Title: Blamed
Author: Lushard
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Rating: T
Words: 91k
Status: Complete
Pairing: Robin/Cordelia (hints at previous Robin/Emmeryn)
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10682000/1/Blamed

Blurb: The war with Plegia has ended. It is supposed to be the era of peace, of rebuilding. But for the new Grand Master of Ylisse and the new commander of the Pegasus Knights, peace doesn't mean rest.

This picks up in the lull between the Plegia and Valm Chapters of Fire Emblem Awakening. The story is itself tightly knit, background knowledge of the characters is needed and the first half of the Game's plot but not complete knowledge of the game itself.

As for the story, I thoroughly enjoyed it. From the Authors prose to the pacing, the story is excellently told in a tight frame and it never skips along purely for the sake of adding words.

Where it differs from the other FE fics I've read is it depicts Robin well, in the sense of his role as a tactician, while it also depicts the perception of him by those around him. Those who have come to know him trust him, while those who haven't see a threat and how those people act based off that understanding is well done, particularly displayed in Cordelia.

It's angsty at times, but I never felt that it went overboard with that. It simply tells the tale of a man struggling to live up to the ideals of a person he loved/idolised and interjects it with FE's standard action and medieval era framework.

This one I'd definitely give a 5/5, I thought it was flawless.

 

Well, I gave it a read, and I'd say it was a decent use of my time.

I particularly enjoyed the author's writing style, and the prose was done nicely as well. Robin's characterization here is probably the favourite version I've seen so far as well as Maribelle's, though I didn't like Cordelia's as much since she felt a little bland to me.

It's very character-focused, so the plot felt, well not 'lacking' per se, but more just boring, though that's mostly made up for by good characterization. Overall, 4/5

 

1) You linked the mobile version. NEVER LINK THE MOBILE VERSION.
2) The author has a habit of never naming background characters, making it clear they're lazy cookie-cutter NPCs.
3) NEW SPEAKER, NEW LINE FOR DIALOGUE.
4) Excessive facial expressions and overly emotive characters in dialogue tags make everyone feel schizophrenic.
5) Characters are bland and meld into one another. I never really got a sense for most of their voices as distinct in this fic.
6) STOP. USING. ELLIPSES.
7) Dangling modifiers everywhere.
8) Lots of telling, little showing. The twist: characters are doing the telling, not the narrator.
9) Felt like it opened in media res but without any action. Ex media res?

I'm gonna stop there. It's not as bad as it might seem from reading here, but it's bland enough that the faults stand out far more than the virtues.

3/5

 

As an avid Fire Emblem fan this didn't do a ton for me. Is it a decent take on an alternate version of the game events? I guess. I just didn't see the point as nearly all of the story comes down to Robin not telling Cordelia the plan and that leads to sexual tension between them?

It's just ok as a time waster.

2.5/5

 

I just read this, it's pretty decent. The writing is good technically and the plot is a somewhat interesting twist on canon. However, the character dynamics seemed a little... odd to me. Like Robin and Cordelia somehow undergo some dramatic shifts in outlook, yet there wasn't actually that much action involved that would have triggered such a development. This is a story that would have, in my opinion, really benefited from being set over a longer time period, with a much more gradual build up in dynamic between the two main characters. Now normally this would only be a moderate annoyance, but given that the whole story is sort of built on the Robin-Cordelia dynamic it's really a fatal flaw.

Basically, this story seemed really promising, and it had enough of the signs of something that I would really like, so I really wanted it to be great. But the greatness that I was expecting somehow never materialized, and instead what I was left with was a decent but not spectacular story. 3.5/5 for me.