#because at a lot of times the nasuverse (and fgo) just shows such promise!

[jathun]

Forgot to update this! But! I managed to finish Agartha a couple of days ago. And oh god it was sooooo bad! About the only things you could maybe salvage from that arc is the writing around Wu Zeitan (through not that godawful design) and maaaaybe Columbus as an antagonist (but that's stretching it). Everything else was just bad. Just straight up awful. The Psuedo-Singularity reads like a bad fanfic written by a fourteen year old boy just getting into puberty and learning about feminism from the manosphere or something.

But since I had time to spare this weekend too; I've also gone through all of S.E.R.A.P.H and now started on Salem! And both of them are already leagues better than Agartha. THOUGH! I have to mention that that bar is already freezing in the deepest depths of hell - so it doesn't take much to improve upon all of that.

And upon that note. While the writing itself was way better in S.E.R.A.P.H. I have to admit I'm not that big of a fan.

I really liked the writing around Meltyllis, and Kiara Sesshouin has always been one of my favourite antagonists in the fate-verse; so I enjoyed those parts of the story immensely! And the lore revelations about the Animuspheres and the experiments they've been doing was delightfully horrifying! But the EXTRA-verse itself has always been a bit of a sore spot for me. I've never really liked it. I've played through all of the games (extra, ccc and extella), but the whole "game-within-a-game" meta concept is not something I'm a big fan of and the kinda juvenile humour of the verse is just...eh. Not for me. A lot of the character writing for the games, especially ccc, is amazing though! I'm not disputing that! But my general meh feelings about the extra-verse really colored my enjoyment of the S.E.R.A.P.H. psuedo-singularity for the worse, since none of it reaches the heights of the writing of the games.

Not to mention I've always had a hard time taking the more out-there designs of some of the nasuverse characters seriously and because of that no matter how great the writing might be; if a character's design is one giant boob joke it's gonna be difficult to look past that.

Now, I'm just a couple of sections into Salem, but as of yet it's up there with Shinjuku, Camelot and Babylonia as one of my favorite arcs of the game. Again, with the preface that I'm still at the very beginning of the psuedo-singularity.

It's got a way more oppressive atmosphere than most of the other arcs (as a classical/gothic horror fan I approve) and the fact that it's at least trying to convey the attitudes and predjudices of the time through the characters is commendable...even if it doesn't always land. For example, it's kinda jarring playing as a female mc and watching the other female characters be treated a...particular way... only to have the character you're playing as treated completely differently. It completely takes you out of the story. And yes! It's a huge problem throughout the game as a whole! But it becomes more of a sore spot in the arcs which actually try to tell a good story, since...well, they're actually trying.

And regarding Salem, it's also, in a way, blatantly obvious that the arc is a japanese take on the salem witch trials and lovecraftian elements - a well researched one compared to a lot of the other singularities and psuedo-singularities - but still that. A very, VERY japanese take on it which tries to be authentic yet doesn't want to step on too many toes BUT while doing so inadvertedly offends by trying to sweep things under the rug instead.

I'm kinda, specifically, talking about the issue of the Pilgrims, Queen of Sheba, Tituba, and the GIANT elephant in the room that is the transatlantic slave trade which grand order hilariously and hysterically tries not to touch yet by virtue of it being a time-travel based piece of media it just...can't not touch. It's...awkward at best and offensive at worst that the only (very ambiguously) black character (that's based on an actual black woman mind you(I'm talking about Tituba here not Sheba)) in the cast is treated with such little regard and shown with such little agency and screentime compared to her white (actual slave owner) counterparts. I'm honestly a bit baffled. I mean anything even remotely touching the topic of witches in america is bound to also touch the myriad of stories about specifically black women persecuted and accused of witchcraft because they kept to traditions which didn't line up perfectly with christianity and what the puritans saw as acceptable. You could do so much with the topic! And instead grand order just...doesn't even touch those stories. At all. Heck. Tituba isn't even Tituba. She's Sheba. A character who's just kinda ambiguously brown (?). I guess.

With E Pluribus Unum it was an issue as well - just not as in your face. They just kinda ignored the problem altogether. No slavery here. No sir. But in Salem it's just...ugh.

And I'm really not the best person to be talking about this. I'm a white-as-sheet woman from sweden who just loves history and colorful casts of characters in the media I consume. But I think that it's a disservice to the reader/player/consumers to ignore the topic even if it's uncomfortable and difficult. Anyone who can pick up a history book will know what happened at the time. It's almost insulting to pretend otherwise.

I dunno...I'm sorry for the rant. I guess I'll just see where the story leads and get my thoughts in order when I've finished with the psuedo-singularity.

For now, I'm at least really enjoying solving the mystery behind Salem together with Mata Hari, Robin and Circe. Oh, and Sanson is growing on me too, so I'll see where that goes!

Ugh... I'm currently PAINFULLY making my way through EoR: Agartha and the only thing keeping me from quitting and bleaching any and all remnants of fgo from my phone is that I'll eventually get to the lostbelts.

...that and the absolute love and obsession I have for about seven to maybe eight characters from other type-moon works...