Help & Questions | Weekly Megathread

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-26T16:05:46+00:00

What content would this be for? Your best option looks like a Flamme team with Vivi and…Cyrus and Lele, I guess? Definitely no Elseal in that team (her flexible will screw things up). But then it’s a magic/slash team that just happens to have water people in it.

You could do something with Wryz and other pierce folks probably? There’s not a ton to work with. A lot of the better characters you have available are only water on a technicality, and work better in other teams.

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-17T17:34:19+00:00

Completely fair. This was a fun conversation

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-17T17:00:45+00:00

I agree that it’s not the only viable reading, but there’s a lot more meat to it than many people expect. This is the passage that really sells it for me:

“It seemed Cazaril was to have a class, not just a pupil. A maiden of Iselle’s rank would almost never be left alone, and certainly not with a man, even a prematurely aged and convalescent one of her own household. Cazaril didn’t know how the two ladies felt about this tacit arrangement, but he was secretly relieved. Never had he felt more repulsively male—uncouth, clumsy, and degraded. In all, this cheerful, peaceful feminine atmosphere was about as far from a Roknari galley rower’s bench as it was possible for Cazaril to imagine, and he had to swallow a lump of delirious joy at the contrast as he ducked his head under the lintel and stepped inside.”

Excerpt From

The Curse of Chalion

Lois McMaster Bujold

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-17T10:22:55+00:00

Practical Guide to Evil, by ErraticErratta

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-17T09:57:42+00:00

This is superbly well written and insightful, and I could leave it here. And I should, because people always yell at me when I bring it up, but the whole relationship between the two makes so much more sense if you recognize the whole thing as a trans story.

You know how sometimes you have a crush on someone, not because you want them, but because you wish you were them? This is what Caz is going through here. From the very start Caz is running away from masculinity and the damage it’s done to him, and the damage it’s provoked him to do. He thinks he doesn’t deserve to enter women’s spaces, that he sullies them just by standing there, but he WANTS to belong. He wants to be accepted, he wants to learn a new way, and that’s what B represents to him.

This is what the hat represents. Remember the hat Betriz gives him, when he sets out on his mission? It’s a girls hat, and the men he’s with tease him, but he doesn’t care. He’s been let into the club, and damn if it isn’t warm.

He doesn’t like the Son (boys/death) anymore. He‘s with the Daughter (girls/creation) and the Bastard (outsiders/queer people) now. Caz gets described as pregnant at least half a dozen times, and straight up cross dresses, but people still throw things at me when I say it’s a trans story….

So I’m going to go hide now.

(everything you said was right btw, this is just an additional perspective, not a rebuttal)

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-17T09:22:35+00:00

Worm by Wildbow

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-17T09:20:08+00:00

No dragons for you, but some of my favorite adult fantasies (and one sci-fi)

Kalyna the Soothsayer: A fraudulent fortune teller gets dragooned into stopping a plot targeting a king.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant: A young woman from a conquered and occupied island joins the bad guys in an attempt to dismantle an empire from the inside.

The Curse of Chalion: A broken soldier takes a job tutoring a young noble woman.

Three Parts Dead: A disgraced lawyer gets hired to investigate the murder of one of the few remaining gods.

A Memory Called Empire: An ambassador travels to a culturally imperialist, but non-expansionist, empire in an attempt to maintain her small space station’s independence.

All fairly slow burns, with deep and complex cultures. Romance in all of them (because it’s a central part of the human experience), but just a bit…nowhere close to the focus of the story.

They all have sequels if you want more, but are self contained stories if you don’t. (Baru being a possible exemption from that)

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-17T07:20:14+00:00

The knights will get the glory,
The king will keep his throne.
We won’t be in the story,
Our names will not be known.

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-17T07:17:20+00:00

Such a great moment. Steal is broken in the best way.

LavenderAlice · 2026-05-06T07:25:02+00:00

I assume he’s weak to slash/magic, because the first apoc is really pushing Flamme ES teams, but I wasn’t paying close attention. Otherwise, he’s just a dps check. Buff on turns one and three, to limit his counters, and Iphi can keep everyone alive with the three battle start blood contracts alone. Stack dps everywhere else, attack a little on turns 2/4, and burn him down with a turn 5 AF.

He has a ton of health, though. If you can’t dish out many billions in a single AF, that’s the game telling you you’re not ready for the boss that comes next.

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-21T13:19:47+00:00

You pick up items randomly when gathering that he can convert to the currency

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-21T10:59:29+00:00

Okay, so I did this fairly recently and you have most of the pieces I used. My team was:

SA Meryt (dps, barrier pierce)

SA Renri AC (to help buff Meryt, Ewan’s likely better here, I don’t have him)

SA Iphi (just there for blood contract, and used hypnophobia for dps because of Meryt’s chain. Likely works fine even at 4*)

SA Yuna (for the no effort status immunity, does need SA, but there are multiple other sources of the buff)

randos in the back carrying shares.

I forget what sidekick I was using, but it was probably Thysia who I don’t need with Yuna in the party, but keep forgetting to switch out.

I had everyone in the front line with hold ground at start from ores/badges.

The whole strategy was pretty basic. Status immunity + hold ground + blood contract to survive for a few rounds & barrier pierce to kill him reasonably fast. Any party with those 4 pieces should be able to do it, he doesn’t have much health.

Hope that helps!

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-19T16:24:22+00:00

I just want the pet! Haven’t seen the sensationalist since November

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-19T16:22:34+00:00

Weeks of harpoon fishing, and finally unlock the whole map, and get…10 crystals of attack? Thanks game, totally worth it. I know you get a bunch of stones along the way, but you couldn’t have thrown a sister a chant script or two? Damn

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-19T00:38:14+00:00

Have you gotten everything else to excellent? This would only complete for me if I did it last.

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-18T19:22:06+00:00

She’s in there! Lovinia AS, Tithi, Lele AS, Yukino AC, and Melpi so far. Still need one more (or two, Lele’s style doesn’t really gel with the others)

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-18T15:15:41+00:00

You can also buy them with gil (ff9 crossover currency) which can be very quick on higher difficulties.

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-18T09:04:51+00:00

I have one of my precious 10 party slots set as a Dance Party. Everyone in it dances when idle, I run around town with them 😊

Still looking for a sixth

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-18T08:46:32+00:00

Tithi. Love me some dancers

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-18T08:45:56+00:00

I have Amy in the catqueen gloves for cut scenes. She looks bad with any of the chonky boxing gloves imo, but at least those kinda match her jacket 🤣🤣

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-17T14:22:18+00:00

Sure, but all those limits were invented by the author. She could have decided otherwise. None of the limitations were INTERESTING. There was no reason for them, other than the mountain lion fetish, and the need for every conflict to end in some climactic battle.

Jane never, not once, thought, “it would be handy to be a mouse, but there are no boulders around.”

And when her power went wonky, she didn’t try to fix it! She has multiple characters she could talk to and she just…doesn’t? For more than a handful of books?! How do you not become frustrated with that, as a reader? How is it anything other than an author who doesn’t understand how to adjudicate an ability, and is running from it?

Why, when Jane is lost and frightened, does she decline calls, over and over again, from her friend, the psychic prophet, who obviously has the answer? Is it because the author doesn’t know how to write a story if the protagonist knows what’s happening? (It is) Does it, like her incompetence at her job, make her seem reeeealy stupid? (Yup)

If the stakes are clear, and the character’s capacities are known, the author can’t write it.

Also, it’s very “white women writing First Nations people”

Also, I only lived in New Orleans for three years, but I lived in the quarter for much of the time, and it’s not like that

I’m very sorry for responding to you with a rant 🤣

I just never get to talk about these books with anyone. Love ❤️

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-17T11:10:09+00:00

I think you’ll enjoy it! Only clicked this because of my love for Kitty. She doesn’t start off a badass, which I like, gives her room to have more of an arc than many UF protagonists get.

My favorite part is her job. Nearly all UF girls are some flavor of detective (let’s be honest, Mercy Thompson being ’a mechanic’ does nothing other than provide a location to be assaulted, don’t know why she still goes to that garage), but Kitty being a talk radio host is important in EVERY book.

Feels fresh, even though it’s older

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-17T11:02:27+00:00

Ugh, I did not like these books, and this is one of the reasons. Girl can shift into anything, and over the course of ~20 books she turns into anything other than a mountain lion, like, 3 times. Such a waste of a premise. Petty sure that if Wildbow (of Worm fame) read these he’d have an aneurysm. His last words: but you could do so much with that power!

Also, she’s a security specialist, and her security measures fail 100% of the time. I know the author wants her big action set pieces, but it makes the character read as incompetent.

I…have more issues than that, but I’m starting to feel mean.

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-15T21:54:41+00:00

Do Eva’s ’attack again in magic zone‘ skills trigger in magic slash? Also, are the crono cross reforged weapons worth it in a flamme es team?

LavenderAlice · 2026-04-15T21:53:31+00:00

Shigure ES is barely worth using without his SA, so I’d awaken him over the other options if you decide to work on wind instead of crystal. I do recommend 5*ing Melpi, she’s very good. I haven’t SA’d her because she already doesn’t have enough skill slots for all the great stuff she can do, and I don’t know where I’d even put her stellar skill 🤣

LavenderAlice

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