#SIN lostbelt

[cynthiaandsamus]

Weren't you guys literally just tearing this ship apart to study every bit of it? Or is learning only evil when poor people do it?

[zmeyel]

I know Road to 7 is only on Götterdämmerung, but since it's Easter it might be a good idea to clear SIN if you haven't already.

[queenofnohr]

i just watched the 2nd Camelot movie and wow.

wow

i will be volunteering myself to be the entire round table’s personal onahole thank you very much

[joanplou]

Oh my god Jing Ke I love you you genius assassin

[morsking]

regularly scheduled lostbelt 6 post but man doesn't it fucking kill you the fsn lostbelt trio was the characters most known for being self-sacrificing and having been destined to meet an unsightly end just like how the entirety of faerie britain and everyone in it only existed as a sacrifice of retribution for an irreversible sin because a promise had been made and it was a promised that was owed.

you had the emiya shirou who gave his life and afterlife for the greater good and to keep his promise to fulfill kiritsugu's wish serving as the vessel for senji muramasa who promised he'd forge a sword that would sever karma and destiny and used his whole spirit origin to save artoria caster from a lonely death. artoria caster who was born to forge the holy sword artoria pendragon would wield into the years her kingdom would fall, the faerie dragging herself to her demise and the demise of king arthur and camelot kicking and screaming but doing so because her life was a promise to the star in the storm. and cu chulainn who died defending ulster never refusing the people who asked for his help yet being undone by the geass (the promises) he broke because above all he had promised himself he would walk no other path other than this very one he had chosen in his childhood so he was the perfect man to keep odin's promise that something of humanity would remain after the cataclysm in his stead. all of three of them standing in contrast to the fujimaru ritsuka who made a promise not to save the world but to carry on for the memory of romani archaman and to keep hold mash kyrielight's hand as she believed her brief life was coming to an end in the collapsing command center of chaldea and oberon who was the promise of a complete and absolute end to the tragedy of britain's existence.

lostbelt 6 is about promises dammit and it doesn't matter how painful they are they have to be kept because to live is a promise when you die you must have fulfilled your promise just as gareth fulfilled her promise as the last of the mirror clan just as percival fulfilled his promise to melusine just as melusine fulfilled her promise to aurora just as koyanskaya fulfilled her promise to muryan just as muryan fulfilled her promise to herself and the rest of the wing clan and just as habetrot fulfilled the promise she made as totorot. and that's why excalibur is the sword of promised victory. as long as it exists there is a promise that even in the furthest and darkest battlefield, waged not even by armies but by a small and ordinary person against despair itself, victory is promised it will be achieved so long as you hold on to the hope radiating from that promise.

[zeravmeta]

i still fucking adore this plot twist especially because of how it also recontextualizes oberons actions at the very end. vortigern as a curse made to destroy britain is this giant handsome fella

which is a conglomerate of bugs all made to consume the land and destroy it. the land of fairie britain is not only made of corpses but also sin, as it continues to grow it only further damns itself because the fairies are fickle beings who act purely in self interest, unable to truly change. when they die their bodies remain and a successor to their name is born from the land, once again taking their place and once again being unchanging, which is why the land of fairie britain has been an unendingly cruel land subsumed in curses and its also why vortigern is the one meant to destroy it. the insect of the abyss is called as such but in fact doesnt really look like anything its just a tube with wings, at MOST you can MAYBE say it looks like a leech or lamprey but in fact hes just a void that consumes and annihilates everything only adding to its mass. a curse and a lie all ultimately as such because there is no meaning other than total destruction to the curse but oberons will is what motivates the destruction of the lostbelt and chaldea and not vortigern and thats why its so significant

oberon-vortigern isnt just destroying britain. hes letting the bodies rot and the sins fade away, quite literally the bugs on a corpse that let it decompose and pass on

[theendofviolet]

“ashiya douman is evil for the sake of being evil”

yes! but also.....very much no.

(heian-kyo and very mild out of context paper moon spoilers abound below)

i think what i find sometimes among fate/go players is treating ashiya douman As It Says On The Tin; they’re a nuisance, a monstrous soul, a giddy evil jester happy to spread their malice to cause harm to human beings. and yes, as it stands, that’s exactly their role. even nasu states in an interview that douman was created to be a negative force to push the lostbelt kings a little to serve the plans of the foreign god as her Apostle. the man was told “be amusingly evil” and boy, did they live up to the task!

but to stop at just the interpretation of “oh, guy is EVIL that’s all, time to wrap it up and go home boys” completely misses the true complexity lying behind the surface, and whitewashes a key point repeated time and time again in heian-kyo.

douman....or rather, limbo (and the distinction is important!) is an alter ego. limbo is a shadow. limbo is a part of the whole. limbo is an aspect, a silhouette of humanity, a piece, a caricature. xu fu even goes into detail of the nature of alter egos here:

limbo is an alter ego, which means if you take the whole of ashiya douman and write them off as “evil for the sake of doing evil”, you are more than happy to stare at the shadow at the back of the cave without wanting to turn around. heian-kyo is more than unsubtle about this point. for where, does it ask, that resentment come from? where does that malice originate? when guda and the others meet the living douman (even if it is limbo, hiding in plain sight), the man they meet is not a overly hammy evil clown but a mild-mannered, sincerely humble monk. and it is seimei....yes, that seimei, the great nemesis, the one limbo spits at and hates with every fiber of their being, who makes the distinction over and over again that limbo and ashiya douman are distinct.

“but living douman also wanted to do evil for the sake of evil!” are you sure? this is a man who we see in a brief moment want to end his own life with no real hesitation because he was deeply appalled by the nature of his own evil in the form of limbo.

and then, if we really want to go down to brass tacks, even if we make a distinction between limbo and douman, with writing off limbo as the monstrous form of a human’s resentment and evil, is LIMBO really evil for the sake of evil? time and time again, we see limbo do things that seem so contrary as to be suspect. douman finds and fixes danzou up, claiming that they are doing so as to make her suffer more by giving her memories of her son, but without limbo, danzou would’ve continued to be a cold unfeeling broken machine with no recollection of what mattered to her most. in nagiko’s interlude, guda even calls limbo out for acting as a nuisance to actually help her and raikou resolve their differences. is that “evil for the sake of being evil”?

this isn’t to say that limbo isn’t evil at all. this isn’t even to say douman, as tragic as they are, isn’t evil in his own way, either. but the truth is more complicated. in the end, limbo and douman are just....human. flawed and horribly human, even if one is an aspect of a person. to write them off as some grand evil with nothing more to it is to make the same mistake that history did. douman was the nemesis of seimei, so he had to be evil. of course he’s evil. there’s nothing more. ignore the man crying at the edge of a cliff for all his sins and vices and flaws, hm? there’s nothing more. there’s nothing more. there’s nothing more-

Fufu. Even if I am in the guise of a Heroic Spirit, I am still the shadow monk of humanity. But I suppose that's no different than what it means to be human.

[empty-dream]

Knowledge leads to doubt. Once people are trapped by such delusions, they inevitably begin comparing themselves to others and resent the world itself. Without such wicked individual egotism, this world can be paradise everlasting. It is through ignorance that our people live their lives in peace and health.

Fate/Grand Order • Cosmos in the Lostbelt : Syncronized Intellect Nation, SIN

[fiannalover]

Fate Fic Recs

Because I read a lot of fics and am always rolling that ao3 gacha, so I felt like sharing a non exhaustive rec list under read more. Feel free to reblog and add more!

past the lingering smoke - Kadoc-senpai is best senpai! Post-ID. Hurt/Comfort.

For Want Of A Relic - Fate/Zero Servant Swap AU where Waver gets Diarmuid and everyone else swaps around too. The resulting team-ups are honestly delicious and you get very good Diarmuid out of it. The writer came back after 4 years of hiatus to finish the fic and write sequels, go give them a round of applause!

Fragments of Chaldea - stares directly at the camera

Café of the round - Reincarnation AU Coffee Shop. The Main Round Tale reincarnate within the Fate Universe and get together to own a coffee shop, meeting and remeeting other nasuvere people along the way.

AND GUINIVERE IS THEEEEEERE!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉 yaaaaaaaaaay

Multiple Case Studies of the Strange Concept of Love - a Servant is summoned to Chaldea, and spends her days looking at the romantic couples within it and analyzing the emotions she feels. Once you learn who is the main character you'll start crying. Also, RamaSita, yay!

Sunset Cocktail - BediGudao Valentine’s day fic. Bedivere saves Gudao from stalker of the day, takes him to Moriarty’s bar, on Moriarty’s suggestion. Bedivere regrets his trusting of shifty old men from the word go, more at 11.

a planet between your teeth - Drabble. The god asks if the fairy wants to eat him.

what name is there for what we have done? - Post-LB6 Fic where Mordred is, quite frankly, blowing up after Morgan and Baobhan are summoned to Chaldea, specially with how much the former looks like him. This takes him to Bedivere’s room. Hurt/Comfort, amazing Bedivere, amazing Round Table dynamic (author uses he/him for Mordred)

vignette 50 - Sieg & Guda farming at New York Event. Cute. Cute. Cute. CUTE! def a fic to read to warm up cozily at the end of the day, I get cuteness giggles everytime I read it.

Taste-testing - CharlieGudao baking fic. Pure, unaltered fluff. Charlie lays the sugar Thick.

Conversation by the bus stop - Bedivere talks to a fairy who is not there

But we stay silly - GudaCas. Guda shocks Artoria out of dissociation by barking like a dog. Adorable. I SWEAR this is cute. Trust me.

Sign here - Modern AU GudaCas stuff following on that part of the chocolate competition where Cnoc says the winner will marry Ritsuka. A lovely comedy drabble that will Not tear your heart apart at the last second, unlike fics made by other authors who followed up on that scene.

遅くの成人の日 (救った世界が必ず貴方を救ったくれる、どんな形でもそれは貴方にきっと届く） - I can only pray the title formatted well. Summer event fic of Ritsuka dealing gwith how long she has been at this, and the acceptance of her own aging.

And Thus Did The Leaves Fall - BediArthur. Bedivere as Arthur dies.

Look at me - GudakoBarth. Gudako, Bartholomew, their feelings for one another and how much one needs to fit another’s type.

She did not want to die - NitoSche fic and character exploration. Amazing Sche character exploration, accompanied by an equally amazing Nitocris POV version of the fic in Act As A Pharaoh. If you like either girl, you HAVE to read it.

Have I Made You Sad, Mom? - Post-LB6 Morgan has been summoned to Chaldea. Baobhan hasn’t arrived yet.

(Free from) Sin - Morgan!Aesc, Aesc!Morgan, and the many times she felt love, wretched, cursed love.

Atonement - Ritsuka going through therapy and readjusting to a normal life post-lostbelt, as the voices of all her Servants remain ringing in her ears.

Your heart in my mouth, bitter on the tongue - MashMorgan. Mash confesses, Morgan vaguely remembers what emotions are. I do love a good rule of three emotional discussion fic.

Bridal Ox - Asterios goes to Habetrot’s workshop to ask for a dress

Taking the bit (heh) to its natural conclusion - Modern AU GudaCas. Guda is face blind, Caster needs someone to help her run away from the cops.

the odds don’t look far - Avicebron and David bonding over being the only jewish Servants in Chaldea (and, post-Part 1, the staff as a whole).

[falsegrailwar]

More Lostbelt posts but specifically SIN this time bc I love agender mothman

[mako-neexu]

everytime i remember the lostwill episode for guda, i turn into a glitching and screaming bocchi.

illusion!da vinci saying “it’d be bad if you’re not in top shape to take down the lostbelt. replacements are common as to be practically worthless but youre the last master. oh yeah anyways we have kadoc, youre a spare now” and illusion!mueniere going “you can stop being a master now. you’re just a civilian so youre not needed anymore”

illusion!holmes’ “theres no need to worry about your sins. all those people who knew are gone now” and illusion!goredolf’s “theyre merely simulations. there is no need to feel sympathy over them. we are the winners and they are the losers”

chaldea has relied on guda so much that the weight of it cannot be measured. that’s their only purpose now. to be a Master. and to be a Master, they need to push forward the longer this kind of suffering got. “to live” they still want that, believe in that. but that meaning gets muddled everytime the tears mixed with your bloodstained hands, with the same hands you used to hold your friend yaga’s hand with, to eat with the little girl from scandinavia, to get a high five from the twins from olympus, to reach out to the people you lost.

then to holmes and goredolf’s lines: its meaningless, so why try? why try indeed... a way to have guda’s will collapse, the antithesis of what the’ve been doing in the lostbelts all this time. “its already hard for you so why dont you give up? your efforts are meaningless” they’ll disappear in the end no matter what.

isnt life meaningless? how, in the end, we’re all going to die anyways. and the only thing we can do... is to give our lives purpose. to find meaning because thats what everyone has been doing ever since the beginning.

guda thinking “relax. what does it mean to relax? someone dying in front of me, a body torn topieces in front of me... training those legs that are desperate to flee, training to clear my mind...i cant recall any other way of life now” but theyre still hoping that they’ll be able to move past the blood after all of this is over

and then GUDA ADMITTING SOMEONE WANTED TO TELL THEM THAT WHAT THEY CARRY IS A BURDEN MUCH TOO PAINFUL FOR THEM TO BEAR THAT YOU CAN LEAVE IT BEHIND AND UNFINISHED THAT YOU CAN RUN AWAY BECAUSE ITS YOUR DECISION. YOUR DECISION. YOUR LIFE. that its enough.

and to live... is to live without regrets. to move forward because you still have that ‘something’ to hold on to and reach towards. 

just like he said.

[mahapralanya]

I have been reading the From Lostbelt manga translations and my mind got absolutely fixated on these panels from chapter 11.

This isn't the only time that cannibalism is invoked as part of the process of Arjuna Alter's ascension to godhood. He acknowledges it during his interlude:

"The battle where everything spiraled out of control. A great war in which god, man and beast were liquified into sludge. I then consumed that sludge, slurping it down as if it were soup. Forgive me, that was just a figure of speech. Truthfully, what I actually did was far worse." (Source)

Although he doesn't say it with his own words, the implication is there - that was just a figure of speech; what I actually did was far worse.

This, combined with the manga panels, made me think many thoughts.

The first thing that caught my attention was the lack of gloves; we almost never see Arjuna not wearing them, and the image of seeing his bare hands, knowing how princely and royal he is, comes as striking. This, along with the focus given on his hand gestures, makes me feel like I am witnessing something that shouldn't be seen - something intimate.

And it got more intimate when I realized that it looked like he wasn't wearing any clothes. There is nothing covering him, at least from the angle we get. It might be a stretch, but I do believe that he was naked there.

Nakedness implies intimacy, but it can be translated into other things as well; in this case, I think about vulnerability, transformation/rebirth, and returning/embracing nature.

The first one should be obvious enough - humans are pretty frail without clothes, and it is far easier to hurt yourself if there's nothing protecting you. Clothing keeps us safe from the extremes of both heat and cold, and in the context of a war, paired with armor, they exist to keep one alive.

The other two things are closely tied, although I do see them as being different enough to be listed separately.

We are all born naked - and in this moment, the key point to the lostbelt's existence, Arjuna is going through a transformation, a rebirth process. He has discarded the things that made him human and is going to grow stronger, the result different from the Arjuna that he used to be.

For this to happen, he also had to embrace his own human nature, flawed and fragile, exposing himself, offering his body and soul to the earth and gods that made him what he is, embracing his primal instincts.

Every creature needs to eat.

Cannibalism in art can have many readings, and has been used as a metaphor for many things, ranging from love, depravity, and hate. Eating something because you love it so much you want to become one with it, being overcome with desire that you must eat the other to saciate your hunger, consuming your enemies so you can absorb their strength and laugh as they are reduced to nothing more than fuel to your body.

It is usually something very violent.

While not fully shown, it is easy to imagine the process of eating an entire being with one's bare hands to be a messy ordeal. Killing by itself is already dirty and violent enough, but eating one's own kill like an animal is truly something else.

It makes me wonder about how broken Arjuna's mind was at the time, as he accepted the need to do something so extreme. Baring himself, tearing the gods apart with his own hands, taking them bite after bite, enduring the taste and the sin.

The third panel says more than enough.

He hated it.

This also reminded me of a certain piece of information delivered to us during LB4: he refused to devour and absorb Karna, even after effectively killing him with his noble phantasm.

While the story paints it as a sign of Arjuna's distastes for Karna as his rival, I never really bought into that explanation. Thinking deeper, I do believe that there were other factors that played a role in this decision.

If he truly hated Karna, I believe he would have eaten him - it would have been the ultimate demonstration of power, and to devour him after killing him in his own terms would be incredibly cathartic... In theory.

One could say he was far too removed from his humanity to care about his feelings for Karna, but we know that this isn't exactly true either; it is Karna, after all, that ends up being able to reach Arjuna's core, his humanity, which he hadn't truly lost but actually buried away, hidden deep under his skin.

I believe he spared Karna as a call for help.

Arjuna Alter's origin story is nothing more than a tragic tale, full of trauma and horrible, complicated feelings. He wants to get rid of it all, to discard and erase them away - to remake the world over and over, until there are no traces of suffering, of the things he lost, the sins he commited.

But it's impossible to erase one's own flawns; in Arjuna's mentality, that would mean erasing himself. Karna says so directly to his face, making him confront himself and do some actual self reflection after centuries of denial.

Of course, this doesn't mean that other characters wouldn't have been able to figure this out themselves and have this dialogue with him; however, having it coming from Karna hits him different. It makes him realize how far he has come, to the point that he isn't, as he directly says shortly before dying, the man he used to be.

Arjuna never wanted to become evil. He never wanted to lose his humanity. All those violent things he did, stripping himself from who he was raised to be, it was all an act of desperation.

He never wanted to lose his ties with Karna, as severing them would make his world imperfect, exposing him to the flaws that are his own feelings, the fact that he isn't as emotionally detached as he wanted to become.

Karna needed to exist to save Arjuna from himself. Karna needed to exist to become his downfall.

Arjuna Alter, unconsciously, bared himself to be devoured by Karna, as only destruction could be his salvation now.

And Karna saved Arjuna, both god and human, at the end of the world.

[rake-rake]

@avaloniamagus

“   is it getting bad again?  ” / Vortigern :>

For the heavy hearted.

It is Vortigern's back that is turned towards Merlin, Vortigern's hands that are gripping his own arms in some sort of bizarre embrace, only to let go with a sudden tremor. Yet, when he turns to look at Merlin, it is brown and pink hair framing kind features and healthy skin, and it's Oberon meeting his gaze.

"No no, see how it is?" he tut-tuts at Merlin, an index finger wiggling in the air between them in disproval, "It is been a while since we last spoke. Take a seat and listen for a while. It is my turn now. I said sit down."

The smile never stutters but the inflection of his voice leaves no place no arguments. Oberon himself takes no seat, leaning his back against the wall behind him and crossing his arms over his chest, hands gripping his biceps in a similar way Vortigern had been doing moments ago. His eyes flutter shut, bushy lashes brushing pinkish cheekbones, a gentle smile to his lips. Yet, there's a certain air and feeling to the room, a finality to the tone of his voice as he continues to speak.

"I've known you before the first flower flourished at your feet. I've known him before the first fruit rotted in his hands. I've known you both since the first light and the last shadow. I was there when your two gazes crossed for first time, I was there when you turned your back. I was there when the sword was pulled from the stone, and I was there when the lance pierced him and you watched the light leave his eyes. I was always there. Vortigern Pendragon hasn't always been me, but I have always been Vortigern Pendragon. Human notions like time, space, and reality mean nothing to a Great Parent."

Great parents, the greatest classification of faeries. Just as Caster, once called Arturia, just as Morgan, once called Vivian. Born directly from the inner sea with a purpose greater than themselves. For Morgan it was to save Britain, which she was shunned by the planet for abandoning and naming herself Morgan, demoted to a shadow of what she once was as the Inner Sea created a new daughter, Arturia, later named Caster, with the same purpose.

Oberon's purpose, however, was way more obscure, shrouded in darkness and light in equal measure.

"I was always there, through everything, not only you and him. I saw, and did. Was it good fortune, that your child never found wild beasts whenever he ventured alone into the woods? Was it cheer luck, that when terribly hungry and gorging on berries, he never found himself poisoned? Was it coincidence, that when lost at night the fireflies would light the way out for him?"

"Dragons are my children too. The ones like him, shining so bright, could never pass my attention. So I aided him, little as I could, shackled to Avalon and conditioned to Vortigern's Pendragon very existence as I was. I did everything I could to aid, to ease his journey. To see him reach the end, and his dream. It was for naught. I asked you— I commanded you to protect Caster, to protect my— Vortigern's— our daughter, so that she would not end up like your King. She did. You failed. Such as you failed Arthur Pendragon as well."

He gives him a snide smile, and there's something different about it now, something closer to Vortigern's cruelty than Oberon's kindness. Suddenly, the air seems too cold, the shadows of Oberon's face too deep and pronounced, making his face more similar to the one he last sported right at the end of the British Lostbelt. And when he speaks his mouth to speak, there are insects writhing under his tongue and clinging at his throat, and Avalon shifts.

"I break the pact, accepting of any punishment that befalls me. I reject you. Begone. Avalon has no place for sin. Thou art more human than fairy, and humans are not of my kin. Vivian, Caster. They are both gone. I am the first Great Father who frees you, I am the last Great Mother who shuns you. Cambion you remain, but never to curse our home again. Thou shalt wander the earth along humanity for all eternity, until you and them have redeemed themselves from their sins, until every drop of water has given pass to grains of sand and until every light has dimmed on the night sky. Repent. The Fae King Oberon Vortigern curses you so."

[bittertomato]

Woops, I still have Lostbelt 6 feels. Sorry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Every other Lostbelt King got to go down after a tough battle against the heroes, but not Morgan. Morgan died the way Oberon said would be the only way to beat her: deception and assassination. And damn did it take so much bullshit falling into place to literally stab her in the back.

But that's not what gets me about Morgan's death. It's that Fujimaru, Mash, and the rest of their party will never know about it. The only ones to witness it and remain in this "future" past the collapse of Faerie Britain are Baobhan Sith (who did NOT need more suffering) and the audience.

It's why Oberon Vortigern's My Room line to Morgan tugs at my heartstrings.

I had to do everything within my power to kill you. Despite all that, I never even got to face you when you died. …So, let me be clear: I didn't hate the picture book you drew.

Oberon can scoff and say that once the story is over it'll be something people just move on from. Not me. Morgan's super fucked up ending will stay with me for the rest of FGO's lifespan. Because it works so well narratively-speaking for a character who has so thoroughly convinced herself that she is a villain—the witch that the heroes must strike down, no matter what version of Morgan this is—to die a wretched death.

Except she wasn't defeated by the heroes. She died under thousands of years of Faerie Britain's sins—including her own—and there isn't even anyone besides the audience who will mourn how massively fucked up this is.

[zeravmeta]

we learn later in this interlude that the reason dantes appeared in place of divine spirit astraea was because he put a filter in gudas brain to protect them from astraeas mere presence but actually also i fucking love the implication that gudas perception of a judge/justice would in fact be the count himself. that guda is so drowned in sin and guilt over their fight for survival against the lostbelts and so the only person who could truly judge them is the one who agreed to walk beside them on the path to hell and he would only ever judge guda should guda have given up

[swamplevel]

Also I think I'm about halfway through SIN in my Lostbelt catchup quest, and I'm enjoying it. I'm slightly baffled by the hard right turn into making Spartacus an actual character and not a weird joke (did this happen somewhere before this?) but Emperor Qin has been completely delightful as an antagonist.