesn't hit emotionally. Veyle in general just needed more time as a proper deuteragonist. Maybe have Veyle and Alear do a couple solo maps together? They get cornered by Corrupted and fight them off together (with Veyle using a different class and weapons of course), trying to get the player actually attached? Have Veyle hang out with the whole gang in a few longer cutscenes so she feels like part of the team and not a random aside? Maybe have Alear open up to her about Lumera so they have a special connection with her? I just wish they'd done something here. As it is, the only reason to pity Veyle is because she's a young kid being abused, and while of course that's something, she plays such a big plot role and we don't even get to know her as a person. There were definitely better ways, imo, to pull this off. Letting her join your army and leave again intermittently pre-reveal (a la Ninian, maybe) would have improved things.

Getting to the meat of the plot…I very much like that Alear is an adopted Divine Dragon and that this is treated like a good and legitimate thing, to the point of them even gaining physical characteristics of one. If we go through with a real world metaphor, then Lumera loved them enough that they became her "true" family, and that works very well. FE only really ever does found family stuff with its side characters, preferring to focus on Divine True Sacred Bloodlines, and having Alear as a Fell Dragon who became Divine through the power of love and wanting to be "a good dragon" is actually quite nice and helps them feel a little less like a Robin retread. The issue that is unfortunately there is effectively zero buildup to this revelation. Other than Veyle's sibling obviously being Alear, we see no connection between them and Sombron. Alear has a single flashback to 1000 years ago in an early chapter and never again until the reveals start being dropped…in the last handful of chapters. While the single time travel chapter is kinda bizarre, it's a good step from a character perspective, and I wish there was more of that. Why not show more of how they became close to Lumera and how she adopted them? When did they defect, how did that go for then, how did they start calling her their mother? Interspersing flashbacks or hell, even more time travel (as silly as it would have been) throughout the story would have fixed so much of this game's lacking emotional core and let the plot actually work. As it is, it's a good concept that we see barely anything of.

I do disagree with the people insisting that Alear shouldn't have been so upset when Lumera died because they barely know her — they barely know anyone, Lumera has been kind to them and they know she's their mother, they're mourning the possibility of what they lost as much as the actual loss. I dunno, obviously I've never been in that situation, but even if I barely remembered my mother due to total amnesia I think I would still be really upset if she was murdered in front of me and especially if she had died due to using up all her health and strength to protect me. Personally. Feels a bit silly to be defending something like this but yeah. Now I do think her death scene was a bit long and dramatic when a quick sudden death is pretty much always more emotionally effecting, but that's a separate issue. Regardless, the plot hinges so much on Lumera and her relationship with Alear, and we see hardly any of it for some reason. Lumera simply needed a lot more screentime, even posthumously. Hell, let her live for the first half or so of the game, THEN get killed off. It still would have been predictable, but at least we would have gotten to know her.

Alear as the thirteenth Emblem makes sense in a meta way, but it does make me wish that they provided SOME kind of lore as to why and how the Emblems exist. The implication seems to be that the Emblems were created in death separate from their bodies, or when their bodies were already gone? And that all of their worlds exist out there, with Sombron intending to invade them? At the very last minute Marth drops a "btw Emblems are not the same as the actual heroes" but that's pretty much all we get. Idk I'm not looking for a Zelda timeline for all the FE games, I would just like…some kind of lore explanation as to what is up with Emblems and creating new ones. As well as the idea of the new protagonist joining the old ones as an Emblem works on a meta level, we just kinda needed more lore and buildup to make it work. My usual refrain. Personally liked the idea that Elyos was created *by* the rings or is somehow linked to them, because of the way its lore feels like a mashup and homage to so many previous games but…that probably wasn't the intention. Who knows. Fire Emblem. I like that our protagonist *is* the literal Fire Emblem though. Last time it was their *waves hand* blood power, now it's just straight up them.

The Four Hounds show up way too often and only do things in their last few appearances, which is tiring. Constructing them to be semi-likeable from the beginning, and maybe not fighting them and having them easily walk away just fine over and over, would have really improved everything with that subplot. I see what the writers were going for. But they whiffed it.

Alear is fine. They are kinda forgettable and a total dumbass for the first half of the plot, but they do change and grow and become more assertive, which works. They are an actual character, unlike Byleth. And they don't do stupid awful sometimes-evil things and get patted on the back for them a la Corrin. That is all I ask really.

Basically, a mess, but better pacing with more screentime for Veyle and Lumera and more flashbacks on Alear's end could have made it a really nice mess. Alas. I do think, overall, this was a simple but good and heartfelt concept for a plot. The execution was just poor, as usual for FE, and because the plot is so simple it can't hide what a mess it is the way other FE games often do. But I like it better than SOV (I like cat food commercials better than SOV…)

[ohbluesky]

“Get it?” the man said, his snarl trying to morph into a grin.

this was either the most iconic or the most absurd shit i ever read so i had no choice but to draw it

[bookrat]

Pretty sure my little man has a case of abundism affecting the marble tabby coat under all those white splotches

[worstloki]

people just ignore Thor was a feral child, huh? like his life goal was probably to demolish another race at age 12 and he was probably begging to go to war and attempted to murder their father for not letting him via telepathy that he didn't have.

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

someone in the comments said they wanted to see the adepti mentioned for the attack on celestia, so here’s the crew

[shurara-gundan]

Stuff..... after thinking of this section i have also decided that another one reassuring the readers that they wont catch any of this stuff is needed

[swiftpolls]

[iknowwhereyousleepatnight]

went to go clothes shopping today and i got the cuntiest misa-esque dress for like $8 at the thrift store <3

[silenthillbunni]

🦷

[r0semultiverse]

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake finale spoilers without context

[marypsue]

I freely admit that this post is more propaganda to try to get people to consider using a book journal than me actually believing that People In General keep book journals, but consider: keeping a book journal.

[liapher]

Kommt Mausi raus?! (1995)

„Du bist draußen, du bist auch nie wirklich drinnen gewesen!“

[franeridan]

no but talking about the beginning of the kaido fight i dunno if it's just a personality of the characters involved sort of thing but i love the difference between the way lu zoro and law interact with each other vs with kidd and killer, there's an ease to their working off each other that's missing from how they move around kidd n killer and you would say it's normal since they've spent months together by then and all three of them fought doflamingo together already, but i love that oda keeps these things in mind when writing dynamics sm

[mishy-mashy]

I lost the OG post where I was talking about the EX novel 4

Anyway, I got the book and haven't even read it straight because I'm too excited to do that, and

Spoilers.

- Reinhard really just had to blink and everyone died, huh...

- Groovy Gumlet is cute

- Julius is cute. He's also the MC here

- I thought that when the wiki said they didn't show Reinhard VS Cecilus, but cut to the aftermath, they were exaggerating for the sake of the wiki summary... they literally did this. Just said something like 'Begin!' and we cut to Cecilus covered in cuts

- Translations are a bit strange (Cecilus = Cecils, Ia = Ire, In = Innes, Vollachia = Volakia...)

- Cecilus is good at blending in to the point Ferris (a demihuman) didn't notice him, but Julius still happened to through magic

- Groovy makes an appearance screaming and flying through the sky and I like it. There's just a distant "YAAAAAAAHHHHH" from the forest

- Julius is really kind and compassionate here. He's also extremely perceptive of everything that I was surprised and half-scared because how???

- Cecilus is literally that guy who comes into work late, a disheveled mess

Vincent: Where are your two swords?

Cecilus, who arrived late: At the blacksmiths. I was late, so when I got out of bed, I just grabbed the two first swords I saw, and—

Is literally the gist of one of their conversations

- Julius is cute

- Cecilus almost got mistaken for a woman at first glance

- I like Groovy a lot. He swears like a sailor, is super cute, walks around with weapons galore, and his name is GROOVY

Like. Awesome puffballs.

- Vincent refers to Cecilus as a thing, talking about how he had absolutely no situational awareness from the start, being completely out of the loop the ENTIRE TIME

- Is Bordeaux buff or something under those old clothes??

- THE ART.

- Ferris's feminine appearance is commented on

- Reinhard wears a Collar of Submission for those who are into that

[hawnks]

the city is iced out and I’ve been stuck inside for two days; cabin fever is setting in; I am developing opinions on the idol industry

[iamthepulta]

my poor advisor. I feel like a toddler madly scribbling dark and angry scenes in black crayon unable to focus on anything meaningful. I've just wasted 6 hr of my life and now I need to go to class and not waste more of my life and I don't want to do that either, even though this is objectively one of the best classes I'll be taking my whole career.