2Deep4Me or "How I learned to stop thinking and enjoy the headcanon"

[Kirby]

Was Ryougi's identity complex a stand-in for Japanese postwar national re-identification?

Correct.

It's actually my idea so I guess I'll see if I can find an old post because I swear I've made at least a short version of that post on BL proper.

Anyone know where this old post is? I tried looking through this thread but couldn't actually find anything.

[Leftovers]

From here onwards.

[Rafflesiac]

For a while, I've liked the idea that one of the reasons Shirou beat Gil is that while it's a rule of the world that humans can't beat Servants, since UBW is a different world that rule no longer applies.

[RoydGolden]

For a while, I've liked the idea that one of the reasons Shirou beat Gil is that while it's a rule of the world that humans can't beat Servants, since UBW is a different world that rule no longer applies.

I think the reason "humans can't beat Servants" is more because Servants as a whole are massively superhuman then any kind of kind of conceptual rule, but sure. Whatever floats your boat.

[UnlimitedBladeWorks]

Reviving this thread with something I've been thinking about for a while. Does Fate/Extra (CCC and Encore included) resemble Tsukihime thematically more than Fate? If this is the case then why?

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to clarify a bit I often find myself wondering why FSN's themes and ideas remain if not exclusive to it far more rare than works inspired by Tsukihime in TM (especially Nasu's) corpus. I think Fate/Extra's as the first Fate spinoff provide an interesting window into this.

[Comun]

Maybe I'm not the best person to answer this because the idea of "Fate and Tsukihime as two separate things" doesn't come organically to me, one thing I can say is Hakuno is a lot more Shiki than Shirou. They don't have an ideal they study and ultimately decide to keep pursuing, keep pursuing more critically, or abandon in favor of mundane happiness in loving company. Instead, they're just a person marked by the fragility of their life, whose thoughts are more focused on the deaths they see and the moral validity of pursuing happiness with blood on their hands, and whose actions are motivated by Nasu's most overpowered girlfriends the will to reciprocate kindness.

Overall, Nasu just feels more comfortable and natural writing the Shiki kind of protagonist rather than the Shirou kind.

[UnlimitedBladeWorks]

Yeah that's what's interesting to me I guess. Nasu writes the Shirou type once and then never really does again for his leads which is interesting for a writer who's not exactly afraid of reusing/playing on old character archetypes.

[Formless Creature]

I was alerted of this thread by it being resurrected, and, finding the subject interesting, I began backreading through all 70 pages, which is what I tend to do with BL threads that I find interesting and haven't yet hit the 1000+ page mark. And although I am only on the 28th page As I was ruminating on this, I went ahead and finished all 70 pages to see if there was any greater discussion of what I'm about to talk about next.

Anyway, it is weird how the subject of sex = killing/death keeps coming up, even by complete accident. In fact, TM itself seems to have a strange fascination with the intersection between sex and death, however imagined. There are several villains who literally kill you by having sex with you. Even in something like Agartha, Fergus' entire counter-argument to Scheherazade when it came to her fear of death was "have sex. ideally with me specifically". I guess you could always just say it's like, a fetish thing (for Minase it probably is, really), but it's interesting how often it gets brought up. I guess something something, beginning and the end, things can't have a meaning without an end, etc.

Also it's interesting going back, seeing people's theories about early FGO, and noticing how close they got. It makes you wonder how things like GUT will look when all is said and done 50 years from now.

[TomPen94]

Bridge's legacy lives on.
:')

[UnlimitedBladeWorks]

Yeah this was one of my favorite threads back in the day so I wanted to bring it back.

[UnlimitedBladeWorks]

Still reading Mahoyo (on chapter 8) and I think it's interesting how even in pre crash Japanese society Soujirou is alienated and finds that in a lot of ways society has little to offer him. With Shirou and Ryougi if you look at FSN and KNK from a social lens you get the vibe that a lot of their alienation is supposed to represent a like post crash rupture in the youth but even Soujirou isn't really fulfilled by urban life even in the 80s. It shows that Nasu doesn't inherently romanticize the pre crash era I guess.

[Maedhros]

The crash is obviously a big part of Nasu's writing but I think there's also a lot of it that has to do with "modernity" or the "experience of modernity." Those're terribly vague terms that get used in a lot of ways, and I've never really put enough thought into how exactly they apply to Nasu's work to really define how I'm using them in this context, nor have I ever put in the effort to think about exactly what Nasu's saying about them. However, Nasu's preoccupation with "consumption civilization," the constant contrast of "mountain weirdos" like Soujuurou with more modern types, and even small stuff like the more straightforward modernization seen in Misaki City or Fuyuki's Shinto are definitely getting at some worldview of Nasu's (or his characters')-I just haven't really thought about what that point might be. I think I've just learned by rote that anytime alienation and urbanization start showing up in media, "modernity" is never far behind. Someone said, in the Misc Thoughts thread the other day, that the Touko/Araya dynamic forms the core of a lot of Nasu's work, but this I think is the Alice/Aoko dynamic (and probably also the First/Fifth)-and I think that if anything ever makes Nasu's take on modernity more clear, it'll be the mythical Mahoyo sequels. Or maybe it's clear enough already and I just need to put some brainpower into it.

[Kamera]

It's been clear since Angel Notes and Tsuki no Sango.

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It's not like Nasu had been subtle about his vague pessimism against modernity either. It's baked into the TM worldbuilding with the conception of Gaia and Alaya.

[UnlimitedBladeWorks]

I'm not quite sure if Angel Notes is pessimistic against modernity. Rather Angel Notes seems to lean more towards ambivalence, humanity itself will die out but some form of their "essence" may remain in the A-Rays. Absolutely agree about Tsuki no Sango though

[Maedhros]

I had forgotten about Tsuki no Sango, which is definitely pretty transparently on the pessimistic side. I'm not convinced that's true of everything Nasu has written, though, or at least no so one-sidedly; Aoko is a heroine, after all, and one of the earliest.

[Petrikow]

It's not like Nasu had been subtle about his vague pessimism against modernity either. It's baked into the TM worldbuilding with the conception of Gaia and Alaya.

I don't think he's a pessimist at all. If anything, he's so relentlessly optimistic about the future of mankind that he trends toward stories that are all about overcoming and surpassing the end of humanity. The brightest and most hopeful answer to the most pessimistic and bleak future possible.

And this comes up again and again.
Notes? Dead world, extinct humans, cosmic invaders. Story about life blooming anew.
Tsuki no Sango? Humanity stagnant, brink of collapse, nothing being born. Story about finding love.
Last Encore? Earth is exhausted, humanity nearly wiped out. Story about taking back the future.
Grand Order? Future gone, past incinerated, earth blank, etc. Story about never resigning your life.

In short:

[Reign]

Yeah Nasu's works will make commentary on consumerism and stuff - I recall Mahoyo having a decent bit of this - but overall his stories trend toward optimism about humans.

[Kirishima]

Tl;dr the world sucks, but you can make it better

[tsugumi]

Magi humour consists mostly of in-jokes.

The rate of SA at the Clocktower is high. Most of it probably isn't seen as SA, exactly.

[UnlimitedBladeWorks]

This isn't actually a headcanons thread it's meant to be a lit crit thread.