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megashadowdragon · 2 years

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Douman: Mmmnn... "Love". "Trust". "Respect".

Douman: Seimei had those things. You have those things. And yet, for all of my knowledge, I never had those things. Only obsession.

Douman: Obsessed with winning. Obsessed with the Foreign God. Obsessed with Chaldea. Obsessed with hatred.

Douman: But the memories of 'Limbo' makes up my records, but so do the wishes of 'Ashiya Douman'. Someone who didn't know the Foreign God. Or Chaldea. Someone who only knew the proclaimed superiority of Abe-no-Seimei, the hatred of Japan, and had yet not seen what he lacked.

Douman: ...And perhaps that means I must see things differently now.

Douman: So, in other words, perhaps this Douman has decided to finally take Seimei's advice for once...

I like Douman. I think he's interesting. I really liked that segment at the end of Heian-kyo when the living Douman talks a bit with Seimei. It's short, but I think it shows a lot about how different 'Douman' and 'Limbo' are in the end.

Marking spoilers because people are still working their way through Heian-kyo. Also, good luck on everyone's Ibuki rolls tomorrow! She's cute, but I'll have to skip her for a certain "Shana-oh" dropping a few months later.

It’s kind of cruelly ironic, actually. That’s the exact thing limbo expects people to do with him and they’ve taken the challenge up with gusto.

If they’d actually read heian kyo they would at least be able to understand WHY he’s like that though

Ashiya douman is an incredibly competent and capable character who nevertheless was constantly compared to an other, more skilled and more well liked person that it was impossible for him to ever ‘beat.’ He was never allowed to achieve anything on his own merits bc people wouldn’t stop comparing him to seimei so when a manifestation of his own jealousy, anger, and people’s perceptions of him as seimei’s villainous foil showed up and taunted him over not being good enough he literally broke. He wanted to be recognized for his own achievements and if he can’t get that as a ‘good guy’ (Ie as an onmyoji) then by god he’d get it by being the villain people want him to be. Limbo as a character exists as what people think douman is-a rival for the hero to beat, a rival to be ridiculed to make the hero look better. He’s slimy and cowardly and odious because that is what makes the hero look better, because his stories were always written only to enhance how amazing seimei were. This is the role given to him by the foreign god, ‘limbo is irredeemably evil’ which is also why his two largest alter ego components are Chernobyl and izapapalotl, who are both ill defined dieties that exist as targets for humanities hatred and grudges over their misfortunes (chernobog as a god of bad luck, izapapalotl as the goddess who ruled over the world where victims of infant mortality were sent) and yet these gods by nature are not inherently evil,, they are like that because of the role they are meant to fill. This is the role he is intended to fill so he tries to convince the reader that it’s true, but he’s trying to convince himself as much as anyone else. He is a being that is essentially a manifestation of ‘limbo’- when he tries to do good he fails to be the hero, when he tries to do evil he fails to be the final boss. He has committed an extraordinary amount of emotion pain upon people because he is incredibly familiar with how insecurities ruin people and, again, that is the role given to him by the foreign god, and yet he can’t commit to anything more because he has no goal until he’s backed into a corner and realizes there is something greater he wants to acheive.

He wanted to become a beast to overcome this fate, failing to realize that beasts are essentially this trope on a much larger scale, ie a stepping stone for humanity to overcome. He failed to become a beast because he lacked love in his heart and he also failed to become a curse on humanity because he lacked true hate. he does not love humanity but neither does he hate it or want to destroy it-all he wanted was for once to be able to surpass seimei on his own merits. He’s obsessed with people who have lost important things to them (Amakusa and arjuna alter) and gets his claws in them by offering them revenge, to show the people who hurt them what they’re truly capable of (like he wants to be able to do himself) He hurts people. He helps people. Limbo overtook Ashiya because he was what ashiya would be remembered as, nothing more than a spiteful shadow, vilified to glorify another person. And when the dust settles ashiya tries to kill himself because he’s so horrified at the idea of becoming something like limbo.

It’s also worth noting that his parallel though out heian-kyo is kintoki. Neither of them have a concrete dream or ideal, but whereas kintoki doubles down on his humanity limbo doubles down on trying to become a superior being. They both desperately want to know what their own dreams and ideals are. Limbo constantly powers up and renames himself throughout the story because he wants to become something of note, and yet whenever a plan fails he has 0 bitterness or distress over it and simply moved to the next one because the fixating is simply on gaining something.

And at the same time the limbo we summon also possesses qualities of ashiya douman. He isn’t wholly evil and he isn’t wholly good. He’s done a lot of bad things and at the same time, there’s an undercurrent of ‘could things have been different? Could things still be different?’ His entire character is built around questions-‘is that skull in the bond ce his?’ ‘Did he hate seimei?’ ‘Did he love seimei?’ ‘Is he evil?’ ‘Is he irredeemable?’ ‘Was he good?’ ‘Was he bad?’ ‘Did he curse that talisman?’ ‘Can he love?’ ‘Does he truly want to help?’ You can’t just take things at face value. They could at least TRY to dig into it a little I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff with him.

But i guess having a bunch of OTHER characters be smugly superior over him (through their connection to other gods or master) or 1001 comics about gonging and maiming him are more pertinent character explorations? It’s incredibly ironic given how much it plays into the role he was assigned, but I feel like saying that under every post that does it wouldn’t accomplish anything.

All I want is for people to at least make it clear that they’re aware of the thematic symbolism and meaning of the character before they charge ahead with flanderization a lá dick wizard Merlin or milf hunter Lancelot. Heian kyo was supposed to give more context (and it did) and if people actually read it and absorbed it’s meaning they’d know that aspects of the real douman are still present in limbo, and even if limbo is still indisputably not a good person, he still has a multifaceted character that has the potential to grow and change. I would also suggest taking another look at limbo’s chaldea lines and commentary as while he’s definitely a…clown, at the very least he basically offers to do your administrative work like taxes. Which imo is frankly more valuable than what some of the other servants offer I may have a bias bc I don’t understand that stuff at all He is an evil person, which is why his offer is to specifically do evils that the master is unwilling or able to do in order to enable them to advance. You may find that unpleasant, but it is something that can hold value. There are other servants like that in chaldea as well, with the only difference being they are less obviously evil or they’ve harmed less people we know of. He is a being that will follow the master into hell. This may not appeal to everyone, but he would do it.

It’s also worth bringing up some of his interpersonal relationships in chaldea- while murasaki is a hair on edge with him she is like that with a lot of people, and is oddly gentle when he asks if seimei had a message for him. She seems to be somewhat aware that he’s different from the douman she knew and adjusts accordingly, and is still respectful. Sei outright doesn’t give a shit that he’s an evil clown and annoys the hell out of him because she can, and he’s basically powerless against her because she’s so self assured. Nursery Rhyme invites him for tea, cuts him off before he can hype himself up into making a shikigami for Jack to dismember, and he ends up playing their mother in law. He literally plays house with the child servants and they enjoy it (for the record, oberon tries to play with nursery later and she turns him down, so she does have a standard.) In one of sei’s interludes he also works to repair her relationship between her and raikou, and peaces out the minute the master calls him out on actually helping people. So he DOES have decent interactions with people even if he also has bad ones-it isn’t all black or all white.

One of fate’s themes is that no one is as static as they think they are and this does still apply to him. Ignoring that is how you get stuff like summer 7, where he was only one of the characters who caused trouble (and was also an ally for a good chunk of time) and yet was the only one to face consequences while the others got off scot free, which iirc pissed off a lot of Japan players.

The most ironic aspect in all of this is that Limbo is the Alien God's jester. Her clown.

The jester acts like an idiot and because of that gets to know all the secrets of the king's court because nobody thinks he could actually do anything with said secrets. And Douman behaves with evil in a way where others constantly think they can perfectly tell what he'll do because if they just know he's evil and dangerous it means they must know everything they have to know about him.

It's intentional that in LB4 and LB5, the two people that stop Douman are Asclepius and Pepe. One a disgraced demigod who moves his own path without concern for good and evil, the other a self-admitted twisted man whose nature sets him apart from conventionally altruistic people.

The fact that people are reacting like that is exactly what he would want. To be underestimated and just seen as a "generic evil".

#fgo #fate grand order #fate/grand order #fgo comic #fgo fancomic #fate grand order comic #fate/grand order comic #fgo ashiya douman #ashiya douman #heian kyo #lostbelt 5.5 #gri5

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