The Drawing Room

Anything I feel like posting, with a ton of cross-posting involved. My AO3: ncfan. My Dreamwidth: ncfan. My Pillowfort: ncfan.

[ncfan-1]

I wonder if the reason they didn't show the name of Cai's special attack in particular is because he's straight-up sending people to Zahras. All of those special abilities look like they're connected to the Agarthans somehow, but Cai's really stood out in that regard.

[crayaks]

whoever it is you wanna kill im gonna get you to kill them even if it costs me $79.99 thats how serious i am

[demonlordkrys]

i need to settle an argument please tell me im not crazy

[ncfan-1]

Much as I would really like this game to be its own thing, I think you may be right. That is the exact same ugly shade of blond Cichol and Cethleann had their hair dyed to in Arval's paralogue in Three Hopes, there's a bit of Nabatean-green down at the end (didn't have quite enough dye, maybe?), and his circlet appears to be the same design as Seteth's.

[taxkha]

I made a quick edit of Theodora so her skin looks less ashy. For comparison, this is the original:

Im excited for this game but also disappointed about the ashy skintones of many characters we have seen so far especially since the skin tones of the dark skinned characters in the previous game Engage looked fine. On top of that the woman with the darkest skin tone is also the most sexualized one. Theres also some design elements like the neck rings which are worn by wives and only taken of should her husband die and considering FE's emphasis on supports + paired endings with its playable units I doubt that Theodora is already a wife at the beginning of the game. On top of that, a lot of the male characters who are black get to have appropriate hair texture as we have seen in the trailer. Off the top of my hat I can only name that lady with the golden cat mask with a black hair style. Her design is beautiful imo and I'm excited about a game taking place in an african inspired country but it sucks that everytime a game is takes inspiration by anything african it is usually poorly researched and drenched in orientalism. I think FE has become a lot more inclusive over its many many entries over the years but I wish they would handle these things with more care still.

[theknightlywolfe]

When the CEO of the company that didn't turn away Nazi business says "this isn't going to work" you know it's bad.

[peachiehambo]

OFFICIAL FORTUNE'S WEAVE ANNA DESIGN

[ncfan-1]

I've seen people saying that since the Fortune's Weave calendar shows the year as being sometime in the 1500s, that's proof that it's a sequel to Three Houses and not a prequel. I'm going to raise a few points that refute this:

We have no evidence indicating that Dagda and Fodlan share the same calendar, and given how isolationist Fodlan is, it's unlikely that other lands would adopt their calendar. Given that this is a Dagda-centric story, it would make sense that we're seeing Dagda's calendar, and not Fodlan's.

Even if it is Fodlan's calendar, Fodlan's calendar was canonically reset at the founding of the Adrestian Empire, the year of its founding being either Year 0 or Year 1 (Sorry, I don't remember which at the moment). The calendar could have looked like anything before it was reset.

Close to the timeskip, Shamir will express shock at certain features of Fodlan's society--namely, the existence of Heroes' Relics, people whose hair and eyes change color, and people who live an inordinately long time. That suggests that by her time, Dagda's looking a lot more mundane than Fodlan. I think it makes more sense that this is taking place in Dagda's distant past, rather than all of these people just moving in and setting up shop at some point after the events of Three Houses.

This is a little shakier, but related to Point #3, the fact that there are all of these Nabateans running around--the Divine Sovereign, the evil Nabatean lady holding the baby, potentially Ninae (who I am suspicious may be the evil Nabatean lady holding the baby), and potentially the auburn-haired woman with pointed ears--suggests that this takes place in the world's past, rather than after Three Houses' events. Yeah, it's not impossible that there could be living Nabateans on other continents, but all of the surviving Nabateans living in Fodlan speak of the massacre as though they are the only ones to remain.

[ncfan-1]

My eyes do not deceive me, right? This lady has pointed ears like the Nabateans, right?

[ncfan-1]

Shout out to Triangle Strategy for portraying House Wolffort as this clan of super-honorable warriors, then letting us obtain a history of the Saltirob War really early on that goes “Oh, by the way? Their staunch morals led to them pissing off every great power in the land during the war. Good thing nothing ever came of that, huh?”

[fox-bright]

Swarovski can continue to fuck off.

In 2021, Swarovski (the company that makes the very sparkly crystals you see in certain jewelry, on figure-skaters' twinkliest outfits, on red carpet dresses), decided they didn't want the grubby fingers of small-time jewelers, clothing designers and costumers and crafters on their shiny beads and rhinestones anymore. They decided to limit their sales to "luxury" and couture creators, not girls who sell stuff on Etsy. The tenor of their press release on the subject was snide and insulting. Resellers (like your favorite bead shop) would no longer be allowed to carry their product; the average Jane on the street would not be able to purchase them. You could only get them if you had an authorized business agreement that bound you to very strict brand behavior. And those of us who still had good stock of the crystals would no longer be "permitted" to use the brand's name in our listings for sale.

Every bead shop and craft supply place and many, many small clothing makers--wedding shops, prom and dancing dress suppliers, the sort of salt of the Earth mom and pop time machines of shops that are the backbone of the field--scrambled to find something that could replace them. The last of the stock dwindled quickly, all of us grabbing what we could get while there was any chance of it, and then it was gone and we no longer had any access.

I was Big Pissed about it at the time. It was just so goddamn stuck-up, when wholesalers and indie jewelers had made them so much money, when some people I knew--when *I!*--had been brand-loyal for decades. But with no recourse, everyone pivoted fairly quickly, most of us to Preciosa Crystals. Those are Czech, quite sparkly, and considerably less expensive than Swarovski. The faceting method they use is different, but not worse; any differences are hardly noticeable when you're seeing them as a hundred pinpoints of light.

Well, out of nowhere, Swarovski just dropped this: https://www.harmanbeads.com/swarovski-brand-policy-update

"Effective June 1, 2026, Swarovski updated the distribution and brand usage policies introduced in 2021. Businesses may now purchase Swarovski Crystals without signing a Brand Control Agreement, and Authorized Distribution Partners may once again sell Swarovski Crystals to resellers, including bead stores and online retailers. Businesses may also use the Swarovski brand name when following Swarovski’s Proper Use Guidelines. Designers, manufacturers, artists, brands, retailers, and resellers are now eligible to purchase Swarovski Crystals through authorized distribution channels."

They want us back. A lot of the companies who could have kept a brand relationship with them also have swapped to Preciosa, over the last half-decade, in solidarity with indie creators and out of a sour awareness that it could be them, next. And it doesn't hurt that Preciosa was able to expand their line quite a bit now that everyone who wanted sparkle had no choice but to go to them.

And I'm not seeing nearly anyone who intends to return. The feeling is, "Y'all told us to fuck off! Off we fucked! And now, that's what you can do, too!" I'm seeing a lot of "How many of us did you stab in the back?" comments from the people whose money they're hoping to attract.

And personally I'm sitting over here all rubby hands, mean snickering, because they really thought they were going to be able to outclimb the people who actually provided all their profits, and now here they are, hat in hand.

[anghraine]

Any take on Luke as just a normal kid whining about freedom should probably account for the fact that he lives on a lawless desert planet controlled by gangsters who kept his father and grandmother as slaves

[anghraine]

#like … every time i see a post about how much easier he has it than leia i’m #he absolutely does in some ways #but also leia’s family are wealthy and powerful while luke’s are eking out water from the air

This post is nearly ten years old and I still think about this, honestly. Luke has no consciousness of the dangers and pressures in Leia’s life when he’s playing with his toy starship; she’s already had to become what he can only vaguely dream of. But she’s also never had to consider “where is tomorrow’s food and water coming from” to anything like the degree that Luke, Owen, and Beru do every day. Luke and Leia both make sure they’re armed when they leave home because their environments are so dangerous, in completely different ways.

It really is possible to talk about the ways Leia has been forced to grow up and Luke has been allowed to remain functionally a boy, without dismissing pretty much everything we ever find out about Tatooine and the Skywalkers, or the drastic differences in their opportunities and access to material luxuries. I promise, she’s a good enough character to stand on her own without misrepresenting Luke’s circumstances to prop her up.

[userfinalgirls]

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015) dir. J.J. Abrams

[bruzum]

[lastvalyrian]

This is literally what people are talking about when they say AI will be used to mainstream widely held bigotry. LLMs are trained on frequency and probability -> straight relationships are more well represented in the dataset -> straight pronouns and terms become the "correct" normal.

This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).

Combine this with the mass of people inclined to believe (and being encouraged to believe) that if AI says and does something it must be correct

[cogimiun]

it's INCREDIBLE that corentin has revolutionized food storage as they know it in a world where the means to preserve food is CURRENTLY causign a literal war and he's acting like a big baby bc he couldn't make a sword out of it

[kelbunny]

Shoutout to Cordelia and her Cleric/ Prayer Master class for making me forever curious about the Glenbrook religion haha.

[smilepebble]

For the color palettes: Either Dusknoir with Fallen or Cordelia Glenbrook with Joan of Arc?

puppet princess

[triangle-strategy-notes]

Missed this on the anniversary itself, but we got new art from Rina Yoshiura of Avlora and Cordelia! (and Exharme and Kamsell in the background)