#I'm so sorry I think I diverged a lot esgfbds

[madillhethen]

I feel like you can argue that Archer didn't fight with a reason, and that's why he became a machine. He fought for an ideal, but it was borrowed, he didn't have any reason backing it up.

I feel like if you view it that way, it shows why UBW Shirou probably wouldn't become just a machine like Archer, because he reinforced his dream and he has a genuine reason for fighting, which strengthens that belief. He's not just fighting for someone else's ideals for no reason.

So, when Archer says fighting without a reason just makes you a machine, I personally took it to mean he was saying that there wasn't a reason behind his ideals. They were just borrowed ideals with nothing to back them up, so he became nothing more than a machine upholding those ideals.

I do agree, but at some point, I feel that the ideal becomes the reason. In the same way, Saber tried so hard to be ideal, it became the reason she fought, the reason she sought the Grail—though Archer fought for an ideal, his survivor’s guilt and the promise he made were his reasons to fight, even if it was borrowed, it’s still a reason to fight? It was the reason the ideal was even made and became something he kept seeking. His wish to save everyone didn’t just stem from a borrowed ideal. Although that’s what Archer says, he did have reasons, good ones even, but he just became embittered with it all after becoming a murderer via Counter guardian. His ideal was yes, stems from Kiritsugu wanting to save everyone, but Archer is the fully realized Kerry. He didn’t want to save everyone because he knew he couldn’t—his whole reason to fight was ‘never to see people cry around him’, the ideal originally being for no one to die. (And you could dive deep into the survivor’s guilt and absolution of protecting the little boy who ‘died’ in the fire by his doing so is reason enough but he just doesn’t realize it hence in the VN he quotes angrily to himself (not actually speaking to Shirou but venting his own anger out at himself) that ‘in the beginning, you didn’t know what to save’.) He had his reasons but the trauma of everything and not fully understanding it nor ever dealing with it made him latch hungrily onto the dream and ideal of Kerry’s.

When Shirou reinforces his beliefs to say ‘so what it’s borrowed/fake?’ It was the same as Archer’s. Archer just lost hope and needed the fire rekindled. Hence the epilogue shows that despite his loss, despite how he still loathes himself, he wouldn’t find salvation but he did find ‘salvation’. He needed someone to tell him he wasn’t wrong, that the path he chose was his own and he found that answer with ‘himself’.

In the same way, Archer finds his answers (though not confrontational as UBW) in Fate Route and Heaven’s Feel, it’s only given subtly, and mind you I’m speculating from how Nasu says Archer found fulfillment in all three routes, but when Archer realizes that Shirou chose Sakura over his ideal, and Saber over the War, he realizes that he did have choices, and the borrowed ideal was not just Kiritsugu’s but his own or that he made it his own. At the same time, he’s proud that Shirou got to choose a life of humanity, and save someone both from despair and mortal danger—the latter part what Archer couldn’t/didn’t accomplish.

Though reason and ideals are overlapping but wholly different, it’s just the same as a heroic spirit made by fame and a heroic spirit/Counter guardian made from Alaya. At the end, it accomplishes the same goal and is used the same for justification of one’s life and choices.

Nameless stating that I see more as another nod to the fact he isn’t OG Archer. Where Archer learns that the ideal (and his entire reason of just not wanting to see people cry around him) leads him to a mechanical life of constantly ‘saving’ via killing, Nameless doesn’t become a CG (I assume/been told/wiki-dived years ago) so Nameless sees someone killing for no reason as a heartless machine, not understanding that ideals and reasons can very well lead to the same conclusion.