#casualcollectorlightme

[coe-lilium]

We were all wrong, it wasn't Wilhelmina. It was Clytie, the daughter of Oceanus and Theses, who loved Apollo, but was eventually abandoned by him. Despite her rage and despair at being rejected, Clytie never forgot her love for Apollo, staring at the sun constantly until she was transformed into a sunflower herself. (part 1)

pt2: The Outer Gods needed to use the real Van Gogh in their plans, as Van Gogh had the ability to turn normally human Foreigners into gods, but Van Gogh refused, and killed himself in defiance. So the Outer Gods, knowing that even if they were to summon Van Gogh as a Heroic Spirit, he would still defy them, took his powers and memories, and mixed it in with Clytie's own Spirit Origin, turning her from a water nymph into a goddess, and creating a Servant that wouldn't be able to go against them.

pt3: Have to ask... did you see that coming cause I sure as hell not.

Definitively and sincerely not. This reveal, however, does nothing but kill any interest I might have had in the character and about... 90% in the event as a whole.  

Yet another OC almost unrecognizable from IRL/the source and yet another mix mash that kills our chances to see the individual characters on their own. Excuse me as I yawn of boredom.   

This Lovecraft stuff has far overstayed its welcome as far as I’m concerned. 

[tainbocuailnge]

his mindset is due to the fact that his dad (Who spoiled him rotten) tried to assasinate him via origin bullet. got saved by a homeless boy who died trying to get him some foods for him to recover he became disillusioned about himself. A lowly, homeless boy who has nothing could accomplish the deed he couldn’t even imagine being able to do so, despite being born as a magus : Risking your own life to safe someone you don’t know. With this event he decided to devote the rest of his life.

and then instead of trying to help the people who already exist he decided to overwrite them with Better humanity and dressed this up like it would be salvation, like an idiot, like an asshole, like a fucking magus

[fgodestinyawakenings]

We all thought Eldritch Abby would be the last ascension, but it turned out they actually went pretty wholesome with her.

I know right, this is definitely a surprise with how they placed her ascension. Now i do hope to see at least 2nd or 3rd ascension there, otherwise I’m still killing people who are placing the first ascension

[shuttershocky]

The whole, circe had odysseus children thing? Thaat is a story told in the Telegony, an early Greek epic that does not survive except in a summary, but which was attributed to Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene and written as a sequel to the Odyssey. So i gotta ask, if no one saw nothing BUT the summary, would it count for the throne of heroes? (Granted, there been far stranger servants in the throne, udon servants being chief amongst them). ignore if it's a stupid question

Honestly whenever someone asks “is it possible for x to become a servant” I just point to Jeanne D’arc Alter Santa Lily (Lancer) and just say “You tell me.”

[benedictsvestcollection]

@casualcollectorlightme

I wasn't talking about the premeire episode.... Read the post again.... I was talking about the VIRTUAL RED CARPET PREMEIRE.... It just aired like 30 minutes ago.

[mst3kproject]

521: Santa Claus

Ever since they included a Christmas episode in the first Netflix season, I have been slowly coming to terms with the fact that this blog will not live long enough for me to do all the Christmas movies on Christmas.  Might as well get on with it. This one goes out to @casualcollectorlightme.

It’s Christmas Eve, and Santa Claus is setting off on his annual trip to take gifts to the children of the world.  He’s anticipating trouble: a demon named Pitch has been ordered to stop him.  If nobody gets any presents, then the children of Mexico won’t see any point in being good, and will turn to evil en masse!  Can Santa, with his friends Merlin the wizard and Vulcan the smith, thwart Pitch’s wicked plot and save Christmas?

My favourite thing about this movie is its weird portrayal of Santa, and for once I actually can explain why it fascinates me.  If you’ve ever seen the movie Mothra, you probably had a good laugh at the bit set in the foreign land of Rolisica, which shows us what Japanese people in the 60’s thought Americans were like (if you haven’t seen it then for heaven’s sake do so – it’s funny as hell).  Santa Claus is kind of a whole movie about that, because when it was made in 1959, Santa wasn’t really a thing in Mexico.  The film was an attempt to import him, and so we get to see our beloved Christmas traditions through the eyes of a people who aren’t very familiar with them.  

We begin with a tour of Santa’s workshop, which is not actually at the North Pole, but floating in space somewhere above it.  In American Christmas movies the toy factory would be staffed by elves, but this one goes for another short, energetic option: children from around the world, in the form of a parade of offensive stereotypes embodied by tone-deaf six-year-olds.  This is very strange, not only because they all seem to be singing in the snow rather than working, but because we find ourselves unavoidably wondering who these kids are.  Where are their parents, and how did they end up in Santa’s custody?  Are they orphans he took in, or is this some kind of mass kidnapping operation?  Do they get an education?  What happens to them when they grow up?

When you give it a moment’s thought, however, this setup actually makes more sense than elves.  What the hell are elves, after all?  Where do they come from and why do they work for Santa?  Nobody ever asks that, because it’s just part of the mythology (and when movies do try to offer answers they’re almost always weird and disappointing).  You might as well ask why the Easter Bunny is a rabbit. That’s just how it works.  If you haven’t grown up hearing about it, though, the idea that orphaned children get raised by Santa, helping to bring joy to the rest of the world… that's messed-up, but it works.

The same applies to Santa’s collection of magical surveillance equipment, which looks like something out of a Salvador Dali sugar high. American Christmas films, like the classic Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer or even Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, rarely go into how Santa sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake.  Again, he just does.  Because Santa was something new to the Mexican film-makers, though, they felt like they had to explain it.  Their attempt tried for whimsy but took a wrong turn and ended up smack in the middle of fucking creepy.

It’s creepy in several ways, too.  I mean, the giant lips that speak in the voices of children’s wishes are an awful image, but there’s also the fact that Santa is spying on you directly.  He’s watching your dreams.  He’s listening to your whispered conversations.  He’s reading your fanfiction.  The Three Naughty Boys discuss how they don’t believe in any of this and Santa speaks to them, informing him that he knows very well what they’re planning!  Santa is Big Brother, always watching – and this is true of the ordinary concept of Santa Claus, too!  We sometimes make jokes about this but it seems harmless to us because we never delve into the details the way this movie does.

This thread of explaining things we don’t normally think need explanation runs through other areas of the movie as well.  Why does nobody ever wake up and see Santa Claus?  Why don’t our dogs bark at him?  Because he’s got a sleeping powder and a magic flower that can make him invisible. If that were as far as it went, then it wouldn’t be too strange.  I can see similar things appearing in something like a The Santa Clause sequel… except that there, they would probably have been made by the elves.  Since Santa Claus does not have mechanically (or dentally) gifted elves, it needs to provide another origin. Hence the inclusion of Merlin the Magician and Vulcan the Smith, which seems like a weird juxtaposition of mythology to us, but as far as the Mexicans know they’re all ‘American’ so they’re close enough.

Santa Claus also feels obliged to confront the awkward question of class differences.  Santa is supposed to be an egalitarian figure: he doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, only if you’ve behaved yourself.  Poor kids should therefore get just as many presents as rich kids, which is manifestly not true in the real world.  Most American movies just pretend everybody is middle-class and ignore the issue completely.  Santa Claus tries to do something with it and the results are once again, weird.

There is, for example, the never-named Rich Boy who is tired of toys and just wants to know his parents love him.  Santa makes his wish come true by drugging Madre and Padre into heading home from their Christmas Eve out, and the question of whether he got any other gifts is never brought up.  The nearest thing the movie has to a main human character, however, is adorable little Lupita, whose father is out of work.  She wants a doll for Christmas and frankly any doll will do – she struggles with the idea of stealing a rag doll from a craft market, but puts it back, and Santa rewards her by bringing her a doll her parents could never afford.

And that’s nice, but what message does it send to all the well-behaved children in the real world whose parents can’t afford to buy them anything fancy?  That they weren’t good enough?  That they didn’t write a nice enough letter or say a nice enough prayer?  That Santa just doesn’t give a shit?  There’s a reason most Christmas movies don’t touch on this.

The specific doll Santa brings to Lupita also kind of bugs me… it’s just not a good present for a child like her.  Lupita is around five or six years old.  She needs a doll she can cuddle, play with, and carry around with her, like the one from the market.  The one she gets is as big as she is and wearing a fancy dress.  That’s not a toy, that’s a piece of décor.  It’s the doll that sits in the rocking chair in your grandmother’s living room and which you swear you can see move out of the corner of your eye. It’s not huggable, if she takes it anywhere it’ll get dirty or broken, and there’s a cynical part of me that thinks her parents probably sold it the next day so that they could buy food or pay the rent on their hovel or something.

Then there’s Santa’s adversary.  American Christmas movies pit Santa against bad weather, other supernatural entities like Jack Frost, and ordinary grouches like Phineas Prune.  In this movie, the villain is the devil.  This does, I guess, make a certain amount of sense, since Santa is dedicated to rewarding well-behaved children while Satan wants to collect the souls of the wicked, but we’re just not used to this meeting of religious and secular imagery.  Christmas is a Christian feast pinned to the ass of a much older Pagan solstice festival and it has never managed to really do away with this duality.  Most people keep the Christian and folk sides of Christmas pretty separate, but here we see them collide head-on.

Finally there’s the stuff that’s just plain terrifying.  Like the creepy laughing reindeer.  Or the rather complicated explanation of why Santa must make it home before sunrise.  When the sun comes up, the mechanical reindeer will turn to dust, leaving Santa unable to return to his palace in outer space.  What will happen then?  Why, he’ll starve to death, because Santa and his helpers subsist on sweets made from clouds and stardust, and cannot digest normal food!  Wait, the toy-making children, too?  What does happen to them when they grow up?  Can they return to Earth and start eating burgers like the rest of us, or do they remain children in Santa’s bondage forever? I told you this movie was weird.

Santa Claus is not as enjoyable in its own train-wrecky right as its Martian-Conquering cousin, but it is my favourite of the MST3K Christmas episodes. The movie itself is cheerful and the host sketches are a positive delight.  I particularly love everybody’s joy at the terrible Secret Santa presents, and their all-inclusive seasonal song that distilled tumblr to its essence decades before tumblr ever existed.  The very best part, however, is the awesome Christmas mods they did for the bots.  I love the snowglobe in Tom Servo’s head, and here I am once again helpless to articulate why it’s so damn funny. 

[coe-lilium]

Really? I feel that her now-revealed backstory also does a bit more to justify her as a Foreigner while avoiding crossover with the certain other mad artist foreigner, and for once isn't yet ANOTHER attempt to gender flip someone. (Part 1)

It’s more that -I’m not sure if I’ll be able to express it properly but I’ll try- at a certain point the random, nth genderbend becomes the last of the problems on the list of non conventional takes. Okita Souji being a girl for no other reason that Takeuchi is always drawing new Saberfaces for me doesn’t even come close to the likes of “we will take a folk hero of people we nearly genocided and use them to give exotic flair to our OC and jokes on how little information on this hero exist (because of said attempted, cultural, genocide) while we’re at it”. The former may make your roll your eyes, the latter... I’ll restrain myself.     

Done well or badly or somewhere in the middle on the spectrum, at least the genderbend take remains the interpretation of a singular figure. It’s “that” person, whose original we can look up and compare with the new version, to see what Fate has to offer. 

But in cases like this one (or Pseudo Servants) the “addendum” prevents us (or at least, prevents me) to recognize the figure and appreciate it as what Fate sold its Servants for: reinterpretations of fascinating pre-existing figures or personalities. 

I can absolutely love original characters for what they are! Outside historical novels, Fate is the only media I follow that isn’t built on them, the OCs on themselves aren’t the problem here. 

The main problem is that I don’t like being scammed. If you promise me, say, a reinterpretation of Orion and Artemis then that’s what I expect and even pretend to see. Not Lum and Ataru with the serial numbers scrubbed off. I’d go read Lum if I wanted to see that couple. 

This type of characters runs into the same problems of Pseudos: what kind of fan is satisfied with this mix-up? The admirers of the painter? He’s not even awake! The fans of the mythological demigoddess? She’s being tied to a figure she has zero connections to except what the writers invented from scratch. 

It’s not like the Nasuverse doesn’t have creatures who can be programmed to have abilities of others, the homunculi are right there. And it’s not even comparable to those affected by the Innocent Monster skill bc that has a base in the myth/rumors surrounding the hero/historical figure. 

IM is an excellent concept for a reinterpretation; franchise-known humans as meatshields or whatever the hell “Van Gogh” is... not so much. Not for me.              

[coe-lilium]

2) Her existence isn't too far off from the Sakura Five really. She's basically a goddess as a servant frame, consisting of composites of potential servant candidates and divine entities while picking and choosing the components needed to make their ideal servant.

See, I very much disagree. 

The Sakura Fives “divine/heroic parts” are basically comparable to ancient heroes attributes. 

It’s information downloaded into them but they very much are their own person. Lip or Melt aren’t “X and Y goddess mixed” they are Lip and Melt, distinct, recognizable characters with their own individual personalities, flaws and mannerisms... some of which are partially inspired by the goddesses whose attributes they were given/based on. Lip has Brunhild “yandere” tendencies, but she remains herself. 

It’s very different from these last cases or Pseudos.  

[coe-lilium]

Quote Ironically, legends say King Arthur had the face of Nero, so it’s not really correct to call Nero a Saberface. In actuality, Saber and co. are Nerofaces. unquote. but i am honestly at that tidbit of knowledge.

It’s the first time I hear of this, in which tradition and author is stated?

[fgodestinyawakenings]

Basically the main difference between lostbelt zeus and regular zeus, is that the latter chose not to become a complete jerk.

.......... Well, to think this is the very Lostbelt supposed to continue as humanity future.......

Thankfully, it didn’t happened. Though I doubt it’d really happen considering the true motive of the Alien God using each Lostbelt and their kings too

[shuttershocky]

HUMAN ORION!!!

THEY DIDN’T EVEN CHANGE HSI CLASS LMFAO

[shuttershocky]

Did you play theh reines interlude, its pretty good!

I did not, since I don't have Reines. Sorry!

[coe-lilium]

so... have you watch Hamilton, it is amazing.

I haven’t, not really interested in it, sorry ^^’ 

[coe-lilium]

I get why some people are pissed kama not portray as male, but you gotta remember, the hindu mythology does show gender fluid, Mohini (Sanskrit: मोहिनी, Mohinī) being a prime example (Also missed opportunity since rama also a avatar of vishnu and Mohini slept with Parvati husband). yes yes, i will concede with FGO!Kama has flaws i will concede to that. Also I am so glad that you avoided calling Kamadeva 'the sex god' like more disgruntled fans did. he's not the sex god, that his wife Rati role.

I understood Kama’s domain is sexual pleasure/love and desire in particular, not just “sex”? That’s why I usually referred/refer to him as god of pleasure anyway. Good to know I got stuff right!

If hindu god had to be, they should’ve just used his wife then (always pleased to learn more, but TM didn’t choose a genderfluid god, they choose a male one).

The whole affair feels so... ill thought of, but I won’t list all my gripes again. 

[shuttershocky]

To be fair on Goredolf (In the prologue) this is BEFORE his character development. (You have to remember what he did save Mash life in LB2) plus Koyanskaya is the sort to mess with your head.

Since I’m reacting to FGO NA’s present and not JP however, it’s perfectly valid to describe gordolf (they’ll never get me to accept that e on his name) as a dick

[shuttershocky]

Never buy a tesla, there humongous deathtraps. btw your anonymous thing is disabled.

I’m very flattered you think I can even buy a car at all (and no, I’m no fan of Elon either) but I wouldn’t be able to buy a Tesla with my current pay rate if I never spent any money on anything ever for over a literal fucking decade.

Also, I disabled anonymous asks on purpose. Not accepting those anymore, sorry!