#fgo abby

[rare-prism-s]

YIPPEE

[melusineisthebestest]

I just realized that the funniest thing about Santa Abby is that in my video, she gets her powers from Saint Nick... and the year we actually get Santa Abby is the same year Saint Nick's tomb is found.

[mako-neexu]

its so funny dfssjhdlk dantes and oberon doing the most weirdest or most fucked up things ever because they love guda and are literally their PRIMARY protectors in guda's dreamscape/psyche meanwhile i didnt think that THE REST of the dream servants are more BEHAVED considering their track record/how they are lol

[hydragoon513]

Santa Abby is adorable and if I had the qp to do it she'd be grailed to 100 already

[xenodile]

I log into FGO for the first time since LB6 when I rolled Barghest. I roll 2 Lady Avalons, 2 Summer Skadis, a Summer Ibuki, and most importantly, Summer Wu. I log out of FGO.

I log into Arknights for the first time since I stopped playing it after the Ling event. I roll Shu and Chongyue in 30 pulls. I log out of Arknights.

Just win at the gacha without ever playing, it's easy.

[raspberryusagi]

Help. I’m not okay.

That interlude hit like a truck and I’m not just talking about the fights…

How am I gonna deal when OC2 drops?

[hathor-liderc]

AEW Rsmpage 10/20/23

[lorddoom01]

Based on my friends' new year's eve banner rolling.

[haskamadoneanythingwrong]

Hello Kama Nation.

I, your lovely mod, require your help.

Which Buster Extra GSSR should I go for. Its either Oberon or BB and I can't pick between my wives

[bathtub-siren]

hallo you all will look at my master oc ok? she is just a teenage girl in the world

[rare-prism-s]

yayyyy....finally did this..

[mako-neexu]

[biting the floorboards] if NA translates interlude 2 with abby calling dantes as "Mister Edmond" instead of "Uncle Edmond" im storming aniplex hq with a cinderblock in hand to convince them to change it

[hassiegfrieddoneanythingwrong]

Day 167: Siegfried deserves hugs just as much as Abby deserves them.

[medi-melancholy]

BRO WHAT MAGIC IS AFOOT WITH ALL MY GAMES TONIGHT…. I JUST WANTED MAYBE A FUJINO WITH MY WEEKLY TICKET?????

[call-me-noa]

Unknown character showed up in the FGO JP Christmas event. Main theory going around online right now is Bastet because of the cat ears and Egyptian accessories.

Worth noting that Bastet appears in the Cthulhu Mythos and this is an event starring Abby.

[cyborg-squid]

FGO's Arjuna and Krishna

Reading the (translated and abridged) Mahabharata has made me think a little bit more a character that is mentioned a couple times by Arjuna: Krishna.

When I watched Arjuna's second interlude (since I unfortunately don't have a copy of my own), Krishna is mentioned as a sort of... representation of Arjuna's dark side, the negative emotions he tried to repress no given form. But it was just that, a metaphor and a representation, a name given to the negative yet natural feelings that he experienced, which were amplified by his position as a Hero, specifically him being almost the 'chief' hero out of all five Pandava brothers. Digression: It's actually something that he has in common with Abigail Williams, the extreme pressures of their respective societies (mythic war India and puritan New England) making them view their natural emotions (Arjuna's jealousy and Abby's childlike mischief) as something dark and unwanted, and their repression of those feelings left them both open to malevolent outside influences.

So when this line happened in Lostbelt 4 (an otherwise extremely good chapter), I was a little put off by it. It felt like something of a cop-out, or a misntepretation on either my part or the writers, having Krishna/dark Arjuna be an actual entity contributing to the Lostbelt, instead of Krishna just being the sort of metaphor for Arjuna's dark internal feelings. On my first read of Lostbelt 4, at least.

But now having read (most) of the Mahabharata, my perspective on what 'Krishna' is in Fate has changed somewhat, in the Epic, Krishna is very much his own character and entity, rather than just something inside Arjuna. I'll admit to maybe not having the best grasp on the theology of it all, but Krishna is a manifestation and avatar of the god Vishnu, who is basically the omni-god (oversimplifcation) of the Hindu pantheon. And most importantly in the epic, more so than any death-becoming world-destroying powers, Krishna is dharma. The quickest way I can describe dharma is that it is like one's fate (concept not franchise) and conduct, it is what one must and will do, according to both one's class status (like the Ksatriya warrior class that most of the epic characters are) and ones own self. Despite being in the same class, two people can end up having very different dharma, like Bhima and Duryodhana, for example.

What ties in with the Fate series is that... Krishna is still a dark 'side'. I'm not saying this to slander him or portray him as a villain, he is dharma, what he says goes, and if an act is adharmic (going against dharma) to either the performer of the act or to others, it can be made dharmic simply by Krishna's will.

And that is a large part of what he does in the Mahabharata, as he is forbidden from fighting directly in the Kurukshetra war, instead acting as Arjuna's charioteer and the chief advisor of the Pandavas. It is he who instructs Arjuna to shoot Karna in the back while Karna's wheel is stuck (due to treachery), even though such an act would be cowardly, against the rules of war, and adharma, it is permitted because it is Krishna's will. Earlier and similarly, when a noble hero on the Kaurava side is about to slay one of Arjuna's disciples, the distant Arjuna, at Krishna's urging, interrupts their duel by shooting the arms off of the Kaurava general, saving his friends life but earning him the rebuke of said general, who correctly assesses that it was Krishna who drove Arjuna to commit such an adharmic act that he wouldn't otherwise commit.

It's not just Arjuna that Krishna manipulates, during Bhima and Duryodhana's final duel, Krishna instructs Bhima to strike his foe below the belt (literally), a move that incapacitated Duryodhana and was as illegal in a mace duel as it is in boxing, but was nonetheless permitted because Krishna.

And while Krishna permits acts that violate dhama when it benefits his friends and chosen side, he will not tolerate it from others, such as when Ashwatthaman, confronted after the night-raid where he killed hundreds of Pandava soldiers in their beds, throws his weapon at Arjuna's pregnant wife. Which is very uncool and very much adharmic (then as now), and Krishna punishes him by cursing him with eternal injuries (in FGO, it is the rage curse that Ash has) and immortality, condemning him to walk the world cursed forever. Maybe that's a fitting punishment, maybe it isn't, that's subjective, but it does kinda show how Krishna's double standard operates, he's willing to punish breaches of dharma done by others, while at the same time encouraging the Pandavas to violate dharma.

This does not go unnoticed by other characters in the epic, and Krishna is not completely infallible; many of the Pandavas express doubts or discomforts over their breaches of dharma, and only wise Yudhistra, himself a lord of dharma, can match Krishna in moral rhetoric. Krishna himself also blames several breaches of dharma, encouraged by him or not, on the fact that the world is, at this point, in the Kali Yuga, an age of pain and strife, where breaches of dharma are to be expected.

Duryodhana, himself a wicked man (not an insult, both he and the narrative know it), remonstrates Krishna as he lays dying, pointing out the various dirty tricks Krishna told the Pandavas to use, and then basically giving that Skyrim quote "My ancestors are smiling at me, [Pandava]. Can you say the same?" Because dharma is a multifaceted concept, a man as wicked as Duryodhana will still go to heaven and meet with his warriors and kinsmen there, for even with all the evil stuff he did, he still acted according his dharma as a Ksatriya, and his own personal dharma (being the villain of this story), while the Pandavas now have to live with the guilt and pain over what they have done. (The multifaceted nature of dharma is also why FGO Ash can have contradictory sounding skills of 'Violation of Chivalry' and 'Revered Soldier'.)

To bring it all back to Arjuna's interludes and Lostbelt 4, the mention of Krishna in LB4 makes a lot more sense to me and coheres more, know that I'm more well informed on Krishna as a proper 'character' than I was before. And Krishna as a character does, in fact, not clash (in my opinion) with 'Krishna' as Arjuna's dark side and the evil voice inside his head, because the 'real' Krishna was evil voice in his ear during the War. The point of Arjuna's 2nd interlude is that, even if such an adharmic act was permitted and encouraged by Krishna, Arjuna still bears guilt over killing Karna in that way. And coming to terms with that, recognizing that both the feelings that drove him to strike in that way, and subsequently feelings of guilt over it, are part of what makes him and us human, that he is allowed to be human and fallible yet still follow the path of the Ksatriya and a Servant to the best of his ability...

...Arjuna is a really good character, guys. Really good. And he and Karna's and Aśvatthāman's (and presumable Bhima and Duryodhana's, when OC1 arrives) stories mesh really really well with the Mahabharata, there's a real sense of cohesion between them that I'm really beginning to appreciate.