is that confirmed to be a stone?Originally Posted by madarra
looks pretty red to me.
wouldnt it be more like the waters of life?
is that confirmed to be a stone?looks pretty red to me.
wouldnt it be more like the waters of life?
have you ever seen sand
かん汗ぎゅう牛じゅう充とう棟
Expresses the exceeding size of one's library.
Books are extremely many, loaded on an oxcart the ox will sweat.
At home piled to the ridgepole of the house, from this meaning.
Read out as 「Ushi ni ase shi, munagi ni mitsu.」
Source: 柳宗元「其為書，處則充棟宇，出則汗牛馬。」— Tang Dynasty
Iirc the JP voices mostly say Kenja no Ishi and like only once say Aqua Vitae
Oh good, I was remembering correctlylooks pretty red to me.
It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
Was thinking on other OC/original magecrafts that can at least somewhat be linked with IRL Concepts
Like the thing i said the other day on projection and the symbolicness of ritual tools (as in they just represent the thing)
Reality marble is just macrocosm/microcosm or just links to literal egg symbolism in many myths
Sure, yeah, though that one is just basically straight up explained in the stories, so I don't know if that one counts as much.
True, i guess you could link the calculation stuff that atlas does to some conceptions of alchemy, specifically the ones that see's the magnum opus as a internal thing and not a literal physical stone or process, but i feel like im stretching that maybe
Last edited by Byegod; February 9th, 2022 at 02:39 PM.
I should look back on how I understand alchemy is in this fictional world, and how much it ties in how alchemy was defined historically IRL
Because I realize I don't really recognize and understand what alchemy was of the latter. I only know superficially from weeaboo media.
There's really multiple chools of thought when it came to IRL from my understanding. The stereotypical 'stone is a literal object' vs 'its all a metaphor for a higher state of being and the process for it' For example FMA uses a lot of the former but I'm pretty certain it uses elements of the latter, for example the idea is that the stone is your body in old text i read.
Plus there are variations on parts of it, for example the stages of the magnum opus can be nigredo, albedo and then rubedo OR nigredo, albedo, Citrinitas then rubedo.
From my readings and checking wikipedia citrianas tended to get compresses into rubedo after a certain point
And there is all sorts of shit like sun and moon symbolism for example and the 4 elements which may be linked with each stage of the magnum opus ect
It was making me remember that Dust of Osiris's endgame from MBAA was called out as being alchemy af
Also, very hazy uncertain recollection of someone here before made a speculation post on how Note's Land of Steel related to one of those aforementioned alchemy phases; I cannot recall for the life of me who and if this was what was question then.
It really surprised me that the "alchemy from Egyptian metallurgy" thing in the side material wasn't some invention and was something even written on the Wikipedia article.
Altrouge is interesting and something that could be fun and cool. Her concept is fantastic too.
Vlov is like an ok concept but he's boring as a person and character so zzz. His main appeal is being fun in Melty let's be real.
He needs more knight armor clearly.
Alchemy roots are heavily from egypt at least at first, it merged heavily with middle east and hermetic occultism
I do recall one thing from a alchemical text i did read, since occult texts love shrouding everything in metaphor
One of the things in the text was referred to the tomb of osiris to refer to if memory serves the first stage which is nigredo, if i wanted to go deeper maybe I could say something like dust of osiris never got past the first stage in the spiritual journey version, the spiritual death that is nigredo
I posted this as a blog entry but I'm reposting it here, if the wording feels more like a blog that's probably why... heh.
I don't think there's anywhere else to post something like this, not unless I dig up my dead youtube channel from its grave. As with most visual novel protagonists that change a lot between routes, I don't think it's anything new to say some people prefer a route's version over the other. But recently I came across a person's interpretation of the visual novel as an overarching character arc for Shirou.
Here's their exact wording.
[Wasn't the whole thing like..
Fate: "I will be a hero!"
UBW: Questioning Emiya's idealism and showing the consequences of them if he goes down that path
HF: "I can't save everyone, so I want to do the best for those I care about" ]
I spoke to them a bit back and forth, and their main point is that the Fate route is there to establish the wish to be a hero, the UBW route is to showcase how futile that wish is, and the HF route is to evolve Shirou past that ideal as he puts his loved one(s) first.
This happens a lot to the UBW route from what I've seen. It gets attached at the hip to the HF route as "set up for the really good Shirou development". And I can't help but be confused and frustrated.
Unlimited Blade Works isn't about explaining to the reader that Shirou is a dumbass and you should want him to change. It's about the exact opposite. There's no big shift in perspective in UBW for Shirou, he simply grows as he comes to terms with his ideals. However, there is a person of the Emiya family that does have a shift in perspective. Archer's character arc in UBW is more akin to heroic character arcs we're used to seeing. Scarred hero with a troubled past learns to reignite his passion for his dream and believe in it again.
UBW isn't there to establish Shirou's ideals are garbage. It's a double fakeout. The predictable course of events is for a foolishly optimistic heroic wannabe to realize his dream is futile, give up on it, then grow past it somehow. But then you realize Shirou's past flips things on their head. The dream doesn't originate from within himself in the first place. He's not delusionally blinded by some sort of ego. In fact the more he understands the consequences of his actions the more determined he becomes.
This is because the main factor determining Emiya Shirou's success or failure in his path in UBW is not the reality around him, it's not the people he fights or the people he has to kill. The deciding factor in his success and failure is his own mental health. His own motivation. The fuel that keeps him going. That's why he says he is fine with losing to anyone except to himself. As long as Shirou never ever gives in, then his dreams and his path remain justified. If he gives into regret like Archer did, then yes. His dream was a failure.
If he had given up on his dream then yes UBW would be a route about how sucky his ideals are and how he sucks and should change. However, the exact opposite happens. His faith becomes stronger, he becomes stronger, and Archer is the one who has the flame within him reignited as opposed to being able to extinguish his younger version's drive.
The only way I can see someone ignoring all of that and just seeing UBW as a route to deconstruct Shirou's ideals, is if the emotions in his confrontation with Archer were completely ignored by the person.
UBW deconstructs Shirou's ideals only to build them back up by the end.
It's about how the hard decisions defining who you are can't be answered by others, and you yourself cannot be defined by others. Sometimes the most difficult decision in your life will require you to place full faith in only yourself. And that's okay. As long as you're willing to shoulder the burden that comes with that. That burden is that you can never give up, otherwise you should've never put that much faith in your path in the first place.
That's what Shirou could not accept about Archer. And that's what Archer embraces in the end. Because of how herculean the task Shirou wishes to accomplish is, his determination has to be of unimaginable levels. That might not be the most realistic portrayal of the human psyche but god damn it if it's not a theme humanity has always held in high regard. I don't think a character arc is better written just because it's more grounded and sad. The myths and legends that Fate has used to create countless Servants originate from humanity's own dreams. The point of those tales was never the question of did they take place for certain or are they simply stories. It's what a person interprets from the story, the lesson they take away from it.
Sue me for thinking it, but the idea of abandoning everything for your loved ones is nothing new and has been executed a thousand times in portrayals of the hero's journey. And of course, so has the concept of a protagonist with unbreakable determination. However the way it's executed and portrayed in UBW is very special in my eyes. The fact that there's still people who only see that route as "the route that exposes Shirou's a dumbass" goes to show that it tried to pull the rug under your feet with its decision to have the protagonist change everything but his goals. Even if it didn't land for a lot of people, it's always inspired me.
If it never resonated with me, I might not have made it this far in my life as dumb as that sounds. And I sure as hell wouldn't have had to vent about it like this. It's fine to prefer a Shirou without his ideology, but I think it's a whole other level to discredit UBW's entire point just because optimism is easier to dismiss as foolishness.
Since we have Nasu's "intended themes" for each route:
Fate: "Oneself as an ideal"UBW: "Struggling with oneself as an ideal"
HF: "Friction between reality and ideals"
it's fairly easy to see what the intended takeaway is, as well. Fate reinforces, UBW tests but ultimately does not (necessarily) reject (often the idea of struggling is that we overcome the struggle and come out better for it), while HF leans closer to rejection. I honestly think all of this is almost painfully obvious in most of the text that, as you were getting at, the only way to really interpret it in another way is to willfully ignore those parts of the text. Still, I've heard it many times before, and funnily enough the "shirou's a dumbass" thing does get brought up a lot, and while it's something I can sort of understand people thinking for Shirou in his entirety (even though the ratio of people who think this after having read the VN vs only watched the anime seems awfully skewed), coming to that conclusion in a single route alone just screams "missing the point" for me.
This person is a VN only fan, which baffles me all the more how you could read all three routes and miss the point of one. I have to assume they feel the need to justify some sort of connection that HF is the objective path that Shirou should take and going down UBW is a mistake so they outright reject UBW's latter half? I'm not sure.
That wouldn't be too out there, really. I've had several people I know read the entire thing only to at some point randomly refer to HF as the "true route" or "canon route", in which case it's easy to see how you need to twist the meaning of the previous ones slightly in order to neatly fit them into that view.
Shirou came to different conclusions of his standpoint depending on thehe ended up in. Personally, that's the charm of FSN, depicting that interacting with someone else for considerable amount of time will either reinforce or reshape a person's worldview.girlroute
One of the problems one could say of Heavens Feel is that it isn't really interaction, struggling with, or exploring an answer with Sakura that brings a change in Shirou.
Its horny, and the sort of need to protect Sakura from her lack of agency and the evils shes pushed in. It has a lot of great moments, it uses some characters fantastically (Kotomine). But it fails Shirou, and most of all it fails Sakura in a few core ways like this.
You could say that Nasu figured he'd try to flip it on its head by making the heroine an antagonistic force (already been done in Tsukihime mind.) But you can have a antagonistic heroine of a route interact with, push and force development/answers from the protagonist!... After all the heroine of UBW, Archer does just that very well prior to Heavens Feel
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