#zepia eltnam oberon

[kaibutsushidousha]

Is malignant information in Fate like a Douman-exclusive thing? How does it work separated from him, if it does at all?

Malignant information is not a properly defined term yet despite how old it is and how much presence it had in the original Melty Blood. Nasu tends to mention it with the attached explanation "information entirely harmful to intelligent life", and more recently "what's inconvenient for humans to have while trying to perform good deeds". Really vague stuff, so we gotta look for patterns in our case examples.

The first place to look at is the character the concept was created for. Night of Wallachia. Dead Apostle Zepia, and consequently his successor Dead Apostle Sion. Night of Wallachia's gimmick is that Zepia is no longer corporeal but still exists as a curse that manifests in communities plagued by rumors and ingests the community's blood by giving physical form to their malignant information. The thing about his Tatari forms is that they never overlap with real people. They're either characters who are already dead (Nrvnqsr, Satsuki, the original Zepia Eltnam Oberon) or alternate possibilities of the living characters (Nanaya, Red Arcueid). Falsehood is the keyword with Tatari/Night of Wallachia and malignant information is his keyword for falsehood.

Next, CCC is what gives the most elaborate description of what is malignant information because Nasu loves overexplaining BB's powerset instead of properly showing it. The Mooncell is a recording computer, so its positive operation is about recording the truths of the physical world. The products of curses, lies repeated for personal profit, and rumors without substance are categorized as malignant information and dumped on the unobservable wastehole that is the Far Side of the Moon. There's one particular line that didn't really mean anything back when CCC came out but means a lot now that we know how pruning and Lostbelts work. "The Near Side of the Moon records the correct history of human society, while the Far Side records the horridly offending histories that were discarded." Basically, the BB channels are made with pruned timeline data, apparently.

FGO has a couple scattered mentions of malignant information in Kiara's and BB's NP descriptions, but they're mostly concentrated in Id and its buildup. See this post for the relationship between wasteholes and malignant information. This vengefulness angle is the one usage I struggle to associate with the previous usage of malignant information. Id also finally uses malignant information to refer to Salieri's rumor amalgamation monster status, so that's neat with the Melty original.

But do you know what FGO usage case does tie in with the concepts of falsehood and pruning? That's right, Douman. The mechanism of Douman's immortality is converting himself entirely into malignant information and then copying and multiplying his data body as shikigamis. Heian shows off the differences between the flesh-and-blood Douman and his malignant information copy. Limbo is remarkably dramatic (just like Zepia fr fr) and openly affected by his rivalry with Seimei in a way that reflects the rumors about him better than the reality we're shown in the Singularity. It's a neat mirror of the relationship between Toono Shiki and the OG Melty's Nanaya Shiki, the most iconic malignant information construct. And Douman being CHALDEAS's choice of Servant to explore lost histories like Shimousa in preparation for the Lostbelt makes more sense with the idea that they tie to malignant information information as one of his main magecraft expertises.

[dailyarturia]

wall jumpscare

[odeias]

✦ reserves list, august.

these reserves are for our august 1 — august 7 opening period. it will be updated sporadically.

arknights

the doctor — lore

bloodborne

the doll — rose

bungou stray dogs

dazai osamu — remi

ryuunosuke akutagawa — z

ensemble stars!!

wataru hibiki — ren

fire emblem

… archanea.

minera — lia

camus — lia

… three houses.

edelgard von hresvelg — june

felix hugo fraldarius — owl

final fantasy

… seven.

sephiroth — alex

… fourteen.

alisaie leveilleur — mouse

estinien varlineau — owl

hythlodaeus — skadi

ryne waters — daniel

... sixteen.

joshua rosfield — mouse

hatoful boyfriend

fujishiro nageki — lys

hitori uzune — juni

honkai

… star rail.

gepard landau — li

kafka — crow

sampo koski — pingo

jujutsu kaisen

geto suguru — mono

gojo satoru — nell

league of legends

viktor — vincent

library of ruina

xiao — nerd

limbus company

dante — laur

don quixote — puchi

emil sinclair — marion

hong lu — li

ishmael — cae

gregor samsa — virus

yi sang — tamagoogo

lobotomy corporation

carmen — cori

hod — laila

tiphereth — virus

mahoyaku / promise of wizard

cain knightley — puchi

chloe collins — charlie

figaro garcia — lati

owen — alice

oz — blue

rustica ferch — z

shylock bennett — mono

marvel

miguel o'hara — echo

melty blood

zepia eltnam oberon — rozen

metal gear solid

kazuhira miller — vincent

milgram

mikoto kayano — quin

neon genesis evangelion

nagisa kaworu — xia

persona

… three.

hamuko arisato — juni

minato arisato — lati

... five.

goro akechi — murr

puss in boots

humpty alexander dumpty — lok

touhou project

merry hearn — marion

renko usami — cori

undertale

sans — ani

the world ends with you

joshua kiryu — laur

your turn to die

shin tsukimi — daniel

[coolchulainn]

my uncle who works at nintendo

[kara-knuckles]

The announcement of GudaGuda 5 rerun with Case Files still being in Limbo reinforces my theory that they are waiting for the second season, which was supposed to be ready earlier, but got screwed by Covid. And the reason they will wait for the anime is because they plan to add a character from the next arc as a limited Servant.

I think there are currently four candidates in Case Files series that can be used in FGO without being a Pseudo-Servant shoehorn (or, well, two of them can be pseudos, but they actually have reasons for that).

I consider Ergo the least likely option, because a). he is too recent and we know it takes a long time to create a Servant; b). not all identities of the Gods inside of him are known, which also means that c). our knowledge of his abilities is limited; and d). unlike Meteo, Sanda isn't a part of FGO regular writting team, so his series doesn't have the same benefits as Requiem.

Faker somewhat has the same problem in that the anime watchers won't know the full scope of her powers until the last arc. However, her series is finished and she is female, so I can see her being implemented... But that won't explain the rerun delay, unless they plan to make her a Pretender (I doubt that) and the reason we haven't gotten the rerun is due to Avalon Le Fae.

My second most likely guess is actually something I have been joking for a while about, namely Zepia as an Oberon pseudo. "But we just got Oberon!", no, hear me out. First of all, the Oberon we got isn't quite the actual Oberon. Of course, the writers may pull some retroactive bullshit, but let's not think about it right now. Next, Case Files Material teases some sort of connection between Zepia and Oberon. He took the name of the fairy king, and it is specifically pointed out that this is a serious business in the world of magecraft. You know where else the same plot point plays a major role? In Lostbelt 6, with Vortigern. Finally, there is the last Servant teased back in February, whose silhouette looks suspiciously like Zepia. So, if we presume that Zepia is being added, the delay is easily explained because you need Avalon Le Fae to be out to know the other Oberon, the Atlas arc of Case Files to be announced to know he is a part of that series, and, hell, you can even speculate that he will be a DLC in Melty Blood and there will be some lore tying Fate and Tsukihime backstories together, somehow. No wonder they would delay things so much, it's like waiting for the stars to align! "But why would we need two Oberons in the first place?" Because it would be funny to get two Oberons who aren't actually Oberons, and we all know that the jokes are the deepest lore.

But, of course, the most likely option at this point is Kay. He is already mentioned several times in FGO, and they could have recorded his lines alongside Add's. I always thought that he would be less likely to appear than Faker, but, as I mentioned before, with the current situation he seems to fit the bill the most.

Now watch the new Servant actually be the Corpse King...

And here is a bit of a bonus speculation that is more like wishful thinking on my part. You know how the past Halloween events are presented as something like flashbacks in the current one? It will be really cool if Mnemosyne is used as a framing device to rerun Case Files alongside some other events (Accel Zero Order and Da Vinci's event would probably make the most sense).

[colourpicked]

Nonbinary flag with Night of Wallachia from Tsukihime

[reignsan]

Zepia Eltnam Atlasia, the Fate timeline version of Zepia Eltnam Oberon from Melty Blood, from Case Files Material. In Fate timelines he is a Dead Apostle, but he’s not the Night of Wallachia and is still the director of Atlas. He appears in Case Files during the Atlas Contract arc, volumes 6 and 7, which take place in Gray’s hometown.

[julia-stored-in-heart]

this Wall guy is pretty moe

[inversionimpulse]

The Mincing Mockingbird Guide to Troubled Type-Moon Antagonists

Since my Guide to Troubled Type-Moon Protagonists did better than expected (I.E. it got any notes at all), I went ahead and made another, but with villains.

... Though, like the first one had characters who aren’t officially protagonists, this one includes characters who aren’t main antagonists, aren’t particularly malicious, or don’t stay antagonists (or just aren’t antagonists at all, in the case of Type-Mercury, who is standing in for Type-Saturn, who has no official art). In some cases this is because I couldn’t find a fitting quote for the more major villains, or because I didn’t know anything about them, or just personal preference.

[fiannalover]

Can't stop thinking about Habenyan mentioning all fairies have a purpose, and they're unable to fully leave that purpose, and Oberon is the Autumm Court's Fairy King, the season where things fall and die, and his domain is the Forest of Wales, which he explicitly states is "a place of relaxation for withering things", and he is here to help us kill Morgan and give the Lostbelt a peaceful end, and how this connects and is opposed to his Melty Blood namesake, and hhhhhhhhh

[tainbocuailnge]

i initially thought zepia was only mentioned in casefiles but waver straight up gets his help in solving a case and the sheer concept of zepia eltnam oberon being just kind of an eccentric but overall decent dude as far as mages go instead of the most balls to the walls batshit conceptual vampire made of malicious rumors and drama is SENDING me, I can barely wrap my head around a sane wallachia and you’re telling me he’s HELPFUL?? you’re telling me he's A GOOD PARENT TO SION???????

[kaibutsushidousha]

What do you like so much about Zepia?

Good question. A madman who lost himself to the daunting task of saving the world is probably the most common Nasu villain archetype, so I have no shortage of characters to compare him to. So what makes Zepia's tragedy stand among so many like it?

The first and most shallow factor to consider is that Zepia is more aesthetically interesting than most if not all of his peers. The vampire imagery, the theater imagery, and the possibilities brought by his status as rumor land malware are all super cool stuff that meshes well with each other and ties in neatly with the themes of Melty's narrative.

The other key factor is his relationship with Sion, the other natural information vampire of the Eltnams. Due to Sion's unique talents, the creeds of the Atlas Institute, and the beliefs and upbringing that naturally form when the two are combined, Zepia takes a very "you are me" approach to his interactions with Sion. He knows where she's going because he walked that same walk. He knows what becomes of Sion when she loses her hopes. Sion was a TATARI in the making, until Actress Again where she actually became Zepia's TATARI successor like he sorta wanted at first. Because Sion is a new hope Zepia found some 500 years after losing all that he previously had.

Most other members of Nasu's fallen hero archetype don't have this personal and involved connection with the protagonist they confront. Sion and Zepia are thoroughly defined by their relationship with each other and FGO thoroughly and consistently proves that Sion can't be interesting with him removed from the picture.

There is one exception. Archer is the one Nasu madman wrecked by the task of saving the world who has even more of a "you are me" relationship with his hero. If ask me which other Nasu antagonist is the closest to Zepia, my answer is Archer. They even share the powerful heartwarming moment of happily accepting that their enemy has found something better in life than following his doomed footsteps. But Zepia stands out more as the undiluted version of this idea since there is so much more stuff happening in UBW while Melty Blood is only Sion and Zepia (arguably Shiki and Riesbyfe too, but be honest, they're accessories to Sion's character more than anything). It's a prime example of how less can be more.

[dailyarturia]

if there's one nasuverse character outside fate you read up on in your life please make it night of wallachia

[trashybugs]

Yo, I did some digging about Oberon and our lovely mothman is all over Europe, to the point his true origins is unkown. I might need to send more than one bug though, still I hope you find this interesting! In Arthurian legends, Oberon is mostly known as Morgan and Julius Caesar's son, but in other sources, he is the grandfather of freakin Merlin, or Morgan's brother. In other stories, he has a daughter named Gloriana, whom Arthur falls in love with and eventually, ends up being his ally.

interesting! i did know that in some legends Oberon and Merlin are related but i can't find a source of it, i do remember some people speculating that he's Merlin's dad back in LB6.1

its interesting to see how much connection he have with the Pendragons, im wondering if they're going to release or at least tease PHH Oberon in the future or not since he still have a lot of mystery like his relationship with Zepia Eltnam Oberon

well maybe not in fateverse but he could show up in another TM works

[coolchulainn]

ah, what did I seek this form for again?

[kara-knuckles]

You know how before Oberon was announced there was a theory that the last silhouette that was shown way back then was going to be Zepia as Oberon's pseudo? So now that Oberon was revealed and apparently his art doesn't match the silhouette, what if it is Zepia in some form after all, but he will be added in either the potential Melty Blood collab (unlikely for several reasons) or in Case Files rerun (would explain such a long delay if they are waiting for anime news).