"(S)he's A Killer Queen

"(S)he's a killer queen

Gunpowder, gelatine

Dynamite with a laser beam

Guarenteed to blow your mind"

Oh. My. Fucking. God. This was much more labor intensive than I originally assumed it would be, for several reasons- my watercolors are VERY translucent and have to be built up over many layers. I have to mix any ahade of purble darker than a pale violet and I'm not good at that. And I had a migraine that wouldn't go away for about 4 days. THAT is the main reason I can't deal with a background- it would never get done. I was terrified of fucking it up with the ink, but I kept repeating the immortal words of Bob Ross- "there are no mistakes, only happy accidents".

Regardless, please accept my humble offering of best husbando as the crazy hand man. Making Gharnef into Killer Queen was hard because I couldn't figure out how to balance their traits, but I think this was a good compromise.

A WIP of my newest project. I'm not a jjba fan, but I AM a DC Douglas fan, and learning that Gunther was going to voice this "Kira Cuine" fella was enough to pique my interest and consequently make me care about anime for the first time in a decade??

(I'm totally not invested just to giggle as daddy DC talks about boners again)

EDIT-

i'm always terrified of art until I ink it. Then it looks good, until the horror of color rolls around. Why is art so scary???

I suppose we have a different idea of what consequences should be for gigantic, world/country-threating blunders. When everything goes back to the status quo in-universe and we're told "Oh, btw, the problem learned their lesson", I generally tend to call bullshit. It's no different from a story saying "Mary Sue was the bravest, smartest, kindest girl in the land, and she felt really bad about that massacre she caused."

Maybe it's just been years since I've played FE8, but I don't remember an instance in the game where Eirika's trusting nature gets tested after she fucks up with Fomortiis. I can almost forgive it for being an old game, but this problem always crops up. Likewise with Celica, when she gets deus ex machina'd back into the story, the game is pretty much over. She fights Duma because he's standing before her, threatening her and her friends with death, not because she learned a lesson about not trusting strangers/ gods. When I fuck up something badly, it doesn't matter how bad I feel about it- people will still be mad. And my screw-ups aren't threatening the world! Even if I fix it, I still have to deal with people being mad at/ disappointed in me.

And where in Birthright or Conquest does Corrin actually deal with the death of anyone? In that exact instant immediately after their older brother dies? Beacuse they don't grieve for Flora. They don't grieve for Gunther. They don't really grieve for anyone, outside of the immediate second when that person dies (and not even then in Gunther's case). They can whinge about killing Hoshidans in self defense, but not bat an eye when it comes to breaking into the palace in Macarath and just murdering eveyone there (seriously- they broke in to steal something and massacred the guards who were just doing their job. And felt nothing). We the player might feel bad that Xander and Ryouma are dead, but it has no impact on the actual in-game story. Corrin forced people who weren't ready to/ didn't want to rule into a position of leadership. So what? It doesn't affect the story at all.

Nohr conquers Hoshido and is directly responsible for the deaths of their queen, both kings AND prince? The new queen will just mosey on over there for their corronation, not a single hint that she might have some lingering resentment towards the person who was directly responsible for her brothers' deaths. In Birthright, Hoshido invades Nohr and kills three members of the royal family? No hard feelings, especially directed towards YOU, Corrin. YOU feel bad (or at least, you implied that you did)- that's all that matters from a narrative perspective. Corrin crying for five seconds isn't a consequence for me. Whatever country they screwed over being thrown into a turmoil is a consequnce. That wouldn't "last forever" either, but it sure would make it seem like people in positions of power making stupid decisions actually negatively affects the world around them. Like it does in real life. The US government was fighting over a fucking fence and people couldn't afford to feed their families for a month as a result. But we don't need to bring that up after the fact. I can assume everyone responsible learned their lesson.

This isn't a matter of how we think people would naturally react to such situations- it a matter of IntSys not being able (or willing) to figure out what consequences should be for huge events. These are games about WAR, and yet... there are so few consequences for this war you're fighting. Awakening touched on it, with Chrom saying that the people of Ylisse almost starved because his father conscripted all the farmers, but Birthright can't make a pasaing mention of how people are freaking out after their former prince(ss) lead an enemy battalion into their castle and murdered 3/5ths of the royal family? Sure, I can assume that happened, but if things like this are left up to assumption, you've written a bad story. You might be okay with assumptions, and that's fine. If you think these are good, properly flawed characters, then by all means, enjoy. But I, and many other people, say "that's not good enough."

Too many FE fans: We want really imperfect main characters that show weakness and flaws!

Intelligent Systems: Okay, sure. *Eirika, Micaiah, Corrin and Celica exist*

Those fans: These characters are f*cking dumbasses.This isn’t what we wanted.

IS: 

Hello! Sorry if I’m bothering you, but I’m back with more questions haha. I’m just,,, really curious about ships. So... what are your ships for the following characters? (even if you can’t do it in the game, for example azura x shura) -Takumi -Saizo -Kaden -Hinata -Azama -Subaki -Hayato -Benny -Keaton -Odin -Laslow Again, sorry for bothering you and have a great day~!

Bothering me? Lol, impossible. Can't lie, it makes me feel a little special to think my opinions matter to anyone.

Okay, so there are lots of Hoshidans here, and I think it's no surprise that I have no love for them. Maybe it's my Nohr bias showing, but I find so many of them downright unlikable. Therefore, characters like Takumi, Saizo, Tsubaki and Hayato should die alone. I jest, of course (*hoarse whisper* not really), but some of them are just so horrible that I wouldn't want to burden anyone with them. Especially Takumi. I get that he's young and has hella self esteem issues, but that's really a "him" problem. Who would want to be in a relationship with someone who treats them like garbage until YOU work to make them open up? Likewise with Azama. ...you know what, I ship Takumi/Oboro- they can be awful together.

Oh, you know what would be the best ships ever? Pair Tsubaki with Chrom. He's already a Cordellia expy, so why not carry that over as well? That, and Kaden and Izana. Both of them are obsessed with beauty, while thinking they're the most beautiful things. I can just see them staring deeply into each other's eye... at their own reflections...

Benoit I ship with Charlotte. What can I say, they're good together. A badass blood knight and a Disney princess- perfection. Keaton is a tsundere, and I... just despise them, so I wish he just had a garou girlfriend in the mountains that doesn't put up with that hot/cold/hot/cold shit and every "it's not like I like you or anything" is just met with a deadpan "I'm leaving you.". And as for not!Owain and not!Inigo, I can only think of them having girlfriends from their world, and I know I paired Inigo with Kjelle and Odin with Cynthia (of course, Cynthia was his cousin in my playthroughs, but since when does that matter?).

Despite having played Fates more times than any other FE games and cycling through most of the pairings, there just aren't that many that stand out to me as interesting. Although, when I think about it, you know who Takumi needs? Flora. She understands what it's like to be second fiddle all your life, but she would not for a second tolerate his bullshit attitude. You can't pull that Corrin C support shit with someone who can give you a literal cold shoulder. How do you have such an interesting cast that has such terrible chemistry with each other???

I think, overall, what kind of story you like/ want to see shapes how you view the events of the game and the characters. You seem to be content with the story of the bands of characters, which I assume is why you see their personal grief as consequence enough for their action. The characters are the important thing to you, the story ends when their adventure ends. And that's fine! Plenty of people are more invested in characters than anything else.

But for me, and others like me, the world at large is just as important, if not moreso, than the characters. I don't need to see a character in stockades being shamed, but I need to see that word of their actions has spred and has some influence in the world around them, otherwise, it's bad writing and bad charactetization to me. A little blurb at the end of SoV, "The people of the newly joined Valentia were wary of their new queen, and it was many years before she won them over" isn't going to push a writer into a nervous breakdown. A character doesn't have to go to war to show they're mad at someone. I did a rewrite of Fates, and at the end of the Birthright route, the war had ended, there was peace as both nations began rebuilding after the war, and Leo informed the Corrin stand-in that she was no longer allowed Nohr. There would be no coming to see his corronation, no visiting the graves of her siblings, because the people had not forgiven her betrayl and while he didn't want to do anything to her, he had an obligation to his people as their king. It happened during the epilogue, just some dialogue, the main narrative had concluded, but it showed that everything wasn't hunky dory and her actions had far reaching consequences.

I don't think I'm asking too much of a game to do something writers of novels, fanfics, and so many other games have done already. As another person said, Genealogy of the Holy War did exactly what I was talking about. That game was made in 1996 for the famicom- if they could do it then, they can do it now. When your game already has an epilogue, I see no reason to not include things like that.

"I just don't care about those things because they're ultimately unnecessary to me when I'm playing a video game." And therin is the crux of the matter. It doesn't bother you because those elements of a game's story aren't important to you. They are important to other players, like me. It reminds me of the people who watch Game of Thrones. Plenty of people watch it only for the dragons and fight scenes, and get mad when other people complain about the plot holes and teleportation (I'm not sayimg you're like that; you're very civil and I'm grateful for that), but it doesn't mean those people are wrong for seeing problems. Stories, be they found in TV, books, or games, linger with plenty of people. If you can see "The End" and be satisfied with a story, that's wonderful. But if I see "The End" and the first words out of my mouth is "Really??? That's it?", the writers have failed in my book. Heck, that's usually what I'm thinking while I'm playing the games (it was my biggest reaction after defeating Berkut, I hated that part), and it's why I'm still holding out for better characters in a better story for the series.

Too many FE fans: We want really imperfect main characters that show weakness and flaws!

Intelligent Systems: Okay, sure. *Eirika, Micaiah, Corrin and Celica exist*

Those fans: These characters are f*cking dumbasses.This isn’t what we wanted.

IS: 

"Merh! They HAVE to put Camilla on the banners cuz she's popular and that's what sells!! No one would care about a random, unpopular character!"

You wanna try that again?