Ice-Cold Rainy Passion (2018 Version)

Hello to all.

Remember back at the very start of Fairy Tail when Lucy was caught in Bora's love charm and Gray's gaze broke her out of it? Me neither.

Remember during the Phantom Lord arc when Lucy called out Gray's name as she jumped from a ten story tower? Me neither.

Remember the time when Lucy was sick and Gray went out and placed a stolen sakura tree onto a dinghy just so Lucy could see it? Me neither.

Remember before Team Natsu went to fight Precht, Juvia told Lucy to "stay close to Gray"? Me neither.

Remember late into the Grand Magic Games, Gray and Lucy pull off a perfect unison raid on the first attempt? Me neither.

Remember that time when Gray and Lucy touched foreheads? Me neither.

Remember the ending of the Fairy Tail movie, when Lucy hugged Gray? Ne neither.

Remember at the end of the Tatarus arc, when Gray went to Lucy for comfort over Silver's death? Me neither.

Remember when Gray and Lucy lived together under the same roof for half a year? Me neither.

Remember when Gray went completely apeshit after Lucy killed herself in order to break Invel's blood chain? Me neither.

And lastly, remember in the final chapter, Gray told Lucy that he wanted and desired her body? Me neither.

Over the course of Fairy Tail's duration, it seemed to me that ZN-Lover and other GrayLu shippers would go to any lengths to prove that their pairing was actually legitimate, going so far as to hype up friendzone moments such as when Gray patted Lucy on the head when they were partying in the Spirit World or downplaying legitimate Gruvia and NaLu development by saying grade-A bullshit such as "Gray only sees Juvia as a creepy stalker" or "Natsu and Lucy see each other as brother and sister". One poor soul actually came up with a list of "reasons" why Gray and Lucy were a perfect match for each other a few years back, though a lot of the reasons he posted were either based of falsehoods, had nothing to do with romance, or both.

Of course, the fact of the matter is that Hiro Mashima favors a strong emotional bond between his characters over a shallow-ass perception of love, and at the end of the day, GrayLu was not given any emotional development that would suggest that a romantic relationship could plausibly happen, and anyone who thinks otherwise is honestly kidding themselves at this point, especially given the current trajectory of the 100 year quest.

TL;DR: Gruvia is canon. GrayLu is dead. Deal with it. Game Over.

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Fairy Tail is (c) 2006-2018 Hiro Mashima
All unit(s) are Lv18 and above.
This pic was made by GaggedDude32. Go here and here to view his stuff.

Have a nice day.

Choose Your Damsels 2017 and 2018

Hello there.

With Brave Heroes 2 literally on the horizon, I felt it would be a pretty good time to talk about last year's Brave Heroes and the effect they had on the game.

Last year, Intelligent Systems conducted a popularity contest featuring every named character in every Fire Emblem game at that point in time. This contest lasted about a week, and in the end, the winners were reveled to be Ike and Lyn, with Roy and Lucina coming in second. There was a lot of speculation on what the CYL alts of each hero would look like, but many rumors started spreading around, including one where the heroes would be wearing Askrian armor. Eventually, the Brave Heroes banner was released on August 31, 2017, and the contents of said banner exceeded everyone's expectations.

Each of the brave alts had a weapon that granted two effects (a stat boost + a tier 3 version of a skill), and the two 1st place winners each had an exclusive B skill as well as a Lv40 BST that was roughly 4-5 points higher than other units of their range/move type.

Of the four first generation Brave Heroes, Brave Lyn (Blyn) had the most profound effect on the metagame by far. Blyn had the honor of being the first mounted bow user in the game, and had absolutely crazy stats for a ranged cavalry unit, with 33 atk and 35 spd dwarfing all of her competitors at that point. Her prf weapon, the Mulagir, was designed to help deal with bladetome users, having +3 speed and an effect that neutralized field buffs on mages built into it. However, what made Blyn truly one of the most oppressive units in the game was her exclusive B passive, Sacae's Blessing. This skill had the effect of blocking counterattacks by physical melee units, thereby removing one of her otherwise biggest counters (while dragons could still counterattack, they had to cut through her much higher magic bulk).

The combination of her high offensive stats, cavalry movement (and thereby access to cavalry buffs, which were very easy to get), and B passive meant that players had to more or less run specialized checks against her, such as TA Raventome mages. And even so, Blyn could easily run builds or have teammates that could trip such builds. Due to all of this, for the rest of 2017, Blyn was widely regarded as "the single best unit in the entirety of FEH". It wasn't really until the introduction of the weapon refinery and the rise of bulky dragons that Blyn started to become less dominant in the meta, but even to this day, she's still one of the most dangerous units to face in lower arena.

As for Brave Ike (Bike), he wasn't quite as oppressive as Blyn was, but he was a major threat for a while. Unlike Blyn (or the other two, for that matter), his statline leaned more towards a tank, coming with high attack and defense, along with a decent HP pool, but low speed and res. This was complimented by Urvan, an axe that not only lowered the cooldown of Bike's specials by 1, but also reduced the damage of any consecutive attacks to a fifth of what they would normally do, making weapons such as brave weapons nearly useless against him. As if that wasn't enough, Bike also came with a skill called Steady Breath, which not only increased the user's defense when attacked, but it also increased the rate at which specials charged, allowing him to fire off Aether very quickly. And unlike his B passive, this could be given to other units via skill inheritance. His B passive, in contrast, wasn't quite as useful as Blyn's was, only imparting a dull effect against cavalry and flying units.

While the other two came with some interesting effects and niches (Blucina could impart +6 speed in combat buffs to any physical unit, while Broy was the first true hyper offensive sword cavalier), they didn't quite make the same impact the other two did and both ended up getting dropped to the wayside pretty fast.

Now, it remains to be seen how the next generation of brave heroes will shape the metagame, but from what we've seen from Blyn and Bike, we should probably set our expectations high.

That being said, all that's left is to share this pic of the 1st place female winners of both 2017 and 2018 in a... predicament.

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Fire Emblem is (c) 1990-2018 Intelligent Systems
All unit(s) are Lv18 and above.
This pic was drawn by Kupoexe Magnus. View his stuff here.

Have a nice day.

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And now, alt time.

Ballgag:

Blindfold:

Ballgag + Blindfold: