like a star, like a firefly

Turn rewind mechanics like Mila's Turnwheel and Divine Pulse are a quality-of-life feature that 100% deserve to be a part of modern Fire Emblem games.

Ever spent a long time on a single map, only for something to go horribly wrong right at the end? I hated having to start the entire map over from scratch when that happened while playing the older games, especially when it rendered the long time I'd already spent on it totally wasted. Having turn rewind in such circumstances helps save that time, and really, nowadays players shouldn't be forced to restart from scratch just because one thing went wrong near the end of an otherwise well-enough-played map; things don't have to be the same now as they were 20+ years ago.

Moreover, I think people who are completely against turn rewind don't have much empathy for players who, y'know, have lives outside of playing games and therefore don't necessarily have tons of free time to bash their heads over and over on one map in one game. That's why I've believed for a good while now that Casual mode also very much has a right to exist in this series, and I say that as someone who still plays on Classic!

I can understand people thinking Three Houses gives a tad too many uses of Divine Pulse, but that's the only concession I'll make. Turn rewind is a good thing, I'm glad it's confirmed to be coming back in Engage, and I hope it stays in every new FE game going forward.

And to anyone who is violently allergic to it being a thing: don't bloody use it then! It's optional, for crying out loud!

Storytelling pet peeve of the day:

( CW: bullying, victim-blaming )

Just one of many tropes that really need to go away... and it's sad that I have to wish situations like that would go away in real life as well.

Dear various authors on AO3,

If a character or relationship does not actually appear in your fic, or if they only have an extremely minor appearance in your fic with no real role to speak of, or if they only show up in the background and might as well be a random painting on the wall, then do not include them in the character or relationship tags for that fic!

No love,

Someone who likes many not-so-popular characters and ships and would prefer it if the results of searches she does for them included more fics that were actually about them to any degree.

Am I the only European Fire Emblem fan anticipating Fates's English release who doesn't feel like throwing a tantrum over the fact we don't have a confirmed release date for our part of the world yet?

... more than likely not, but it sure feels that way when I keep seeing whiny posts about it in the tags on Tumblr. Good God, guys, lose the sense of entitlement already! It's a sad fact of life that we Europeans tend to get games later than North Americans -- one that I've been used to for over 20 years of being a gamer now -- and the gaps between releases aren't even usually as wide now as they used to be in the past! Besides, while I can't claim to know much of anything about the localisation process, I'm fairly sure it takes a bit of time to translate games into French, Spanish, German and whatnot for the European market; it's not just for Brits like myself.

Also, if the release pattern for Fates is anything like Awakening's, I don't think we'll be getting the game that much later than America. Awakening's dates were February 4th for America and April 19th for Europe (the latter of which happens to be exactly one year after the original Japanese release). That's only about two months later for us. Therefore, if Fates's American release date is February 19th, I'm going to make a guess that the European date will be around late April, give or take -- hardly "a ton of months later" like some people on Tumblr like to claim.

Whenever it does come out here, at least I'm going to be patient in the meantime.