#mentioning the holy grail Not in a fate context feels so weird and alien now. anyway.

[c0rpsedemon]

Same anon as bwfore - those are all valid hnoc complaints, i have a soft spot for it since it got me into arthuriana which is now a big special interest (also yk, the thing of making ur own Canon for a media piece in ur head that no one else knows abt)

Appologies for yelling in ur asks abt it, just trying to say I agree

Also sending asks so u can ramble abt ur gripes w hnoc if u wish (no pressure to)

yeah i Used to have the same perspective on it too but as time went on and i developed a stronger aversion to the mechs fandom (everyone say thanks to ts teeth hcs, dr c mischaracterization and any other piece of widely accepted fanon which ppl get weirdly overprotective of) + realized that hnoc Wasn't my actual introduction to arthuriana (shout out to dragon slayer's academy and this niche little vn which i pretended to have read for weeb clout when i was ~12 even though really i had just read the summary of it on a fandom wiki, it was called destiny/leave day or something like that?) an i'd just somehow forgotten about its predecessors + tried to fit my arthurian faves into hnoc-verse and realized that it just Didn't Work and realized just how bad it was in comparison to like. udad. which was soooo good and it just kinda. made me go a little bit insane and tanked my opinion of it. also my growing hatred of a/g/l due to med lit fandom drama (< bizzare series of words that Sure Does Exist) + modern arthuriana like in general probably fanned the flames.

anyways. i said almost everything i have to say about hnoc in the og tags (save for some parts that are less a hnoc issue and more of a discussion of th white/mzb/modern arthuriana in general or a frantic explanation of why it's ok when fate does it but when hnoc does it i'm mad and it's not hypocritical of me (< generally it boils down to 'arthurian lit is incredibly inaccessible to english speakers in 2023, imagine what it would've been like to japanese speakers in 2004, nasu did the best he could, meanwhile the mechs have demonstrated the ability to heavily research their albums and are english speakers who would've had university access (p much the only way to read anything other than le morte or sgatgk legally without breaking the bank) at the time they were working on it')) but i got cut off so i'll add a basic summary of the tags which tumblr couldn't handle bc my arthurian takes r 2 complex and well-thought out for it

basically re: "#and idk it just rings hollow to me for the adaptation which made all/most of its characters either lgbt or poc to have written out p much#all the arthurian characters who were originally poc (palomydes. priamus. ysabelle. feirefiz. isolde of ireland. etc.)" there was a second part of that sentence which also pointed out how almost all the academically/historically substantiated lgbt characters (palomydes, tristan, gawaine, galehaut, lancelot, sebile, morgan, galahad) were cut out or unrecognizable (lancelot and galahad fall under the unrecognizable category).

i also had the character assassination of gawaine as it's own point, as it's just. particularly bad and one of the main reasons why i dislike hnoc, as well as the reason why hnoc's world is so hostile to p much Every other arthurian story bc he's basically the main character of medieval arthuriana and he's now. . obligatory disclaimer that i'm not opposed to gawaine as a villain bc god knows i'm a palomydes stan above all and anyone with a passing interest in the tristan tradition will know that gawaine is a fucking asshole an a horrible person but like. he didn't have to be fucking racist. medieval gawaine is an incredibly complex and deeply deeply flawed character and hnoc boiled that all down to 'racist' which is. one of the few things medieval gawaine is not. and so now all the characters and stories that orbit him are dead in the water bc why would anyone want to read about the cartoon racist.

in general all of the hnoc characters seem like they were written to serve the plot and the co-opted into being the nearest arthurian character. not a single one resembles themself at all. the best example i can think of is galahad (who's actually my fave hnoc character) who just isn't. galahad. medieval galahad is young and has been worshipped and dehumanized all his life, the very reason he was conceived was bc a prophecy said he would be good and pure and would achieve the holy grail, and so he was raised like a holy relic for one purpose and one alone, to the point where, when he finally tries to make a friend in le morte, literal angels intervene to remind him of his purpose, and ultimately he did succeed in that purpose! and when he did he had nothing else to do but end his own life. hnoc galahad is never dehumanized nor worshipped or even liked. hnoc galahad is viewed as a crazy person but a person nonetheless, and hnoc galahad genuinely wants the grail. the two are connected by name alone and it's the same w everyone else. medieval lancelot will always return to guinnevere, and she is the source of both his loyalty and sense of self, and he will destroy anything that poses a threat to her, hnoc lancelot genuinely cares abt camelot and uhm. human life. medieval mordred wasn't actually arthur's son in most texts and kinda just tagged along w his brothers' plans (particularly agravaine's) and ultimately took over camelot bc agravaine was dead and it was the next logical step to take considering all they'd done before, if you want something really interesting mordred-wise the alliterative morte gives him genre awareness but his lamentations of his fate are centered around the uhm. fratricide. and not arthur, hnoc mordred views arthur as his whole world which his Only brother gawaine is comparatively a footnote in, and has motivations which are truly his own. medieval guinn is politically savvy and stuck in a loveless marriage unable to fulfill her one purpose as queen (to have an heir) and thus centers herself around lancelot and his devotion to her to cope, hnoc guinn is a gunslinger. idrc enough abt arthur to analyze him but ultimately it's easy to see that These Are Not The Same Ppl in the way that like. myth orpheus, ulysses, narcissus etc. and udad orpheus, ulysses, narcissus etc. are. even in like. ouat(is) where the characters are Obviously Different People from their fairy tale counterparts, they exist in a form of commentary on their other selves, and the ouat(is) approach to characters is true for the prisoner of dorian gray + frankenstein as well. hnoc has no commentary on the original arthurian characters bc it Doesn't know who they are, the characters in hnoc are meant to be the arthurian characters in a different setting like in udad and tbi (the latter i can't speak on bc i don't norse myth and don't tbi). and it gets them wrong.

tl;dr uhm. the mecha arthurian vn that lives in my head wouldn't do this to me