#one of my favorite tracks from fgo

[xbuster]

Hollow Ataraxia does have a few really good tracks, but god the soundtrack is such a disappointment when compared to stay night. Because of the way HA is structured, the limited selection of music for non-story events just gets so grating. Because of that, the only tracks that will end up sticking with me are the ones from the nights of the Heaven’s Feel.

[lomappreciationblog]

Legend of Mana is undeniably a funny game as with my last post, but it also has some of my most favorite poignant writing and dialogue lines ever in games.

So here's a collection of some of them:

Starting with Pokiehl, since, well, can't deny that the Messenger of Cosmic Truth really do be sounding cosmic:

From "Cage of Dreams"

And another noteworthy sequence:

...I just realized, I loved Legend of Mana ever since I was a kid, and I wonder if unconsciously, this was one of the things it instilled into me? That this beautiful world is indeed full of tragedy, but we aren't here to just curl up and despair. We're here to celebrate that beauty and share its love with everyone else.

And this sort of thinking appears in a lot of my favorite media: the Legend of Zelda (Courage is never forgotten; a single person spreads hope even in an hour of darkness), Natsume's Book of Friends (people in this world will love and accept you for who you are; be kindness to one another), Mushi-Shi (human or Mushi, we're all doing our best to live, and though alien to each other, there is beauty to be found in the other), and Ancient Magus's Bride (it may not be what you feel at the moment, but hold onto your life, hold onto it with fingernails - there is a home for you, too). FGO is also pretty blatant about this, I mean, the game is "take back humanity's future" and with that, "there is worth to humanity's journey." Splatoon as well, has a core message of "celebrate life and colors."

I guess, basically, my most favorite/comfort works has this say: despair seems natural in this world, but it doesn't have to be.

(wow that got long, move onto the next screenshot)

Lastly from Pokiehl, in "Legend of Mana."

Now onto another Wisdom - Tote! I'd say he's my second most favorite wisdom, I love just how chill he is, and he's simple. He's just a turtle, but one that lives a good life.

From "In Search of Faeries"

Onto my other most favorite NPC, Monique, from "A Siren's Song,"

It's such a simple statement, but the power behind it, and the scene for it bowls me over to think about.

And another from "The Spirits' Light"

Lay into him Monique!

Now here's our other resident siren, Elle, and her talk with Gaeus:

And lastly, Vadise from "The Crimson Dragon"

....ooof, I just realized, too. Vadise insistently uses "bonds" and the track that plays when your arm is twisted into working for Drakonis, is the rather melancholic version of the main theme for this arc...is "A Bond Bestowed". I'm not completely sure, but it may have been named "Bondage Bestowed" in the PS1 release, which is more accurate to the situation - you had no choice but to work with Larc because you had been dragged into the Underworld and turned into a half-spirit.

So Vadise uses "bond" here as to how it should be - connection to others that comes about out of kindness, not manipulative as Drakonis had been. Though, comedically, gameplay-wise completely NOTHING stops you from not going through with the dragon arc and screwing over Drakonis that way - to unlock the Mana Tree, only one of the main three story quests need to be finished, so if one so chooses they can either complete Star-Crossed Lovers or Jumi Arc and then jaunt on over to the Mana tree despite being supposedly half-dead lol.

There's waaaaaaay more poignant scenes, of course - I just talked about "Can't Look Back", which is all about grief and losing loved ones, and "Diddle's Had it!" is another big quest full of "we're here, and let's live life!" And of course, the Jumi Arc is filled to the brim with heartfelt story scenes.

So this long ass post really is just a small collection of these moments.

What would you say is a dialogue line from LOM that stuck to your mind?

[toskarin]

What are your favorite pieces of music from the fate franchise? Which ones get the biggest emotional response? Any that stand out on a purely technical level? Been making myself cry with f/ha's soundtrack and got curious.

I have to get this out of the way because it's really obvious: EMIYA is a perfect piece of soundtracking and actually deserves all the praise it gets. it's not the most technically complex piece ever, but it will always hold a place in my heart for how it's used so sparingly, drops so hard, and carries all the emotional weight it needs to

Ever-Present Feeling is one motif I'll never get tired of hearing. it's so simple, but so effective. gut-wrenching, bittersweet, and full of love. I can't really offer any better commentary than saying "I've heard it probably several hundred distinct times now and it still chokes me up a little"

Yomigaeru Shinwa is brutally absent from the franchise after its debut. I know we got a remix for FGO, but come onnnnn. it gets one (very effective) drop in the VN and then we just don't see it anymore

if I was gonna have one song from Zero on here, would it surprise you that it's The Dream Fades Before Dawn? it shouldn't. what a beautiful track

I like a surprising number of the GUDAGUDA themes. the compression on them is brutal, but it's amazing how much of the good soundtrack for FGO exists entirely within GUDAGUDA. I wish the entire game sounded more like it

besides that? CCC has so many hits. Omen is so melancholic and eerie. I love the baroque sound of Spinal Coaster and Love is Like Poison is one of my favourite compositions in the entire franchise

there's definitely more, but this is just kind of a rambling list. no real structure

[laplacemail]

🌼🌸 anon here to make your day a bit sweeter !! you're an amazing person and i hope you've had an amazing start of the week. now, onto some nosy questions: where do you get your inspiration for your character(s) from? are there specific types of medias that have influenced the way you write or maybe even specific writers (maybe even from the rpc)? anyways, i hope your week continues to be sweet and amazing because the best of the best is what you deserve, dear friend !!

Hi nonnieee! Thank you for such a sweet message. I'm starting to get better, so hopefully I can go back to writing more often...! Hopefully next week 😭 ... want to chill with my husband for my birthday in a few days and then I can pay attention here and do some much needed cleaning (threads/asks/followers/what have u) and hopefully that will keep me on track! I hope you are having a super duper awesome day too! And that you're eating something yummy!!

And, hmmm. Good question! I kind of take inspiration from characters I'm currently vibing with, or shows/things I like. When I make OCs I just think of a like. Vague concept or personality trait I'd like to explore and then I just go off from there and add things to complement it.

Examples I can think about: Adonia was made was I was very into CRK and Pure Vanilla was a guy I was obsessing over! So I made somebody who would fit my current likes and what I was into at the time. And he just turned into his own person, completely different but still having some hints of my original inspiration. Aeron takes inspiration from Karna (FGO) and Siegfried (GBF), but he isn't quite exactly like that? But the fierce knight who is a bit awkward at talking to people normally / charitable hero traits are things you can see in him. Luc takes inspiration from Phantom (Arknights) and. well. POTO. And the funny thing is that Arknights just stole back from my guy so I find that horribly funny. But my method is just 'what are interesting themes I want to explore' and it just goes off from that. Or even a song sometimes, one of my oldest OCs I just kind of took a lot of inspiration from a song from my favorite band. This is more of my character creation process than my inspiration, but I feel like they go hand in hand.

For actual book authors I get inspiration from, I feel like once you read something you start to assimilate some parts of their writing/how they do stuff. That goes for your RP partners, too. So for book authors I cannot really give you a list of things that inspire me, since your brain likes to absorb these mannerisms like a sponge! And in the end you're left with an amalgamation of things you like that... makes you a better person and writing more comfortably at the end of the day.

But I'd like to reserve this space to give a shoutout to some writers in the RP community that amaze me and inspire me to do better, and 500% of my will to write is really like. 'This starter/reply/ask was amazing and I want to give it the attention and love it deserves'.

Which means I probably read their replies over and over, even if it is not directly addressed at me. Thank you for inspiring me to be better, and for sharing your writing (which can be such an incredibly personal thing, sometimes) with the world! It ain't easy and it ain't much!! But it's honest work!!

Here's some amazing people that inspire me (and just some otherwise this list would be WAY TOO LONG LMAO) :

@thronelessking / @aaternum / @derjaegermond / @xamassed / @kesil / @voiceofduality / @stagsworn / @saintsdawn / @lunaetis / @tenkoseiensei / @ofhope

Tumblr is gonna break some of these but I'm going to eat both of its hands right as I publish this ask. (noms)

Thank you for this btw!! I hope you have a great great great great week and weekend!

[e17omm]

do you ever wanna write something new and different (tm) or are you content with the stories you have?

Most of the time I get a few short ideas of things that could be fun but I dont write anything so they just kinda fade away.

Most of the time though, I write what has my brainrot going. My brain thinks a lot - and its not always a good thing. I started writing Himeko adopts a stray Herrscher because I could not stop thinking about it. It gave me a headache.

So the reason why I write so much of Snippets is because Ive kinda broken out of the "I cant keep track of a long-ass story because if I write down notes (like what happened to HaasH) then my brain just hits the brakes and stops there." shell.

Because I can write Snippets of Sirin Schariac's life in whatever order I write it in. So absolutely; Snippets AU is kinda an amalgination of ideas that Ive had of the HI3 story that I mash together and make work.

Sirin is alive. Bella is alive. They have a better life with Cecilia and Kiana is their little sister. Mobius is alive (though that one is more "I read the Soul Eater manga recently and I cant believe the anime ends 40% through the story. Also Medusa is fucking great and I basically copy how she is written while undercover as the school nurse and write Mobius like that"). Mei accepts being a Herrscher early on. Kurikara isnt Bella's reincarnated corpse but Mei's version of Benares. Kevin actually does shit. Kiana got to use the Judgement of Shamash. Himeko becomes a Herrscher. The Herrscher of Dominance isnt stupid and will abuse the hell out of the massive advantage that they threw away in canon. The ending wont take a wierd turn into a stigmata dream thing that wasn't foreshadowed at all.

What if Sirin survived? What if Mei accepted being a Herrscher early on? What if the Will of the Herrscher (chapters 7-9) never happened? What if Project Stigma was what it was foreshadowed to be? What if the Will of Honkai was the Will of Honkai and not Prometheus wierdly hacking into it?

You can (or will) see those independent ideas that I had in Snippets of Sirin Schariac's life. That's why Im writing so much of it, its like 8 different fanfiction/canon divergences that I've thought about turned into one long fanfic AU.

That's not as to say I dont have other ideas. That Fallen Moon AU is like a side-gig I'll definitely return too when I want/need a little break from Snippets.

I have minor fic ideas like "what if every battlesuit was a person in a FGO-style of way?" and other stuff like "what if Reaper in the Black Reaper RWBY fanfic was sent back in time and met her earlier self?" I like fics like that.

For Black Reaper, since its a fanfic of a show I barely mention; it is a fanfic of one of the main characters (Ruby) falling from grace, takes on her dead sisters Semblance (special power), but since its anger-based, and Ruby wasnt meant to have it, she completely loses control of her emotions. Shes much angrier and violent because Yang's semblance turned anger/pain into strength. And Ruby just spirals down until she accidentally (yes, accidentally) murders someone in cold blood. She runs away, teams up with everyones favorite criminal duo, Roman and Neo, and does crime.

What Black Reaper does that sets it apart from other "fallen from grace" fanfics I've read is that - it stick to what it did.

But it also almost didnt.

So, the original ship is Ruby x Velvet. Perfectly fine, cute ship.

The much more interesting ship is Ruby/Reaper x Neo.

Because Reaper does turn back to the good side. So you'd expect the boring "angsty return coz Ruby did horrible stuff and is trying to be good again with Velvet." turn.

But NO! The author, vengfulfate, posted in their notes that the original plan was to have that boring return to 'Ruby'. What they decided seeing the comments though. Was to have 'Reaper' return to the good side. Not Ruby. (Fall from grace fics turning around and making the whole thing mostly pointless, and BR not doing that, is likely one of the main reason why I love consequences from events in stories. Bronya's legs being fucked and needing to be robotic. Mei's horns staying there. Sirin's arm being chopped off. I have nothing against them, but those are consequences from events and just, undoing them is so boring!)

So Ruby falls from grace, turns to crime, renames herself Reaper, returns to the good side as Reaper. She fully embraces her new life with Neo. The most important thing is that Reaper learns to tame Yang's semblance, so ultimately, Reaper does get something out of having turned to crime. And it just makes it all feel like it had a point to it.

I would've hated Black Reaper if Reaper turned back to Ruby. Because it just undoes so much and makes it pointless.

And the reason I went on this Black Reaper rant, is because Ive always had a small want to write a fic where Reaper is sent back to a time pre-Yang death. Because Reaper is VERY different from Ruby.

It'll also be so unheard of. Most "sent back in time" has a character develop, get experience, then sent back to their younger, more inexperience self.

But this would be a character getting traumatised, losing control of themselves due to things out of their control, turn to a life in crime, radically change their moral compass (Reaper casually steals snacks she thinks is too expensive and will break into a clothing shop in the middle of the night just to get a new fit. While still being a quote unquote Good Guy™. I love her. Reaper Rose is a great character), and have THAT person, transported back in time to a point where their moral compass would NEVER allow them to even think about doing those things? (Would also be great angst because Reaper get to see her sister again. And Neo wouldnt know her. So it would just be oh, so angsty with Reaper trying not to turn into a murderer again because oh, murdering Adam and Cinder would be all that she had left in her life with Neo gone from it. The only reason Reaper eventually stays as a Good Guy™ is because after turning Neo into a Good Guy™, Neo really liked that life and didnt want to go back to crime. But Reaper would also have to protect her younger self from becoming Reaper. So she would still have to be a Good Guy™ but only for the reason of murdering two specific people she absolutely hates. This is to say nothing of Ruby reacting to "oh god this is me in the future!")

Oh, I feel like I could just talk of some of my own ideas, Black Reaper, or Fragments of Chaldea for hours (not literally, but feel free to ask).

Anyways, yeah, I do have some more fanfic ideas. Some Honkai related and some not.

[strangefellows]

Gilles de Rais, William Shakespeare, Jack the Ripper, Solomon, Nero Claudius, Kid Gil, Abigail Williams. Revenge for my 5k answer to yours.

First impression

Gilles: WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK OH SHIT OH SHIT THAT'S BAD--

Will: ..............yeah, okay, I want to deck him and that probably tracks

Jack: WHY IS JACK A BABEY-- oh. OH. BABEY.

Solomon: [brb incoherent screaming because Plot Reveal]

Nero: LMAO why does she look like Artoria?

Kid Gil: WHY IS GIL BABY WHY IS BABY GIL NICE WHAT IS HAPPENING WHAT IS HAPPENING HE'S SO CUTE AUGH

Abigail: I have Concerns about this girl and this chapter. CONCERNS. But also FUCK SHE'S ADORABLE

Impression now

Gilles: Die Bitch Die. I don't like him, does anyone? He's a fairly boring Saber and Caster? Oh, you know, the child murder and eldritch monsters and all that.

Will: I'm going to beat that man senseless (affectionate), what a genius (derogatory). I'll probably have more thoughts again after Apocrypha - jesus I have to finish that shit - but for now I'm gonna punch him.

Jack: AN ACTUAL MURDERBABY THAT IS MY CHILD, I LOVE HER, I LOVE HER SO MUCH.

Solomon: [incoherent screams turn into sobs] COME HOME

Nero: She's absolutely a delight! Her appearance will trick you into thinking she's a boring Saberface but no, she's wonderful, she's awful, she loves herself and is so confident, what a girl. What an emperor.

Kid Gil: Well that's the 10yo form of my Fate husband, of course I love him. I have...mixed feelings about him that I'll talk about later, but generally speaking I adore this little brat.

Abigail: DAUGHTER DAUGHTER ELDRITCH DAUGHTER I love her so much and I wish I could pull her but she's very rare and I have others to save for. She's still absolutely babey though and a good naughty girl.

Favorite moment

Gilles: NONE, DIE. But no in all seriousness, there's a bit in the Shimousa (or Salem?) manga where he talks to Dantes for a little, and that was actually kind of an interesting thing.

Will: None yet lmfao sorry bitch. Okay no wait, him and Hans fucking. Writing the Solomon and Sheba play while shitfaced ass drunk just to make us all suffer, but also thank you I love you that made my day even as I cried.

Jack: I REALLY NEED TO FUCKING FINISH APOCRYPHA. But in FGO, idk, she's just very sweet and baby in the events somehow and I love that all the time.

Solomon: IDK MAN THE REAL ONE WAS ONLY HERE FOR FIVE MINUTES BEFORE HE MCFUCKING DIED. I'm not counting that speech in Temple because it's too sad to be my favorite even if it was amazing. I'm cheating and pretending the Chaldean has at least a little of him in there and saying when he saves our ass from Kirsch that time in Atlantis and then is just like UGH DON'T LOOK AT ME at Fujimaru, like I AM LOOKING DISREPSECTFULLY SIR SORRY

Nero: She's a delight in Septem, but like, so many of her scenes in Extra slap extremely hard, I love her roast of Gawain especially, as does a lot of her my room scenes with Hakuno.

Kid Gil: Not gonna lie, I remember the scene in the Prisma*Illya manga where he absolutely mcfucking nukes someone for using Enkidu and I loved that very much.

Abigail: PANKEKI PANKEKI KURONEKO PANKEKI-- but also, her appearance in the Summercamp event was very sweet and funny.

Idea for a story

Gilles: I would not want to write a story about him XD but frankly, it might be interesting to explore the fact that we've more or less proven the child [redacted] and murder accusations were false, vs the evil psycho persona he's kinda shoved into by the Throne even so.

Will: FACE THE CONSEQUENCES OF YOUR ACTIONS AND TALK TO OBERON. But no, there could be some fun stuff with his NP if it does what I've heard it does in universe.

Jack: Babey Girl, go have some cute fun with your friends, have a nice day, no murder :)

Solomon: I WILL DRAG YOU HOME BY YOUR VOLUMINOUS HAIR YOU DUMB MAGE GET BACK HERE I AM BEGGING YOU. But also what if Certain People were discovered early is always fun.

Nero: I want to see her and the other Extra+CCC cast actually interact more, BB kind of cockblocked that in the SE.RA.PH Event lmao. Musings on Hakuno vs Fujimaru?

Kid Gil: Exploring the headcanons I'm gonna mention below, or maybe just let him maul his older self for once, that'd be hilarious.

Abigail: A Day in the Life of An Eldritch Child Wandering Around the Chthulu Mythos with Cats and Her Adopted Uncle.

Unpopular opinion

Gilles: .....idk man

Will: IS HE POPULAR? IS HE NOT? IS WANTING TO SUPLEX HIM INTO THE FLOOR POPULAR OR NOT IDK MAN

Jack: She looks FINE you guys.

Solomon: IDK? He's SO at least 50% of the Chaldean I'm CONVINCED OF THIS FACE OKAY, I'M COPING.

Nero: I'm not really sure? I hear some people aren't really a fan of her in FGO compared to Extra, but I think she's fine?

Kid Gil: I'm not sure if having mixed feelings about him is popular or not, to be honest?

Abigail: IDK XD

Favorite relationship

Gilles: N/A do not approach any Jeanne

Will: Him and Hans are fucking hysterical, to be honest, but I'd love interactions with him and Oberon. Just for the lols.

Jack: Her and the other littles in Chaldea and Amakusa is absolutely fucking precious.

Solomon: [lies down] Sheba....Fujimaru....Mash..........

Nero: Her and Hakuno to be quite fucking honest. But also her and Lizzie is hysterical.

Kid Gil: shrug emojis into the distance, actually

Abigail: Her and Lavinia, her and Fujimaru.

Favorite headcanon

Gilles: I do not think about him XD

Will: Hm....I'm not sure, I can't think of any XD He and Hans drunk write way too often for everyone's own good. Hans wouldn't even drunk, but Will MAYYYY be coerced into writing fanfic for people.

Jack: She really, really likes raspberry jam. Strawberry is also okay, but raspberry is her favorite. Put it on everything.

Solomon: UHHHHHHHHHH he's at least in part the Chaldean. He's not a generally good person as Solomon, he's very terse and grumpy. Let him live. He's tired.

Nero: Despite the whole Gilfest/Nerofest rivalry, Nero WILL hang out and drink with Gil sometimes, they get very loud and obnoxious (and they'll talk about Hakuno sometimes).

Kid Gil: This is implied in some My Room dialogue and probably in Hollow Ataraxia which I haven't read, but I do definitely double down on the idea that Kid Gil isn't actually what Gil was like as a child, but the what the Gil we know in the present day would be like if he were a child. That's Kid Gil, not Gil as a kid. And he's very aware of this, and he wonders quite a bit about what he was ACTUALLY like.

Abigail: In my 'verse, she is one of the only people aware of the fact that my Fujimaru is running in a reset timeline, as the first one was a terminal bad end my Fujimaru's little brother - the Master at the time - reset to let his sister have a try. She's extra protective of my Fujimaru for his sake, because Big Brother wouldn't want anything to happen to his big sister.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Belay That Order

Fate/Grand Order just dropped a brand new Saber Medusa and i feel nothing. Utter indifference. That sh*t is huge because Medusa is my favorite Servant, after Mordred. If this was, say, five years ago, I'd be mad hype. Type-Moon would be getting so much of my money off that Banner, it’s be disgusting. But now? Now this ridiculously awesome situation gets a resounding “Meh” out of me. How the f*ck did FGO fumble the bag so hard that i, as a Nasu Apologist, flat-out do not care that there is a new Medusaface, in my favorite Servant Class? Seriously, every Medusaface released, so far, has been fantastic. The art is dope, the skills are perfect for attacking, and all of the Noble Phantasm animations get the juices flowing. Saber Medusa continues that level of excellence AND she’s a goddamn Five-star! Not even Gorgon is Five-star, re you kidding me? I should be falling all over myself to get this card, when it releases over here in two years, but i can’t be bothered. Why? What the f*ck happened that made me lose so much interest in a game based on one of my all-time favorite franchises? Just SO much, actually.

The biggest issue that made me fall off was when i lost my original account. That was on me, sure, but recovery was stupid. That sh*t is a joke among the fan base. Once you lock yourself out of your account, it’s basically gone forever unless you’ve kept track of literally every metric you have, and it has to be identical or your sh*t is in the wind. The reason for this, is the fact that Fate/Grand Order doesn’t bind your accounts. When you transfer your game from one device to another, you need a goddamn transfer code. Who still does this? I get that was the way to go when FGO was first launched and, even then, maybe not, but benefit of the doubt. After all of these updates and revisions, these motherf*ckers STILL haven’t added the option to bind your account to an outside source. Azur Lane does. That sh*t is tagged to my Facebook account. BLEACH: Brave Souls does. Facebook account. DBZ: Dokkan Battle? Google Account. I was five years into my Grand Order journey when i swapped Bluestacks versions, didn’t get that code, and fought these motherf*ckers for my sh*t over the course of a full month, only to be told “yeah, nah. None f that lines up.” Just f*ck me then, because you assholes refuse to modernize your systems. You are living on that razor’s edge playing FGO for longer than a week because, at any time, everything you’re earned, invested into, and paid money for, can be gone in a goddamn instant; All because you didn’t get a Transfer Code and don’t know what your seventeenth Rider is. That’s juts the biggest issue. There are others. So very many others...

One of the which, and probably more egregious than the aforementioned Account Binding if you look at it objectively, is the fact that the game is f*cking boring. You don’t “play” Fate/Grand Order, it plays itself. I mean, there is this weirdly passive action selection but, after that, it’s just you, watching a bunch of sprites do said actions. If you happen to trigger a Noble Phantasm, you get a cute little movie deal but that’s it. There really isn’t a whole ton of strategy involved. You can’t really delve deeply into a game plan. It’s just set it and forget it. There are mobile games which autoplay. There is an entire f*cking genre of these things. FGO ain’t that. it forces you to be present, while passively watching it play. How is that a game? For years, Fate/Grand Order was the only mobile game i played and it it left a horrid impression of the entire goddamn industry because of how bogus the game play loop was. And then i downloaded Azur Lane on a whim. Imagine how goddamn frustrated i was when i found out there were actual games that could be played on mobile. FGO’s game play loop is so bad, it made me dismiss and entire section of the gaming industry, for years. o be honest, i think that was by design. The reason the actual game play is so bad, is because the Fate franchise is, ostensibly, a visual novel. They’ve diversified into other things but, at it’s core, Fate started as an adult Visual Novel out of Comiket. FGO is a visual Novel before it’s a game but, even in that, it sucks.

There is a grand total of twenty-seven available Quests on the Japanese version of the game. That is twenty-seven visual novels to explore. Some of them are pretty good. I personally enjoyed Camelot and Babylonia. The rest? I literally couldn’t care less. I’ve been a fan of Fate for years. I own a fan translation of that OG Adult Visual Novel and it’s sequel, Fate/Hollow Ataraxia. Ataraxia sucks but Fate/Stay Night does not. Heaven’s Feel is my favorite of the routes available, Stay Night, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven’s Feel, but i simp hard for Sakura so that goes without saying. There are no narratives which com anywhere near the quality of those first first three stories, in Fate/Grand Order and, more to the point, there are SEVERAL, that fall short of even the meager standard Babylonia set. Seriously, London was the worst and i had to play through that sh*t, twice, to unlock the ability o pull Mordred out of the goddamn Gacha! That’s right, i played through London, again, years after i did the first time, because i opted to start a new account just for that. Mordred is my favorite character in the entire goddamn franchise and my original one, was perfected. axed out on all levels, lost to the winds because of f*ckery. I opted to go through that grind one more time, as a fresh brand new player, and actually paid attention this time around. That’s how  know the writing is bunk. Starting a new game, years into this sh*t’s lifespan, as a player who was there in the beginning but lost all of that work, was a whole as experience. And a bad one to boot.

I periodically take time away from these mobile games because i tend to get bored of them. Not Azur Lane. That one’s my baby. I love them Kraut Girls. Generally speaking, when you return after a while, you get bonuses because, you know, you need them. Just because you were gone, doesn’t mean the game stopped progressing. FGO kind of does this but not in any real impactful way or, at least, not when i came back to it after a few months n my old account. After i lost that account, i went through the seven stages of grief and signed up for another one. Imagine my horror when, as a brand new player signing up for a game which, by then, had been active for six goddamn years, i got nothing. Like, they let me roll one Five-star character and basically told me to fend for myself. I couldn’t skip the original Mission Quests even though, by that point FGO was rounding out the Lost Belt narratives. Cats didn’t even f*cking give you the option of an abridged version of these Quests, you have to play through the entire goddamn thing! Which i did because Mordred. Once i finished the slog that is London, i quit. I abandoned all the work to even have the opportunity to make a run FOR Mordred; The entire point of me opening up a second account, because that grind was f*cking absurd. Now imagine how disillusioning it would be for a fresh player wanting to get into this game because they saw the Babylon anime or those Camelot films? Imagine going into that thinking you get to make a run at Tiamat or Lancer Arturia, only to be forced into playing through goddamn Fuuyuki. And then Orleans. And then Septem. And then Okeanos. And then London. And then you’d still have E Pluribus Unum before you even sniff Camelot.

In this, the year of our lord 2023, Fate/Grand Order is a relic of the past. It’s everything that was wrong with the Mobile Game industry way back when. There have been so many innovation, so many improvements, but FGO refuses to change. It’s that lack of growth, that apathetic refusal to adapt with the ever changing market, which has the once dominate Fate/Grand Order on life support. It just such a bad time and the player base knows that. They’re leaving in droves due to the poor writing, lack of actual playability, and the overall, real world, cash cost. I didn’t even touch on how expensive this game is to play. You have to be LUCKY to roll Five-star servants, man, even if they have a Banner. And you straight up never earn enough Saint Quartz to roll anything grand. Sh*t doesn’t even have a Pity System, you just get to throw money at a broken and predatory system until you get what you want. Th wild thing is, Fate/Grand Order has always been this way. It’s designed this way. It was never a good game. It was never going to be a good game. It was designed to be a money pit so Nasu could get off all of his pet projects, which is fair. I get it. FGO hit four billion in lifetime profits way back in 2019. That’s a lot of duckets that can be spent of spiffy UFOtable animation. I only which that some of it went to improving the goddamn game which gilded your pockets in the first place. All that said, the free Five-star I got was Mordred so I take back everything I said. 10/10, perfect game!

[smokeybrand]

Belay That Order

Fate/Grand Order just dropped a brand new Saber Medusa and i feel nothing. Utter indifference. That sh*t is huge because Medusa is my favorite Servant, after Mordred. If this was, say, five years ago, I'd be mad hype. Type-Moon would be getting so much of my money off that Banner, it’s be disgusting. But now? Now this ridiculously awesome situation gets a resounding “Meh” out of me. How the f*ck did FGO fumble the bag so hard that i, as a Nasu Apologist, flat-out do not care that there is a new Medusaface, in my favorite Servant Class? Seriously, every Medusaface released, so far, has been fantastic. The art is dope, the skills are perfect for attacking, and all of the Noble Phantasm animations get the juices flowing. Saber Medusa continues that level of excellence AND she’s a goddamn Five-star! Not even Gorgon is Five-star, re you kidding me? I should be falling all over myself to get this card, when it releases over here in two years, but i can’t be bothered. Why? What the f*ck happened that made me lose so much interest in a game based on one of my all-time favorite franchises? Just SO much, actually.

The biggest issue that made me fall off was when i lost my original account. That was on me, sure, but recovery was stupid. That sh*t is a joke among the fan base. Once you lock yourself out of your account, it’s basically gone forever unless you’ve kept track of literally every metric you have, and it has to be identical or your sh*t is in the wind. The reason for this, is the fact that Fate/Grand Order doesn’t bind your accounts. When you transfer your game from one device to another, you need a goddamn transfer code. Who still does this? I get that was the way to go when FGO was first launched and, even then, maybe not, but benefit of the doubt. After all of these updates and revisions, these motherf*ckers STILL haven’t added the option to bind your account to an outside source. Azur Lane does. That sh*t is tagged to my Facebook account. BLEACH: Brave Souls does. Facebook account. DBZ: Dokkan Battle? Google Account. I was five years into my Grand Order journey when i swapped Bluestacks versions, didn’t get that code, and fought these motherf*ckers for my sh*t over the course of a full month, only to be told “yeah, nah. None f that lines up.” Just f*ck me then, because you assholes refuse to modernize your systems. You are living on that razor’s edge playing FGO for longer than a week because, at any time, everything you’re earned, invested into, and paid money for, can be gone in a goddamn instant; All because you didn’t get a Transfer Code and don’t know what your seventeenth Rider is. That’s juts the biggest issue. There are others. So very many others...

One of the which, and probably more egregious than the aforementioned Account Binding if you look at it objectively, is the fact that the game is f*cking boring. You don’t “play” Fate/Grand Order, it plays itself. I mean, there is this weirdly passive action selection but, after that, it’s just you, watching a bunch of sprites do said actions. If you happen to trigger a Noble Phantasm, you get a cute little movie deal but that’s it. There really isn’t a whole ton of strategy involved. You can’t really delve deeply into a game plan. It’s just set it and forget it. There are mobile games which autoplay. There is an entire f*cking genre of these things. FGO ain’t that. it forces you to be present, while passively watching it play. How is that a game? For years, Fate/Grand Order was the only mobile game i played and it it left a horrid impression of the entire goddamn industry because of how bogus the game play loop was. And then i downloaded Azur Lane on a whim. Imagine how goddamn frustrated i was when i found out there were actual games that could be played on mobile. FGO’s game play loop is so bad, it made me dismiss and entire section of the gaming industry, for years. o be honest, i think that was by design. The reason the actual game play is so bad, is because the Fate franchise is, ostensibly, a visual novel. They’ve diversified into other things but, at it’s core, Fate started as an adult Visual Novel out of Comiket. FGO is a visual Novel before it’s a game but, even in that, it sucks.

There is a grand total of twenty-seven available Quests on the Japanese version of the game. That is twenty-seven visual novels to explore. Some of them are pretty good. I personally enjoyed Camelot and Babylonia. The rest? I literally couldn’t care less. I’ve been a fan of Fate for years. I own a fan translation of that OG Adult Visual Novel and it’s sequel, Fate/Hollow Ataraxia. Ataraxia sucks but Fate/Stay Night does not. Heaven’s Feel is my favorite of the routes available, Stay Night, Unlimited Blade Works, and Heaven’s Feel, but i simp hard for Sakura so that goes without saying. There are no narratives which com anywhere near the quality of those first first three stories, in Fate/Grand Order and, more to the point, there are SEVERAL, that fall short of even the meager standard Babylonia set. Seriously, London was the worst and i had to play through that sh*t, twice, to unlock the ability o pull Mordred out of the goddamn Gacha! That’s right, i played through London, again, years after i did the first time, because i opted to start a new account just for that. Mordred is my favorite character in the entire goddamn franchise and my original one, was perfected. axed out on all levels, lost to the winds because of f*ckery. I opted to go through that grind one more time, as a fresh brand new player, and actually paid attention this time around. That’s how  know the writing is bunk. Starting a new game, years into this sh*t’s lifespan, as a player who was there in the beginning but lost all of that work, was a whole as experience. And a bad one to boot.

I periodically take time away from these mobile games because i tend to get bored of them. Not Azur Lane. That one’s my baby. I love them Kraut Girls. Generally speaking, when you return after a while, you get bonuses because, you know, you need them. Just because you were gone, doesn’t mean the game stopped progressing. FGO kind of does this but not in any real impactful way or, at least, not when i came back to it after a few months n my old account. After i lost that account, i went through the seven stages of grief and signed up for another one. Imagine my horror when, as a brand new player signing up for a game which, by then, had been active for six goddamn years, i got nothing. Like, they let me roll one Five-star character and basically told me to fend for myself. I couldn’t skip the original Mission Quests even though, by that point FGO was rounding out the Lost Belt narratives. Cats didn’t even f*cking give you the option of an abridged version of these Quests, you have to play through the entire goddamn thing! Which i did because Mordred. Once i finished the slog that is London, i quit. I abandoned all the work to even have the opportunity to make a run FOR Mordred; The entire point of me opening up a second account, because that grind was f*cking absurd. Now imagine how disillusioning it would be for a fresh player wanting to get into this game because they saw the Babylon anime or those Camelot films? Imagine going into that thinking you get to make a run at Tiamat or Lancer Arturia, only to be forced into playing through goddamn Fuuyuki. And then Orleans. And then Septem. And then Okeanos. And then London. And then you’d still have E Pluribus Unum before you even sniff Camelot.

In this, the year of our lord 2023, Fate/Grand Order is a relic of the past. It’s everything that was wrong with the Mobile Game industry way back when. There have been so many innovation, so many improvements, but FGO refuses to change. It’s that lack of growth, that apathetic refusal to adapt with the ever changing market, which has the once dominate Fate/Grand Order on life support. It just such a bad time and the player base knows that. They’re leaving in droves due to the poor writing, lack of actual playability, and the overall, real world, cash cost. I didn’t even touch on how expensive this game is to play. You have to be LUCKY to roll Five-star servants, man, even if they have a Banner. And you straight up never earn enough Saint Quartz to roll anything grand. Sh*t doesn’t even have a Pity System, you just get to throw money at a broken and predatory system until you get what you want. Th wild thing is, Fate/Grand Order has always been this way. It’s designed this way. It was never a good game. It was never going to be a good game. It was designed to be a money pit so Nasu could get off all of his pet projects, which is fair. I get it. FGO hit four billion in lifetime profits way back in 2019. That’s a lot of duckets that can be spent of spiffy UFOtable animation. I only which that some of it went to improving the goddamn game which gilded your pockets in the first place. All that said, the free Five-star I got was Mordred so I take back everything I said. 10/10, perfect game!

[saidtheriver]

finally getting around to this oops

i got into paradox live bc my friend was like "hey i have a fun franchise that you could make an au out of!" well i never did make that au but i got into paralive so oops. ayumu murase also got me into hajun, but this isn't about my bias towards hajun

as for 1nm8, when i saw that hou was designing them and amatsuki would be voicing kei, i knew i'd like them immediately. hou is one of my favorite artists (they're the artist behind my beloved prince of lanling from fgo, although the pfp on this blog isn't done by them), and amatsuki is, of course, a famous utaite and i also love his voice. so yeah, double whammy for 1nm8 for me. i got into rokuta and itsuki afterwards, but my main bias is kei

also pretty boy kei so true. the sad boy kei also so true. slaps kei this bad boy can fit so much shit

i would also say i'm not really a kei simp i'm more like a blorbo anthropologist (great term invented by my mutual on my main blog) i like watching what he does and observing him very carefully, even if i know damn well he's doing terrible things. i want to crack him open like an oyster to see what's inside. i do have sympathy for him, but it only goes so far when his messiah complex is the size of the paradox live cash reward lmao

i also agree that his reasoning is understandable, and that's one of the great things about kei is that he's understandable. doesn't mean he's likeable, but he's understandable and there's some logic to his madness. i think he's going to get a hell of a lot more character development after losing the consolation match bc he talks big but look at where he is now. i think he's just suffering the new character curse bc they've only been around for like a year or so and only have like two drama tracks or something like that

glad to see no one else on this site is a kei fan. i'm gatekeeping him now and only my interpretation is correct ever.

[azure00075]

Only a couple of months until LB3 is on the CN server! I blew all my quartz trying to get a second copy of Skadi, so uh...

Support the original artist by purchasing the album: https://www.fate-go.jp/music/ost3.html

[starrymothwings]

fgo au involving my mastersona wherein a cat person adopts two very troublesome dogs. more info under the cut

- Moth is a paid intern working for infamously shady company Chaldea. They do good work but their public image is so sketchy that it doesn’t even matter. wildly underqualified for her position, but it pays well at least

- Izo was a stray that Moth found and took in off the street, and he’s been living it up ever since. He is just. The rattiest pomeranian you’ll ever see. Clingy and bad-tempered, he’s lucky that he’s so damn cute. Not that she’d ever think of getting rid of him. Prone to pouting

- Mori was also a stray, but it’s more accurate to say he found her rather than the other way around. For whatever reason, Moth’s the only one he listens to, and he has to be kept on a tight leash or he’ll pick fights with anyone or anything that even looks at them funny. Other than that, he’s surprisingly well-trained. His breed is a mystery, but there’s speculation that he’s a wolf-mix because of how big he is

-Izo’s sword is his favorite toy, with the sheath made out of a hard material made for chewing, and the actual ‘blade’ being made out of a more flexible, foam-like material. He’s so attached to it that he brings it to bed every night, and will throw a fit if Mori get’s too close to it

- With good reason, too. Mori doesn’t prefer one particular toy over another, and that’s because he goes through them too quickly. Moth is always looking for sturdy dog toys that he won’t destroy, but so far it’s been a bust. He vastly prefers playing outside over toys anyways, always dragging Moth out for walks

- Izo and Mori don’t necessarily get along, but Mori is too well-trained to actually try anything, and Izo is too damn small to be able to hurt him

- There is so much fur. It’s everywhere. These two shed so damn much when it starts to get hotter

-Though he’d never intentionally try to hurt her, Mori is just so big that it’s inevitable that Moth walks away from playtime with some minor injuries. He also has a bad habit of bringing in dead (often mutilated) animals from the backyard as gifts for her, and he typically tracks in mud when he does so

[300iqprower]

The issue is actually moreso FGO loves Nero, everyone else associated with Rome must bow down to her. Ironic because my friends who have played Extra said she had the weakest story back in her games and the only reason she gets so much is because Wada Arco is a big shot in fate combined with everyone else working on fate/fgo loves Nero. The only decent (not great) roman servant is Romulus-Q because he actually acknowledges that Rome caused Boudica's misfortunes.

Yeah, that’s basically what I meant by the issue isn’t Rome, it’s just Nero. And I haven’t played Extra but that tracks with what I’ve been told, that Nero isn’t a 1 dimensional mary sue like she was in Septem, but she had the weakest story because she doesn’t really have much of a character arc, especially compared to Tamamo and Elizabeth.

Then, yeah, you have pretty much exactly what I was saying before: every other roman servant got screwed about as much as Rome’s enemies because Nero is the only one that matters according to Fate. Caesar started out decent then immediately became a complete joke (again really hope LB5 does something with him…) and Caligula has the potential to be one ofbthe absolute coolest servants but they actively choose to squander thar potential in favor of him speak and act like your average Nero defender. And of course Romulus was paid a bunch of lip service as being all-powerful but it was really only to make it that much more “meaningful” when he calls Nero the best thing to ever happen to Roma. Quirinus from what i know doesn’t really live up to the hype but is a massive improvement nonetheless. His line for Boudica cemented my like of him. All these grandiose monologues and waxing lyrical with his responses to others, then at the very bottom of the room line list at number 10 for Boudica just the single line “…Your rage is my greatest sin.” Like THAT’S THE SHIT, MORE OF THAT!

Although, Spartacus is technically a Roman servant so there is at least one genuinely good Roman servant…but that’s about as big a technicality like Leonidas being a “[Mythological] Greek Male”

Cant speak for the Wada bit. I do know Sakurai being a massive fangirl for Nero was why Septem’s…everything happened, and she’s long since apologized for how she handled her writing in that first year. It would make sense though if Sakurai was far from the only one who played favorites with Nero.

[hasnightingaledoneanythingwrong]

I posted 2,633 times in 2021

154 posts created (6%)

2479 posts reblogged (94%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 16.1 posts.

I added 653 tags in 2021

#fate grand order - 152 posts

#fate/grand order - 143 posts

#fgo - 138 posts

#florence nightingale - 114 posts

#mastersona - 59 posts

#eve - 20 posts

#julius - 10 posts

#dagger - 8 posts

#mash kyrielight - 5 posts

#convo - 4 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#want to write something with eve interacting with them but not sure if you want to just keep them in their own universe so just reblogging

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Day 24

A conversation heard in the hallway

Jack: here you go mommy, happy mothers day!

Julius:awww thank you Jack.

Jack: you're welcome mommy, by the way have you gotten anything for miss Nightingale?

Julius: no why?

Jack: well I heard uncle Rex call her your "dommy mommy" so I was wondering if you got her anything for mother's day.

Nightingale: ... well Julius did you get me anything?

Julius:... I need to have some words with Rex

53 notes • Posted 2021-05-10 01:02:12 GMT

#4

Nightingale's no no box

While many poisons and poison type substances are locked away in cabinets inside the medical wing of chaldea there are a few substances the head nurse keeps in a locked box physically on her person, any any attempts to retrieve said items usually ends with her attacking the individual. Hi my name is Julius and in this series of logs I will inform you all of a couple of these items for safety reasons

It should be noted that these substances were created either by hoenheim, jekyll, asclepius, and various others around chaldea.

Item 1. vick'xxx: a small tub of vick's vapo rub that unknown to most had been combined with various aphrodisiacs, after application it starts off doing what the label says with it helping congestion and the like, after that however the individual with then gain a lust and libido as if several gods and goddesses of love including aphrodite herself had given them their blessing.

Item 2. Goodfuckingnyquil: a bottle of medicine that will help an individual with their sickness, but as an adverse side effect the individual will be in a comatose state for ten hours in which no outside stimulation will rouse them from their slumber.

Item 3. The unholy: five small vials of what appear to be pure liquid gold, it's true nature is actually the highly concentrated juices of one thousand golden apples, it's effects are unknown because as soon as it was finished hoenheim gave all five vials to Nightingale and asked her to seal them away, when she asked him why he replied "I'm not sure, but something tells me I've gone to far with my science this time, " some rumors such as "it could make whoever drinks it implode, " have started about it others think that it could be a fast track ticket to the root.

Important notes

After drinking goodfuckingnyquil you will have 5 to 10 seconds of consciousness before passing out

If you are able to give a quick believable/ convincing reason she will be willing to temporarily lend you either the vick'xxx or the goodfuckingnyquil

Any attempts to get unholy results in her immediate hostility

@hasereshdoneanythingwrong @hasabbydoneanythingwrong @hasquetzdoneanythingwrong @hasmashdoneanythingwrong

64 notes • Posted 2021-04-15 20:17:13 GMT

#3

Day 98

The face she gives you before beating you senseless for not taking care of yourself.

119 notes • Posted 2021-11-25 02:56:24 GMT

#2

All the various mastersonas and guda rolling into lb6 pt2 with the og kotr to kick the shit out of beryl gut for what he did to mash

122 notes • Posted 2021-06-14 17:11:22 GMT

#1

What would y'all think if they added an alarm clock feature to fgo, similar to the favorite servant one but it's them trying to wake you up.

136 notes • Posted 2021-11-13 17:04:56 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[deathvsthemaiden]

🌻

Congrats! You have won access to a list of some of my most random thoughts in recent memory! Enjoy maybe (advance apologies for not linking any sources to any of the half remembered fun facts...don’t take them too seriously I never know what I’m taking abt 😬🤗)

•If you’re talking loud enough for people to hear you without trying or meaning or wanting to...it doesn’t count as eavesdropping!! @/my mother I am innocent! Learn some volume control 📢

•The older I get the more toxic and alienating I find the commonplace turn of phrase “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached!” Why is that painted as a bad thing...... 🥺💔❓I’d loveeee to forget my head. Just a few times. 👌🏽 As a treat.

•excluding the obvious, such as slurs, my least favorite words in the English language are landlocked (hideous reminder of my geographic state of affairs), and kismet. The latter is just so uglyyyyy the original language(s) it’s derived from make it sound so much better why can’t we just say kismat! I speak Urdu so I’m biased but like—

•I emphathize with fish an odd amount. I’ll eat them gladly and w gusto but I also find the level of suffering they’re allowed to feel staggering. It blindsides me. Blob fish used to (actually still do) freak me OUT!! Like my sister would scare me by showing me pictures of them w no warning. But apparently the reason they look the way they do is normally they live like 2000-4000 ft underwater and the decrease in water pressure as they’re drug up to the surface misshapes and deforms them and apparently this is very painful?? Even if it isn’t tho...the first time I read that. Immediate tears sprung into my eyes. And apparently some fish can choose to commit suicide? Like they just stop swimming and eating... god oh my god—!! They’re FISH!! Why are they so COMPLICATED!!! And I used to own a tank full of fish and usually fish don’t last long in our house! Rancid vibes you know? And my mom and I were so pleased these ones had lasted so long!! And then mysteriously they all just died too?? We did everything RIGHT! It was probably more than 2 years ago and we keep saying we’ll get more fish but I just don’t have the heart...I’m.....not ready to get hurt again so soon.

•apparently purple marble is/was a thing that exists. But the Romans used it up? Wild if true

•can’t stop thinking abt how elegant FGO!Bedivere would look in fencing gear

•My parents almost named me Sumbal

•You know how B&N has special gilded hardback editions of various classics? I will never forgive them for making their edition of Jane Eyre black/grey and WHITE!! MONOCHROME and BLEAK!! (Just bc it’s gothic!!!) It’s one of the most colorful books I’ve ever read!!! It swept me off my FEET! During the happiest parts of the book everything in my line of sight irl was GOLDEN I was in literal actual and true LOVE!!! I fell a-freshly in love w life bc of how much this book delighted me and they swaddle her in black and WHITE?? I can’t deal gentle reader I cannot deal—

•I have mixed feelings about poetry but I have a soft spot for The Tiger is out yes (you know the one, by the little boy? the ENERGY!!)+e. e. cumming’s The Grasshopper. On average poetry doesn’t make sense to me but grasshopper is the sort of (non)sense which I’m capable of appreciating. I dream of having a voice controlled fancy robot try to kill me so I can tell it to recite grasshopper and then it just explodes in confusion bc you can’t do that (recite grasshopper) 🐅 🤖

•I’ve lost track of the # of years I’ve waited in vain for Shoukoku no Altair to be localized and have official (physical!) English copies available for purchase, instead of just ebooks. Since the forgettable and upsettingly bad anime adaptation I’m afraid it’ll never happen ever...💔 I ache and yearn for naught but idk how to stoppp 😭

•The Cr*wn of L*ve by John Everett Millais is one of my most favorite paintings but I’m like. Embarrassed about it 👑 @my brain WHY. When did I become such a s*ppy gremlin. I blame ur fics and Jane Eyre Eve 😑 I was firmly in the ‘romance is a neurochemical con job’ camp just years before courtesy of my upbringing....what have I become 😶😶😶

•nothing screams “I hate you” like not appreciating+wasting food and also not returning the favor ever like it’s not a zero sum game but god is a little reciprocity too much to ask yes it is and yes I am sensitive and have been hurt before why do you as—🤐

•purposely vague but sometimes I wonder if I’d been one of those kids who put her head down on her desk in elementary school a lot and stopped listening to teachers whilst doing so maybe life, academically speaking, would go smoother for me now. But I was too afraid of getting in trouble and not yet the full fledged quitter you do (not literally) see before you today. Although the urge to put my head down wasn’t one I never felt...Missed opportunities alas

•I used to be able to handle spending any length of time in those mesmerizing aquarium tunnels and even enjoy myself in them but I’m now a more fragile and wise gal and can not even look at pictures w/o feeling intense WHJDNDNDND idek. They’re scary man. 🌊

•one of my favorite fun facts ever is this painter in 1881, Edward Burne-Jones finally realized mummy brown paint actually had bits of real mummies in it when having lunch with friends and was so unnerved he tried to give his tube of the paint a burial immediately. Like immmmeditately. (read this like a year ago in The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair) 🎨 📖

[strangefellows]

I'd ask about all your servant hcs but I'm still working my way through UBW before I even get back to FGO, so I'm restraining for the sake of avoiding spoilers. If you wanna gush about Vortigern and who he is in the myths, and how that might compare to FGO, that'd be neat though! I know nothing about him so I'm curious.

UGH FUCK TUMBLR ATE THE FIRST VERSION OF THIS SO THIS IS GOING TO BE SHORTER AND WORSE BUT

Vortigern, okay, so. 

IRL mythology wise he's not really...he's a lot older, and really there's only one myth tying him to Arthuriana -- my favorite lol -- and that's the story of him, Merlin/Emrys, and the dragons.

According to legend, when Vortigern fled into Wales to escape the Anglo-Saxon invaders, he chose this lofty hillfort as the site for his royal retreat. Every day his men would work hard erecting the first of several proposed towers; but the next morning they would return to find the masonry collapsed in a heap. This continued for many weeks until Vortigern was advised to seek the help of a young boy not conceived by a mortal man. The King sent his soldiers out across the land to find such a lad. The boy they found was called Myrddin Emrys (Merlin Ambrosius). Vortigern, following the advice of his councillors, was planning to kill the boy in order to appease supernatural powers that prevented him from building a fortress here. Merlin scorned this advice, and instead explained that the hillfort could not stand due to a hidden pool containing two vermes (dragons). He explained how the White Dragon of the Saxons, though winning the battle at present, would soon be defeated by the Welsh Red Dragon. After Vortigern's downfall, the fort was given to High-King Ambrosius Aurelianus, known in Welsh as Emrys Wledig, hence its name. (Wikipedia, Dinas Emrys)

As for Fate Vortigern -- specifically PHH (Proper Human History) Vortigern -- we have info on him from an older novel and from FGO itself; the FGO info does contradict some of the older info, but not all, so for the most part I’ll be relying on the FGO stuff.

Near the end of the fifth century, after the Roman Empire's collapse, Britain was inhabited by many tribes led by kings. The kings worked together except for Vortigern. The brother of the strongest king Uther Pendragon, Vortigern was said to be the personification of the white dragon, born from within Britain to destroy it. He was born by Britain itself interfering with his conception, making him something more than human. He was the incarnation of the will that tried to reject the Age of Man. [...] Artoria Pendragon, the incarnation of the red dragon, was created by Uther to oppose the incarnation of the white dragon, Vortigern. (TypeMoon Wiki, Vortigern)

Now, okay. Given that whole ‘Vortigern is the white dragon and Artoria is the red dragon’ and they’re meant to oppose each other, especially given it says ‘incarnation of the will that tried to reject the Age of Man’ -- it’s pretty easy to assume that Vortigern, the white dragon, is an embodiment of Gaia. I mean, FGO basically straight up confirms this:

Goredolf Musik states Proper Human History Vortigern is a Fae embodiment of Britain's will, specifically to preserve its Mysteries and destroy its humans. (TypeMoon Wiki, Vortigern)

Which, like Britain’s will = the Planet’s will = Gaia for sure. After all, Gaia is explicitly the Planet’s will to survive, and the wiki even states that Gaia can and will see humans as a Threat to be Dealt With. And it tracks with Artoria being his opposition and a King of Mankind, given she would be an embodiment of Alaya to be his equal and opposite. In fact, yeah, this is where the novel also supports this too:

Vortigern is fundamentally opposed to humans ruling Britain and wants it to remain a land dominated by Mystery. (TypeMoon Wiki, Vortigern)

Really, Vortigern’s origins are the only thing the novel contradicts; but FGO is more recent, so I stick with just what it says, which is the above. And that to me opens a very interesting can of worms that parallels really delightfully with LB Vortigern, which is where the actual main part of the theory is. 

I’m specifically talking about the line “He was born by Britain itself interfering with his conception, making him something more than human.” Looking at that, looking at the fact that ‘Vortigern the White Dragon’ is more or less explicitly a Fae creature and implicitly a child of Gaia, and then looking at the fact that shoving THAT into a human vessel is probably a shitty idea, given that Humanity is the exact opposite of what Gaia represents…PHH Vortigern probably had a real bad time. After all, a Fae soul/Spirit Origin/essence in a human body seems like it would be fundamentally incompatible. An existential contradiction (looks at LB Vortigern pointedly). ESPECIALLY with the fact of his Faerie Eyes (which he probably also had in PHH if it states outright he’s a Fae), and that it specifies that a human would probably go insane with them. It’s really not hard to imagine that he started out fairly okay, but the pain and misery of his contradictory existence drove him insane.

I’m not sure if I want to buy that ‘destroy humanity in Britain’ was part of the initial ‘preserve Britain’s Mysteries’ goal, or if maybe he at first simply didn’t want to follow through with that part, being partially human, but by the end it’s clear he went completely mad and, well, destroy everything time! (Looks at LB Vortigern again.) Basically the parallels track really, really well, as someone who never meant to be truly evil, just a being created for a purpose, but the contradictory existence forced on him drove him insane with pain and misery until he just went full scorched earth on the world that was making him suffer. It’s just the specific contradiction (reality vs lies/fiction and human vs fae/nature) that differs. 

So following that, it’s my personal headcanon that PHH Vortigern was a good dude his early life, just Different and Faerielike, but over time his existence simply drove him mad and gave us the Vile King Vortigern he was at the end of it, so full of pain and rage and hate that he wanted to take it all with him. I would be happy to infodump about my further headcanons, namely his personality, relationship with Merlin, and all that, but that’s for a different post. (As is my headcanons about Merlin himself, which are probably extremely controversial lmao.)

[joshnekuu]

lancers 👀

Servant Ratings:

100/10: my favorite dude, a major reason I even got into the Fate series

10/10: My wonderful idol daughter. I support her and her dreams of not becoming a serial killer

2/10: I’m so sorry my dude... I never really got to know you and your design looks more like an elaborate NPC. Maybe someday.

11/10: A good pupper!! His design is way more intricate than Cu’s which is cool! But his ascensions are boring come on fgo.

8/10: Mashu’s other senpai, looks kind of like a buffer redheaded Cu, also ha armor perfectly sculpted to his abs. I appreciate him.

8/10: I finally used hi for the first time in NA and he’s actually very good, helped me a lot while I waited to roll Cu, thank you Roma

10/10: -pointing- That’s my uncle. Hektor is a good uncle who is doing his best and I love him. Give him some coffee.

9/10: My wonderful spear mom. I love pretty much everything about her but I am kinda ready for her to take a backseat to some other Servants since she’s been one of the top waifus for awhile. Excited to see what they do with Caster!Scath though.

9/10: Here comes a special boy. Dia is cute and sad and I want him to just have a nice day for once please.

6/10: Cool concept, rad first ascensions, first Servant to constantly be riding a horse. Did pretty much nothing in London though and I don’t like her final ascension. She’s in lesbians with Nightingale in Go West though so she gets more points than I was gonna give her.

11/10: A GOOD BOY...... One of my original favs. I love Karna and pray for his happiness.

8/10: the world’s most beautiful fuckboy. I love him but he’s also terrible and I would not hesitate to punch him in the face. 

7/10: She has cool hair and an interesting concept, but she hasn’t really done anything in like over a year and she isn’t as original a take on the yandere trope as I initially hoped she’d be. I want to love her though. I believe she can make it.

10/10: Let’s hear it for the boooyy. I don’t actually know a whole lot about him other than he will kick anyone’s ass and also the radio existed when he was alive. My bf loves him though so he is Good.

7/10: We could have had it aaaaaaaallllll.... I love her first two ascensions and the concept of her and her face is gorgeous but hey fgo aging doesn’t have to mean Titty Inflation. Actually got to do shit in her chapter though so she gets more points than her altered version.

7/10: Tamamo Shark!! She’s very strong and has fun animations! One of my favs from the original swimsuit batch.

5/10: She has a very nice color scheme and Kiyo looks cute in a ponytail. I’m glad they did more with her snake/dragon motif here.

7/10: Scruffy uncle Vlad who gives Liz a hard time is valid and I respect him. Also I like the contrast in appearance between him and Berserker Vlad. 

5/10: She’s... cute. Her concept is ridiculous but her story is heartwarming. I am personally tracking down Takeuchi for her outfit though while simultaneously knitting her a sweater.

100/10: The love of my life, the dirt of my dirt.... I love Enkidu so much they were one of my original favs and will allways have a special place in my heart.

8/10: A stylish child with a great aesthetic. Her final ascension is kind of Eh. But I love Medusa and Medulily is a good daughter who I will Protect.

6/10: GAO GAOOO. Taiga showing up was such a surprise and I’m glad she’s here, her ascensions are cute and goofy, but I have like ever used her and she lives in storage I’m sorry tiger mom

0/10: Hey what if we took the lewdest character we’ve made to date and then made a version of her where the running gag is that she’s here to prevent lewdness, while making her even more fanservicey? God we’re so self aware and hilarious.

9/10: I love her so much..... the color scheme is beautiful, I think this artist was actually a pretty good choice for Sakura, my only issue with her is some potential... discomfort, with it being an Indian god possessing the body of a Japanese girl, because I’ve seen some people raise issue with that so I’m not really sure how to feel about that hdahkjdh But other than that she is Good

7/10: His ascensions are really unique! I still know nothing abot him though because I’m a sham. He’s cool though and I should probably level him someday.

7/10: Her animations are really nice and the color scheme of her ascensions is good, but her final ascension feels kinda like a bargain bag of annoying ascension gimmicks that don’t really add anything to her design. I’m hoping she gets a bit more development.

10/10: She is beauty she is grace. I love her color scheme so much and her ascensions are beautiful. Also she’s a fucking dork and I kind of wanna hold her hand.