Author’s Notes for FE:CSR Tale 9x Final Chapter

The title, “The West Wind”, is derived from the biblical East Wind, which is said to be a divine force that sweeps away all that is evil. Likewise, the West Wind would theoretically be the demonic force that sweeps away all that is good. Considering this chapter focuses on the overarching antagonists from Tale 2 to Tale 12 (whose ultimate goal is to destroy everything The Eternal One created), I felt it to be quite appropriate.

Originally I was going to hold off on revealing Anankos, Idenn and Jahn’s names, but I figured I’d probably get bored playing the pronoun game for so long (the original plan was to reveal their names well into Tale 12). Besides, the opening pretty much confirmed it was Idenn and I was too lazy to change it.

I know FE5 takes place BEFORE the Holy War arc in FE4, but for beings as old as Mihnea, Manfroy and Veld (who are all over 4000 in Tale 9x; the Holy War arc in FE:CSR takes place around Marth’s time, 2000 years before Tale 10), a few years difference seems like no time at all.

Fun Fact: the closest given name I could find to Ninis was “Ninus”, the name of an Ancient Babylonian King. Unfortunately I didn’t check that sooner so I wrote the Ninis in FE:CSR as a woman. I’m not changing it.

The word ‘Ninis’ is obviously Greek, though, and what Google Translate told me it meant seemed very odd.

The canon Galdrar may be exclusive to the Tellius games, but in FE:CSR they were created by the Avramites (who I formerly called Archsages) in the ancient past for a variety of reasons. Remember, the Tellius arcs in FE:CSR take place nearly a millennium after Tale 9x; the herons may or may not be descendants of the Avramites.

I’ll get more into the curses Aenir mentioned at the end of the next tale.

Speaking of which, I should probably let you know I rebuilt Robin from the ground up so don’t expect him to be remotely like his canon counterpart. The other Shepherds, however, are mostly unchanged; the only significant modifications I made to them were stripping them of the cliched anime traits Nintendo game them.

Next in the queue are AS, PHK and ULD. All should be done by the end of August; best case scenario, I’ll have them out by the end of July, but considering my track record I don’t see that as a likely possibility. I will try, though!

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Author’s Notes for Romance By Fire

Not sure if this really counts as fluff, but it’s the best I could come up with.

The name is a play-on-words of “Baptism By Fire”.

I know in the game Chrom got married right after he defeated Gangrel, but I needed something to work with.

Yes, yes, I know Arcfire wasn’t available until the second part of the game, but I’m pretty sure Miriel had a B rank on at least one of my playthroughs by the time I finished off Gangrel, so she could easily use one.

This fic may have seemed rushed, but please cut me some slack here, I don’t know how to write fluff! I’m used to intricate plots and at least somewhat deep stories!

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Here’s my plan for the next three months:

• Final chapter of Tale 9x in FE:CSR should be done by the end of the week,
• The next chapters of AS, PHK and ULD should be up by mid-August,
• I should be done reworking Tale 9B by the end of August, and then
• I’ll be on track to start Tale 10 some time in September

That’s all for now, folks!

Author’s Notes for The Love Masters

I’ve been looking forward to writing this one.

I wanted to include more characters, but I was somewhat pressed for time and couldn’t come up with anything for them.

I realize Sully doesn’t look remotely like Kent, but I figured it would be funny if I pretended she did.

In hindsight, I realize Fire Emblem fans may think I made Olivia seem like Severa, and (I believe) Anime fans may think I made her seem like a “Tsundere”. I, however, look at it from a psychologist’s standpoint: she’s going through classic denial, which is something plenty of people go through. Ergo, Olivia is not OOC.

Oh Lord did I have fun writing that last scene. In fact, I originally wrote it months ago, before I even knew what I was writing it for!

Author’s Notes for The Legend of Anankos

Sorry for the pathetic name; I didn’t have the energy to come up with a better one.

I don’t remember if the Vallite King who reigned when Anankos went mad was named or not, and I wanted to stay close to canon, so I didn’t come up with one. If I had, I’d probably dig something up from one of the Western or Middle Eastern Classical mythologies.

Not much else to say, really. If I come up with something later I’ll add it in.

Author’s Notes for FE:CSR Tale 9x Chapters 4 and 5

These were originally going to be one chapter (I split them mainly because I promised you four updates but couldn’t finish one of the oneshots I planned on uploading today). As such, I will be combining their notes.

The beginning, if you didn’t notice, was a recap of the end of Chapter 3, except from Karel’s perspective.

In order to qualify for the leader boards, you have to have participated in three hundred rounds, but not necessarily three hundred tournaments. There can be over twenty rounds in a single tournament, each counted separately when calculating leader board positions.

Kinesis Magic is essentially the Force.

Copper coins are worth .01 gold. Here’s a conversion list:

• Copper: .01G
• Nickel: .1G
• Silver: .5G
• Gold: 1G
• Platinum: 10G
• Ruby: 1000G
• Sapphire: 5000G
• Diamond: 10000G

Most of Miriel’s dialogue this chapter may have seemed OOC. I have two separate excu– err, justifications for this:

• Plot Reason: Miriel was under intense strain.
• Real Reason: I didn’t have the energy to improve her dialogue. Hopefully that will not happen again.

The Hypogeums in Feroxi arenas are based on the ones in the Roman Colosseum, though they serve very different purposes: The Colosseum’s hypogeum was a complex network of tunnels beneath the field that stored slaves, convicts, combat animals, and a variety of other things; Feroxi hypogeums are basically prep rooms.

I know I said before that Robin had more than one restraint. The thing is, because of his amnesia, he can only control his outermost level (for now).

‘Elding’ is the Icelandic word for Thunderbolt. The spell is basically Sith Lightning.

Miriel will not normally be able to do what she did this chapter. Rage boosts are not tricks I like to pull often.

Nimchas are the knives assassin-class characters in the Elibe games duel-wield.

Yes, yes, I know I jumped the gun on unsealing Falchion, but trust me, I’ll make up for it.

I didn’t really want to introduce the Shepherds here, but a promise is a promise. Sorry if it felt wrong.

“Dragon God” Forms look like Naga and Loptyr’s incarnations in the FE4 times. They are four times the size of the Fire Dragon boss from FE7.

Had the Ice Dragon taken its opponents seriously, only Chrom would have stood a chance because of the boost Falchion gives him.

The Astra Invocations are roughly based on those in Hindu mythology.

Chrom’s plans are not exactly what they were in FE13.

If you’re wondering who the old Manakete was, I’ll say this: God can appear in a variety of forms.

Mihnea will be important next chapter… and he’s the Gharnef archetype of the overarching plot that takes places between Tales 2 and 12. The next overarching plot will also have a single Gharnef and will take place between Tales 12 and 20. Both have the same Medeus.

Cramer basically looks like the comic book version of DC’s Deathstroke (sans the eyepatch) with Geese (from FE6)’s outfit.

MacMillian, Excellus, Torden, Tain and Elim are the five important OC’s on Walhart’s side in the Valm arc (which will be ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like it was in the actual game). Needless to say, they will be getting a lot of screen time.

MacMillian was originally supposed to be Cramer’s son, but a subplot I later thought of dashed that idea.

The rationale behind Juidice: I wanted another female Valmese General for a subplot I intend on introducing, and I needed someone to be the antithesis of Cramer.

I’ve been planning the fight between Cramer and Juidice since before I actually started writing this fic.

Some time in the near future, I may upload a post with photos demonstrating the different stances I mentioned.

Shadow Manipulation, like Kinesis Magic, resembles the Force from Star Wars, but is less potent.

If you couldn’t already tell, Elim and Juidice are in a relationship of a sort.

I added Lyn’s scene to explain what she was doing between now and Eliwood’s tale. She won’t be coming back to Elibe until AFTER Darin’s attack. This change won’t have as great an effect as you think on the plot, but it will change Lyn’s motivations later in the story. How? I’m not going to spoil it for you.

Next chapter: the antagonists become the protagonists, and the plot darkens dramatically…

A Historian’s Perspective on The Importance of Domestic Job Growth

Preliminary Note: I believe NAFTA is one of the worst things to happen to us in recent years.

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Many economists argue that sacrificing factory jobs in this country is worth overall economic growth. Well, I’m not an economist (yet), but I do know something of history; the last time corporations sacrificed workers to increase profits, our nation was rewarded with Black Tuesday.

In the 20’s, the market did nothing but rise. Everyone appeared to be making record profits, but with unemployment rising, debt proliferating and wages disproportionately low (sound familiar?), the economy was doomed to fail.

Right now, the national unemployment rate may be down in many fields and the demand for skilled labor may be rising, but the working class seems to be getting fewer and fewer opportunities. Corporations will only bring in profits for so long; when every-day Americans become unable to buy new goods no matter how inexpensive they may be, when people lose the ability to enter the workforce and contribute to the national economy, when only corporate executives make any profit whatsoever, history will repeat itself.

It can be argued that we mainly got out of the depression because the Second World War increased the demand for unskilled labor. Since college costs have increased (I blame the unions) to the point that many (NOT including me) doubt its worth, there are plenty of folks entering the workforce with nothing more that a High School diploma. That means if corporations don’t stop outsourcing, we’ll have a crippling surplus of unskilled workers, and that’s never a good thing. Now you may be thinking, “what if we make college free?” My answer, and the answer of many economists is: there is no way we’ll be able to pay for that. If you’re going to say, “but many countries in Europe can do it!”, don’t. One, most of those countries are suffering much worse problems than we are, two, our economic system is profoundly different than theirs at the core, and three, we have significantly more people we’d have to cover than any European country. I could go on, but if I haven’t convinced you by now, I doubt anything else I can say will change your minds.

If we put an end to outsourcing and increase wages to match inflation (something we haven’t done since Reagan), I don’t think there would be a negative impact on the economy as people will have enough money to contend with increased prices. Of course, this would be politically toxic as many among the socioeconomic elite feel they will not make as much money if such laws are passed and will lobby against them, killing them before they even reach the House Floor. Some economists have come up with a less unrealistic alternative: continue to outsource old markets, but open new markets for unskilled laborers in their place. I think that will fail all too quickly, as corporations will outsource THOSE jobs as soon as they emerge.

Oh, how I wish NAFTA never happened…