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unwiltingblossom · 5 years

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Sigurd and Brynhildr are really the most stark and obvious illustration of the difference in the way Fate/Grand Order handles male fanservice and female fanservice, and how they deal with their male and female audience. Until we get Nefertari, or maybe someone like Actually Fate Shirou, they’re probably going to be the best comparison there is with the least wiggle room of ‘but there’s this’. They’re a couple who were released with a large gap of time between them (unlike Ryouma and Oryou or even Aster/Euryale Teach/Drake), and so exist as their own characters. It’s not a case of unrequited or uneven love, and neither had a harem.

Anyway. Sigurd and Bryn. Let’s talk about how they differ. (there are pictures)

Bryn is an unimportant bonus character introduced early in FGO for a special download campaign because she was popular in a different Fate work. She had very little presence in the early game, and only one rate up for two years. Sigurd is a significant character from one chapter in part 2, and for at least a year I think he’s only had just one rate up. Both of their designs are meant to be fanservice and cool.

This is Bryn’s FA -

This is the famous Valkyrie warrior, cursed to kill who she loves. She’s wearing a Japanese school girl outfit and armor that conveniently shows off her breasts, short skirt, thighs, long neck and one of her shoulders. She’s also in heels. Her ascensions are fairly weak, as this was an early game character, so they just put the armor on her that you see here. She’s posing in an alluring and girly way, blushing at the viewer, as the camera is angled upward to look at her goods.

This is Sigurd, the warrior king/prince’s final ascension. He’s in full mecha armor, with only his face exposed. He’s standing sturdily, looking cool and with his weapons at the ready, prepared for battle. The camera is from above, so that you won’t see much below his shoulders, almost completely obscuring his chest and abs, even covered by armor as they are. His ascension path - despite being new - is similarly boring, starting with a full fask mask to top off his armor, then showing off his glasses, then finally ending up like this, maskless. The tone and mood of this is completely the opposite of Bryn’s tranquil scene.

Their valentines and white day CEs are deliberately similar, so I’ll show those, too.

Brynhildr’s frozen chocolate (not meant to be eaten)

Sigurd’s return gift (meant to be worn)

As you can see, they are intentionally meant to be similar. Their bond CEs are also intentionally referencing each other, as Brynhildr’s is named after him, and Sigurd’s is named after her valentine’s CE. Thus, the ways that they’re different are deliberate and significant.

Right out from the gate, we can see that Brynhildr is designed to look feminine and sexy. Her final art is clearly geared toward making her appealing to waifu. Sigurd is designed to look cool. There’s no sex appeal in his design or in his final art. The only part of him that is designed to make a husband lover swoon is that he wears glasses and is voiced by a person who usually voices heart throb characters.

But it goes deeper.

Their My Room lines differ significantly.

As you talk with Brynhildr, she’ll mention that she is intentionally avoiding falling for anyone, because if she loves them, she’s cursed to be driven to try to kill them. As you build bond with her, she inevitably fails to resist Guda, and ends up in love by the end, now determined to hold herself off from harming this person she loves.

As you talk with Sigurd, he’ll mention that he doesn’t believe there’s any room for even friendship between master and servant. He’s cold and abrupt. As you build bond with him, he’ll slowly warm up and realize that despite himself he’s become friends and then very tightly attached to the master - to the point where he’ll compromise his own sense of morality and look the other way if necessary. Love, however, is not mentioned at all.

When Sigurd debuted, he debuted with a line for Brynhildr, and she was given a line for him. Sigurd’s line is him saying that he will prove his everlasting love for Brynhildr. Brynhildr mentions how long it’s been without him, and waffles about whether or not she can now continue to be the master’s servant, but ultimately decides that no matter what, she’ll never hurt the master.

S: “ Brynhildr, is it... She tries to prove her love with that murderous impulse. That makes me happy, but, unfortunately, I will be unable to prove the love I feel towards her if I die. I must survive and also let that love be proven. A difficult thing to accomplish, don't you think... “

B: “Oh, finally ... That person finally came here ... ... .... I understand ...... I just can not understand it. Master, I would like to be your servant if possible. But, if, if ... .... No, nothing. No matter what, Sigurd or I will not hurt you.”

As you can see: just in these lines, Brynhildr’s line is still directly romantic toward Sigurd, but also keeps the master in the situation. And this is worth noting, because a common argument could be ‘oh, Brynhildr was early on, they didn’t know what they were doing, so of course she was made waifu’. Her line for Sigurd is modern (not counting other stuff she appears in), and it remains in the same tone as she’s always had. Sigurd’s is nothing but gushing love for Bryinhildr.

Let’s talk briefly about their roles so far in the story, now.

Bryn’s first *story* appearance is in LB2, same as Sigurd. However, before that she appeared in a few other events, most significantly JAlter’s event. This is relevant, because in this story Brynhildr is yandere dedicated to JAlter, fostering JAlter/Bryn yuri in fandom for years. In this event, it’s not ‘technically’ Brynhildr who loves JAlter, but a copy of her. She appears in other limited capacities after this point, but they’re not that significant.

Sigurd’s is similar. When he appears in LB2, he’s romantically attached in a yandere level to Ophelia (not important who this is, it’s a girl). Technically, it’s not him, as he’s actually possessed by another being while he’s behaving this way. However, unlike Bryn, who remains yandere for JAlter all event long until she dies, Sigurd is able to escape this and has a romantic time with Brynhildr, which people who like Sigurd x Bryn will be happy to go into detail talking about, as it gets plenty of focus.

Now, finally, their Valentines scenes. The scenes are generally accepted to be at least some level of fanservice between the master and the chosen servant. It may be romantic, sexual, platonic, or familial, but the relationship is still the focus of it.

Brynhildr’s scene is from the original round of valentines, so her scene is shorter than later scenes, and it’s straightforward. She says that she wants to express her love for the master, and so in the process of expressing her love for her hero, the master, she created glasses that looked similar to the ones Sigurd wears. She determines that the glasses will definitely suit the master (the chocolate is not meant to be eaten, it’s magically frozen), because the master is her hero, much like Sigurd was. She does mention that Sigurd is the person ‘she loved’, but it’s clear her feelings for the master are both separate and also romantic.

Sigurd’s scene just got released this round. It’s a nice, thoughtful gift where Sigurd gives the master special glasses that will protect the master’s eyes from strain, damage from light, or attacks by beasts or enemies less powerful than servants. And they’re stylish. However, it’s strictly a friendship gesture, as aside from the master getting flustered by him leaning in close to compute the proper measurements for the glasses, there’s not any kind of flirtation or indication of any kind of romantic or sexual feelings for the master. And even worse, one of the times that Sigurd blushes is not when Guda gives him chocolate - he considers that a matter of course - but when he mentions Brynhildr. How does he mention her? By hinting that they did something romantic or sexual for valentines day.

Yeah, that’s right. During a white day/valentine’s scene with Sigurd, the only romantic context involved is hinting that Sigurd did the nasty with someone else that day.This is the same problem that Paracelsus and Saber Diarmuid have (and what Arthur had, until they retconned it as a half-hearted attempt to make up for having nothing for White Day last year), where instead of talking about themselves or the master during their bond lines, they talk about someone else. Except it’s even worse, because at least bond lines can be excused with the idea that sharing thoughts about an important person can be a sign of closeness (though these lines really don’t work like that). Valentines/White Day has only one purpose. It’s fluff fanservice. The only reason for including Bryn is to say that the reason people like Sigurd is for his relationship with Brynhildr.

Now, remember that between these two, Brynhildr is the one who is more hung up on Sigurd in lore. She’s cursed to kill all who she loves due to her misery over killing Sigurd, who she loved. She’s further cursed to try to kill Sigurd because of this, making her character naturally Sigurd-focused. Sigurd, on the other hand, died because he was unfaithful to Brynhildr (in a passive way, but it still amounts to this) and has no associated fixations or curses with this. He’s just a normal person. If anyone should be leaking their love for the other into everything and hard-blocking romance with the master or anyone else, it should be Brynhildr, not Sigurd.

Just a quick note - yes, Brynhildr’s master used a command seal on her to get her to believe her enemies were Sigurd so that she’d kill them, but Rin used a command seal to prevent Archer from harming Shirou, too. Command Seals don’t stay in effect when they’ve been summoned again by a different master in a different timeline. The closest that we have is that she’s drawn to love heroic figures, and because of her love for them she hearkens it back to Sigurd. It’s not a berserker Kiyohime or Phantom thing (which is another kind of unpleasant comparison to make) where they think the master is someone that the master isn’t. The master merely reminds Bryn of Sigurd *because* she loves them, she doesn’t love them because they remind her of Sigurd.

So.

That was rather lengthy, but I wanted to go over all the differences, because on their own, people like to try to pick it apart and downplay it. It’s worth noting that in Bryn’s bond CE it’s more about her love for Sigurd and in Sigurd’s bond CE there’s some indication of romance/sexual behavior with the master, but this is the only time it’s swapped like that.

The evidence here should speak for itself. Short of Nefertari debuting and being into the master, we probably wouldn’t get any more direct and obvious an illustration of how FGO deals with female players vs male ones than this. In this, we see that the female side of the romance has two separate existences - one in the main story where she realizes her romantic subplot with Sigurd, and one in the side story stuff/my room fanservice lines where she’s into the master. It’s not treated as weird or inappropriate to waifu her or for her to have romantic interests in people other than Sigurd despite her love for him being so important to her character and lore.

In the male side, Sigurd only exists to be romanced with Brynhildr. He has a nice little friendship built up with the master, but his story is all about his romance with Brynhildr, his design and FA is actively avoiding having him made up as a husband/swooning material, and even his valentine only has romantic fanservice for Sigurd/Bryn. If you’re not into Sigurd/Brynhildr, you’ve still got plenty to get from Brynhildr, but you’re SoL with Sigurd. This extends into fandom, as you’ll find plenty of Bryn/JAlter yuri and a good amount of Bryn/Guda art and material, but if you look for anything with Sigurd other than Bryn (or sometimes Ophelia, related to him being possessed), there just isn’t any. And don’t even hope to find Sigurd/Guda stuff, because there’s nothing.

And this is just how it is. That’s why Saber Diarmuid pointlessly has his lines all cluttered with talk about Artoria for no reason - when he hates her by the end of F/Z - but Semiramis barely speaks about Amakusa and instead flirts with the master. There’s the odd outlier like the Prince of Lanling who is super dere for the master and Tomoe who friendzones the master, but for the most part, the women are almost entirely designed with the explicit intent of making them moe, waifu-able, and romanceable. The men...aren’t.

And this double standard is pretty vexing, as someone who is more interested in swoonable husbands than moe waifu.

If you somehow don’t believe me about all this, just wait for Nefertari and Haydee to debut. If they’re summonable, wait for their blushing my room lines and valentines scenes where they acknowledge their feelings for Dantes/Ozy, but confess anyway. And if they’re not, well...even Nobukatsu experiences this compared to Nobunaga (Nobunaga having a mostly naked FA, romantic content for the master, and a full fanservice alt character, and Nobukatsu again having 100% of his character entirely based on being moe toward Nobunaga, with zero room for the master in that).

#fate/grand order #fate/prototype #brynhildr #sigurd #fgo #ooc #meta #rant

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