#zack reads vn

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Oh, I love this art of Arcueid.

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This image is precious.

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I love how much of FSN is because of the choices of other people that came before the characters, and I wonder if there’s anything to say about that and the fact that the people that fight in the series are Heroic Spirits from long in the past.

Like, you have Shirou who’s dealing with the legacy that his father left to him, the ideals of Kiritsugu, and what he chooses to do with that ideal.

You have Rin, who is constantly trying to live up to what is expected of her as a magus, how that leads to her closing off her emotions.

And because of those closed off emotions, Sakura comes to think Rin hates her, Rin is so closed off, and she never shows her feelings, which in turn leads to Sakura interpreting this as Rin hating her.

And I feel like it’s easy to argue that Sakura only went down such a dark path in Heaven’s Feel because of that. If Rin was more emotionally open, somehow showed her love for Sakura in a way she could recognize, I think Sakura wouldn’t have lost herself.

I’m not blaming Rin here, though. I’m blaming the mage psychology that she was raised on, that Tokiomi raised her on. Rin definitely needed to grow past that, but it’s not her fault she turned out so emotionally constipated, a lot of it is based on how she was raised.

And Sakura isn’t to blame for misinterpreting, either. What Zouken did to her, basically taking away any kind of hope or happiness from her, that’s not going to leave you in a good state. So I feel like it’s natural she’d view Rin’s actions in a negative light if she’s in a negative state of mind.

Then there’s how Illya is doomed to die because of the actions of the Einzbern family, the actions that people long dead decided on. Not to mention how they got her to believe Kiritsugu abandoned her, leading her antagonism and hatred towards Shirou at the start.

Like, everything that happens in FSN happens because of the actions of the three families. Both in the case of creating the war itself, and in the case of what they told their children, how they treated them.

And all the families are essentially gone, they’re completely gone and don’t have to deal with the fallout of their actions, leaving it all to their kids to deal with.

I mean, Kirei is there fucking shit up, too. But he’s just kind of an added bonus.

[brave-symphonia]

I feel like I want to talk about the heroines of each route in FSN and the effect they have on Shirou’s ideals.

Like, Saber is put in front of Shirou as basically a mirror. Someone who holds his ideals so he can see how self-destructive they are and actually recognize that part of himself, so he doesn’t turn out like Archer.

Even if he still goes down that path, he still was able to realize this about himself before it happened, rather than just be left for regrets his entire life.

Archer is put in front of him in UBW to actually physically challenge his ideal, to show where it leads for him specifically, what kind of life awaits him at the end of everything.

So when he finally decides to stand by his ideals and defeats Archer, he knows what he’s walking into, he knows what it all means if he ends up at that path, just a murderer for the planet.

And Sakura is put in front of Shirou in Heaven’s Feel. Someone that he cares about and wants to save, but can’t. He can’t just save her by taking her away from danger, another life he was able to save for his ideal.

By trying to save her, he’s sacrificing so many more lives, so he’s not living by those ideals. She represents something that’s completely incompatible with his ideals, which is what he needs to completely break away from them.

It’s not that he loves her so much that he’s willing to throw away his ideals, it’s that she represents someone that he can’t save with those ideals. And if he can’t save those close to him, what use are ideals like that?

And I absolutely love how all three routes show different aspects like this.

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I'm a big fan of the way they use the sound of a ticking clock in this scene, and just a fan of this scene in general, even if it's just a funny scene where Rin yells at Shirou.

Like, the ticking clock kind of clues you in that tie is passing, so when the decision pops up and the ticking stops, it gives the sense that time has stopped as you're making your decision.

And then, when he says it, there's a sound of glass breaking and the clock stops, as if Shirou is feeling time stop as he realizes he really said the wrong thing in this situation.

And I really like the way the inverted colors and the way Rin's voice changes as she talks after that moment really sell that Shirou fucked up here.

Right up to that last bit where she playfully asks him if she looks angry before screaming "OF COURSE I AM" and calling him a thoughtless jerk as time is brought forward again.

I just really love how you can really feel a lot coming together just for the joke of Rin being angry at Shirou for being scared to pick either option.

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Even after everything from the entirety of all 3 routes, this conversation still sits with me.

The wish to protect something is simultaneously the wish for that thing to be violated.

Kirei hears Shirou's wish and sees right through him in no time, realizing the true hypocrisy in a wish like that.

And I love how at the start of Shirou's journey Kirei just presents one of the biggest problem with his ideals.

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Love Rin and Shirou's dynamic when it's like this.

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And with that, we have the complete form of Shirou Emiya.

Someone who grasped onto his father's ideals and refuses to let go of them, because he promised Kiritsugu on his deathbed.

Like, there's no stating exactly how massive an effect Kiritsugu dying the minute Shirou promised to take on his ideals had on him.

It's honestly one of the really big things I'll never really forgive the UBW anime for not mentioning, because lacking that information can just completely alter how you view Shirou as a character.

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I just rewatched the scene where Shirou stabs Sakura in the finale and breaks the contract between her and Angra, and something just occurred to me that parallels between that and the earlier scene where he can’t bring himself to kill her.

In one, he can’t stab her because it means she’ll die. But in the other, he stabs her because it’s the only way to save her.

And you can see it in the way he is shown in each scene. In one, he’s trembling, barely able to hold the knife, but in the other, he’s confident, happy in this path that he’s decided on.

And Sakura is accepting of it in both cases, but in the first she accepts that she has to die, and is happy for it to be by Shirou’s hand, for her life of suffering to come to an end. And in the second, she chooses to go on living like this, with Shirou by her side.

Unlike his father, when told he has to kill the person he cares about more than any other, he chose to refuse that and found another way. The first way is what Kiritsugu would’ve have done, and had done. And the second is a result of who Shirou is and the growth he went through throughout this route.

Would he have made a different decision in the other routes? Of course, but that’s the beauty of his character, there’s so many different versions of him, some people like UBW Shirou most, some like HF Shirou most, and I’m sure some like Fate Shirou most, he’s a complex character, with many different sides of him explored, and that’s just wonderful.

[brave-symphonia]

It’s really just hitting me how lonely this feels.

There’s so many times where I feel like she comes down and sees Archer, that I expected him to be there despite the summoning not happening yet, but she’s alone.

All alone in this massive house, it makes me feel sad for her.

While you can say she still got the better deal compared to Sakura, she didn’t have an easy life in any sense of the word. She grew up without parents, unable to really be herself with whoever she could even consider a friend, all alone in this massive house.

And it really just makes me happy to think of the Emiya household, how she moves in with Shirou during the war, she’s someone so much more lively.

Shirou couldn’t have moved in with her, because of all the people that would wonder things. Taiga and Sakura, to be precise. But Rin has no problem moving in with him, no one she has to explain the situation to, she can just leave her house unattended, and there’s no one to even care.

Really, the Emiya household is a bunch of people that are coming together from somewhere that wasn’t kind to them, somewhere they were lonely, coming into one big family.

I mean, that doesn’t work for Taiga, she probably has fun at her normal home, but Illya, Sakura, Rin, they all come from places that don’t really show them much love and get to live with Shirou and experience the love of a home that cares about them.

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I can’t help but think about a parallel between Sakura and Shirou, and how that changes throughout Heaven’s Feel.

Like, at the beginning of Heaven’s Feel, they both think of themselves as worthless compared to other people.

Shirou thinks his life has no value, so he should always put other lives before his own, and Sakura thinks of herself as worthless, someone who no one would choose if they knew the truth about her.

But over the course of the route, Shirou casts aside his ideal, culminating in him deciding to live for himself. And Sakura gains the confidence to stand on her own, and in both cases, it leads to them being able to be happy.

Shirou can just be happy living a normal human life, and Sakura can smile around everyone, not just Shirou.

I feel like it really lends something to the fact that they really complete each other, and how they’re broken, but they make each other whole.

Not just in the sense of being able to be happy together, but also in the sense that they help each other through to the point where they can have worth and be happy on thier own.

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It really becomes clear why she hid the bruise from Shirou when you know her situation.

Shinji clearly takes out his frustrations by abusing her, so I’m assuming that every time that Shirou hits Shinji, it just makes things all the worse for Sakura. So she learned to hide it.

And as much as him commenting on how “Shinji isn’t tired of getting hit yet” could bring a smile to my face, the fact remains that Shirou punching Shinji doesn’t solve anything.

Which might be a way to show how Shirou’s ideals don’t work in the real world. He can’t fight his problems away, he can’t save someone as a sword or a weapon.

The only way to save someone in a situation like this is to emotionally save them and actually help them get away from that situation.

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These aren’t humans. Because he’s right, they aren’t.

They may have used to be humans, may have once been just regular people, but they can no longer fit that mold.

They’re no longer considered human, they’ve gone far beyond what a normal human can do.

Normal humans don’t pin themselves to a pillar so they can keep fighting for as long as possible, normal humans don’t cast aside everything just to be a weapon fighting to save people that they will never really know.

Archer is a sword, Cu is a beast, but neither can really be considered human anymore, that word just can’t be applied to them in ways it can be applied to others.

[brave-symphonia]

I keep thinking about We Know the Devil and how much I love how my understanding of it changes with each successive playthrough.

Like, let’s use Neptune as an example.

My initial thoughts on Neptune and her Devil scene were that she wants to corrupt everyone around her and make them give in to their worst desires. And that didn’t feel completely right since she still seems to care about Venus and Jupiter.

And then, after playing through multiple different routes a few more times, I felt like I understood her better, that it’s not that she wants to corrupt them, but that she wants them to be their true selves, to not hide who they are for the sake of others.

And even still, I don’t think that fully encapsulates her character, a fact I’m sure of after hearing one of my mutual’s thoughts on her character, there’s still more to her than even what I got after multiple playthroughs of the game.

My point here is that it feels like the more I play this game, the more I really understand each and every character in it.

And it’s not even that you need to play through their ending to completely understand them, because if you just try to play through one ending to understand a character, you’ll be missing out on a lot of their scenes.

The way the game is made, if you get Jupiter’s ending, you’ll be missing out on a lot of her scenes, simply because you have to ignore her in order to get her ending.

In order to fully understand these girls, you have to play through multiple endings multiple times to fully explore all of their scenes, what they all mean, who these girls really are.

And I really love that. I feel like it really keeps you coming back.

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Now that I’ve played through all the endings, I think Jupiter’s still hits me the hardest, excluding the final ending, at least.

I’m not even really sure what it is, something about the way her as a devil was described just really hit for me. And that line about how she was a hand for every kind of touching, and listing off both positive and negative touching just really sticks with me.

She might also be my favorite right now? I’m not entirely sure, something about how she was the last one to give into the devil, something about it really resonated.

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God, I love this.

Illya being shocked, unable to understand what Shirou just did, and realizing she can't really get her revenge, I love it.

Shirou isn't Kiritsugu, she can't really use him as a replacement for him, and this is the moment when she starts to realize that.

It's boring, one of the biggest things she wanted from this war was just taken from her.

And that's probably why instead of trying to get revenge or going after any other masters, she shifts to trying to get to know Shirou more in this route.

She knows he'll never replace Kiritsugu as someone to get her revenge on, so she tries to see about getting to know her little brother.