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green-spear-of-causality · 4 years ago

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this theory on reddit mostly lists things I’ve been losing m’mind over since like 2017 already (to the point of having a dedicated tag about What Is Up With The Celt And Norse Gods but i kinda stopped talking about it after lb2 bc it gave zero answers lol) or things that further underline that Something Is Up but imo while odin’s involvement in caster cu’s saint graph is guaranteed at this point I’m also certain that it’s not a case of odin masquerading as cu like the theory implies, he genuinely is cu chulainn. in fact, I will say it’s the opposite

rather than odin using caster cu to manifest as a servant, it is cu chulainn who takes odin’s place

now this one will take a while so make yourself comfortable. there’s no reason to believe caster cu isn’t cu chulainn, his ingame and material profile both underline he and lancer are the same person. the way cascu talks to archer in first order would make no damn sense whatsoever if he weren’t legitimately cu chulainn, they blatantly reference their fight in front of the church in ubw. caster cu is undoubtedly the same person as every other cu chulainn.

BUT, interestingly enough, that fight at the church is also where archer says that cu’s gae bolg is stronger than gungnir. in fate/side material it says that gae bolg’s ability to always strike the heart is not an original function of the weapon, but rather something cu made himself. in fate/extra material it is further specified that this ability is one step below being classified as a divine authority. in fsn itself it says that this makes it closer in function to gungnir than his own father’s brionac.

let me repeat that: gae bolg has functions that cu made himself, that are one step below a divine authority, that make it similar in function to gungnir, and gae bolg is the stronger weapon between the two.

a connection between cu and odin that the reddit post doesn’t mention is that in fate/extella, altera can smell the norse gods on cu. lugh isn’t a norse god, but cu stil assumed it was about his father. while easy to dismiss as some kind of translation error in a vacuum, in the greater context of all of cu’s ties to odin over lugh it’s sus as fuck

in scathach’s interlude, it’s brought up cu’s power might be getting split between his lancer and caster versions, although this isn’t an apparent issue with any other servant with multiple versions. however, cu chulainn was cut in half in fate/hollow ataraxia by lugh’s noble phantasm wielded by bazett, and this is reflected in caster cu’s design. his hair came loose and stayed that way, the spear he leans on to stay upright becomes a staff, and the third earring that prompted this fight dangles off it. a cu chulainn without gae bolg as noble phantasm or setanta’s “gae bolg user in training” skill is not possible because the spear is symbolic of his heroic and tragic fate, but fragarach is “a sword that severs fate.” if something like that were to cut him in half, a portion of cu chulainn unbound by that fate should become possible to manifest, right?

which brings me to something else I believe is very important here: cu chulainn’s heroic fate. because the thing about that is, he may have had that prophecy to ensure the result, but cu chulainn is a hero by choice, not by fate. he’s a demigod and a monster and was prophesied to great glory and untimely death, but his bond ce confirms that long before any of that was relevant he independently decided that he wanted to become a hero, and he continued to make that choice time and time again as he was repeatedly made to prove himself. even cu alter, the most monstrous we’ve seen him so far, insists on maintaining the dignity of a hero. he has aspects of gods and monsters alike but regardless of what his origins are, cu chulainn is the result of choosing the side of humans as a hero. his tragic fate is his own choice, and gae bolg’s ability to always hit the heart that represents this fate is a feature he made himself. as long as cu chulainn has gae bolg he will always be a hero, even if that weapon puts him on the level of a god, even if the bones it was made of make him look the part of monster, because it embodies his choice to be a hero.

the reddit post mentions it’s extremely likely that cascu will appear in lb6 and I agree, so let’s make a short detour to talk about someone else with a god level spear who is related to a camelot chapter. that’s right, I’m talking about lancer arturia alter! she noticed rhongomyniad elevating her to godhood and forcibly turned herself alter in order to remain human, even if it leaves her clinging to existeence with bleeding fingertips. notably, she appeared in the kara no kyoukai event where she is assumed to be an empty suit of armor, the same event where caster cu insists there’s no cu chulainn here. cu alter is a monster king but chooses the pride of a hero even so, a chapter later lancer artoria is a divine king who didn’t make the choice her alter did, saber alter is the person guarding the grail back in singularity F where we first meet caster cu, various forms of saber and cu keep circling each other in this “once is a fluke, twice is coincidence, thrice is a pattern” kind of way. lartoria alter is also one of the leaders of the wild hunt, same as odin, so there’s dots to connect there as well.

what am I getting at, you ask? I’ll tell you what I’m getting at. cu chulainn inherently has the capacity to be(come) the god odin, but chooses to be the hero cu chulainn instead.

here’s where the proof gets tricky and I have to veer off a little further into speculation rather than simply listing what’s right there in the text, because the missing puzzle piece is the reason why scathach is skadi. it seems the game is purposely vague about that in how it handwaves it as “they share a similar origin” without any further specifics or bringing it up in story, even though there’s plenty other heroic spirits with similar origins who don’t take each other’s names, like siegfried and his scandinavian counterpart sigurd (who are arguably much closer connected than scathach and skadi). even if the truth is indeed that their origin is simply similar and they blended together, it’s strange that scathach-skadi’s profile so strongly insists that she’s predominantly skadi when her noble phantasm is scathach’s gate of skye. a similar case is actually clytie van gogh, who is said to be predominantly clytie but even so her two noble phantasms are both van gogh’s, and curiously enough scathach-skadi featured in van gogh’s event as well.

what is the reason for skadi being skadi and scathach being scathach even though skadi uses scathach’s gate and scathach uses skadi’s runes? if their origin is similar enough that their true names are getting combined, why are they still different? this is where it becomes theory instead of simply fact: the key lies in their decision to be either scathach or skadi. this mysterious shared origin of theirs at some point made a choice between siding with humans, gods or monsters, and the difference in that choice is the difference in their person.

scathach is an immortal witch from the land of shadows but before that she was, as far as we know, simply a human who worked her ass off until the world itself was like “wow hold up, one human can’t do that much in their lifetime, you have to be immortal for this to make sense.” scathach HATES being immortal. as far as she’s concerned she’d much rather have died as a human, because all her human achievements became void now that she has infinite time to achieve them. her disposition as a teacher is a natural extension of this mindset: what scathach values the most of all is humanity’s potential to achieve impossible things in their limited lifespans. she is no longer human herself but she can still choose humanity’s side, and therefore she is scathach the godslayer.

skadi on the other hand is a goddess inherently superior to humans, who cares for them from a place of taking responsibility for them rather than guiding them to achieve their potential. she lacks scathach’s skill or drive to improve as a warrior, and it seems that as “shining bride of the gods” she was more preoccupied with the happenings of other gods than those of humans. the skadi we meet had a lot of her options taken away as only survivor of ragnarok but she decided to live on as scandinavia’s divine guide and insisted on treating all of existence equally. skadi’s material profile notes that if she were to use her full authority as skadi, to choose the side of gods, the part of her that is scathach would shatter. but lostbelt skadi couldn’t pick the side of gods anymore now that she was the only god left. as someone with the aspect of giants she could have chosen the side of monsters as well, but instead she kept a careful balance between humans, monsters, and the one goddess left and therefore she is scathach-skadi, an existence somewhere between the scathach that unequivocally chose humanity and the skadi that unequivocally chose divinity.

the situation is again similar to van gogh, whose existence is suspended between van gogh as human, clytie as monster, and the foreign god as divinity, and each of her ascension stages reflects one of those aspects. this would imply a third scathach(-skadi) who chose monsters, wouldn’t it? conveniently for my theory there does indeed seem to be a third one; skadi’s material profile mentions that summoning a scathach-skadi with a disposition closer to panhuman scathach is possible, and scathach’s material profile mentions that her body has another “stage” to it, which caster cu also mentions in the knk event. clytie van gogh’s noble phantasms are van gogh’s because she chose to side with humans, likewise scathach-skadi’s noble phantasm is scathach’s because, in letting herself be summoned to chaldea, she implicitly chose the side of humanity as well.

now, back to cu chulainn and odin. cu and scathach are deeply tied as “the one who gets to kill you/me”, scathach and skadi share an origin, skadi and odin share a connection as norse gods and possibly lovers, cu chulainn and odin share an unspecified connection, and skadi feels poignant but unspecified emotions when she sees cu. caster cu’s first noble phantasm is a druid technique that never actually existed to match a cu chulainn who isn’t supposed to exist either, and his second noble phantasm is the full power of odin’s runes, unused by him because odin supposedly placed some kind of use restrictions on it. meanwhile cu’s personal modifications of gae bolg make it a spear similar to but more powerful than gungnir and altera reads him as norse rather than celtic, so it’s not only caster who suddenly has ties to odin, this is something inherent to all cu chulainns.

remember what I keep saying about choice? scathach and cu chulainn are both heroes of the human order because that is the choice they made, regardless of their origins. extrapolating from the relationship between scathach, skadi, and cu to fill the gap odin leaves, what we can conclude is this:

cu chulainn and odin share an origin similar to the way scathach and skadi do, cu is simply the one that chose humanity while odin chose divinity

what this means for their exact relationship I can’t say, because it’s super vague what “origin” even means in this context. is it the origin of their literary tradition? is it their character concept? digging through the material books with my limited jp knowledge it seems the kanji used differ from those of the nasuverse magic concept “origin”, but even so it’s interesting that so many of the clues tie into the apartment complex that souren araya used to research origins.

scathach and skadi aren’t directly related nor are they plausibly the same person, although skadi refers to scathach as her “other self” there is no indication that scathach does the same. what is notable is that “scathach” comes first in their combined name, skadi prefers “scathach-skadi” or “scathach-sama” over simply “skadi”, and skadi respects and fears scathach for her outrageous competence, confidence, and dependability. likewise, even if cu chulainn indeed shares an origin with odin, it’s explicitly stated that his gae bolg is more powerful than odin’s gungnir. cu could beat odin in a fight, scathach can snap skadi over her knee like a twig. those that chose the side of humanity are the more powerful and respectable ones, because this is fate and we will always choose humanity above anything else. that is why I say it is cu chulainn who takes odin’s place rather than the other way around.

right now the biggest mystery with no way to solve it yet is actually lugh’s identity, and by extension the identities of the whole celtic pantheon. as much as we’ve gone into various pantheons, the norse and celt gods are still a suspiciously large mystery. it’s not unlikely that lugh and odin are the one with the shared origin instead, and it carries over into cu as lugh’s son. it could be that nasu read the same bit of old academia I remember reading and plays it as cu being an incarnation of lugh as well as his son. with the new valentines event a fha collab that brings up bazett’s ties to lugh is more likely every day. whether I’m right, and what the specifics of the situation are in case I’m indeed right, are something only time can tell.

honestly though, if it turns out all of this is wrong and caster cu WAS in fact odin all along I’ll still feel vindicated for how my first reaction upon seeing him back in 2015 was “hold on, this doesn’t seem very cu-like of him.”

that’s all I got for theory directly extrapolated from fact, to wrap it up it’s time for some speculation and wishful thinking based on vibes alone.

lb6 as a whole seems to strongly be about “who you are meant to be”, about your destined potential. miss castoria is so different from OG saber that she lacks the name pendragon and it’s even possible to argue that she’s outright an artificial construct made by miss merlin, but even so she is “the once and future king that will come to britain’s aid”. its assigned crypter beryl is a beast in human clothing, and he is openly disdainful of the idea of living up to his potential. “becoming my best self is something I’d never want.” he says as he kills kirschtaria for trying to elevate humanity to godhood. beryl delights in failing to live up to his potential, in not being what he could or was meant to be.

caster arturia’s bond ce says “not a single thing is different. not a single thing is the same. for you have already met your other self.” which will no doubt smack me in the face with what it actually means hard enough to crack skulls once lb6 actually comes around. lb6 no longer has a fantasy tree and is maintained with rhongomyniad, the divine lance that forced arturia to choose between humans and gods. the lostbelt itself is a world of fairies rather than humans.

nothing is different. nothing is the same. you have already met your other self. your origin, your potential, is realized through a choice. you can be a god. you can be a monster or fairy. you can be human. all of those are the same, all of those are completely different. the only difference is the choice, and that choice makes all the difference.

gae bolg is the symbol of cu’s heroic ideal. it’s his choice to side with humans. and while caster cu’s materials state that getting his spear back isn’t his primary goal and he’s assigned himself the role of guide for now, he still misses it a lot. he doesn’t feel right not being a hero, he’s just acting the way he thinks a caster should, and possibly the only reason he even manifested like this is because this part of him was forcibly split off.

the god level lance that maintains lb6. the god level spear made through his own choices. the fairies that he as druid has a stronger connection with than usual. his existence on the interstice between human god and monster, different in every form yet always exactly the same person. and, the use restrictions on ochd deug odin.

sooner or later caster cu is going to get his hands on a spear. it is going to be gungnir. the restrictions on ochd deug odin will be lifted and he is going to unleash the full force of odin’s magic. and he will still be cu chulainn.

#holy shit my brain #yes #long post

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