#fgo crit

[narukaminigga]

ORT and Subliminal Bigotry: A paranoiac leap

This is a little long. There is discussion of Nasu, xenophobia, racism, and some weirdo thoughts. under the cut contains all of this, so if you are looking for thoughts on lostbelt 7’s whiteness, here you go. also spoilers.

No introduction needed—just look at this thing.

This is what will destroy the planet; a big, foreign, jet-black alien. On the flip-side is that thing’s heart:

Now, for good measure, here’s Camazotz:

These are the two major antagonists of the Lostbelt, besides Daybit and Tezcatlipoca. The one thing in common is that they’re both black, blood-sucking vampires. The story slowly codes specific characters as darker skinned to depict their motifs and their role in the story, and weirdly, it begins with clothes. I made a list:

U-Olga Marie and her tacky ass weird ass design. She is promptly turned into a good guy.

Rasputin, or Kirei Kotomine. He wears a black-ish robe with blue. He’s basically sort of on the side of the heroes.

Daybit and Tezcatlipoca, who both are insanely pasty people, are the bad guys here. They both wear clothing that is jet-black and modern—an allegiance to ORT.

The Black Panther Guy. His army is faceless and has masks, setting up the motif of mask = faceless enemy. You can’t see their emotions.

Kingprotea Alter, who wears latex. She is white, but the latex makes it near impossible. When she dons the mask, she becomes a faceless hostile enemy. When it’s off, she is the gentle white woman.

Nitocris Alter, who serves as “the token dark skin” of Chaldea. She becomes an Alter solely to fight against the evil, destructive Camazotz who goes berserk. At this point, alter is coded as “dark” in the Fate series, so the clear distinction is made that Alter here literally notes a character’s melanin.

Ereshkigal Alter, who is another dark skin. After Nitocris goes, she fills this role.

Camazotz, who is a blood-sucking vampire. He’s the only character who remains fully antagonistic throughout (besides ORT), and transforms into his beast state out of grief and rage. He is literally the de-facto dark-skin here.

ORT, who is jet-black. While without his heart, he is white, ORT progressively advances color after color, reaching a state of brown / bronze before being eliminated. He has no face (repeating the masks as a faceless), and serves as the hostile, Chaldea hating wall.

This escalation is important—it depicts an increasing level of hostility through melanin until we reach the level of blackness. ORT unironically shares fears of destruction from an outsider (he’s an alien) destroying the beautiful nation (which is nahui mictlan), a common conspiracy pointed towards immigrants and other minorities (especially blacks), and ORT steals powers to get stronger and stronger to kill his enemies faster and more efficiently. By the time you reach the Beast Class of Camazotz, you are used to the usual trope of sympathizing with the Beast; they’re people, after all, and they want to change the world in their own stagnant, awful ways. ORT, however, is different. ORT is literally not from here, and ORT doesn’t care.

Veering off this topic, for a moment, which does relate, Nasu depicts America as having the worst magecraft.

TYPE-MOON wiki summarizes here: “[…] but it is also known to be aiming for the complete degradation of Magic into Magecraft through the advancement of human technology. On bad terms with the Clock Tower due to its apparent hostility to the concealment of Mystery as enforced by the Assocation.”

I am bringing this up specifically because primarily, America has been given a bad rap in the Nasuverse. Yes, america sucky doodoo it’s racist and borderline fascist. But it’s mostly because it’s *outside* Japan. What I am positing sounds weird, but Nasu has been known for not really liking his international audience. Authors tend to insert their beliefs into their works, and so Nasu is literally shitting on America. He has always not liked the place. And the thing is that this is easily connected to Nasu’s fear of space — he’s afraid of the damn solar system! He’s afraid of what’s out there! America and his foreign audience can be scary, it can be insane! Hence, his reluctance to get official TLs of Mahoyo, Tsukihime, and other Fate works until very recently.

Veering back to ORT, the reason why I am saying all of this is because ORT is representative of the unknown. The Nasuverse has been known for it’s antiblackness and sometimes flagrant disrespect of deities outside of Britain and Japan (The Australia debacle, for one), and ORT serves as like, this weird “colonizer” metaphor. The black alien monster is going to destroy this beautiful culture, this beautiful world, and I have to stop it, because if I don’t, I can’t get back home. It’s impossible to reason or talk to it or do anything except fight it. It’s not a leftist thing at all. It’s more like James Cameron’s Avatar where it’s a conservative film, fighting off the “globalist” humans in the name of nationalistic interest. And it doesn’t help that ORT is basically the face of blackness here, as far as a reach it may sound. He is the culmination of these themes in Lostbelt 7 surrounding these characters.

Kukulkan also is a major factor in this—when ORT lost his heart, it became *white*. Weak. Kukulkan is white, though, and she’s really nice… she’s strong… she wants to have sex with you…

And really, that’s ORT’s heart! It’s beating, living heart! ORT without it is just an angry angry shell that raves and roars for bloodlust (like it already wasn’t), and ultimately Nasu creates no avenues to talk to ORT. It’s not the point. ORT is the enemy. But we can romance a piece of ORT—the piece that is kind, the piece that loves, the piece that is a whitey, and the rest is trying to attain it’s blackness again so it can finish everyone off.

See, historical accuracy is something I ignore for Fate. It’s impossible. But ORT is not real—and is conducive to a strange reading of antiblackness. This fear that this foreigner, the most powerful thing in existence, is a giant black spider monster who is faceless and can’t talk, and hates you, wants you, your family, your nation dead, and it’s coming, and it will kill you.

Maybe I’m just overthinking this. Maybe ORT being jet-black was just the nightmare vision.

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

when i track down whoever designed the farming levels for the mahoyo collab, though

[thexvthmember]

Colored this silly old sketch I had laying around in my wips

Enjoy lol

[elstreem]

My FGO blursed luck continues again with me wanting Xu Fu so I threw the tickets I've been saving...

The game: Did you say you wanted NP 2 Arcueid?

Me: Well - no but I'll take it -

I did do one 11x roll and got one Xu Fu, I guess NP 5-ing her is for another day. I'm sorry Xu-Xu, but my saved quartz is going to NP 5 Summer Gareth and whatever is left is for Avenger Nitocris...I know I'll NP 5 Xu Fu eventually, so sit tight!

One thing I am ridiculously happy about is - getting the Guda CEs!

I adore them so much so getting their artwork has me stoked in probably a silly way, lol, I should be more hyped I got Arcueid with just tickets.

I just find it cute and sweet that Ritsuka is training in magecraft with Kadoc. I'm sure it's a situation filled with comedy and much exasperation for our once-rival turned still sorta rival but also your comrade and also sort of your older brother haha.

I also find it amusing that it's Gudao and Kadoc on fanservice duty for this round while Gudako is just being cute with Fou and da Vinci pfft.

[tbzrai]

so yknow how at the start of the ORT boss fight you get a popup to show the battle mechanics and they used jekyll as an example of a servant being absorbed after theyre defeated by ORT?

Well anyways I solo’ed one of ORT’s hp bars using only jekyll + hyde to fulfil the prophecy except sheer willpower stopped him from getting absorbed 🎉🎉🎉

[lanliingwang]

giving fate zheng chenggong (in my fgo style stats sheet for him) the ability to change NP types between Buster and Quick hyped me up too much I think. now I'll just be disappointed if fgo gives him something more subpar if/when he debuts lol.

[300iqprower]

BEOWULF USERS HOW ARE WE ENJOYING NEROFEST?

[rex101111]

I was thinking that, despite how relatively popular she is, Shuten has only had one extra version of her, so I started thinking of what kind of Alter she’d get and what sort of event would bring it about...and I hit upon a really stupid one that made me laugh so I wanna share it.

Ruler Shuten. Yes, I’m serious. 

Now the whole point of a Ruler is that they are supposed to be outside the conflict and make sure that a grail war doesn’t go off the rails and everyone follows the rules, a “judge” in other words, right? So, I was thinking, what sort of war or contest or whatever could Shuten possibly be qualified to be a judge of?

And then it hit me, cooking contest!

It would be a really silly event, like Oniland, and likewise spurred by Ibaraki saying something that manages to hit Shuten’s usually well hidden soft side. This time the younger Oni complains about how the food they serve in Chaldea isn’t as good as they used to have back on Mt. Ooe, and how now she has to share instead of just having as much as she wants. It’s a selfish want on the surface but Shuten can see that underneath that its just Ibaraki feeling a bit nostalgic for the good ol’ days.

The event is of course a big and bombastic cooking contest, like Master Chef but with explosions and people stabbing each other. All the famous, and infamous, chef servants fight a heated battle to satisfy the taste of The Grand Judge...Shuten Douji???

Everyone points out how outlandish it is that Shuten somehow managed to manifest as a Ruler, the loudest complaints of course come from Raikou, who is miffed both because she has to deal with Shuten and because she tried to cook something for Kintoki and it turned out awful so she’s using this chance to improve her skills and having to have her cooking judged by Shuten is seriously ruffling her feathers something fierce.

R: “How the hell can you possibly be qualified to judge me, insect?”

S: “Do you know how much wine I’ve drank? The feasts I’ve consumed? By sheer volume alone my tongue has more experience than anyone here~”

R: “You ate people!”

S: “Exactly! Thank you for reminding me! Yes! I ate people! Young and Old! Rich and Poor! Man and Woman! My tastes are diverse and well balanced! Truly my qualifications run deep! So here I am before you, as Ruler, as judge.”

R: “I-! You-!”

S: “So be sure to try your best~~”

Cue Shuten vanishing in a flash of light and Raikou gnashing her teeth and so begins the event. Tamamo and Kiyohime and especially Tomoe continue to be utterly atrocious at cooking and are the first bosses, Benienma continues to suffer as she opts out of the contest because she knows it would be unfair so she tries to train everyone else and boy is she in for a rough time, Archer and Boudica forming a quiet but intense rivalry as they battle it out in the kitchen for the title of Mom Of Chaldea, just a lot of small scenes of servants having fun and cooking like those mini-scnes in Oniland.

Shuten would be the featured 5 star limited servant of course, dressed in a mix of flowing white robes and a chef’s outfit that, because this is FGO and this is Shuten, gets skimpier the more you ascend her. The one thing that doesn’t change is that in every ascension...she has a little white chef’s hat between her horns. It only changes in her final ascension where it becomes a BIG white chef’s hat between her horns.  

The ending would be something like Raikou finally cooking something that satisfies Shuten (and beating each other up because they couldn’t resist) and she then turns around...and gives it to Ibaraki, who marvels at how this is exactly like the stew or whatever they used to have “way back when”. 

Ibaraki turns to Raikou and thanks her loudly and the samurai can only stammer a quiet, “thank you” and out of instinct pulls out a handkerchief to wipe Ibaraki’s face. Shuten just watches this with a quiet smile.   

So yeah if we can get a Ruler that’s a Casino Manger/Playboy Bunny why not Chef Shuten? Why the hell not huh???

[zmeyel]

Loving the disconnect between Koyanskaya's "Come back if you dare" lines during the raid and the reality of having to purposefully avoid killing her to farm the mobs.

[actual-haise]

Shinpachi is super cool, drawn by the Type Redline artist, he came home twice and I had 10 grails so This is only fair, I think

[kara-knuckles]

...I really don't understand why people are so mad at Johanna for being “another Arts AoE looper” when she is obviously supposed to be more of a support? Like, when I saw her kit my first thought was “oh, she will work amazingly well with Astraea and Beni-Enma”. You know, boss killers? Not farmers? Really, the only other effect I would love her to have is healing, and maybe a bit shorter skill cooldowns, but she is perfect otherwise.

[nobuverse]

"ENOUGH! JUST DIE ALREADY!"

[afklancelot]

on one hand, having popess johanna be another AOE arts np user sucks when all the new servants in 2023 so far are all AOE, but on the other, this is clearly in response to the fgo userbase prioritize loop farming with AOE NPs, so we did kinda bring is onto ourselves

[randomstranger27]

You all know how Van Gogh says she'll "remake it all" during her NP? Spoiler alert: she wasn't goghking.

(For context: I put F/GO back on my phone for holiday traveling, and it doesn't know what to do with her NP. Also, it didn't change back on it's own--I had to use her NP again to fix it).

[just-your-average-supervillain]

He's finally home.

I blew so much fucking SQ on rolling him, but by god is he gonna be more than worth it alongside Himiko.

Plus, he's gonna be eating well in the Saber Wars event, like reintroducing wolves into ecosystems without enough predators.

[np5enkidu]

"lambda is better than vritra, you don't need to use her"

consider this. they are girlboyfriends