Happily Ever After, Part 2 (Poll) (Sneak Peek) (Patreon)

Hi everybody, I'd like to check in with you regarding a poll I posted a year and a half ago (how time flies)! If you participated in the first poll, thank you so much for sticking around and continuing to support me! 💖

Here's pretty much a copy-paste from the first poll: 

Here's another question for you guys, this time about other characters' happy endings...

If you do succeed in unlocking a character's "good" ending (not your RO), how would you feel about them getting married or having families with other (unnamed) people? (Not with each other, just randoms down the road.)

This isn't really something I've seen in other games, so I'm curious.

Say you romance Trouble, or Tallys, or no one at all. And you manage to unlock Ayla's good ending, with her closing out the game as your best friend or even just as a good friend.

Ayla's ending in the game is then:

After the events of the game, Ayla remained a Shepherd for the rest of her fighting days. When she retired, she founded an orphanage in Haven, marrying a local woman some years later and having three strong children--all of whom inherited different elemental affinities than their mother! [Additional stuff, obviously this is completely made up and not reflective of a real ending]

Or would you prefer to leave marriage and romance out of it, in case you plan on romancing those characters in a later game? AKA they're happy and single for that ending of the game?

(Read: I don't let any Fire Emblem characters marry each other if I'm planning on romancing any of them on a later playthrough... Don't like it when a DA character gets married to someone else in their ending... etc.)

Or do you like seeing your friends/best friends/companions/other Shepherds have relationships and families (and eventually bloodlines) of their own, if that's something that fits their personality or is something they're explicitly interested in, and sort of have their own lives outside of the MC? 

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Now, the results of the first poll were mixed. The majority of people who voted indicated that they would like or didn't mind to see the other, unromanced Shepherds married or what have you later in life. But the people who didn't want this were vocal in their emotional reasons, which were compelling.

Here's my take: 

As a writer, I like writing alternate happy endings for my characters and letting them realistically/potentially end up with somebody in their happily ever after alternate canon-thing (this is only true for certain characters, I think others are natural loners if not romanced by MC).

As a reader and a player, if I were in this situation with some other game, (let's say Wayhaven or something), I would hate this! Imagine if you romanced A and then M fell in love with someone else... but it's like, I was getting around to you too! Only love me!!!

Maybe that's just weird preference I have (I promise I don't play harem games...) lol, but I find myself equally split between both sides.

So then I thought, what if I make it an optional toggle?

*~~~~~~~~ Mild spoilers for the epilogue below. Skip if you don't want to be spoiled. ~~~~~~~~*

Here's what a toggle might look like:

It... obviously isn't going to look exactly like this or use these words, but that's the gist of it. Choosing option A will lead to slightly altered endings involving the other non-romanced Shepherds' families, but the endings are about much more than that, so this is just minor flavor text.

Option B is pretty much exactly the same, except it never alludes to anything about marriage and is still complete save for the additional small paragraph.

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However, I know some people don't even like the existence of the marriage "canon"/"alternate universe" thing, even as a toggle. Or... is it just me lol?

We have more members now, so I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit this issue as we head into the next arc of the game! Feel free to vote and leave your thoughts below!

(I ran out of space on the choices so sorry if they're not as descriptive as I'd like...)