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asksythe · 18 days ago

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Below is the plot outline for an EdGuda story idea I have nursed for a while. It's a short story only, which I have named: Seven Nights at Adora. It is a time paradoxical love story where Ritsuka is reverse summoned into the original Chateau d'If, before a human Edmond Dantes, for 7 nights, before he forgets her completely. This story is my way of answering why it is that Edmond Dantes is so devoted to Ritsuka, to the point that in his character materials, it is said that Ritsuka is the only Master the vengeful heroic spirit Edmond Dantes ever contracts with.... as well as the striking similarity between Ritsuka and Haydee. The story takes place right after Ordeal Call 2 and just before Monte Cristo (King of the Cavern) is summoned to Chaldea.

Premise: In which Ritsuka Fujimaru is reversed summoned to the real Château d'If, to the side of Edmond Dantes, the human prisoner.

It begins at the edge of exhaustion, in the shadow of Ordeal Call 2. Ritsuka Fujimaru has seen the end of another world and carried the weight of yet another salvation. But in the silent aftermath, something gives way. Not in the grand metaphysical sense, but personally, intimately, as if some invisible circuit in her soul had finally overloaded. She goes to sleep one night in Chaldea, or perhaps in Dream Tokyo, and wakes in darkness.

Stone walls. Damp air. A narrow cot. Chains. And across from her, a man who stares at her like she is nothing real.

Somehow, Riri has been "reverse summoned"—not by a grail or ritual, but by something more abstract, more fated. She appears in the prison cell of Edmond Dantès, not as the Servant she knows, but the man still rotting in the Château d’If. The connection is inexplicable, but she doesn’t fight it. Every time she sleeps, she returns. Every night, she wakes in the cell with him.

Dantès assumes she is a hallucination—some fragment of his mind breaking apart under the weight of betrayal and silence. And Riri... she’s not sure he’s wrong. She can’t interact with the guards, can’t change the course of his imprisonment, can’t unlock the chains that bind him. She can only sit, talk, bring warmth in the form of conversation, song, stories, memories from a world he will never live to see.

At first, he doesn't speak to her. Then, little by little, he does, as a man in the depths of despair with nothing left to lose, conversing with the figment of his madness.

Riri wonders if this is something like what happened with Asagami Fujino—a brief window across worlds, opened by death or trauma or time. Or perhaps it’s a result of her and Dantès's overlapping dreams, their subconscious minds interwoven from years of Servant and Master connection. After all, Dantès guards her dreamscape in Chaldea. Is it so strange that he would also become the gatekeeper of her grief?

She speculates. She questions. But ultimately, she accepts. Even if this is just a fever dream for him—just one more illusion for a man drowning in rage and despair—it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to be remembered. She’s already at the end of everything. There’s no war to win, no battle left to fight. There’s only this: caring for Edmond Dantès when no one else can.

Seven nights.

Seven impossible, weightless nights where time slips its moorings and love weaves itself into the fabric of history unnoticed. Seven nights where she holds the man who will one day become the Count of Monte Cristo, and listens to him scream, and slowly watches the screaming quiet.

And when it ends—when she wakes up one final time and never returns—he forgets her.

Or so it seems.

But something in him remains. Something indelible. So that when he finally dies, when he becomes a Servant, when he stands before the summoning circle, it is only her hand he ever takes.

And no one—not even Dantès himself—understands why.

The Time Paradox of Devotion

In Seven Nights at Adora, love does not unfold along a straight line. It curls into itself—knot-like, recursive—defying any simple chronology. To call it a beginning would be inaccurate. The bond between Edmond Dantès and Ritsuka Fujimaru was never something born; it was always already there.

Riri meets Dantès for the first time as a Servant. A phantom in her dream, a voice forged from revenge, summoned first by an enemy of mankind. That should have been the start.

And yet—it wasn’t.

Because he met her first.

When she wakes in the Château d’If, summoned by something inexplicable into the world of his despair, it is not Edmond the Avenger who greets her, but Edmond the prisoner. She does not recognize him. She knows of the Count, the cold flame of righteous vengeance, not this shattered man crumbling in the dark. But he recognizes her, or something in her. Something familiar.

There is a precedent in literature, and in the Count’s own memories: Haydée. The young woman who came to him when no one else would, bearing kindness in a cruel world. Red-haired, willful, full of care. A figure who, like Riri, was shaped by grief and fate but remained unbroken. When he sees Riri, he sees not just Haydée, but Abbé Faria too—the one who gave him hope, who reached through stone walls and madness with the promise of escape.

If he sees her as either of those figures, then he sees her as a lifeline. A spider’s thread dangling into hell.

Which raises a question: why? Why does a man, so consumed by betrayal that he transforms into a Servant of Vengeance, tether himself to this one girl across all iterations and timelines?

The answer: he already loved her. Already owed her, in some deep, impossible way.

This is the cyclical nature of their paradox. In the deepest pit of human suffering, Riri reaches for him. Her presence, ephemeral though it is, becomes the one memory that does not burn when everything else does. It does not alter the course of his life—he still suffers, still escapes, still becomes the Count. But in that life-long fire, she becomes the one kindness he believes he imagined.

When he dies and is pulled into the Throne of Heroes, it is her face that lingers in the smoke of memory. So when he is summoned again, not as a man but as a construct of hatred, and stands before Ritsuka Fujimaru in Chaldea, something ancient and aching recognizes her.

Goetia cannot understand him, because Goetia never accounted for love. Not the self-repeating, paradoxical kind. Not a bond born not out of logic or causality, but out of insistence—that even in hell, one thread of light was worth clinging to.

Dantès never turns against humanity. He turns toward her.

And so it loops. Because if he never devoted himself so absolutely, Riri would never have found the strength or the spiritual bond necessary to reach back into his past. And if she had never reached into his past, he never would have known her well enough to fall for her in the first place.

It is an impossible love. One that exists outside of chronology. One that makes no sense unless you believe in stories, in ghosts, in dreams—and in people who are fated to find each other, even if the universe itself has to double back to make it so.

This is why Dantès never contracts with anyone else. Because no one else ever reached for him in the dark.

#fate grand order #gudako #ritsuka fujimaru #fgo #edmond dantes #count of monte cristo #edgudako #edguda #fanfic #plot line

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asksythe · 18 days ago

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Oh man! Mass Effect, my love back when I was in my 20 something. You know the other day I talked to my husband about the ending, it still pissed me off so much I started yelling about it and tearing up to him, Erimies?

Haaa.... it's been something like 10 years and still it hurts me this much. But that's how you know it genuinely touched me. Yeah, I can see what you are talking about. Somewhere in the third game, there's the bones of a great story. I don't know whether it's by intention or a happy coincidence helped on by a lot of passionate people in the writing team, like the creation of female Shepard. I just... well... Us long-time Bioware fans back in the days already got the inkling that something was not right with the company even then. We could tell by Dragon Age 2 that the magic was fading because it was being fed on by the corporate vampire. Reading the dev notes and the testaments of people who made the original trilogy and have since moved on from Bioware, I still am of the opinion that had the game been given the time and dedication it should have gotten, we really would have seen the ending of a trilogy to define a generation. But yeah, now that it has passed, it's up to us the people who still love it after 10 years and many heartbreaks (looking at you Andromeda) to make something out of it.

So, I just finished a Mass Effect playthrough. For whatever reason, I picked the synthesis ending for the very first time. And now I have been inflicted with thoughts.

For the longest time, I hated the very idea of the synthesis ending. It sounded like ridiculous space magic mumbo jumbo, and I still don't really vibe with how it is presented in-game. But I find that I can think of it from a different angle, if I put aside my initial impression.

What Shepard does is the same thing Legion does. Just on bigger scale.

Legion in the third game is fundamentally changed by the Reaper code, but also his time exploring the galaxy with Shepard. He can't simply grant that change to the geth by uploading some code - the experience itself, the road he walked, is the true catalyst. So he disseminates his personality and goes to them. The geth experience enlightenment and Legion is their Buddha.

What Shepard does in the synthesis ending seems very similar to that. His or her person is disseminated, and everything they are becomes a catalyst for a galaxy-wide fundamental change where all synthetic and organic sentient beings evolve to a new level... or something like that. But I think it can't just be space magic to bestow Reaper upgrades. Shepard has to be the one to do it. Because if you want to choose the third ending, you have to haul ass.

It takes painstaking effort and making all the right calls, but if you play your cards right, Shepard becomes a veritable space Jesus. You can broker an alliance between turians and krogan. The krogan get not only a cure for the genophage, but a billion-in-one chance to find themselves as a culture and a place in the galaxy as neither aggressors nor victims but heroes. Quarians can find it in themselves to stand beside the geth in peace, and in return get back their home and their health. Geth experience true individuality and co-existence with not only their creators but the galaxy at large. The batarians, free of their tyrannical central government, rally behind the cultural relic Shepard brings them. Even most of the salarians decide to ignore that one dalatrass to support the great cause. All of this is miraculous in itself. Of course the galaxy, starved for hope, latches on.

Shepard has also stepped outside their own human experience and connected in deep and fundamental ways with many, many different species. Asari mind melding. The prothean beacon and the cipher and exchanging experiences with Javik. A memory of a distant human ancestor meeting a prothean drone. Talking with the rachni queen, and hearing the rachni sing in distant planets ever after. The digital world of David. The geth collective memory. The Leviathan. All these experiences must have changed Shepard in a fundamental level. And that is why it must be Shepard who uses the Crucible.

TIM at the end talks big about the next step for humanity. He thinks he can just force it by controlling the Reapers and so committed unspeakable atrocities to get there. He is wrong, because his methods are wrong and his narrow view can only see humanity.

This is the time. This is the only time all the peoples of the galaxy are ready for a next step. They have faced extinction and terror. They have seen their worlds burn, their own people turned into monstrosities. And they have rallied and banded together. You see it time and again. A random human and batarian befriending and comforting each other. That turian security guard / receptionist who takes care of that teenager whose parents are missing. The sudden entry of the geth into battle results in nothing worse than a headlight shot off by mistake. The feverish mania of creativity and ingenuity and innovation that is happening in the Crucible. Shepard may be leading the charge, but (mostly) everyone else follows in their wake.

The time is right. The galaxy is ready, without even knowing what they are ready for. Through the combination of Shepard's life experiences and the light flung into the future time and again by countless long-lost civilizations, all of them hoping that someone might make it… we get a true miracle. Shepard sacrifices his or herself to save the galaxy, not through cruelty and force and exclusion but kindness and connection and love. After countless myriads the Reapers are not only defeated, but even their very reason for being is rendered obsolete and false.

What comes after? I'm not sure. But, perhaps the asari find their belief in the universe as a great shared consciousness validated in a way they would never have expected. And maybe that world is a little kinder and wiser than the one they left behind.

#mass effect #mass effect meta #commander shepard

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asksythe · 20 days ago

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FGO Pet Theory: Daybit is stuck as a 10-year-old boy due to his wonky time perception

Man! What a title! 😅 But hear me out! I swear I'm not being a weirdo here. Confession time. I went into Lostbelt 7 expecting to hate Daybit's guts. Hah! Ahem... if you have been reading my sleepy little blog for a while, you know I adore Ritsuka. Even came up with the cute pet name Riri for her and everything. I'm a mama fan, see. So I really... really... really... didn't take kindly to people who dunk on Riri for whatever reasons.

The Crypters? Yeah, at the start of the Lostbelt arc, I was incandescent with rage. How fucking dare they?!! To my baby girl!!?!! Because she had the temerity to save the world as a muggle?!! The fucking nerve of these blood purist with inferiority complex assholes!!

Man, the things I did to Kadoc! He was the first piñata for me to wreck with my imaginary hammer. I made it a point to always bring the most embarrassing teams into fights against Crypters. -Kadoc and Anastasia? Kintoki Rider whooped Anastasia while my Riri took the field in a bikini! -Ophelia and Sigurd? Bitchy Loli Euryale did unspeakable things to Sigurd while his lady love watched. -Yu Meiren and her horse lord? Bitchy Loli Euryale to the field again. It wasn't easy to use Euryale for this fight but I wanted maximum insult to injury. -Wodime? Got three-turned by Medb in the sexy prison warden outfit. Bitchslapped to death and everything. -Beryl Gut? Hah! So... yeah... over time, my ire at the crypters started to abate, but even so, my general disposition towards them as a whole is 'those ass-on-backward idiots, what did they break now and how are they going to excuse their harebrained ideas this time?' And... well... I'm not saying I gave Daybit and Tezca an easy time (because my Erice in a swimsuit stole their lunch money and dunked their heads in the school toilet bowl for sure), but Daybit... for sure... wasn't what I expected. I mean... it's been a while since the last time I saw a genuine cloudcookulander character in media. A space one at that! I think the last time I saw one was... Clear from Dramatical Murder. Anyway, so... he wasn't what I expected (I don't know what I expected to be honest since the benchmark for Daybit pre LB7 was Wodime peer but more cool and mysterious), and I have a soft spot for cloudcookulander characters... so... I started to be interested. And here's the thing... is it just me or does he sometimes behave kinda childlike? Fandom perception of Daybit via fanarts and doujins tends to portray him as the socially stunted genius who might never have had a normal human interaction in his life kind of character. But the more you pay attention to how he acts, especially around Ritsuka during their final confrontation, the more cracks you start to see.

"Novum Chaldea was it? Not a bad name" or... Daybit, is that your way of saying: “Fujimaru, You’re Actually�� Kinda Cool.”?? His whole vibe during that final battle is just weirdly funny... in an exasperating way. He clearly expected Ritsuka to be this powerful, cunning opponent. He sounded like he built her up in his head as this epic Chaldean commander, a lackey of Marisbury—someone truly worthy of facing off with him.

And then he sees her. And she’s just a normal person. The first thing he said to her in the lead-up to Ort awakening was: "The woman who saved the world doesn't look very intimidating." He chalks it up to her Master Authority being stripped away, but you can tell there’s this moment of confusion where the fantasy he built up doesn’t match reality.

And then something kind of hilarious and adorable happens: he starts to like her.

...In this very boyish way. Like a kid who just realized the person he was supposed to hate is actually kind of cool. He literally says so after the fight. I think that might have been the only time he actually smiled in the game! Even before the final battle, his sprite always looked to the side, like he wasn't quite there, like whatever in front of him wasn't worth paying his full attention to. But the fight before Ort, that was when the sprite changed to him facing completely forward, looking into the screen at Ritsuka (and the players).

And when he got his ass whooped in the last battle of the Lostbelt, what was his reaction? He had a straight-up “but why can’t you do the cool thing Riri does?” moment with Tezcatlipoca!!! He lost and then complained to Tezca why couldn't you do that chain summoning some more servant thing she did??!! Hahaha!! Just straight-up pouting because his giant chaos god partner didn’t help him win.

It's giving playground rivalry energy.

Like what is this expression range, sir??!! You are supposed to be inscrutable and unknowable.

Anyway!!!

Time Isn’t Real to This Man (Boy stuck in time??)

And here's my pet theory: I think the reason Daybit acts this way is because, to him, time doesn’t pass like it does for the rest of us.

Yes, we all know by now that Daybit can only remember 5 minutes of every day. He does have a mechanism for choosing which part of the day he gets to remember, but the way he's seen by other characters in LB7 suggests that it's not total control (or he wouldn't act so impatient with Xquic). The game told us that Daybit can still function like normal and that a regular human only needs 5 minutes per day to remember everything important to them... ...Like I still believe the shit this game tells me!!! How many fucking times did Nasu lay down some rules only to later on have some character break them before saying 'yes normally it's like that but you see this one is special and this special circumstances xyzzz'? There's a reason people call it Nasubabble!! I would be a sucker to take Nasu's words at face level! Yes, Daybit is clearly not a completely dysfunctional wreck (his sense of fashion aside), but it's clear the 5 mins per day thing has an effect on him. Humans' memories don't just operate on a conscious, day-to-day, data inscription on the brain meat level. There are aspects and facets of our psyche that are pinned on our perception of time. Put it like this for easy understanding. At the end of LB7, from Tezca and Daybit's conversation, we know that a year in that timeline only amounted to about 30 hours from Daybit’s perspective. A whole year. Experienced in thirty hours. You know what that means? It means that the years between the '5 minute' incident in which Daybit's father was vaporized and he himself was turned into what he is today... to the time when he joined Chaldea at 18 years old... was only 1.5 week in Daybit's experienced perception.

Imagine that. This kid went from abruptly being turned into an orphan (not just by his father but the rest of humanity as everything he was before that moment was erased from the memories of mankind) in the most traumatizing manner possible, having to question even his personhood as he was, in his own words, just a replica of the original boy (via malevolent alien angel space magic no less)... to jumping headfirst into a suicide mission against Marisbury's Chaldea because... in the word of his father's, a human is someone who does good. Take a moment to really let that sink in. One and a half week of experienced and remembered time. And during this time in between, he was only bunking with the worst possible folks to entrust a traumatized child to, the fucking mages of the Clock Tower. You think he got any manner of help or attempt to reconnect him to his own humanity? Hah! And the only thing he has left to him is what his father told him... about what a human is... in a time when he doesn't think of himself as human anymore... I really wonder how much of Daybit as he is is because of the angel relic and how much is from the experience afterwards, when he has little way (and time) to fully process what happened to him and no one to reconnect his humanity to. Keep in mind. We are talking about a 10 years old boy here, not a grown man like he appears to be. Even if physically he’s grown up, mentally and emotionally, he might’ve never really moved much further from where he was when it all started—like age 10.

That would explain a lot about him, actually.

He acts like a precocious kid sometimes. Detached. Observant. Kind of literal, in a high-functioning autistic way. Has no idea how to deal with people. Probably still thinks in very black-and-white “game rules” logic. He fixates on Riri like she’s the final boss in a video game, gets emotionally unmoored when she doesn’t match that image. You know I have this funny idea that if Riri had picked up on it and started treating him like a very clever 10-year-old boy—snacks, headpats, gentle encouragement—Daybit might’ve actually thrived. There’s something tragic and sweet about that. Like all this time, no one’s ever looked at him and thought, “Oh, this guy’s just a kid who never got the chance to grow up.”

So... TLDR...

Daybit Sem Void is a cosmic boy trapped in a man’s body, and the weird way he experiences time has left him emotionally stuck in childhood (or tweenagehood if we want to get technical here). His reaction to Riri in LB7 is one of the only times we see that vulnerable, half-grown side peek through. It’s awkward. It’s endearing. It’s sad. I kinda dig it.

So yeah. That’s my Daybit theory. He’s ten. In space years.

#fate grand order #fgo #Daybit #daybit sem void #Fan Theory

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asksythe · 21 days ago

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Close-up version so we can see all that yummy intimacy! The full version is a bit bigger so I'll leave it below. Commed. Artist: Raccoon Nilh It's completed! I'm so happy with how this piece turned out! Raccoon Nilh did great work! Anyway, this is one of the illustrations for a future fanfic project I have planned. The name is: Pygmalion Gazes at the Stars. To avoid the fate of other stories I have come up but forgot to write down (they faded from my brain), I wrote down this (much truncated) plot draft. The original plan was something like... 7000 words of text over varios plot elements, the overarching structures, how the relationship will unfold, how it will be viewed through the astonishing eyes of Chaldea staff, the implications and fallouts of Daybit's presence, the climatic finale act complete with mad girlfriend Riri riding a motorbike and wielding a shotgun running over Lostbelt 7 to hunt down Daybit in his jeep.... among other things... ...anyway...

Premise

Pygmalion Gazes at the Stars begins as a continuation of canon—a hypothetical extension of Lostbelt 7 ending. In this version, Daybit Sem Void, having been defeated and undone in the final act of his own Lostbelt, accepts Tezcatlipoca’s offer to rewind time. He’s given a single opportunity to try again, to change the outcome, to pursue the answer he never found.

But instead of rewinding back to the start of Lostbelt 7, Daybit goes further. Much further.

He rewinds all the way to the very beginning—before the explosion at Chaldea, before the Lostbelts, before Team A was sealed into the coffins. This time, Daybit evades the collapse of the command room. This time, he does not follow the other Crypters into slumber or betrayal. Instead, he walks a different path.

He joins Chaldea’s new timeline and aligns himself with a girl he once underestimated: Ritsuka Fujimaru.

But his motives aren’t benevolent. This isn’t redemption—not yet. What drives him is an obsession. In his mind, Ritsuka is the one who defeated Ort. The one who overcame the impossible. The one who bested him.

In her, Daybit sees a rival unlike any he’s ever known. So he returns to the beginning—not to save her, not to support her, but to observe her. Study her. Surpass her. To do this, he refuses to take command as the 'Last Master of Humanity,' a title which would have gone to him as a member of Team A and the much more experienced Master than greenhorn Riri, much to everybody's surprise. In typical Daybit's manner, he refuses to elaborate beyond insisting that Riri is the best Master there is (because it's the truth in his mind! He hasn't surpassed her yet)

The rest of Chaldea doesn’t understand why Daybit defers to her leadership. Ritsuka herself is suspicious of his sincerity. But as the singularities unfold and the Lostbelt threat begins to stir once more, an unshakable bond forms—not through fate, but through day-by-day presence. Through belief. Through proximity. Through shared experience.

In trying to surpass her, Daybit begins to understand her. And through her, he begins to understand himself again.

The Pygmalion Effect

The heart of the story lies in the psychological concept known as the Pygmalion effect: when someone believes in you so completely, you begin to rise to meet their expectations. Ritsuka, who starts the story uncertain and insecure, begins to grow into her role because Daybit believes in her without question. That belief changes her. And, over time, it begins to change him too.

This story isn’t just about one person sculpting another. It's about two people who become better versions of themselves through mutual belief. Ritsuka sees through Daybit’s inhuman detachment (in typical Riri's fashion. What's a Cloudcuckoolander Daybit compared to literal BEAST Draco?). She recognizes his pain and loneliness, which even Daybit himself fails to vocalize. In doing so, she returns his gaze with her own belief—that he isn’t beyond saving, that he’s still human underneath.

The Shape of a Life: Daybit, Riri, and the Slow Return to Humanity

One of the most grounding elements of Pygmalion is the day-to-day life that quietly unfolds between Daybit, Ritsuka, and Mash. After the decision is made to support Riri, Daybit quite literally never leaves her side. He insists it’s necessary to observe her constantly in order to surpass her—he must be there at every moment to record her strengths, catalog her missteps, and understand her entirely.

And so, Daybit eats when Riri eats. Trains when she trains. Reads mission reports at her side. They review battle data together, share coffee across the table, and discuss Servant summoning strategies long into the night. Eventually, sleeping arrangements become shared, too—not from romantic initiative, but because Riri falls asleep at her desk too often and Daybit refuses to leave her unattended. In his words: “It is vital to track the frequency and condition of her REM cycles.”

Mash, ever loyal, is often close by. In many ways, this strange trio becomes a unit—Chaldea’s emotional core. Riri becomes something of a pseudo big sister to both of them, despite Daybit technically being her senpai. Where he brings raw analytical ability and bizarre alien foresight, she brings warmth and trust and an instinctive grasp of people.

What starts as Daybit’s obsessive campaign to study and “surpass” her becomes something else entirely. Through Riri’s routines—meals, laughter, arguments, fatigue, quiet joy—he begins to feel again. He starts noticing things: how good coffee tastes after a long mission. How soothing Riri’s voice is when she’s humming without realizing it. How Mash smiles a little more easily when the three of them are together.

Without meaning to, Daybit begins to experience what he lost: a sense of family. And while he would never use that word himself, it takes root in the quiet spaces between battles—in the walk to the cafeteria, the silence before sleep, the shared glance across a crowded control room. For someone so thoroughly estranged from humanity, routine becomes a lifeline. Intimacy, even platonic, becomes a catalyst.

Riri doesn’t notice at first. She simply enjoys the company and tries to take care of both of them. But slowly, through a hundred unnoticed moments, she becomes the center of a new constellation—a small, strange, but fiercely devoted family. In essence, Riri becomes a lens through which Daybit can perceive his own humanity again.

The Alien Within: Daybit and the Question of Intimacy

There’s a specific narrative I want to explore through Daybit, inspired in part by Phoenix by Osamu Tezuka (and its later reinterpretation in Saya no Uta) and my own interpretation of Daybit as a character (which I probably should write out one of these days). It’s the idea of a person whose perception of humanity has been fundamentally altered—someone who no longer sees other people as people. Someone for whom connection becomes foreign and unsettling.

Daybit, in this story, doesn’t simply struggle with love or intimacy; he doesn’t even process it in the same way anymore. He’s so alienated from humanity—emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually—that human urges and instincts don’t quite register as real to him. When he looks at others, he doesn’t see potential partners. He sees something akin to how we might view another species.

It’s not that he can’t form bonds. It’s that he doesn’t expect to or even thinks he needs to. But then, into that distorted landscape, walks Riri.

He doesn’t initially see her as a woman or even a person, but as an anomaly. A perplexing variable that he cannot simulate, cannot solve, like how she even bested him in the canon Lostbelt 7. Slowly, through observation and prolonged proximity, she becomes the exception to his estrangement. Not through any deliberate seduction, but through sheer presence—through being human in a way he had forgotten was possible.

In intimate moments, he doesn’t perceive her body as a biological object. Instead, he processes it through alien metaphor: as glass, as sand, as something granular and collapsing yet beautiful in its impermanence. His approach to sexuality is less instinctual and more cognitive—curious, reverent, disoriented. And it’s through this lens that he begins to re-approach what it means to be human at all.

Ensemble Cast and Ripple Effects

In this timeline, the Crypters begin to survive. Daybit’s interference changes the game. The grand sacrificial ritual behind the Lostbelts starts to unravel. More of Team A wakes up and sees what’s become of Chaldea—and of Daybit.

Many assume he’s running the show, only to be surprised when they realize it’s Ritsuka in charge, and that Daybit defers to her completely.

That confusion sparks speculation. Is Ritsuka a product of mage-breeding experiments? A genetically engineered super-Master? The Crypters can’t believe someone as unremarkable as her could be that good—so they start looking for hidden reasons.

Only Beryl, strangely enough, sees the truth. He knows love when he sees it.

And so begins a chain reaction. The rest of the Crypters start to bond, to grow, even to form their own ill-fated or awkward relationships. Chaldea becomes a strange sort of found family—one with plenty of dysfunction, plenty of arguments, but also moments of warmth and honesty. There's even a light parody thread running through it: "nature documentary"-style commentary on the "mating habits" of socially inept magi.

The Conspiracy: Who—or What—is Riri?

As Daybit continues to defer to Riri and the Crypters begin to rejoin Chaldea, something unexpected happens. Whispers begin to circulate. Because to them, Riri shouldn’t be possible. In canon, Riri's success was chalked up to as nothing more than a fluke and the result of her hiding behind Mash by the Crypters (except Wodime but he didn't exactly share that with the class). But in this timeline, Daybit's presence and continual deference to Riri in battle and in decision making as a Master throws that assumption out the window. Mash's deference can be reasoned away because she was just a fancy homunculus to the mages. But Daybit is considered Wodime's peer. There's absolutely no way Daybit would defer to some unknown neophyte without a reason.

The Crypters know Chaldea. They were the elite. Team A was handpicked by Marisbury himself. And yet here’s this complete outsider—a supposed “average” Master candidate who somehow survived the destruction of Chaldea, succeeded where no one else could, and has Daybit of all people in her orbit, treating her like the sun around which he orbits.

They start to wonder: is she really just a lucky survivor?

A theory takes root. That Ritsuka Fujimaru was never just a random candidate. That she may have been the final product of an off-book genetic engineering project—Marisbury’s last, hidden card. A counterpoint to Mash Kyrielight: whereas Mash was engineered to contain a Heroic Spirit, perhaps Riri was designed to command them. A Master refined at the genetic level, optimized for survival, summoning, and leadership.

The fact that she and Mash are inseparable only fuels the theory. Were they meant to function as a paired unit? A living singularity and its anchor? It makes a certain kind of sense because Mash while she was working with Team A never displayed this level of power, initiative, and agency. She couldn't even manifest her servant power in a controlled manner. But if she's essentially a lock just waiting for the key to unlock her true potential, then Riri's presence and their combined success make a lot of sense. And now, with Marisbury gone, has Daybit—forever the outsider among mages—stepped in to claim the prize before anyone else realized what she was?

Even if the theory is false, it spreads fast. It’s easier for the Crypters to believe in a conspiracy than in a miracle.

An Unconventional Romance

Their relationship is not straightforward. For the longest time, Daybit sees Ritsuka not as a love interest, but as a rival—his greatest adversary. He meticulously documents her successes and her failures, determined to surpass her. His “affection” manifests as an obsessive need to learn from her and record everything she does, including moments as mundane as her falling asleep on the command room desk.

He’s oblivious to the fact that this has long since become something deeper. The Chaldea staff eventually catches on, of course. Some even tries to intervene in an attempt to help the poor, socially inept young man with his massive crush... to no avail. Daybit insists that everything he does is so that he can surpass her one day. What? This journal he keeps to record everything about her, even down to her nap time and favorite food and all the little stumbles she makes? Clearly, these are useful data points and potential blackmail materials to be used to devastating effect. There’s even a betting pool on when—or if—he’ll realize it himself. And naturally, there’s comedic potential here: Daybit sabotaging Valentine��s Day to intercept chocolates meant for Ritsuka, criticizing Servants like Dantes for being “untrustworthy,” and insisting on spending every waking hour “calibrating” with her for “operational efficiency.”

Finale: Conflict and Clarity

Hah! Well, I can't put too many details here because I don't want to spoil the plot, but it will involve an alternate Lostbelt 7. This is where it starts for Daybit (and Riri), and this is where it will end. This is the stage of their showdown... and their first big argument (break up! In typical romantic plot!)

It will be explosive! Action! Speed! Car chase! Guns galore in typical American action romance fashion! The young couple meet in battle to resolve their differences! All that jazz!

The Ending: A Declaration

The ending is, in a sense, Daybit's proposal to Riri, in the usual Daybit's fashion. He tells Ritsuka that she is, and always has been, his greatest adversary. That he wants to surpass her. That he will be there at every stumble, and rise beyond every triumph.

It’s a confession in his own language.

And Ritsuka, with tears and laughter and maybe a few swears, throws it right back at him. Yes, she's going to be his rival! Now and forever! Provided he doesn't mess up again! And no he won't surpass her anytime soon, because she's going to try her damnedest to keep the lead on him.

A Story About Belief

At its core, Pygmalion Gazes at the Stars is a story about how belief transforms people—how seeing someone clearly, and choosing to believe in them, can be the most powerful form of love. It’s about alienation and reconnection. Found family. Quiet moments at the edge of the universe.

It’s not just Daybit sculpting Ritsuka into the savior of humanity. It’s also Ritsuka remaking Daybit into someone who, for the first time in a very long time, looks up at the stars and doesn’t feel so alone.

#fate grand order #gudako #fanart #ritsuka fujimaru #fgo #dayguda #daybit sem void #daybitgudako #fanfic

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