#someone once said they would write a Bedivere/Shirou analysis and I’ve no idea if they did but I want to read it

[madillhethen]

The thing I really love about Yu Mei-Ren is that no one expects her to be any foil/parallel to Archer/Shirou because it’s just not obvious. She’s not made to be the obvious foil like Gilgamesh to Emiya, or the half foil/parallel of Cu to Archer, or even the obvious reminiscence that Saber is to Archer. People think Yu Mei-Ren is just a True Ancestor so in love with her husband and that’s her motivation, and no one would connect that to Archer/Shirou because there’s no direct conflict to pit the other against another.

But this Chaldea’s Thriller Night lays it out pretty well that she does contain something you can relate to Archer/Shirou. Not only do both Emiya and her take a well-deserve center stage in this event but Emiya also shows up in her interlude. Before I thought it was a bit random of why any character he should show up in her interlude.

It got me thinking after she says this in the event.

In UBW, Shirou confronts is ideals/dream head on and despite the path it led Archer down, he decides he was going to go down it all the same. Stardust is a theme that is pretty much associated with Archer. He’s not the starlight that Saber is, the star that Shirou hopes to become, he’s the aftermath of what the ideal truly is, destroyed and broken—he’s stardust.

Yu Mei-Ren refers to herself as stardust because she is no longer how she used to be—an elemental spirit in love who lost her husband and wandered for thousands of years, wishing for death and lamenting. She’s only gotten back what she’s lost, and even as the stardust, she presses on which at the end of UBW Archer does too after having his Hope renewed.

The foil/parallel I see it as that she is an elemental spirit who wished nothing to do with humanity and Archer a man who wanted to save humanity, both fought for some survival of themselves and eventually lost the things they wanted to keep (his ideal; her husband). Both trapped in an endless cycle of pain, him constantly killing as a CG and her constantly being killed and hunted by humanity.

On a slightly different note, throughout the event despite numerous warnings, Yu Mei-Ren keeps dying which is more comical in the event, and because she’s immortal, it gets brushed off. In a similar light, Shirou is constantly wounded nearly mortally many times throughout each routes, but thanks to Saber’s sheath, he comes back as if nothing happens. During the Zombie Movie Segmant, Yu Mei-Ren risks her life to save the others and willingly let’s herself die (only to come back in a comedic way later) but her resolve reminded me of how Shirou fully accepts Archer’s Arm in Heaven’s Feel and decides to face Heracles (a mindless servant at that point like the zombies).

Towards the end of the event, Xu Fu wants to give Yu Mei-Ren death, what she wanted so long ago because that’s the way to end her suffering. But Yu Mei-Ren refuses, and accepts the fact her path may very well end up suffering again and she may go on, angry at her past self (sounds familiar? Archer is literally that.)

Regardless of it, Yu Mei-Ren decides the path she has now, the happiness she has found, is worth it. Like Shirou decided that his dream isn’t wrong, he would continue down that path.

Of course, there’s a segment where she is fighting her doppelgänger but gives up, and makes a reference to UBW of Archer’s own conflict to Shirou, which Archer is visibly pained by.

Even if her choices to not die will come to haunt her later, she accepts that her choice now and before (this event tries not to spoiler LB3 but you can connect the dots) to be reunited with her husband are not wrong.

Which I really loved this event for touching upon these subjects, and having Emiya being such a delight during it all. His story was already told but he gets to still be a guiding figure in an event that reminiscences his own arc.