#FGO Lostbelt Moment

[toadeyes-miqote]

Can I at least help bring the two of you a bit of closure?

"Would he still be himself? What binds him here? What's the catch? Do I even have the right to do such a thing? Is this the whole Amaurotine thing again? Jyak'a isn't dead like Haurchefant dead…. Tempted as I am to bend the rules of reality itself Would that not make him similiar to Ardbert and friends? Undying?"

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Originally Jyak'a was suppose to be yeeted to First and the Crystal Tower was one of the keys for his returns. By the time I got to Ultima Thule. A number of conditions were met along the way by Elidibus, Hydealyn, Zodiark, the Uncoiling and Meteion. There was no need to take the original route when Meteion and some Hydealyn, Emet and Azem handwaving offered a less complicated shortcut. Poor guy's problem pretty much started off as being caught by accident. Not quite Musashi but yeah.

Seriously looking a gift chocobo in the mouth? Would there be consequences? I don't know. Is not planned that far. Accept the here and now for now.

Interestingly enough playing Fate Grand Order which share certain Ascian theme somehow in reverse to what Emet does, gives rise to the question as to whether or not the original world will come back. Japan side of the game(NA is two years behind because translation/server release) had hit Lostbelt 6. It gave birth to more questions instead.

Especially what makes Kirschtaria and Varis so sure that the completed Lostbelt/rejoined world would grant them what they want? Would they still be themselves? How would you know if you're the main self if sundered? What if other shard you is happy with their lives and fight back against the rejoining?

[chronologiical]

waver at any moment of his lord's life: just end me

[neospacewaffles]

Happy LB6 release everyone!! Good luck to anyone rolling and finally get to see the journey we've been waiting for!! Here's a Morgan catalyst

[kiwikipedia]

I genuinely think that Guda could survive in the SW universe but Anakin would not be able to handle any of the shit that happened in Fgo

[picaroroboto]

randomly read through people's live reactions when playing Lostbelt 6, kept seeing a lot of reactions saying they hated Faerie Britain and wanted it to die or to kill it ourselves. I get it, things just get worse and worse with every messed-up reveal. But the feeling I had and what I think Guda felt about saving Britain, was that even though we hate this place we've already come too far and committed too much to give up on it, plus Guda is just too stubborn to give up on saving anything, even something they hate.

(in other words, I think at some point I felt exactly the same way about Faerie Britain as Aesc did)

[deirakizuna]

"Fairy King"

Reblogs are appreciated!

[nero-draco]

[300iqprower]

Not gonna defend Nasu but I do have to admit that the ORT thing fits well since it's literally the finally boss fight before Ordeal Call. I just wish he handled it's backstory a lot better so that it doesn't feel like a fawking ass pull designed to torture it's player with not because of the fight but with how you don't want to beat it bc Nasu handled it fawking annoyingly.

A lot of the ORT stuff is thematically quite fitting and in many ways is a neat integration with the mesoamerican belief of the world being reset multiple times before its current incarnation.

That doesn't really change how much it, by its very nature as an alien OC in a supposed historical fiction, completely devolves into a self-indulgent mess of nasuverse garbage that makes clear Nasu only sees other real-world cultures as vehicles for his personal beliefs and fanfiction.

The actual game design aspect is its own mess that just boils down to Nasu being as bad as game design as ever. Again, the only time FGO was a fun game was in Atlantis and that's not coincidence.

[pinkpruneclodwolf]

I'll be honest, all I can think about in a Yuu that is either Avalon la Fae or Morgan AU is their friends leaving feeling hollow, bitter, and thinking that none of it (Britain, fairies, or the thousands of years of effort and pain endured to keep this dying world alive) was worth it.

Also, I think out of everyone, Leona would sympathize the most with Morgan and would be the most bitter of all of them.

Leona sympathizing with Morgan!Yuu is fucking me up so bad you don't even know. You don't even know.

Like the needless suffering, the futility of it all, leaving that lost belt just empty after all is said and done—yet despite that, despite it all Morgan!Yuu vehemently clung to a land that yearned for its death. And in some ways Leona, who has remained stagnant, can feel that vile determination in his soul.

Because Leona, just as Morgan, had found pieces of kindness to cling to (despite the prickly outer shell) he found a Dorm, found people who look up to him, that depend on him which is why he found himself forsaking his pride for his dorm—could you imagine the buzz that would generate from a Second Prince of a country cheating at a game that seems so miniscule in comparison to his influence?

And yet he did it because he wanted to prove himself, he did it because of that vile yearning. And so it rings just a bit more hollow to know that it was all for naught, both for him and for Morgan!Yuu

[kindauglypikachuicon]

Part 2 of my thoughts for Fate/Grand Order Lostbelt #6: “Fae Round Table Domain, Avalon le Fae - The Moment a Planet Is Born”

????!!!! Huhhh??! So humans are food or pets????

Legit the creepiest scene that started to make me feel scared for the main characters. How quickly they turn on each other just so they could have a human to themselves when they were all getting along with each so well before which makes you wonder how humans are treated in this world

This poor nameless fairy who we witness how those tough blob enemies come into being from a fairy’s death

Godddd what a start huh at least we meet up with Da Vinci again but not Mash yet who is still lost with no memories

[np5enkidu]

what if i stopped playing fgo

[zeravmeta]

don quixote fgo is just so good, he is such a hopeful character and i absolutely think he's the standout from traum

what really strikes me about him is that traum is a story dedicated to broken ideals and unfulfilled dreams: the major players of each faction are all characters with failed ambitions and who wage war against panhuman history to achieve those dreams. kriemhild wants revenge on siegfried even after killing hagen, komstantinos wants to remake his old empire, johanna abhors that she is a living fictional character and wants to become a real person, all the nameless servants from each faction are dedicated to rebel not only because of zhang jue's influence but because they all, in some form, had unfinished business, dreams they never fulfilled. this even extends to moriarty himself, a younger version who's fixated on defeating holmes because his older version could not, and he follows through on it because he did not really understand the value of his own nemesis, a fact that ultimately left him defeated no matter how much he tried to control fate. All of these characters refused to face the reality of their failures, and honestly don quixote was the most guilty of this

he was originally a servant summoned in the atlantean lostbelt, and genuinely did try to rally heroes, but as he saw these legendary figures he adored be struck down he lost hope. it wasn't just that he was afraid, it was that the heroes around himself had given up even before him, a craven old man.

the thing is though that the reason don quixote and sancho ran is antithetical to the reasons that the other servants ran: they did it specifically to survive. sancho was able to convince don quixote to leave because she reminded him that it wasn't wrong or evil to want to live, and this was only possible because don quixote, despite being a servant, still thinks of himself as being human. even though he consciously understands himself as being a servant, his way of thinking and reasoning is undeniably that of a normal human

A big part of his too is that traum is also a singularity in which the names of heroic spirits have lost their meaning: the sheer volume of servants means that there is no singular standout hero, sure, but when kriemhild killed the lancer who was about to declare his name she called him merely a foot soldier because said name was worthless, in traum there is only the endless war of people slaughtering each other, and ironically a unifying peace in that.

names are the linchpins of heroic spirits: servants aren't the ghosts of dead people, they're the manifestations of what those legends meant to humanity, all codified by the names they carry. servants have to name themselves and have names for their noble phantasms which directly identify them because they are literal living legends. Yet in traum, those names and legends and meanings become all but worthless in the face of endless war as armies of these protectors of humanity are reduced to mere foot soldiers. there is a similar parallel to this when vlad goes to the righteous realm, and as he sees the army gathered he finds it entirely lacking because it's fully composed of singular standout heroes who are all used to essentially being the main character and thus cant function as a unit. Traum is a world where being a hero has no meaning.

but i think that's also why don quixote declares himself against konstantinos and challenged him: in this moment, he reclaimed the value of being a knight who fights for his ideals, that of a true hero

konstantinos throughout traum is presented as equally a legendary figure as charlemagne is, and yet his reason for fighting is incredibly simple: he's in love with johanna and wants to make her real to panhuman history, and to this end he'll continue the war in traum as needed for that end. kriemhild has an equal but opposite reason rooted in the same thing: love. she wants revenge against siegfried for having gone through with hagens plan, for not letting her in to his pain, he was too much of a hero for everyone that it led him to sacrificing himself even if it would hurt her. konstantinos wanted to be the perfect knight, and kriemhild wanted to get revenge against her own knight for being too perfect.

The thing is, despite their insistence on traum being the cruel reality of a war, both of them were holding onto rather idealized, almost romanticized versions of what a knight should be.

konstantinos knows and declares don quixote as being likely the most famous knight to have ever lived, but he dismisses him as a threat when actually fighting him. When he's about to finish him, he tells don quixote that he has to face reality as he's about to die. However, the story of don quixote was always that of an old man whom lost himself to his fantasies of chivalry and knightly idealism, and despite the troubles he caused still continued to fight for what he believed was honorable. Even if he had returned to reality in the end, there was still meaning to the outright silly journey of an old man knight long past the age of chivalry, of the old man who, despite his fear, still chose to rally an army and fight for the world he felt he had failed.

what traum needed was someone who did good not as a hero but as a human. almost every knightly character in fate carries grand ideals as to why they are knights, but the only requirement to BE a knight and a hero is the simple desire to do good for others, and don quixote is fittingly the most famous knight in the world because he's utterly obsessed with the great chivalric legends of old, yet still strived to do good in the way normal people do.

it's why charlie finds him so inspiring, as well

for all the non-extella link players, charlemagne as we see him in fgo is actually the fictionalized version of him from the tales of the paladins of charlemagne and not the actual karl der Große. He's even more fictionalized than johanna and don quixote himself, because while johanna might have been an erroneous account and don quixote a story book character, charlemagne is a full on sensationalized re-imagining of an already real person. but even if he may be a fictionalized person, what he represents is what matters the most, the same with any heroic spirit, which is why charlemagne considers johanna just as real and why the actual karl der Große saw fit to send him to traum

at the center of traum we ultimately find wakamori, who despite seeming cruel and mysterious throughout the entire plot, has shown multiple times that he's essentially trying to fill in bigger shoes than he can: He's obsessed with defeating sherlock and presenting himself as the ultimate evil, but he's still green at the end of the day, and I think this is in part what leads him to somewhat even respect don quixote

when he tries to taunt don quixote, he does so with the assumption that much like himself, don quixote is attempting to play the part he represents most: don quixote is surely trying to be the greatest most idealized version of a knight, the same way wakamori is trying to be the perfected version of himself, the true evil mastermind whom can finally defeat sherlock. But don quixote flat out tells him that conflict and even life itself has always had no inherent meaning nor any inherent roles to play, so much in the same way that he has no special value to his life tied to being a knight, wakamori's own value is not tied specifically to that of being sherlock holmes' greatest evil rival. There's a surprising empathy in this exchange I feel, because don quixote understands wakamori immediately where it took sherlock the entire story: there's nothing wrong with being a little delusional, but you have to treat them with respect.

wakamori ultimately fails because he believed that defeating sherlock would finally give value to james moriarty as the ultimate villain, unaware that sherlock holmes is the defining equal to james moriarty. there is no purpose to a story with an evil mastermind that doesn't have an equally great hero trying to stop him, and wakamori failing to understand that his own value as such is not diminished by not having ever defeated holmes is what ruins him: He didn't respect the story he was so enthralled by. shinjuku showcased a similar dynamic, but the difference between shinjuku and traum is that the older moriarty very much understood what it would take to succeed, and that would be to become the protagonist of the story, rather than the ultimate final boss.

the stories of knights and heroes and monsters and spurned loves and great detectives and evil masterminds are all in part defined by the meanings that people derive from them, from the ordinary good that they can inspire first and foremost. And even though don quixote may have been a craven old man who eventually gave up chivalry, he still tried to live a good life and do good the way any ordinary person would.

And that's such a genuinely hopeful and kind sentiment to tie to the concept of knightly ideals: you don't have to be grand to be a hero, and you don't even have to be a hero to inspire others.

[morsking]

there has been a thematic thread linking marisbury's vision for humanity's future to kirschtaria's own desire to elevate humanity and protect the crypters, and morgan's own effort to protect the land of britain that contains the memories she made as aesc alongside the original tam lin and uther. this also reflects in artoria caster's existence post-avalon le fae as a simulacrum of the actual artoria caster that died in the lostbelt, preserved and embodied by artoria avalon so in some way the memory of that girl who remembered only sadness could be embraced by happiness. additionally, meltryllis in SE.RA.PH. breaching time and space to protect fujimaru is also a link in this chain. morgan's summer form, waking up after her spirit origin manifested her memories of being aesc, makes mention of the butterfly's dream: a philosophical thought musing that there is a transient boundary between dreams and reality.

the chinese philosopher chuang tzu once dreamt he was a butterfly, untethered and free to float in the air. he woke up questioning whether he dreamed he was a butterfly, or whether the butterfly was dreaming it was him. reality can feel like a dream, and a dream can feel more real than anything, underscoring how transience is an unavoidable part of the human condition. people will live their dreams and watch them end from the moment they are born to the day they die, and heroic spirits are the same because humanity lives every day chasing its dreams and heroic spirits are those dreams.

but starting with marisbury, we contend with the idea that sometimes, the dreamer does not wish for the dream to end. if dreams are transient because the dreamer must wake, then the only way to preserve the dream is if the dreamer fades away into the dream instead. marisbury seemingly committed suicide to preserve the animusphere grand order. meltryllis burned through the remnants of her existence to protect her memories of her timeline's fujimaru by saving them in their own. kirschtaria, already at death's door, stayed alive only to ensure his ideal and his friends could survive beyond his death, his soul being described as a bird taking flight with caeneus chasing in tow as he dies. morgan sacrificed being aesc so the land of britain could survive, and wiped her own memories of totorot and mash so they wouldn't be erased from existence for being time paradoxes. artoria caster used her entire life force to forge excalibur so the time she treasured could live on with her friends in chaldea as they fought to save proper human history, and themselves, from the rampage of cernunnos's corpse.

on top of all of that, there have been very cryptic visuals associating mash and butterflies since fgo's first opening. "shikisai" had the visual of a butterfly floating in ruins, and "yakudou" has a shot of mash's gaze following a butterfly flying into the sky. the butterfly is her guide, leading the way to the end of her dream. kinoko nasu himself once shared that cosmos in the lostbelt is a story about accepting that ends will come, and thus the butterfly is the lesson that she must take to heart to grow into a person who can claim what the purpose she chose is without shame or hesitation as the end draws near. this is something she did once saving fujimaru from goetia's ars almadel salomonis at the end of observer in timeless temple. and i would not be surprised if she did the same against marisbury at the end of cosmos in the lostbelt (which has yet to finish, as paper moon's trailer demonstrates having it be part of the chapter's title).

but what is the dream she is dreaming that is inevitably coming to an end that she will choose to protect at the cost of her place in it? if you've been reading this far, then the answer should be obvious.

but nasu wouldn't be much of a romantic if he believed an end is all you could really look forward to. the journey is far more important than the destination, because it's the only thing that can give the end meaning, as romani archaman rightly puts in his final conversation with mash. you can only extrapolate the significance of something after it's already over. not at the start, not in the middle of it, and not at when it's over, but at the moment that lies beyond the end of the dream.

and when a dream ends, that is the moment when another begins.

[hasmashdoneanythingwrong]

Between Mash at the beginning of FGO, Goetia’s final fight as the King of Men, the Lostbelts as a whole, and probably many more moments I’m forgetting, Fate/Grand Order has a theme of how being there for someone or something’s last moments is important.

[connecticutsfinestconfessions]

my ultimate hot take is that Minase needs to decide if he's going to be a good writer for FGO or not!!! Minase is like. this fucking enigma of a person when it comes to the quality of his writing in FGO like. he's the script writer for the Prillya anime and co-wrote the Prillya event for FGO, which was so badly received Hiroyama never wrote for FGO again. he was also responsible for Agartha, which is universally hated. so it should stand he's just an awful writer and we should just expect everything he writes to be bad right.

but also he's done most of the Valentine events which are hit-or-miss but usually decent. and then the dude writes Yuga Kshetra and Paper Moon, arguably some of the best FGO content not written by Nasu. like what the fuck. it's like the dude decides every time he writes for FGO "i'm either gonna put actual effort into this or half-ass it until the deadline comes" and it's so!!! either just consistently be a good author or not stop making it a guessing game whenever we know you're gonna write something!!!

Yeah it's REALLY bizarre innit. On one hand I enjoyed LB4 so, so much more than I enjoyed any of the previous LBs. It's a thoughtful lostbelt that really felt like it got to the core of what Fate is. It's got great emotional moments, good twists, and is generally written as if the reader is a bit intelligent but not necessarily cryptic.

But then you run into a Valentine's day event and its "oh no men who don't get chocolate are an oppressed class" and I greatly reconsider the act of being literate.