#forget the holy grail or atlantis

[300iqprower]

Astrea dead pissed me off with that impartial judge talk in Atlantis,,,, like if you don't wanna help just say that don't hide behind your class, especially if you see someone at a disadvantage that literally goes against what your class is meant for,,, why were you even here if not to info dump and dip?

Which leads to my next point—I hate Ruler Jeanne and Astrea because they use their class to excuse their impartiality in situations where being impartial is fucking useless? Apoc!Jeanne had a little "country girl, will chase you with a sword if you interfere don't fw me" vibe but Fgo!Jeanne is the most flavorless mf on the planet that you forget she exists outside of Jalter.

Which is sad because I like the idea of Jeanne being the embodiment of what people thought she was, someone far removed from human error and so saintly that the idea of being friends feels wrong, like your actively tainting her by breathing in her direction which leaves her lonelier than she should be....

I have nothing to say about Astrea as a character simply bc I don't care for pseudo servants that aren't treated like the vessels of the Gods and just an excuse to say "Hey look it's a fate character that's outside of fgo!"

Bazette should've been summonable without the need to bullshit and grab a celtic god.... she has a noble phantasm as a normal human she might as well have a slot in the Throne for that.

Agreed Bazzett got screwed by pseudo garbage

can't speak for Lady Reines event and whatever pseudo crap was going on there but I can 110% speak for the Atlantis Astraea bit, so

I am now going to have a very long discussion of what the Ruler class is and how it is fundamentally misunderstood - TLDR, Ruler servants are not supposed to be likable or even benevolent. It's not a matter of hiding behind a class, it's a matter of the class's inherent disposition being one of stagnation, the same way madness is inherent to the Berserker or suffering to the Avenger.

Remember when I responded to this ask about about why Avenger-adjacent characters are so compelling? To restate and directly jump off from it:

"Astraea the impartial god, Qin Shi Huang the mechanical 'one true human', Jeanne the inhumanly pure Saint, even Sherlock who is so rational in his thinking that it goes from sensible to a lack of empathy, all of these are examples of how the Ruler is marked by an explicit lack of humanity that directly results from them lacking the most human quality there is: Desire. The ability to want something, to strive towards something, to truly care about something for reasons beyond cold logic, to act in a sense of being morally right or wrong, is a concept antithetical to the class itself."

And I guess now I have an excuse to elaborate on this. I'll use both Astraea and Jeanne as case studies, starting with Astraea (Or at least her only canon role of Olympus; haven't done Reines but given it's status as focusing on Nasuverse OCs rather than the actual servants, it shouldnt matter)

Astraea is our enemy in Lostbelt 5. She may claim otherwise, but she is our enemy, not our ally or "guide". She is vain, unfeeling, and inhuman. Why do I say that? Because her priority is maintaining impartiality at all costs. Despite her human host, despite not being a proper lostbelt servant, despite having every reason to help us, she refuses to do so directly on the ground of "impartiality". She is an obstacle in our way, because she would rather be opposed to everyone to allied to anyone, all in the name of her "role".

Compare this to Jeanne at the start of Apocrypha. Familiar, isn't it? The "Protector" who regulated bloodshed. The "Rebel" who adhered to a corrupted system. The "Saint" who would watch Children die. (#AtalanteDidNothingWrongTM). Jeanne, until Sieg came along, was a villain. A slave to the Holy Grail. A lie concocted to enforce rules unquestioningly. The Ruler Class is not one of justice, but one of arbitration, and none embody that more than Jeanne, whose only motive at first was to uphold a status quo even though her life was devoted to the exact opposite. Key words, at first. But what caused her to change? Was it Amakusa's interference? Was it the requests of the servants under her watchful eye? Was it her sense of justice seeing the potential for disaster if Amakusa or Darnic succeeded? No. No. And No. It was a random innocent life completely removed from all matters servant-related being swept up into the events of the grail war that made her question herself. Only when something so pure a blank slate began to suffer did she so much as question herself, and even then she could not accept that until Shakespeare completely broke her with ease. Shakespeare who was described as the worst possible opponent for Jeanne. Do you know why that is? Because he is everything she is not. He seeks emotions, he seeks plot twists, he seeks performances, he seeks the greatest story ever told, he seeks change. Jeanne is exactly the kind of person he can play like a fiddle: A fool dancing on strings. Because that's what the ruler class is, a puppet to the grail's sense of order. A slave to the status quo. Devoid of emotion for the sake of keeping up this idea for impartiality.

I want to highlight something you said

"they use their class to excuse their impartiality in situations where being impartial is fucking useless"

That's exactly the point. That's why the Ruler class is antithetical to humanity. It is the concept of balance regardless of what the balance achieves. But in life there is no absolute good and absolute evil. There is no universal set of rules you can apply to everything - life is too unique and too nuanced. But the Ruler class revolves around the idea of absolutes, of a set of rules you can never break under any circumstance, a sense of perfect order. But you cannot be an arbiter in a system that is inherently arbitrary. Look at the list of ruler servants. Not only are there noticeably a LOT of them by extra class standards, but the majority of non-gag event characters who qualify are very explicitly villains. Out of Jeanne D'arc, Sherlock Holmes, Astraea, Qin Shi Huang, Amakusa, Karl der Große, Young Moriarty, Zeus, BB, and Morgan, all but the first 3 of those are major villains. Now look at ALL of them. Ruler Moriarty and his obsession with academic rigor, Zeus and his stagnation, BB's role of judge jury and executioner in a programmed system, Karl's goal of complete unity at the cost of free will, Amakusa's desire for much the same, (Even some gag examples such as Quetz's godly inability to comprehend humanity through anything but physical exertion!) Qin Shi Huang discarding his humanity for complete order, etc.

And that's what it all boils down to. A lack of any humanity, living as a drone for their role. That's why the Ruler is opposite the Avenger, because if the Avenger is an embodiment of pure humanity, than the Ruler is defined by their lack of true humanity.