Me today: LESLIE IS GOING TO BE 16 IN THE COMIC NOW???

WHAT

oh shit have there been updates I need to catch up

That's a big jump...

Well, I guess I won’t have to worry about icons if I play Leslie for five years like I played Fenimore in Luceti. and maybe I won’t feel as bitter about giving her a love interest now that she isn’t a twelve year old who looks ten at best

YEAH.

wow

The plot recently has been moving toward a competition for a religious/political position that Leslie is participating in as a representative of the Salvatores, where there was an initial test to be allowed to participate where the main competition is held four years later.

And the Sperado family ended up in a position where they can’t currently do anything but are still out there BUT I WASN’T EXPECTING THIS TIMESKIP SO SOON.

I guess I’ll have a canon answer for “how does Leslie’s growth spurt go.”

Also apropos of nothing, but also in this chapter LOOK AT THIS CUTE HAT

I need to read this comic..

OUR BABY GIRL'S GONNA BE SO BIG AND GROWN UP

It’s a cute comic, though also upsetting at times but leads into better stuff happening to her and — THEY CHANGED THE PREVIEW IMAGE TO 16 YEAR OLD LESLIE (and she still has her rabbit)

superorbital: I’M ROOTING FOR HER TO BE LIKE SIX FEET TALL

BABY BABY BABY...

BABYYYYYYYYY she would hate that I’m saying this

P.S. They are cowards for not drawing her buff as hell

okay but listen having your characters visibly growing up in game is distressing

Grows up, still tiny.

Characters aging can be hard...

mamoritai: At least when they start high school age or above, there’s reason to fudge it for some years, but now I’m playing a 12 year old it’s very strange.
Dalrint: I really doubt she’s given up hope of being big and strong eventually even after four years.
kittylyoko: Is this how parents feel??

when i was playing Gold starting at age 13 and then he ended reaching 16 it felt so weird even though i had actual canon for him at 16 at that point

hell Kor is 21 now in his Emp incarnation and i'm like oh god my son is all grown up is this how parents feel...

did i accomplish something as an RP parent because i made sure they made it to adulthood in one piece...

GOSH I imagine. If Aefenglom goes on long enough and I keep playing in it all this time, I may have to think about where things go in this alternate four year span THAT WOULD BE WEIRD

Given your often reckless characters, I think it’s an accomplishment that they didn’t die in that timespan.

I played a character who started at 47, she was 51 by the time the game was over

I think the longest one I did was charlie, she went from 15 to 19 in a game.

The big 5-0.

I played a 15 year old in a game long enough to reach 20.

Dalrint: same hat!!

Actually thinking about it, the game ended just short of 20, I think??

OH NOOO

she's gonna be taller than saber rip

isn't everyone

Probably! I guess I have to wait until next chapter to see her next to someone to guess her height there. It’s probably less than she hopes for right now.

Would you update her? ...Actually does aef do canon updates I never really looked...

They do canon updates, but if I ever update her, it’ll be short of the timeskip.

If she ends up 16, it’ll be through growth in Aefenglom.

(Well, I guess there’s a chance of suddenly falling so in love with post-timeskip Leslie that I would want to play her, but I like twelve year old Leslie and the chance to explore that in between time too much to completely jump.)

.......actually come to think of it, I’m not sure if canon updates affect anything other than memory so even if I did update her post-timeskip she might still be physically 12 and that would be WEIRD.

Me: I should do some things today.
ALso me: Well I guess I'm reading Leslie's comic all afternoon.

I've played age difference body dysmorphia and it is really strange and was honestly not fun.

I’d apologize but also I feel like that’s getting something done.

Get ready for “every chapter you learn an average of one new sad thing about Leslie/terrible thing about the Sperados/both.”

Yay.

exploring character growth for a character who has a canon timeskip or otherwise ages up over the course of their canon can be a lot of fun

it's interesting to have a reference of what they're like at that age in canon and how they differ from it in-game because of their different circumstances

felix voice: I see you're old enough to wage war now

Yeah, I checked and it’s memories only, so I don’t really feel like dealing with that kind of thing, especially with your experience backing up the “that doesn’t seem fun.” By reading what has been translated (and I think they’re caught up on the comic), you will have the very latest I could ever canon update her if I do, which I don’t plan on right now.

mamoritai: It will be very interesting! She’s probably going to have a much wider social circle than in the comic 4 years, at least, as if they skipped Leslie making friends outside of the people living in the Salvatore mansion and her tutors, I will scream. (If she doesn’t have those friends I will also scream so I guess I’m just going to scream.)

RuddyOwls: FELIX NO SHE DOESN’T HAVE THE CONTEXT TO REALIZE THAT’S BAD

well, he doesn't either, he was stabbing people on the battlefield at 15 so.... big felix shrugs, seems normal??

And she’ll be trained by that point since she’s learning the sword from Corrin and Byleth...uh oh.

Yeah. Fembles aren't the best people to teach her how to not be a violent warrior by her mid teens...

Okay leslie is adorable in this. I mean, she is in aef too.

This is why when people say Leslie is cute, I say “oh good, I’m being in-character.”

Also I love the step dad. Big cuddly bear.

HE'S SO CUTE.

She has a crush on the pretty paladin boy doesn't she

It's possible! I know for sure that he will be her romantic interest when she's older (which is to say pretty soon), but I don't think she has a crush on him yet.

He's a good child, though.

She's just very blushy around him

Is this based on a novel like all the korean comics seem to be?

It's true! And he's definitely very important to her by the end of this section. I read it as awkwardness at the moment, but I also recognize that I just in general think of romance last.

It is based on a novel! And the novel is finished and also seems to include more details than the comic in certain sections, but alas, only four chapters have gotten translated publicly and the chapters are in a format that doesn't allow for copy-pasting into anything to get it to translate it for me.

What I've been able to dig up suggests it ended at her coming of age, but it featured an epilogue that gets into Leslie's happy ending (I don't think it's spoilers to say she gets one as she deserves).

are there scanned pages of this novel, even if the text itself isn't copyable?

because there are programs that'll get you around that

The novel itself is online! So if I made use of such a program and figured out how to pay for access to the later chapters, I could search through for information with machine translation.

It feels like a lot of work, but it may be worth it one day since I'm RPing her. The four translated chapters gave some information that enhanced my ability to describe the stuff for memshare and brought up something that only got written in the comic in chapter 52.

if on a PC, Capture2Text is a good program for getting text off of images. And honestly on phones, Google Translate straight up can scan images for text and translate them.

I'll keep those in mind if I ever figure out how purchasing it would work. Thank you!

I WAS WAITING FOR YOUR REACTION LMAO

anyway I think they're hinting she's buff as hell just because if you look at how they drew her hand post timeskip that is NOT a soft refined lady's hand

not as good as outright going there but it still pleased me

OKAY GOOD I’LL TAKE IT.

I’d much rather there be more obvious signs, but better than nothing.

she's baby and grew up in less than great physical health, I'll grudgingly accept her being willowy but strong

she can turn into a juggernaut like her mom in her 20s lmao

FAIR ENOUGH.

I guess she's wiry.

Okay so I may have read the whole thing today whoops

You’re so valid.

Did you enjoy seeing this good child get good things? (And also have a bunch of bad stuff dumped on her but it’s an upward trajectory.)

Yeah.

It got a little tense there at the end

I had to read that one chapter coming out at a time when it became obvious that Things Are About To Go Bad for like six chapters.

Ouch.

Granted, I was partially used to it by then because I had to read it one chapter at a time (well, there were a few times where a few chapters were released all at once) since the mid-chapter 20s, I think, so like for example the trial was all one bit at a time. And at that point I was RPing her already.

I'm just going to yell excitedly about how that's not how you draw a Delicate Young Lady's hand EVEN IF SHE'S STILL DRAWN ALL WILLOWY IN THAT PREVIEW

I wanna see bigger Action Leslie and watch her use a sword now that she presumably can do laps properly.

Leslie, age 13;
Leslie, age 16:

The dream.

kalkjelrkjaf

Insert reaction meme of the four guys on the couch being SUPER enthusiastic

Yeah, that’s the ticket!!!!

It’s like this fan art where I’m already enthusiastic about tiny child Leslie and then I just get even more stoked about buff Leslie.

All Leslies are cute.

omg that ingrid fanart

They know what’s up.

Minor spoilers from the end of the novel, which I'm putting in plurk paste for anyone who is up on the comic but doesn't want little details from the spoilers thread on novelupdates' forum.

OH BLESS

that's DELIGHTFUL

Apparently Conrad kept growing when she didn’t and Leslie slightly resents this.

Does she at least get to be a strong tiny?

The person reading ahead didn’t say! But I can’t imagine her not.

"Oh, a new chapter! Ah, some implications that one of her big brothers might be financially ruining the families that have sent Leslie repeated marriage proposals, some cute stuff with the shadows.......a claim that the empire is over 7000 years old?!"

Until there is further evidence, I'm going to assume that's a typo or a mistranslation. In part, this is because other places have suggested the empire to be not much over a thousand years old and even the longest empires in Earth history don't seem to have made it past 1500 years.

But also in part it's because there is a record of one of the child sacrifices happening in "Empire Year 231," and if I'm supposed to take that as anything other than "the 231st year of the empire," I don't know what I'm supposed to take it as.

I'm not about to assume that there are nearly 7000 years of child sacrifices without it being more explicit that yes, that's what they meant.

THAT'S A LOT OF DEAD CHILDREN

IT SURE WOULD BE I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be one thousand years which is already so many dead children.

Like at minimum that's like 600-700 years of dead children even if we go with "empire is exactly 1000 years old and the sacrifices petered out a century ago."

that'd sure explain why shadows are so OP though

that's a lot of dead children

IT’S A FEW FOR SURE.