#versus jakob waiting all that time... nothing but waiting..

[mtkanna]

while i'm here: Jakob Ingold Teeth. what's the deal with em

so. none of the narzissenkreuz documents have a specific time frame on them. the closest we get to one is the knowledge that basil elton fought elynas during or immediately after the cataclysm 500 years ago, meaning everyone from the institute was born pre-cataclysm. this also gives us an idea of when the siege of poisson took place (also pre-cataclysm.) seymour says he was dormant for approx. 493 years, so there's roughly seven years between the cataclysm and the explosion within elynas that kills mary-ann and damages seymour.

But What About The Rest. there isn't a single date or even a rough estimate of time passing, and most of the documents are from rene, who we know grew increasingly paranoid and manic as he did his research, so any timeframe he gave would be... confusing, probably.

we don't know when things happened, which is a problem. we also don't know how old anyone is, which is a problem. and it's not like we can just guess.

mary-ann, alain, jakob and rene were all younger than eighteen while they were in the narzissenkreuz institute. alain was a child prodigy and considered able enough to work in a laboratory with an assisstant; though this doesn't tell us much, as we know there are workforce shortages because of the cataclysm. rene and mary-ann are given no identifying features for their age.

But Jakob. jakob. there are a few inferences we can make for him.

at the time of the trip to the vourukasha oasis, jakob only had three adult teeth. if we're to take that at face value, that places him anywhere between eight and ten. but can we really trust that? at this point, he's already been transformed, so we can assume his physiology isn't like a regular human's. rene and jakob have the same bodily composition, and rene has all of his adult teeth. most people have lost their baby teeth by the time they're twelve, but they can last until later.

which begs the question: Do Abyssal Beings Have Teeth?

some do. kind of. one of the rewards for childe's weekly fight is a tooth; this is actually from celestial voyager, but it's abyssal and fully-developed, so even though it's a sea creature we can assume Tooth Development is possible. which means loss and pushing in of new teeth. or they could just regrow their teeth, because if i'm reading into this right jakob's body has a composition kind of similar to elynas', which is similar to durin's, and we can pick up durin's teeth every other day.

so. we can estimate rene and jakob's age, now! rene is anywhere from twelve to fourteen at most, and jakob is likely eight to ten. which is where i throw a spanner in the works--Fucked Up Teeth Genes. while it makes sense for tooth presence to be used to rationalise maturity--nobody in the institute at this point is an adult save for lyris, and rene's very wary of the other adults around him--and be seen as a measure of experience, it is also entirely possible that jakob ingold formerly baker has a family history of just Not Having Enough Teeth, and i for one think that's the funniest option for why we're doing Teeth Measurements for aging.

this doesn't change that we don't have ages for mary-ann or alain. i'd say that alain and rene are around the same age, mary-ann's a year younger than them, and jakob's the youngest of their group. but we just don't know enough to say anything for certain

[theeeveetamer]

Extended Three Houses Thoughts

I’m about two chapters from the end of the Blue Lions route but I do have some extended thoughts on the game that I wanted to type up and share before I get back to it. Spoilers below the cut, in case that wasn’t obvious.

So first off I want to say that I have far more positive things to say about this game than negatives, but I do think this game has some negatives. These aren’t in any particular order I just kind of typed them as I thought of them.

I feel like a lot of what this game does was in direct response to Fates. There was a lot of swinging the pendulum back in very noticeable ways, and for the most part I think that’s a good thing.

The seriously slimmed down cast, for one. I was kind of surprised and a little worried when I first picked up the game and I found out that each house only had about seven core characters, but I like it. Fates had too many characters, and most of the time they ended up being redundant. You had, what, eight fliers in Revelation including children, with at least five more characters potentially able to become fliers through their normal promotion paths? When, at most, you probably needed three. And some were significantly better than others, so obviously you went with those and the rest kind of rotted away in your barracks.

With Three Houses each character feels important. Since you can now train basically any character to be anything it also means you can have some fill specific niches. You can have Sylvain be a sword cavalry unit, and Dimitri be a lance cavalry unit, and Ingrid an axe cavalry unit if you want, drop their breaker skills on them, and they can all be useful and important on the same team.

The supports also feel more meaningful. Don’t get me wrong there’s still a lot of re-hashing of already covered territory (basically all of Dedue’s supports involve either cooking or the fact that he’s from Duscur, most of Ingrid’s revolve around wanting to be a knight or marriage contracts, etc.) but the fact that there’s less of them makes this feel like less of a problem. And it’s nice that, now, they don’t try to force every conversation into a C-B-A-S format. Some characters only have C-B, others have C-B-A-A+, etc. I think it makes sense. Not every character will be as close as others, and not all support conversation threads need three parts to be meaningful and impactful. Some need more, some need less. Trying to squish them in or stretch them out always hurt more than it helped.

That said, I’m a little disappointed there’s no match-making to be had. Everyone in this game gets brother-zoned/sister-zoned so fast it’s kind of comical. There are a few A supports that hint at feelings but you can’t actually make them S-support. Also, a character might indicate feelings for more than one other character in their A supports so it’s not definitive. Maybe there’s more once the game is finished, but within the actual main story there’s nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, it makes sense to me. As young teenagers in school there wouldn’t really be any reason for any of them to get married. I thought that might change after the time skip but it doesn’t. I don’t necessarily hate that it’s gone, it’s just a feature I enjoyed fucking around with in Awakening and Fates (and I was looking forward to, hopefully, more gay representation. I was really hoping that they might allow characters to be gay for each other and not just the Avatar character, especially since they included so many lesbian options this time around. But alas, maybe next game).

The exclusion of child characters was a good call. Barring the fact that the exclusion of S-Supports would automatically exclude child characters, I still think it was a good call. Unless the game had a significant time skip (15+ years) then they just wouldn’t have made sense. They worked in Awakening because the central narrative included time travel, but they didn’t work at all in Fates. The narrative only had tentative connections to the “multi-verse/multiple realities” thing. And, let’s be real, it’s fucking weird to have kids walking around that are the same damn age as their parents (and parents that didn’t look a day older than 17). In Fates they’d just needlessly ballooned up the cast of a game that was already way too big anyways. If they did it then they needed to do it like Genealogy, where the main cast was essentially replaced by their children instead of strapped onto the game alongside them.

I was worried that Fate’s poor handling of them meant the series was doomed to include them regardless of relevance. Glad I was wrong on that one.

The calendar progression is pretty cool, as is walking around the monastery. It was pretty fun to run around and figure out where each character liked spending their time, which characters interacted with which, etc. I’m always a fan of a little flavor text and having each character say a few lines about current events was really cool and helped give each one a little more personality. The more structured pace of things makes sense for the school environment. Though it does take out some of the urgency when the mission is “FIND FLAYN IMMEDIATELY” and then you have to wait until the end of the month anyways to do it. But for other things, like a mission to march on enemy territory, it makes sense (your entire army isn’t ready to go immediately, there’s preparations that need done).

The designs of the characters themselves were pretty well done. I especially appreciate how they toned down a lot of the sexualization that Fates became pretty famous for. And considering basically all of these characters are between 15-18 all I can say is THANK GOD. Even their aged up versions don’t seem too bad, though I’ve only really seen the Lions (because I was dumb and didn’t recruit very aggressively).

I’m still NOT a fan of this “silent” protagonist thing. It just makes some of the cut scenes and dialogue sections feel really disconnected and awkward. From what I can tell a lot of your dialogue choices don’t particularly matter, anyways. You only have two options, and for the most part they have the same meaning (”You shouldn’t talk that way!” versus “I wish you would calm down.”)  and the character you’re talking to responds the same way regardless of your choice. Or you pick between two different options (”Tell me about the officer’s academy” and “Tell me about the church”) and the characters proceed to explain both anyways.

I think the biggest issues I have with this come from the fact that the game itself is fully voice acted. I think Three Houses fell into the same problem that Breath of the Wild did. Dropping a character that never speaks aloud into a cast of characters that are fully and beautifully voiced feels unnatural. I think they had two options here: Either go back to what they did with Fates (No full voice acting, just some lines spoken here and there) or they needed to have Byleth fully voice acted. After Echoes did full voice acting I really don’t think they would have been able to go back without some serious backlash. 

Personally I would have preferred it if Byleth were fully voice acted but they got rid of some of the dialogue “options”. They don’t feel like a meaningful feature, it’s just a thin veneer so they can say they had dialogue options, because that’s what every other game on the market is doing. Part of me wonders if they did this as a response to the Corrin hate after Fates. It’s hard to hate a character when you pick all of their dialogue, right? If that is the case, then they clearly didn’t understand why people hated Corrin so much.

Overall I don’t really feel any connection or attachment to Byleth. That might just be me, though. The three “lords” of the game are clearly meant to be the main focus, especially when it comes to character development. Maybe I’ll change my mind on that after I beat the game.

That said, thank fuck they toned down the avatar hero worship. Circling back a little bit, I just feel like the character of Byleth is handled much better than Corrin. It’s kind of unfortunate that Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses kind of have this avatar hero-worship vibe to them but if we’re going to have to live with it then I guess I’ll explain myself.

In Awakening the hero worship worked. Robin was, essentially, a brilliant tactician that brought a lot of success to Ylisse’s army. There were at least a few characters that were initially wary of Robin, but they were treated respectfully by the story and it’s presented as though they are just exercising a healthy amount of caution.

In Three Houses the hero worship works. It feels much less like worship and more like genuine respect and admiration. Byleth is a professor and a mentor to these young people so it makes sense. There are a few that were initially skeptical of him/her (which is totally justified in the story because Byleth appears to be barely older than them with zero teaching experience) but they come around after Byleth’s skill is demonstrated to them throughout Part 1. The only character I’d say seems to blindly worship Byleth is Rhea, and that’s justified because she clearly knows something about the main character that no one else does.

In Fates the hero worship was excessive. Corrin as a character is nothing really special. He/She isn’t particularly intelligent or particularly skilled at anything. The most you could say is that Corrin is probably supposed to be charismatic (since every character falls at their feet the second they meet) but Corrin doesn’t feel charismatic to me. They have multiple characters that seem to exist for the sole purpose of worshiping the ground they walk on (Camilla, Ryoma, Sylas, Jakob, Felicia, etc.), to the point that I felt it ruined otherwise interesting characters (Camilla mainly). Any character that doesn’t immediately worship Corrin is either forced to come around, brainwashed by the big bad and turned into a villain, or just wanted to love Corrin so much but circumstances made it impossible so they had to be evil. I could make an entire post about how much I hate Corrin but I’ll stop it here since this is supposed to be about Three Houses.

So considering where they were coming from... Byleth is fine. I don’t know if I like them more than Robin, but I definitely like them more than Corrin. I’ll feel more definitively about them after I’ve finished the game and played some of the other routes.

They re-use maps in this game. A lot. I noticed it pretty quickly about five chapters in, but IMO it’s a serious problem that this game never quite seems to shake. If the battle is in a city, they pick one of two city maps. If it’s in a forest they’ve got one of three forest maps. And I’m not complaining about Auxiliary battles because I only did a handful of those (and they always reuse maps for those, even in Fates and Awakening). I’m talking about main story and paralogue mission maps.

Sometimes they have a unique map (like the tomb/catacombs) but it invariably comes back later for a paralogue or another main mission. Sometimes it comes back less than two chapters after it first appeared (the monastery fight right before the time skip and then defending the monastery two chapters after the time skip.) I could understand if they re-used maps across different routes (because Fates did the same thing), but so far I’ve only been in one route and it’s the same maps over and over.

Finally, I have no idea how I’m going to survive playing this game two (three?) more times. I mean, I like it. It’s fun. But it took me like 40 hours just to complete one route I have no idea how I’m going to do all three (possibly four, since I’ve been told the eagles route can be different depending on if you side with the church or not).

[rhetoricfemme]

Put Me Back Together | Shingeki no Kyojin | Scenic World AU

Rating: G | Words:1186 

Just a bit of world-building for Scenic World, featuring Jean, Bertholt and Reiner, plus their parents. :)

If Susan Kirschstein has figured out anything throughout the years, it’s that life comes with a wicked learning curve.

It’s sharper at some points than others, and though she’s felt the sting at various times, Susan has always come out ahead of the aftermath. Takes note of the difference in feeling between resting periods and balancing the curve, be it akin to a finely serrated edge or the jagged leftovers of violently broken glass.

The blowback she’d received the first few months after verbally opposing her family’s politics. Fearlessly defending her positions at college, because nothing could be more challenging than successfully articulating herself to a barrage of old guard conservatives, and not only coming out on the other side, but coming out while remaining loved and embraced.

Then there’d been finding out what it’s like to crush on a campus boy who insists on challenging her causes from amid the branches of a fucking tree.

“It’s not a bad idea you have there.” He’d called down, amused. A wide, lazy smile with a mop of mouse brown hair and lanky limbs. “But tell me why.”

“That tree isn’t tall enough for your ego. Come talk to me at my table, else I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

Realizing that same boy—who goes by Jakob—not only means well, but is obnoxiously curious, and a bit cut-throat where his own ambitions are concerned. And then falling in love with him.

She’s simply grateful for the breathing space she’s blessed with between rounds. No matter how small.

All of that pales in comparison to the touch-and-go nerves that accompany becoming a parent.

The daunting task of not simply caring for such a small and precious person, but untangling the timeless mess that is parental facts versus misnomer. How to not test one another’s patience while figuring out this new version of partnership. Finding out there will be years of well-meaning IOUs for the perpetual give-and-take.

Realizing only in retrospect that the precious habits their baby has taken to will one day become a thing of the past. At least his stubborn ways and bottomless heart will certainly see this little boy through his lifetime.

It’s when Susan’s second go at parenthood arrives, some twelve years later to not one, but two additional children, that she is all at once completely lost and entirely in charge of her world. It’s of little consequence that she couldn’t have been present for the first part of their lives; nor does Susan care that they happen to each be a full year older than her first-born.

“Jean was all new, and that was insane enough, Jakob! What the hell are we supposed to do now?!”

Strong, comforting hands rub from Susan’s shoulders to her elbows and back again. He stands still while this force of nature leans into his chest for refuge.

“What’d you say to me the other day?”

“’Fuck it, we’ll figure it out cause these boys are mine.’”

“Well, then. There you go.”

She says nothing, but thinks back on the last year-plus of dinnertime visits and overnights, unable to pinpoint when the sleepovers turned into quiet requests for them to stay the entire weekend. Not quite sure when she first heard Bertholt sobbing with night terrors, bolt upright in the trundle bed that tucks beneath Jean’s bedframe.

Jakob had beat her to the door as they’d rushed into the room to find Jean horrified, Reiner climbing into the bottom bunk with him and whispering that he’d told him this might eventually happen, and all they could do was wait for it to be over.

“You’re off about one detail, though.” Jakob squeezes Susan’s shoulders and brings her back into the moment, whispers into her hair.

“What.”

“Our boys, Susan. They’re ours.”

Almost two years after the boys had officially come home, more often than not, life was delightfully low key. Even if Susan was still waiting for the tension in Reiner’s shoulders to dissipate when he thought no one was looking. It was enough to see and feel that they were getting there.

So it was, in the minutes before the sun had fully come up on a weekday morning, that Susan could hear the conspiratorial whisper of her boys downstairs, standing by the front door.

“Where is it Bertl, lemme see it.” Jean’s voice was urgent and full of curiosity.

“Hang on.”

Susan inched toward the balustrade, listening as Bertholt’s backpack slipped to the floor, careful to stay out of sight while getting a look at whatever her boys were up to.

“Dad’s letting me drive us to school,” Reiner warned. “And I say we’re not leaving until we all have one on.”

“Quit pretending you’re a badass Reiner,” Bertholt spoke, preoccupied with lifting the hem of his navy blue sweater. “You’re just getting in the hours for your permit. There.”

Underneath his sweater, Bertholt wore a lime green t-shirt, a band logo emblazoned across the chest.

“Yes!” Jean stood with his arms crossed, all smiles as Bertholt had made good on his promise. “Today is the first official Weezer Thursday!”

Likewise, Jean wore a ringer tee bearing the Weezer band logo, over a long-sleeve thermal.

Satisfied, Reiner loosened more of his button down to reveal his own band tee bearing two masked female superheroes across his chest. “Vintage.”

“I’m telling dad you called his shirt old.”

“Not at all what I said!”

Susan watched on in wondrous disbelief for another moment, before the three of them finally made their way out the front door. Pivoting on her heel, she headed for her own closet in search of what to wear for her own impending day of work.

Something she wouldn’t have to think too hard about, or spend half the day wanting to slip out of when she got home. It was true that having children of a certain age meant she could get away with more in terms of how she spent her time.

Still. That didn’t mean she had any intentions of spending more time than she deemed necessary fretting over menial things.

Looking out a bedroom window, Susan watched the driveway down below. Sitting in the passenger seat was her husband. Fast approaching twenty years after she’d dismissed him and his presumptuous attitude from the branches of a tree, she now smiled at him, watching while he passed one teenager a set of keys and the others bugged them from the backseat of the car.

Jakob had stopped climbing trees years ago, though Susan was glad his too-bold nature had remained. The same part of the man she once found annoying had time and again proven the same trait that so often pushed all of them through.

It was evident within the very moment, as Jean and Berhtolt made annoyed faces from the backseat while their father revealed his own Weezer shirt beneath his work clothes. Reiner, on the other hand, ignored them all. He was too busy perfecting a Y-turn in their driveway to pay attention to his brothers, much less the discreetly proud grin on his father’s face.