mark_asphodel | Thirty(?) Days of Fire Emblem, Days Left Over (Reply)

Let's get this over with and off my desktop.

Day 7: Favorite Game. Pass. I haven't even played FE10 yet. All the ones I have played I like for different reasons, except FE9 which I really don't much like as of yet.

Day 12: Favorite Class. Hm. Shooters? Am I allowed to say shooters? I dunno. I like mages, cavs/pallies, and peg knights a lot. A Lot.

Day 19: Favorite Weapon. I dunno. There's no FE weapon I've fantasized about using the way I once wanted Sailor Senshi powers or my own Gundam with a beam scythe. I have to admit, I like Ephraim's Reginleif. That's a great weapon to start off with. Maybe I like it 'cause it's Ephraim's?

Day 24: Favorite Sacred Weapon. Mm. In a sense, they're all so conceptually (and often visually) similar that there's nothing that really stands out as "better" than anything else. Durandal looks ridiculous. Ragnell looks pretty ridiculous, too. Armads carries a curse. The holy weapons from Jugdral and Archanea have something sketchy going on with them. The Sword of Seals is pretty interesting, and Alm's goddess-powered Falchion is interesting. Meh. I'm just not passionate about it.

Day 26: Scene that made you go "awww." Good ending of FE5, Leaf confessing his feelings to Nanna. Adorable.

Day 28: What the next FE would be like if I designed it. Can you say "crossover time"? With ocean battles. And sea dragons. Oh yes. And a Peg Knight as the main character. Lance-using chick!Lord on a flying pony, plz.

Day 13: What character do you relate to most, and why?

...

That's an interesting question, because it's not the same thing as liking a character. I don't particularly relate to, say, Ephraim. And characters that I might gravitate toward, like the bookish magey-mages, are often too cheerful and cutesy for me to really relate. I can get inside the head of, say, Merric for the purposes of a story, but I don't look at him and go, "Oh, that's me!"

~~I admit to doing that with Lute. Actually, Lute is like a teenaged version of my mother. Scary.~~

The characters I tend to actually identify with-- and there's a scattering of them, across the gameplay classes and the various continents-- are the pragmatic ones, or at least the ones that show a passing flash of it. That's not exactly a popular trait in the kind of video game where starry-eyed idealism and empathy tend to be the hallmarks of the good guys. It's often a trait found among the antagonists. But a touch of pragmatism, of skepticism, of being able to analyze things in a rational fashion at least some of the time... that'll boost a character pretty high in my estimation.

I guess it's a little strange to say I get the warm fuzzies over characters who manage to show some level of critical-thinking skills, but it's true.