#nasu is a hack

[300iqprower]

Saw that you’re removing the Deinos from your rewrite of Lostbelt 7. I feel like you’re missing out on keeping them. Part of why they are written the way that they are is that they’re meant to be juxtaposed against the fae of Britain, as well as offering an answer to Wodime’s plan about an evolved humanity. I guess that the relationship to the other Lostbelts isn’t required because it’s a fan work meant to stand alone, but I can’t help that you’re losing something by not having them in the story at all.

I'm gonna give an actual answer instead of slagging off on Nasu again because this is like the only good faith ask I've gotten about this. There's two components, the problematic aspect and the "frankly i agree with your idea of paralleling the other lostbelt populations through the idea of evolution, but I dont think they even did that idea well with lb7."

Even removing the "black people = apes with guns" thing, it's still an issue when this is the only lostbelt to have a distinctly non-human population. Even the fae and yaga are still humanoids, but for South America they literally said "animals with guns" its just a matter of whether its as on the nose as making them primates.

Then there's the obvious issue of tone. Even discounting the problematic stuff, this is obviously presented as a joke. It's literally a punchline in itself of being a childish fantasy of "dinosaurs with guns". Not even dino people, just straight up literal dinosaurs with guns. It's at BEST lazy in how its not anything unique, compared to something like the Yaga which are distinctly their own thing as opposed to just "werewolves with guns".

So even if we swallow our morals about the racism, I think we can do better than this. It's shameful that the racist "monkeys with guns to represent POCs" designs are actually much better and more interesting than the dinos. Hence why I'm specifically reusing a couple of those designs (without the guns and racist context of course) but throwing out the dinos entirely.

Which brings us to my rewrite and how it actually does the idea you mentioned of focusing on an "evolution" of humanity.

Without going into too much detail before I ever do a proper write up of things, the equivant to the dinofolk in my rewrite is instead the Zonbi. As in the original meaning of the term from Hatian Vodou (and using the Creole spelling to match) of a being that has died but has yet to be granted release from life - a being whose proper time has come and gone but it has not been allowed to leave the mortal coil. The world of this Lostbelt 7 has been reset countless times in a way certainly inspired by Lostbelt 4 but with some crucial differences that result in humanity being reset along with everything else. Up above in the surface of Xibalba humanity is constantly evolving at extreme pace and being reset just as often for "deviating". These deviations are wiped away and whatever remnants are left get cast into Mictlan below, creating a colony of "imperfect" humanities.

In other words its a microcosm of the pruning phenomenon and an explicit showcase of how it correlates to Darwinian evolution.

[300iqprower]

oh look at that more whitewashing too. It's like a two-for-one!

THEY SAKURAFACED MORE FUCKING INDIAN SERVANTS????

Yeah

(Durga on left, kali on right)

[mako-neexu]

i love this chapter sooooooooo much but it didnt really... solve guda's mental illness?😂 i mean they beat cagliostro's malignant ass inside their head... but it didnt really address guda's trauma. like. i was expecting a therapy session but instead we just physically destroyed the remnants and "hard to scrub off" lingering regrets and stuff.

so like... the waste pit is still there and it will still continue to accumulate malignant information even as the avenger team did one last clean up before they cut themself off from chaldea with guda having discarded their flames to move forward. so its like... the trashcan is basically new now, but the HOLE IS STILL THERE which wouldnt help in the long run or in the future!!!!

like... i guess abigail, merlin, kama, oberon (maybe douman?? nnn??) and other dream servants could take dantes' place? but SECOM team was successful because of dantes' flames being able to burn it!!! dantes'!!!! flames!!!!!! and

now, how are they going to dispose of the malignant information? hacking at it away is... doesnt seem to work i guess? dantes did say that his flames were able to burn them until its nothing. it requires his flames specifically!!!!

hm. i guess we could get an event about oberon taking the lead role? but thats going to be a nasu event hmmm this is literally guda's wellbeing but man i really wish oberon was included but it would turn into a nasu chapter.... there were literally so many references to oberon helping abigail and dantes to clear guda's waste pit so like... this would have been a great opportunity to address that too considering DREAMS and all..... but if you consider oberon's attachment to them (VD and servafes 2.0) then that probably wouldnt bode well? perhaps? wwww ah i just realized its still the white day event... and guda did say oberon hid himself from everyone bc they would WANT to enact plays with him www but hmmm [dies from anxiety]

[vyragosa]

guess who did not appear in OC3 released today because nasu is a hack of a writer who just makes the same 3 things he likes over and over to the point of exhaustion instead of actually innovating lmao. well at least BB can have her 2nd summer version with 2 NPs and super cool shit!!!!!!

:( im so fucking sorry to hear this wtf ill read abt it when im finally off work im already completely fucking gutted reading i swear on everythung....

[300iqprower]

Ya know SMTIV, what this is actually perfect. Remember what I said about how Nasu could never be asked to show even a modicum of respect to Tezctalipoca as a figure, and how the "Tezcatlipoca" in FGO in no way has the spirit of their alleged origins?

Well I don't care much for this design either.

In fact I don't like SMT's (or more specifically Soejima's, who is still very much talented as I'll make clear) Tezcatlipoca design at all. I personally find it ugly and having an aesthetic I'm not that fond of, particularly the sort of "Bigfoot sighting" pose he has going on.

But i don't hate it, and I certainly am not morally opposed to it like FGO's, because even if I personally dislike it, ya know what it is? It's still undeniably based on Tezcatlipoca and keeps that spirit in several ways evident through design alone, let alone the way he's implemented into the game itself. It's a design that feels like it respects the culture it's taking its name from, and I'd much rather it do that than have an aesthetic I'm more fond of but lack any representation of its source material.

Just on a surface level you can see the ways in which this is meant to be Tez.

Holding a human heart with one arm, which were sacrificed to him in Aztec rituals

His body is visibly black and navy blue and made of a stony substance, which is a reference to the association many aztec gods but especially Tez had with obsidian rock, and the main symbol of Tez is an obsidian mirror.

Despite this, his other arm and legs are dissolving into smoke at the end, which is a reference to his main title of Smoking Mirror.

His skull-like head is pretty clearly meant to invokes a Calavera, which even if you didnt know the name of you've probably seen if you've ever witnessed a Day of the Dead festival.

That's all just the surface level stuff. There's plenty more if you know to look for it.

While one of his arms is visible, neither of his legs are, which fits with how Tezcatlipoca lost at least one of his legs to the giant crocodile Cipactli when the world was created

While blue isn't the primary color Tez is associated with, the use of teal/navy blue specifically fits with how he was often depicted with an almost interchangeable combination of grey-ish dark blue and black.

Despite my "bigfoot posture" remark, it very much fits Tezcatlipoca, whose spirit animal was the Jaguar, an animal well known for stalking and ambushing prey (rather than chasing it down like African big cats are known to do).

the way the smoke curls around as if forming an extremely distorted prosthetic foot matches how Tez's missing foot is specifically portrayed in the Codex Yohualli Ehécatl (AKA, the source of the image on Tez's wikipedia page), particularly with how the coloring shifts to orange-yellow at the end.

The most shaky but still worth noting claim: The emphasis on the blood flowing from the heart, combined with the gems embedded in Tez's head, could even be a reference to the Ezpitzal, which while looking very different in mesoamerican art still is no doubt connected, given how the key traits are flowing blood and embedding precious stone in [a crown above] the head.

So....do I like this design? No, personally, not really. I'm way too much of an edgelord to settle for such a toned down and subtle design for a figure like Tezcatlipoca.

Do I respect this design? Absolutely, zero question. It's the kind of design you could never get if they didn't at least TRY to research Tezcatlipoca, let alone do so well (at least i can only assume well based on the result). That's the difference between this design and "some white guy from the GAP who likes guns". You can tell they gave a shit, not just in general but specifically in regards to the culture being referenced.

(Oh, and also unlike FGO Tezcatlipoca, I don't need to be told "someone famous drew it" to be able to figure out someone talented drew it. )

[nezumasa]

Fate really did a number on my writing tendencies huh. Not necessarily bad but you will get 10 billion quotation marks and esoteric concepts put into quotation marks (a la Nasu except I’m a hack).

[300iqprower]

and then of course this isn’t even getting into how they straight cast south americans as “gun-toting ape-like savages” which is where it’s not even “just a character design” issue and the writing and plotpoints are directly feeding into the racism.

I'm going to be very controversial for some but I was ready to talk racism since blond, white, green eye FGO Quetzalcoatl.

Lostbelt 7 was way worse, yes but they showed no respect since the beginning.

Yes, a lot of Mexican and Latino players will say they still like Quetz, but that doesn't erase the fact they whitewashed a mesomerican deity.

And the alien factor? Waaaaaay worse. Just stop TypeMoon, don't do it.

And I do like Camazotz design but he is the only monstrous/aggressive one, coincidentally the only brown one lol.

Just don't whitewash all of them???

yeah honestly quetz being allowed to slide as much as she did back when she was the only major one with this problem was evidently a huge mistake considering what we fucking got with lostbelt 7. i suppose it's one thing if you make an exception for one of them because you're taking what you can get or hope they do better later, but when we then get fucking 4/5 whitewashed designs and the 5th one having his own issues (and actually i guess a 6th one depending on if or not you count lawnchair bdsm xochitónal kingprotea), on top of the thematic issues with several of the writing choices of the actual story, and they just keep fucking getting praised for it, it starts to get a bit maddening. especially on top of how egregiously demeaning the australian aboriginal-themed summer event was just after that. people treat fgo with kiddy gloves for the same shit that the same people will mock genshin for. what are we communicating to type moon and each other at this point besides "making it a habit to repeatedly whitewash your characters is okay and i will implicitly or directly support it as long as you're a series i already like and you sell me any excuse at all."

[uncontinuous]

Fate Grand Order is so weird, and not because of the whole "turning heroes, mythical figures, and various historical figures hot girls in love with the protagonist gacha bait" bs. (Which tbh yeah some of it is that but also a lot of it has valid lore behind it despite how bad of a hack Nasu can sometimes be. The man actually writes genuinely good stories and genuinely good queer characters when he doesn't realise he's writing a queer character.)

No Fate Grand Order is weird because of which heroes it assigns you as parental units, and who it assigns as you kids. Yes Jack the Ripper is my child, if you look at her wrong I will murder you. So is a younger version of Jeanne D’Arc. Emiya is my mom, and I love him very much. He cooks so much for me. Yes Pharaoh Ozymandias, King Solomon, Famed Mastermind James Moriarty are my dads and the King Old Man of the Mountain and envoy of Death is my grandfather, what of it?

[300iqprower]

I am so sick and tired of being forced to entertain Kiyohime’s creepy bullshit or insult Elizabeth or disrespect Dr Roman or imply that Mephistopheles is a burden. If Guda is supposed to be a self-insert, don’t force them to have an opinion the player might disagree with!

POV: You've been told a Nasuverse story has a self insert character, and not a bland as fuck mc who very obviously has the author's highly specific views and interpretations, but is called a self insert to excuse the aforementioned blandness and be more marketable.

Like, this sort of thing could otherwise be a nitpicky thing to rile up over, but it's actually a very good microcosm of how Nasu tries to act like he's philosophical and asking questions that don't always have direct answers and wants to be up to interpretation, when in reality he's just trying to get one SPECIFIC viewpoint to be labeled the "correct" one.

[300iqprower]

Nasu: *plays SMT once (1) and read none of the text on the screen*

Nasu: HELLO YES I AM MYTHOLOGY EXPERT NOW I WRITE THE HISTORICAL FICTIONS

Uh, so Kazuradrop's profile confirms that 2 of her 3 components are Murian and Pixie, her 3rd one is "top secret". My guess it's a Yokai like Amanozako.

So like; again; Pixie isn’t an individual and neither is Muryan (I dunno why the localization translated it as “Murian” that’s a town in Iran), and if you mean Amanozako then she’s believed to be a Kami who is the mother of all Yokai , but if you mean the Yokai you’re probably thinking of Amanojaku - which is not an individual again but whose myths tend to involve them eating someone and impersonating. So if it’s Amanozako then we’re 1/3 for goddesses this round.

Anyways why are we here. What was the point of establishing “they are made up of goddesses specifically” if we’re not gonna use that. “Top Secret” Kazuradrop eat dirt.

[veeranger]

some days i remember how much fate sucks and i wonder why i put up with it

[holdharmonysacred]

I remembered earlier how much I absolutely hate the “everyone gets their memories wiped of everything that happened” ending trope and I need everyone here to swear that they will never write that trope ever.

[300iqprower]

the first Tunguska trailer was a masterpiece so i appreciate the second trailer being much more reflective of the actual level of quality to expect

Why does the new trailer thing give Mash a butt shot? Do we need that?

[thessaliah]

Camazotz and Ixcalli, the only two characters with less than pale white skin, are more or less confirmed to be NPCs. Unsurprising from the same company that refers to the Mesoamerican based indigenous religions as “South American mythology” in mats. As if we didn’t need further proof Lostbelt 7 is a steaming piece of shite that should have remained in Nasu’s asshole. And please don’t blame this on lasengle, this is all on that unwashed hack that gets to choose that.

[300iqprower]

So....we can pretty much agree the Pretender class is ruined by this point, right?

Like. They didn't even hesitate nor try. They made the coolest class concept ever for one specific servant who was just as amazingly written...and then set about thoroughly ruined that class with every subsequent release. For fucks sake it's not hard - i've never seen a pretender fanservant that wasn't at least 5 star quality if not 6 star. Meanwhile most of the official Pretender servants aren't even pretenders, they're what we're SUPPOSED to have the Alter Ego class for, but creativity just too fucking hard I guess.

In summary

Can i fucking call em or what

[300iqprower]

Can't decide if it's not-as-bad or even-worse than Caeneus directly saying he identifies as "he/him" and then the universe itself saying "actually you're still she/her, and your official name is the feminine form" and then the only person who respects his pronouns is the villain while you aren't so much as given the option to do the same.

Happy to see sugitani in traum but still annoyed what they did with him