#or the ultimate badass like he was in apocrypha (he IS badass but he has so many other sides!)

[medi-melancholy]

i love karna fate grand order so fucking much because in serious grail wars he’s an extremely fascinating, imposing, and badass character who just has this unique, grand air about him, he looks almost otherworldly and speaks with such purpose yet personality, and he has a huge amount of power, but he's dangerous because he does hold back until he either feels the need or is instructed to just explode everything

but nearly all the rest of the time he exists he is an autism creature in the shape of a gender man who just happens to have godly powers

he may look pretty and composed but do not be fooled. this is the glowy body horror god baby. he is a Huge Dork(tm). he never knows what to do with his face. when given the choice to wear whatever casual clothes he wants he dresses like an arts college student who just tossed on 2-3 layers of whatever was laying around on their dorm floor before heading to the nearest whole foods. his ass is the posterchild for flat fuck friday. he absorbed the meathead jock braincells from the guys he hung out with in life and during christmas he goes full unga bunga about it

in vibes alone karna is like a goofy baby albatross compared to his brother who may as well like the perfectly sleek and beautiful adult ones with the perfect eyeliner in comparison. which is ironic, because karna already has the natural makeup (also, once again, do not be fooled, arjuna is a screaming disaster on the inside, but that's a love post for another day)

i think one of my fav examples of the contrast between ~beautiful ikemen~ karna and absolutely clueless fucking loser karna is that bit in the 5th anni pv where there's that shot of him oh so cooly popping open a bottle of champagne, and he's got the bishie sparkle going on, and looks sooooooo pretty in his fancy clothes,

and then you realize

he just soaked arjuna with it, probably entirely obliviously

tl;dr karna good. yes he is cool. yes he is dorky and silly as all hell. duality of mankind

[dexcidium]

So I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now… my review so far of Fate/Apocrypha. Keep in mind that I’ve read all the way up to the translated LNs, which is only up to the end of volume four, as well as this being written prior to the ending of the anime. As of now, it’s only up to episode 23. Let me preface this by saying that I love Fate. The lore and that distinct writing style ever so present within the series. The (mostly) well represented servants within the series. The character interactions, the relationship between servant and master, and everything else in between. That being said… I’ll keep this part short because I am prooooobably gonna go on and on forever on my thoughts later on.

TLDR: The concept was interesting, hype and it had some really great hooks. However, it felt flat on so many of its percieved promises and then… he happened. Sieg is a black hole that made Apoc so much worse than it actually is. Everything is fucking weak overall aaaaaand once again, FUCK YOU SIEG. YOU WASTE OF SPACE AND TIME.

I promise it’s not too long.

Not at all.

Right, let’s get this out of the way. I think Higashide can be a good writer. There were some good characterisation throughout Apoc, as well as some genuinely well written moments. However, there were many failures on his end as a writer. And it only became more evident in the anime. I’ll get to that later. First of all, let’s start with what I liked about it.

Jeanne(Light Novel): Those of you that know me know how much I adore Jeanne. And since FGO was a waifu game, I initially only liked her for her looks. No hiding that fact. But as I read more and more, getting sucked in to the hell that is the Type Moon wiki, I started to like her more and more based on personality. Again, those that know me know that I find these vanilla heroines extremely boring and bland. (SorryArturiaIjustreallydidn'tlikeyouoryourstoryarcinFSN). But of course, since this is TM, there was bound to be more than meets the eye. Like goddamn, she’s a literal saint. Probably the most well known in the world even. I expected her to be a goody-two-shoes and nothing more. But BOY was I wrong. Jeanne: *prays for hours everyday*. Also Jeanne: *exorcises 1000000 unborn children, suggests to crash a plane into the gardens without even blinking*. Her constant struggle of being called a saint and rejecting that very premise was frankly quite shocking because of the established facts about how much she loved God. There was divide in her character. And suddenly she wasn’t this benevolent, all-loving saint anymore. She was Jeanne. A religious girl who fought for her beliefs, and died fighting for them. The world imposed to her a title that she didn’t necessarily want. But her characterisation ends there… at least the actual interesting parts. Oh don’t worry, I’ll get to *that* later.

The Red Faction: Boy these guys were fun! The Red Servants felt much more organic and light hearted compared to the other faction. Granted that part made sense since Darnic is a literal Nazi. Anyway… these guys were just so much more fun. From Karna’s literal and metaphorical roasts, to Shakespeare’s loud and outspoken cravings for tragedy, to Achilles’ constant and flirtatious admiration towards Atalanta (AKA the woman who beat up his dad), to the crazy, fucked up and manipulative asshole that is Shirou (not Emiya) Kotomine. They were just fun to watch. I could go on about the tinier details but that’d make this shit even longer… MOVING ON!

Kairi and Mordred: Oh boy these two are just… perfect. A father son combo like no other. And an absolute joy to watch. They filled a void sorely lacking in each other’s existence. And you can clearly tell that by their interactions. Kairi was edgy and cool but unlike someone like Kiritsugu, he was easy going and didn’t take everything so seriously. A cool dad. And Mordred… god I love this little scamp of a knight. Mordred is adorable in her own little way while being cool and badass like her master/dad. They were just a fun duo to watch in the series where master and servant interaction was rather lacking of interesting dynamics. These two just worked. And they worked well.

The premise: basically any other HGW times two. Goddamn was the set up cool. That’s all, really.

Right, so this is the section where I shit on Apoc from both a viewer’s stand point, as well as from a narrative and structural stand point. To stop myself from going on an even further tangent, I’ll be talking about Sieg last. Other than this part. Let me just say that he is pretty much directly linked for like… 70% of this show’s major flaws. But again… that comes last. Lets start off with the stupid points in Apocrypha and the disastrous end of the first volume. I’ll also be comparing it to the anime, which was a hot mess. Not quite garbage. That came later.

So… the characters. Way too many of them. It was evident that Higashide could not handle such a large cast. It was basically what a normal grail war was times by a factor of two and then add a little bit more. So what did he do? Take out half of the masters by having Amakusa straight up manipulating the entire thing. A good move I’d say… but there was still too many for him to handle. It was all over the place. But frankly, he handled the earlier parts quite well in the LN. There was, however, a gigantic lack of characterisation for many of the earlier characters. Of course those were the same characters that pretty much needlessly died off for shock effect. For example, Siegfried (henceforth shall now be known as Siegfriend) had me going “this makes no sense" rather than “YOU KILLED SIEGFRIED. YOU MONSTERS". And as a writer, if you can’t make your audience feel the emotion that you intended them to – then you’ve failed. And the series is plagued with these rather stupid deaths. A lot of them felt pointless and held no significant impact on the overarching narrative. They just died. And I didn’t feel anything. The delivery felt weak and half-assed, played for fake emotion.

And speaking of deaths, Darnic and Vlad’s… no that, that was fucking stupid on top of a pile of stupid. Well, this felt like actual lost potential. Unlike a certain other character… Darnic was being built up to be the main antagonist… and he felt like he would have been a good one. If not for the structure being a battle royale-ish. And it is one because people pretty much did their own thing pretty early on in the story. Getting back on track, Darnic and Vlad had a relationship akin to Tokiomi and Gilgamesh from Fate Zero. And that is the servant being more of a master than the actual master. This was good as we were seeing a variety if servant/master dynamics. Darnic, however, was no pushover. This man had been established to do whatever it fucking takes to get what he wants. And he had been succeeding too. Just what grand scheme was he about to pull off- aaaaaaand he’s dead. Dude talked a lot of shit… nothing happened. Not even a lasting impact. He just became one with Vlad and that was it. What the fuck was that? There wasn’t any sort of intelligence or cunningness that he had displayed before. Oh and poor Vlad. Man, he was the real victim here. This part I actually felt for. Because he became what he didn’t want the most. The Legend of Dracula. A vampire. And not one of Nasu’s myriad of vampire OCs. The OG, Count Dracula. It was meant to be an actual tragedy… yet… it left no impact. So when Darnic’s BRILLAINT plan of fusing his and Vlad’s soul together, while activating his Legend of Dracula NP, he was made out to be this near unstoppable being that needed all these powerful heroic spirits boosted by a command seal to be stopped. But really… he wasn’t. Fuck, he didn’t even kill anyone important. And no one at all in the LN. I was expecting him to pull some Hellsing Ultimate bullshit and turn the entirety of Trifas into a ghoul-infested city. But nope. Nothing came out of it.

He ends up getting fucked over by the ACTUAL main Antagonist, Amakusa Shirou Tokisada via baptism rites. This was meant to make him look powerful or whatever. Except the entire fight scene is really dumb because if you know anything about vampires, they have very specific weaknesses. Two of those are the sun and holiness. And not just any weakness. Deathly weakness. AND WHO DO WE HAPPEN TO HAVE!? The most famous saint in the world and the son of a sun god who literally has sunlight woven into his skin. This whole thing was made even more stupid but the fact that the initial plan in the LN was to wait until dawn for the sun to come out. Also in the LN, Jeanne was poking away at Vlad using her holy spear which she did not do in the anime. By the way, Jeanne can do the exact same thing as fuckboi Shirou. Only even better because she’s an actual saint and a Ruler. Plus she used Baptism Rites to exorcise Jack as well. Seriously, Karna could have hugged Darnicula to death. This whole scene is stupid, man.

Continuing the stupid death trend, Avicebron and Adam… god that was stupid. Roche you say? Who? Kid was barely a character. He was made to be killed. He had no build up. No actual back story. And barely a personality. In short he didn’t matter at all. But dear god, this fight was meant to be the Cthullu fight equivalent. Yet again, this was somehow even more anti-climactic and even more boring than the Darnicula fight. Again, nobody important died. They’re killing for the sake of killing. And it was just fucking weak man. I barely felt anything. Other than the seething hatred and boredom of course. And again, it was meant to make somebody else look good. Our “protagonist". Anyway, this fight was dumb and boring. Some good animation in the anime though. I will give it that much.

And this was the point in the series that everything pretty much got thrown out the window and it was evident that it wasn’t going to get any better. Jeanne lost her neutrality, literally 2/3rds of the Ygdmillenia family didn’t even really matter in the end, the Red faction’s fucked off to cross the border or something, Sieg is a super special servant/master hybrid rolled into one with super special BLACK command seals because he’s the super special protagonist aaaaand Jack’s fucked off back to Reika. Who at this point also barely has a personality and back story. But still way less than most people that have already died. And that’s just sad man. I, as part of the audience, couldn’t give less of a shit about any characters except a set few. If I didn’t know most of them through Grand Order already, I would have dropped this shit ages ago. And dear god, Jeanne still doesn’t have an established personality besides existing for SHIGGU-KUN in the anime. The LN does a far better job with characterisation. Even if it is still a heaping dumpster fire. And then they do pretty much nothing except side quest to kill Jack and exorcise 10,000 babies. Which, despite feeling like a loose end that they had to tie up despite being in a rush to go after the Red faction, was actually my favourite scene in the LN due to the fact that it completely changes the reader’s perception of Jeanne. Of course the anime version sucked ass.

Right, continuing on… this scene. It did not work for the anime. And I’ll have to start by explaining that Jeanne’s characterisation does not exist beyond Sieg in the anime. A lot of her characterisation outside of that was cut. Which is a damn shame because she became what I hated the most in an anime character. Bland, generic, no real motivation, no established personality yet somehow still being out of character whenever that shithead Steve-kun is around. Not only was Jeanne no longer the Jeanne I knew, she was replaced by bumbling tsundere who blushes for a wet sock. It was cheap and boring. And this fucking harem Romanian romance BS that was happening was so fucking out of place. It was evident that Jeanne had barely become a character anymore. She was just waifu bait like Astolfo now. Putting that aside, even in the LN, Jeanne still becomes a mess. While I have not personally read the last volume since it has not been translated, I have read summaries. And my god is everything stupid. I’ll return to this part once I cover the long awaited shitfest…

WARNING. As this is my personal review, it is very opinionated. And as you can probably tell… this is very personal.

Sieg. Oh you waste of space, you don’t fucking deserve that name. Like every both of his being, it’s half assed. I mentioned that Sieg was a blackhole in the beginning. And that’s because he sucks up any bit of good in this series whenever he’s in a scene. Good characterisation from well established characters? NAH LETS BEND OVER AND LET SHIGGU KUN WIN AND HE WILL BE LOVED FOREVER AND EVER BECAUSE HE’S SO GOOD AND PURE AND INNOCCENT YOU GUYS. Right, now that that’s out of the way. It’s time to dive into exactly why this dude is such a demerit to the series overall.

First and foremost, he disrupts the entirety of the story structure. While it could have certainly worked, it most definitely did not here. Sieg’s role in terms of plot devices was to centralise the story as a whole. However, Higashide went too far and just… ended up giving Sieg far too big a role. This, in turn took away a lot from the rest of the cast. Not only their screen time but their whole character. Yet despite all this “development" he was getting, he still barely had a character. Some may say that was the point. Sieg is indeed a blank slate that was meant to learn as he grew. But the thing is – he never did. Instead, there was this identity crisis that was never really addressed in the actual narrative. However, as it stands… the whole fiasco was extremely pointless. Sieg remains a flat character and his entire goal was immediately solved the episode after he decided to do it. Worst of all, there was no sense of struggle. Not even a spec of it. He just sorta did it. And my god was it so boring to watch. Even after when he’s trying to get his morals straight, it basically boils down to him asking people if killing was bad. And it just kept dragging on and on and on and on! And in the end… nothing came out of it. By the time they were about to go and attack the Hanging Gardens, barely anything changed. Basically, it was a giant waste of time.

And of course, we have to address Siegfried. While certainly, yes, you could argue that tragedy is the very essence of Siegfried’s story. Even in his own legend we were only told of his story through a series of flashbacks. In Apocrypha, Siegfried’s suffering continues. He has a shit master, he can’t even fucking talk, his brotp moment gets cucked by the fetus, and he never actually gets anything that he wanted. And as a result; he was sorely undeveloped. Then he fucking dies. It was meant to come off as a heroic sacrifice but… there was nothing there to latch on emotionally, as well as making no sense. For one, at this point everything about Sieg was just to make the audience feel sorry for him. That’s it. Nothing else. Secondly, the homunculus and Siegfried had no real emotional connection. They literally just met. Hence, making the sacrifice feel… well, emotionless. They try to reason it off with some BS about Siegfried doing something selfish… but it was still a selfless action. So I never bought it as a proper reason. Now keep in mind, that I personally was trying to keep an open mind about Sieg when I began reading Apoc. I had heard bad things and the stuff that people were saying pretty much embodied everything I hated in a protagonist. Except… it was a lot worse. Sieg is a lot worse. At this point in time, I didn’t even hate Sieg yet. He just had little to no presence or relevance, nor even a semblance of a personality that I did not give a Rin’s ass. Then… Siegfried tore his fucking heart out – his own heart out, literally and made Sieg…. eat it? It was… really stupid. Because A: Servants’ spiritual cores are their hearts and they wouldn’t be able to even move without it the moment it gets torn out. And of course before he dies out Siegfried gets his only redeeming moment… chock one up to poor pacing…. yay. So just when I starting to give a shit about Siegfried, he’s out of the picture. For this… thing. And as someone who’s aware about the consequences of having a servant’s body part attached to another human being (AKA Heaven’s Feel), I was expecting some consequences. Horrible, horrible consequences. But…

Nothing.

But I’ll be generous and gloss that one over since it wasn’t established in the plot here.

Now I may be going on and on about expectations and shit but that’s because literally everything in Apoc was trying to outdo Zero/FSN. Let me go on a tangent for a bit and explain. Twice the masters, twice the servants, a more exciting and dynamic premise. But in actuallity, every bit of delivery was extremely weak. A lot of it was just below par. I was promised something great but even as I continue to lower the bar, Apoc continued to limbo under it.

Anyway, back to that useless sack of shit. The anime didn’t really have this but my god… the following moments is what made me hate Apoc right then and there. So in the Light Novel, Jeanne senses a new disturbance due to Sieg’s unique (*rolls eyes*) existence. So as she investigates, she goes and talks to the black faction (they fucking skipped the theological debate between Jeanne and Vlad in the anime btw), until she finds Sieg.

Then she collapses because of Laeticia needing food still cuz host body and all that. So far I was buying it. Then Sieg carries her. O..kay? Then blushing… Uhhhhhhh…. and when they finally reach a village and was allowed a room for the both of them… it devolved into a generic light novel plot.

They had to share a bed.

Girl blushes.

Dense protag is dense.

UHHHHH

WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? You’d think I was kidding but this id exactly what happens. And it was this precise moment that my expectations drastically dropped to near zero. It came out of fucking nowhere. I don’t get why they’d not-so-subtly force this shitty romance between characters who just met in a primarily action-focused novel. It wasn’t even good. I could open SAO and whatever other clone and they’d do it just as badly.  And it was at this moment that Sieg became the worst thing about Apoc for me. But ohohoho… just as you think it’s hit rock bottom, it somehow goes BELOW that.

GO BELOW AND BEYOND. MINUS ULTRAAAAA!

Okay, so skipping a couple of events, Jeanne fucks back off to the main battle where the Red Faction actually gets their shit together. She does nothing but run around for the entire volume. Like. Literally does nothing except save wet sock’s ass. Anyway, while everyone else is having rather personal battles with Chiron fighting his former pupil, Achilles, the two Lancers/Aces of them having one hell of a fight and arguing their religious beliefs, Fran confronts fuccboi Shirou and gets screwed over by Shakespeare’s NP (and we get to see her real struggles as well as a bit more on how Caules is as a master), Astolfo being a loser as always, Atalanta being… whatever she was doing, she doesn’t really get interesting until after, and Mordred being the shitty driver she is, giving Kairi a heart attack. Right so before this gigantic fight happens, Sieg finally decides that he wanted to save his homunculus buddies. Which is a fine motivation. …that got immediately solved because everyone else was too busy actually fighting. Zero tension or risk here. Anyway after one of his major character motivations gets solved so stupidly easily, he decides to pull a Shirou Emiya (only a lot worse and he doesn’t make sense) and fight the servants. In which Mordred immediately kills his ass but is the only one that does damage for some reason (gotta make him seem useful and interesting), despite Fran doing next to no damage. The servant. Doing no damage. But this guy did. O… okay. So he gets killed, I rejoice like Kirei when he hears an Emiya is participating in a HGW on Christmas day, the evil is defeated, the world is a better pla- and he’s alive. Once again. Not even an episode later. Absolutely no tension. Do you see what my problem is with wet sock as a character? There’s almost no stakes for him. No proper emotional connections to a lot of characters. Characters die for him to live. Said characters who have never even had a conversation with him prior. So tell me how am I supposed to feel? Certainly not satisfied or even happy. In fact I’m frustrated that a far more interesting character died so that this bland fucko could live. And it doesn’t even make sense! He gets a fucking power up too for whatever fucking reason. So Fran accidentally zaps him back to life when she sacrifices himself to kill Mordred. Now he has command spells that are black (because HE’S SO SUPER SPECIAL YOU GUYS). And he can now turn into Siegfried.

What kind of stupid writing is this? It makes no sense. Progression is fucking stupid. No explanation. No proper emotional connection. No proper stakes. No risks. And above all else… there’s no entertainment. I’m so goddamn bored. And I’m already sick of our main protagonist. And he takes up a lot of the time. I can’t connect to this character. Even if I can’t relate to his struggle, I should be able to at least feel for him. But I didn’t. Because I know that somehow, someway, he’ll BS his way through it with fake struggle that has no tension. Wet sock is lacking in every single area. And him being the protagonist highlights his shittiness as a character. Honestly, he could have worked if they didn’t have a forced romance or if he was the main character. He could have provided the view of the homunculus. Instead Toole, who barely appears, does a better fucking job of that more than the guy that takes up half the screen time. And at this point, I’d rather have him gone completely rather than try and make him even remotely interesting. Even his introduction was sketchy to me. It was just a whole lot of “FEEL SORRY FOR ME. ARE YOU FEELING IT NOW MISTER KRABS? ARE YOU REALLY FEELING IT??????”. But I didn’t. I didn’t know shit about this fucko. Why should I care? There was nothing to latch on to, no emotional hook. Not even an interesting characteristic. And he never develops one. Instead, I feel like he just steals shit. Just like him receiving Siegfried’s heart and taking half his name, his entire character is half-assed.  Not quite a self insert because there isn’t a power fantasy to be fulfilled. That sort of fantasy is immediately ruined because he literally turns into someone else. Can’t really project yourself onto someone who turns into someone else. A terrible MC due to him bullshitting everything and surviving everything with no real consequence to him. He just makes the story terrible by his sheer existence.

Right, so going back to one of my earlier points. That scene with Jeanne, Atalanta, and Jack. A very pivotal moment for Jeanne and Atalanta. Jeanne, who was a revered saint decides to confront Jack the Ripper, who is the embodiments of one part of the legends where he killed pregnant ladies or something. I don’t exactly remember all the details with Jack. Anyway, the important part is that Jack is made up of a bunch of unborn souls. Children. And Atalanta, whose wish is for the happiness of all the children in the world, sees all this. The horror of the tormented children, not even a chance given to live. She’s hit right at the core of her being because she was abandoned by her own parents on a mountain for not being a male in her legend. So Jeanne’s decided that she can’t save these children. They’re already long gone. Of course Atalanta was forcing her own beliefs towards this revered saint. It seemed that to Atalanta, saints were miracle workers, they could do crazy things. And historically, yes, that was exactly who they were. And as Jeanne rejects the very notion of being pronounced as saint, saying that she was nothing more than a village girl who answered god’s calling, she demolishes Atalanta’s view. The Archer’s entire world. And with the baptism rites going, Atalanta screaming for her to stop, and Jeanne following her own set of beliefs… it was a very personal moment for all of them. In the anime, Sieg was there for some reason. He literally just took up screen time. He feels like he was just there. Added absolutely nothing and just wasted time. And this annoyed me because this was a very personal moment for two other characters. Yet this wet sock is just… there. Intrusive. Like he needs to be included in everything. It was an absolutely well done scene in the LN where Jeanne’s beliefs are far more established and she actually has personality outside of Steve-kun. Where he wasn’t there.

Basically what I’m saying is Apoc is really good when he’s not around. Seriously, it’s so much better. Achilles’s fight with Chiron was very personal, so was Achilles’ fight with Atalnta. When it’s personal, it’s good. Sieg has no personality or history with others. No emotion. No relations. Nothing. Just stale bread that’s winning against people who have nothing to do with him. And I can’t help but get frustrated at this goddamn show for that.

OKAY: Lightning round of shitty wet sock things:

Spends a fuck tonne of time asking people “are humans bad hurr durr” and comes out with the solution that he basically wants to be hero of justice and protect humanity or whatever. It’s never stated in the anime but this is what Siegfried wanted. So he’s stealing personal character motivations too. Waste of episodes that could have been used developing far more interesting characters.

Jeanne (in the anime ESPECIALLY) only exists to be his love interest. She isn’t allowed to be anything more. And her big character revelation is that she loves Sieg(big surprise). She acts against her neutrality a lot of the time because of him. When she strongly declines picking sides at the very beginning. The reasong for this is that he has nothing to do with the war. BUT GUESS WHAT? HE DOES BECAUSE HE DECIDES TO GET INVOLVED IN IT. So there is no reason to protect him. She acts against her own beliefs so that she could be waifu bait for this fucko. They say it’s all Laeticia or whatever but to NO ONE’S surprise, it was Jeanne all along (yaaaaay….).

He becomes more Siegfried than Siegfried. Well in life, Siegfried could spam Balmung as fast as he could swing it. But he can’t do that as a servant of the Saber class because it’s a big Noble Phantasm. But guess whaaaaaat? Sieg can do that because he apparently also has galvanism from Fran for some fucking reason, and to pour more salt on the wound, he can upgrade Balmung to EX Rank using a command seal. Which, mind you has never been done before nor foreshadowed. Karna’s Vasavi Shakti was still more powerful thought because this dude don’t play around for some ho. And ya’ll know how much of an asspull this was.

Speaking of that fight, from what I’ve heard in the LN, he actually had a clear shot of Siegfriend’s back but for some reason didn’t decide to take it. I can’t 100% confirm this but if that was the case, that’s another thing of making characters act OOC. Karna would never let someone win a fight. And this is him with a time limit while wet sock has a shroud from Jeanne that auto heals him, a bunch of help from a bunch of other people. Yadda, yadda, yadda, ass pulls. He wins the fight. Fuck off wet sock-kun.

Jeanne, for some ungodly reason is unaffected by really personal things like her mother talking to her and reasoning that she shouldn’t have gone off to war, seeing her fellow Frenchmen die in the hundred years war, and even seeing the room where her best friend murdered a bunch of kids after her own death.  Yes, she knows it’s all fake. But when Shakespeare shows her images of Sieg burning at the stake instead of her and his decapitated head… she freaks the fuck out. Why? She knows it’s fake. She’s known this dude for like a week. You could argue that she feels personally responsible for involving him in the war. But once again. This doesn’t make sense. Sieg chose to involve himself. He chose to fight. He chose to fight a riskless war because he’s the main character. Of course in the shittiest reveal ever, she realises that she wuuuuuuuvs him. Fuck right off. AND DON’T GIVE THAT ‘LOVE WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS’ SHIT.

SPEAKING OF THIS BULLSHIT. There was this utterly stupid scene in the Light Novel where Sieg and jeanne see a couple or whatever. There was a baby or something. And Sieg asks Jeanne if servants could get pregnant. Of course, since she looooooooves him so much, her immediate thoughts were “DOES STEVE-KUN WANT TO IMPREGNATE ME!!??!?!?!?”. I wanted to hack out blood when i heard that was a thing. Thank god that it wasn’t in the anime.

He cucks Jeanne out of killing Shiroumine, the big bad antagonist of the series. The anime and promotional material is making them out to be rivals when they have zero ideological battles, have never even spoken to each other before, nor an allusion to some sort of rivalry at all. It just happens. At this point Sieg doesn’t even have any command spells and he pulls Blasted Tree(Fran’s NP, yeah he stole that too) out of his ass. Kill stealing bitch. Reported. Blocked. Emailed Harada. Email Jeff Kaplan. Perma-ban pls. Basically, Shiroumine was a shit villain because his plans weren’t really clear. Salvation of humanity was too broad in a sense on how the actual fuck he was gonna pull it off, and it wasn’t explained all too well. And with Sieg being the contender for the shittest protagonist I have ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on, the main villain just became… fucking boring. I say villain but he was an antagonist. A direct result of bad character writing.

The so called romantic ending is an even shittier version of one of the endings in the Fate route in FSN. Like it’s a straight up copy. Imagery and everything.

Oh yeah, he turns into a dragon for whatever reason. Comes out of nowhere. Like zero build up. Then he fights monsters for the rest of his existence on the other side of the world or something. It’s really stupid. It’s meant to feel heroic but I don’t feel that at all. When a heroic sacrifice that’s meant to make me feel all sorts of emotions, makes me laugh instead, you’ve done a shit job at writing.

There’s probably more that I can’t remember at the top of my head. But there’s only so much that I can complain about. Oh who am I kidding, there’s a chat in one of my discord servers that we spend all our time at least a couple times a week on how shit this fuckhead is. He’s that bad, honestly.

To conclude, Apocrypha could have been great. It had a lot of promise. But it failed on nearly every end. The grandiose battles fall flat because nobody actually cares about a lot of the characters since more a lot of them are severely underdeveloped. And despite the narrative spending the most time with him, Steve-kun was a massive failure of a main character. He was a shounen protagonist in the wrong genre. Actually, he’s a generic light novel protagonist in Fate. And it didn’t work. Because fate is so much more deeper. So much lore. And I love that crazy, well thought out world. Wet sock-kun doesn’t have a place in it. Not in a narrative like this. Not in a world where depth can go seemingly forever. And especially not against characters who have actual strong personality and rich histories. And so, he fails. Sieg fails. The actual self-inserts of a character like Hakuno and Guda do a better job at fulfilling their role than an established character. And that’s fucking pathetic. I had more fun reading through Hakuno’s nurse fetish and Guda’s snarky attitude. Honestly, it is tiring. I was constantly frustrated at Apoc. I still am. The anime will be ending soon. And I’ll probably just laugh at how bad it is.

I won’t rate it or whatever. I’ll just say to not bother. But if you love fate, then go for it. There may be characters you saw in Grand Order that you want to know more about. And the servants are absolutely great. But honestly, just go read their source material. You’ll have more fun with that. But if you’re like me and are a salty piece of shit… the welcome to the club. There’s a lot to gnaw on.

Right so before I get massive flack for an opinion piece that I decided to write, and before anyone says that 'If you’re not going to say anything nice then don’t say anything at all'… I’ll just say to fuck off because it is my very right to speak about a creative piece. I’m not critiquing a person. I’m critiquing their writing in my own little colourful language. Critiquing a professional work, mind you. I wouldn’t do this to a fan work. And again, it’s an opinion. You don’t have to agree with it. If you liked wet sock then more power to you. I just personally thing that he’s the worst thing in the Fate franchise. Though people do say that Manaka is worse. I doubt you can limbo under something that’s like negative bajillion on any scale. Sieg just managed to offend me so hard when almost nothing does these days. And honestly, that’s an achievement on its own. Golf clap.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun writing this. But hey, maybe I’m just a petty little shit who got his waifu cucked by a fetus, amirite?

[nightingaletrash]

@robotslenderman​: pls tell us more about the ships

say no more ;)

When it comes to Miraak, I much prefer to use the cut content for my interpretation of his character because it lends much more depth to him and his history than *checks notes* ruling Solstheim just because.

In the cut content, Miraak actually has some regret for his ‘need’ to kill the LDB because what he wants isn’t power, but the freedom to decide his own fate. He struggles against the boundaries set by others and wants to be able to have control of himself and the path he walks.

“I grieve that you must meet your end this way but necessity demands it."

I like the idea of Miraak not really wanting to kill the LDB, but rather convinces himself that it’s the only way to free himself from Hermaeus Mora. And there is something to grieve in that because the LDB is the only other Dragonborn he will ever meet. The only person who understands exactly what it means to be Dragonborn.

To be Dragonborn is a rather singular existence - you’re essentially a dragon in mortal form, and so your existence is utterly unique. I have a whole bunch of headcanons about being Dragonborn and how certain Draconic personality traits manifest, such as domination and a need for control. It’s also a very lonely and isolating existence because no mortal experiences the world the way you do, and no dragon need concern themselves with mortal limits. And when people know you’re Dragonborn, they either worship you and put you up on a pedestal to be held up to unthinkable standards, or they fear your power and will do whatever they can to leash you *cough*the blades*cough*.

And that’s how it is for Val and Miraak. They both have this isolating experience that no one else truly understands, and they develop a strange sort of kinship because finally someone else understands. Her entire life, Val has been viewed as a cold, standoffish and greedy woman who will go to almost any lengths to get her way - the Blades try to leash her, Maven Black-Briar makes her a Thane and forces her to attend court to try and establish some kind of dominance over her after her assassination attempts fail, and the Thalmor despise her for her interference in the Civil War when she successfully called for the ceasefire and actively want her dead so that she can’t become a threat.

They develop a kinship with one another because Miraak let his curiosity get the better of him, as well as his sense of respect for her. Dragons aren’t without decorum after all. They talk, they understand, and there’s a weird sense of them almost unconsciously defying themselves in how they deal with the situation.

Val, who was born and raised in the Thieves Guild and was taught that sometimes you just need to take the deals you can and accept the chains they come with, decides to be defiant. Miraak, who grew up and rose to power in the Dragon Cult and learned that power and status provide their owners with absolute freedom over others, subjects himself to grim certainty instead of defiance.

Ultimately Val and Miraak escape Apocrypha and go their separate ways for a time. Miraak travels to decide what he will do now that he has his freedom (and save a bunch of idiot mages from Morokei while he’s at it lol) while Val returns to Riften to resume her life (only vampires are a problem she has to deal with now lol). I don’t know exactly how and when the actual ship stuff would happen and probably won’t until we have TESVI (hahahahahaha-) but I like the idea of them coming back into each other’s orbits and finding comfort in the familiarity of being caught between dragon and mortal. There’s no one else quite like them, and being together eases the loneliness that comes with it.

also badass dragon couple fun hehe

Now, Val and Teldryn...

Again, I’m using content not in the vanilla game when it comes to my interpretation of Teldryn - I use the Teldryn Serious mod, which add exponentially to the character’s history and motivations, and I very much enjoy it.

Initially Val gets involved with the whole thing because she wanted to make some money (remember, thieves guild and dragonborn means Money = Power. also shiny). Then she became more and more curious about what was actually going on, and her nosiness overrode her standard greediness. The more she learns, the more invested she became in making sure things played out correctly. It became less about money and more about doing the ‘right thing’... or rather, having control of the situation because, again, dragon. As much as she’s a thief, the last decade of Dragonborn stuff has given her a sense of right and wrong, and she can be stubborn about it. Control, domination, power... they’re all present in the undercurrents, even if her motivations are decent.

And while Teldryn initially finds her interference to be an annoyance, he realises that the shit he’s in actually runs way deeper and that he needs her help. So he decides to put some trust in her, and she gives some back, to the point that when they fight the woman who’s trying to kill Teldryn, they toss Val’s sword back and forth in the fight, allowing themselves to be momentarily without a weapon in order to give the other a chance to fight back.

Teldryn fell first because he already found Val attractive, and all the lengths she went to on his account enabled that fall, while Val is more oblivious about why she gives more and more of a damn about Teldryn. Even after the events of Teldryn Serious wrap up, they stick together on Solstheim because hey, they can count on each other. They’ve fought side by side and know how to handle themselves. When Val has to face her Very Serious Fear of Water in Nchardak, Teldryn is the one who gets her through it, and he doesn’t question or judge her at all. Just realises she’s scared shitless (thanks Irkngthand) and helps her.

Like the dynamic is so much fun with the snarking and nicknames, and how they develop this partnership that becomes ‘I would die for you’ ‘not if I die for you first!’ and they just hit all the right notes... I love these assholes so much...

tldr; Val x Miraak is very much ‘no one else gets me like you do, and that makes you feel like home’ and Val x Teldryn is ‘you’re a dick but you’re stuck with me because I like you’ and both ships are very good in different ways.

My two ships for Val are just

the inherent eroticism of being the First and Last Dragonborn vs two sarcastic jerks who like money