i'm sorry they put heterosexual age gap relationships in the medieval fantasy jrpg featuring two serial killers and a monarch and cai. i'm sorry they put a cool genderweird sapphic romance in the sci-fi fantasy jrpg featuring a pansexual lord and a nonbinary mc

hate to phrase it this way but i don't think IS picks a side in the """culture war""" and sticks to it. i don't think you can assign their storytelling as "woke" or "unwoke". they write what they think fits the setting and vibe and discounting it on preconceived notions is lame

within the first hour of gameplay you are shown two things: 1. text box that explicitly says mediators are sexual hermaphrodites 2. the ridiculous time and work and sacrifice that goes into a functioning mediator body like i'm sorry fortune's weave has flavor i guess??

unsure if it's because fortune's weave is a very slightly denser text than fire emblem twitter is used to but there's something about this game specifically that makes everyone forget how to read

indie game is a much, much, *much* broader label than fangame. i think you lose more by comparing an indie and a AA/A (even within the same genre) than you do by comparing a fire emblem romhack to a fire emblem game, even if just by virtue of romhacks emulating the series' style

i am speaking as someone whose two favorite eras of FE are SNES and GBA, ftr

acting like a fanwork bitches out someone's favorite high budget AAA release just invites unfavorable comparisons and breeds resentment within the community who are generally fans of the series as it exists now. if you want people to play your favorite hack you should be normal

i think there's a sense of rejection that some FE fans feel from modern entries because of the series' changing priorities. and i think it's fair to cope with that via romhacks that emulate FE as it was. but it gets to a point where people will act elitist over obscure romhacks

i need everyone to stop putting untagged fefw datamine spoilers on the tl expeditiously. come on now

i'm also thinking about moments like the cai and leda confrontation where it's framed like a beat in leda's personal arc regardless of which route you're playing, specifically because cai's role in the greater narrative is to be a contrasting opposition to the darkness around him

(see: all of verdant wind)

it's really juicy to me that fortune's weave isn't afraid to make a specific lord the Main Character(tm) for a story beat when it makes narrative sense for it to happen. there are lots of bits in three houses that felt like this

at first i thought it would be theodora due to some pacing issues that I had with her part 1, but her performance in part 2 was so generational that it saved her for me

it is very rare that a fire emblem game gives me multiple lords and i cannot pick a clear favorite or least favorite. but fortune's weave did it for me