I always assumed Rin not putting two and two together was due to the same mix of guilt, embarrassed genius bullheadedness, and Magus pantomime that drives every bad decision Rin makes in HF.
I always assumed Rin not putting two and two together was due to the same mix of guilt, embarrassed genius bullheadedness, and Magus pantomime that drives every bad decision Rin makes in HF.
My opinion is that Rin is so incompatible with Kirei that it's either find every little thing he does suspicious and overthink every single word he says or just tune him out. Sorta like if Spider-man's spider sense went off 24/7 or something.
The only character who might be a more confusing liar than Kirei might be goddamn Oberon, and that guy's whole being is lies. It's almost impossible to tell without immense prior knowledge and omniscient insight into Kirei's character what is decidedly true enough and thus trustworthy enough to act upon and what are lies. It certainly doesn't help that Kirei dabbles in exact words and Jedi truths on the regular, and often combines them with blatant lies to confuse anyone's BS detector.
Originally Posted by Deathhappens
Well the main thing is that its not just HF, Rin has a way of looking at things where she gets caught off guard when they don't fit to the pattern.
Its just that she was blindsided with a ton of information that contradicts what she always thought about her family, the war, and other things. I mean, the game starts with her kinda getting illusions broken that she was gonna have some honorable mage duel and she had to face the fact they were literally forcing a town's populace to endure having living superweapons walking around right in the middle of a metropolitan area, comforting herself that maybe people would be too afraid of the Association to cause harm to citizens.
That is the start of the game, and she keeps getting her illusions broken over the course of all the routes. HF is just where they kept getting broken over and over, so she scrambles in the midst of it.
She self loathes a lot after the fact, but has a hard time taking a step back and stopping to think once she gets going. That was what that whole business where she said she needed someone to be her brakes. But Kirei (and Zouken) were kinda making it plainly obvious they were playing the group(he allows someone to disenchant the worms from Sakura with no actions against it, the gang didn't just attempt the final surgery for the worm in her heart when they were already talking about killing her anyway nor did the so called concerned person recommend that as he smiled about them deliberating the decision).
Shirou I can understand, because he is an amateur, but I can't really give her that same leeway. Given she is supposed to be more intelligent than he is, and somewhat wiser, someone who is gleefully telling you the bad news instead of advising to press forward with the heart surgery and just getting on with the operation raises huge red flags that he only cared about them agonizing over the decision. Even if the option is possible death, most people would try to shoot for the possible solution than to just cap the invalid if they have the option to take it. That is one of my pet peeves in the round robin of "it can't be helped" levied against Sakura. Especially because she survived this long with all this experimentation, and you wouldn't even try that final surgery? Get outta here.
The fact that it so easily played into both Kirei and Zouken's plan is even more infuriating.
I don't think anyone's saying Rin didn't make a bunch of shitty decisions in the route, but all things considered, the chances of her making other decisions in the moment are quite low.
And yet Shirou was questioning and noticing things a little earlier than her? The 3rd rate magus was noticing things were off earlier than the genius?
Hell, thinking back on the bit where she tells Sakura she had been hoping Sakura had had a happier life than her, yet was telling Shirou stuff how she noticed Sakura wasn't smiling except only around him, and telling him later how surprised she was about Sakura being so happy at the Emiya home, shows she probably just suppressed any questions or whatever.
Kinda what I was getting at. Considering the circumstances of her own upbringing, like her lingering guilt over Sakura and her half-baked commitment to being an ideal magus, and her inability at times to properly follow through or do her due diligence because she'd jumped to a conclusion already, it's not a surprise she made the cascade of poor decisions she made.
When I first read hf I was actually only cheering for Rin, since she seemed to be the only one trying to head off a potential disaster in the making for innocent people.
It was also clear to see how much she struggled with that idea despite thinking it through logically
She doesn't suffer like Sakura but she's certainly conflicted in the story far beyond just wanting to be an asshole to Sakura, even if it came off that way to Sakura and a lot of fans
But if she basically saying to sakura.." i actually love you" made her back to senses , one could say doing it earlier could have avoided the scalation, but i know, the story would have been much shorter , and not as intense
The situation wouldn't be solved.
The reason things got into that mess in the first place is because the crest worm culd not be removed without killing Sakura, and as long as it's there the Shadow is a threat to the city.
Rin admitting to Sakura she actually loves her doesn't remove the crest, and the only reason Sakura managed to remove it is because her connection to the grail gave her regen hax.
And Rin also had no influence on what directly caused Sakura to go overdrive, that was all Shinji.
Rin admitting her emotions to Sakura could result in a more cooperative atmosphere among them to figure out what to do eventually, so basically the stuff that ended up happening would still need to happen, just with less 'oomph', and I guess the Jeweled Sword wouldn't need to be projected. That's about it.
burn your dread you coward
When you think about it, they got really damn lucky in HF.
If Rin was not cold to Sakura, and Shinji didn't try to rape her, and Gil didn't attack her, and she didn't eat Gil, she might not have turned into Dark Sakura.
If Kirei hadn't destroyed Zouken's body and Sakura wasn't Dark Sakura, Zouken's last worm might not have gotten out.
If Shirou didn't happen to see Rule Breaker, he couldn't have severed the link between Angra and Sakura.
Yup, the things that need to happen still would happen, so some discussions are pointless
To skip comment, yeah, i tought they had horrible luck but the thing is they were really lucky, and maybe sakura turning dark was more lucky than unlucky, since it finally allowed her to get rid of zouken. Otherwise, he would always have the win hand
Its not just about whether she was an asshole to Sakura or not, she actively was doing things because she wanted to push away the doubts from her.
Given the benefit of the doubt, as we saw in Zero, Aoi and Rin were made to just pretend Sakura didn't exist, and they clearly didn't like that.
She stayed with them until she was four, and there are no pictures left, so one would assume they destroyed her old pictures and threw out her clothes.
In that environment, I can say it would be difficult to do anything, let alone so young, primarily because both her and her mother ascribe to the "family head has final say, no rebuttal"..
But later toward the current time it became more murky, that and logically, based on things she says in other routes, she knows things are bad, given she is breaking her own self-imposed rules and stalking Sakura.
That's why in UBW, it was really headscratch inducing that she immediately stopped investigating the Matou household because Shirou said "yeah, an adopted kid would change depending on if the home was good or bad". I'm like well no shit but how is that relevant for you, Rin? That was more egregious than the "archer class is full of archers" thing.
This boy, who was obviously raised in a home he liked, made you feel better about a person you know has an abusive stepsibling, even when she is so called the hope of their family based on what your father told you as being why she would get stellar treatment. And the stepbrother who has no magical talent to speak of has the family's servant, while their scion who your father told you has as much magical talent as you are, barely registers a blip on your scouter. That is clearly you sweeping things under the rug.
She even lies to Shirou when he asks an actually pertinent question on if Sakura knows about magic.
The funniest thing is that in the Fate route she gets visibly angry at Shirou for having Sakura make breakfast for him, than gets into a fight with said imouto telling her to leave her place of refuge without actually explaining why (the fact that the two who just had a fight, then so easily get along right afterward, to the point even Shirou is surprised by it, means they talked in secret).
When you really get down to brass tacks, she is a mess when she tries to be a big sister. In or out of HF.
Kirei tells you that, but his motive is not to cure Sakura, its to make sure Rin and Shirou suffer while she lives long enough to give birth to AM. Curing her fully would put less onus on Sakura(besides, heart surgery is a thing), less stress for the group and have them put more attention to what is actively causing their crisis, and his plans for getting AM to manifest are less likely to happen.The situation wouldn't be solved.
The reason things got into that mess in the first place is because the crest worm culd not be removed without killing Sakura, and as long as it's there the Shadow is a threat to the city.
So you have to take what he says with a grail of salt. Sakura survived a lot to even live this long, as Zouken admitted in Zero he took no special precautions on a 4 year old to implant the worms in the first place and she has been a guinea pig for over a decade. He says flat out that he was surprised she lived this long several times.
Secondly, Kirei tries to tell Shirou when he finds the truth to have Rin synchronize with Sakura and use the grail, and you know he isn't going to give them a plan that would permakill AM. Like most of what he says, its half truths and a poisoned pill.
Further, the problem with the Shadow is not just Sakura, but the grail system itself, which Rin muses on in day 6 iirc. She just focused squarely on Sakura when Zouken and Kirei trolled her into it and forgot that train of thought.
The Shadow ceases to be a problem if the source is taken out, and the source was filtered through Sakura, but isn't totally Sakura.
Last edited by Altima of the Gates; October 3rd, 2021 at 11:57 AM.
My interpretation of the UBW thing is that Rin basically just took what Shirou said as confirmation of what she wanted to hear, and that's fairly in character for her regarding the Sakura situation. It's like how Kiritsugu poorly explained to Taiga his dilemma with regards to teaching Shirou Magecraft, and he took her half-baked answer as a solution.
That's pretty much what I was thinking. It was purely to assuage her own doubts while it helped her keep to what I would assume is something she (and her mother) promised to her father, to stay out of any business with the Matous.
So Shirou slinging basically "fun things are fun" was the perfect way for her to obfuscate.
Of course, the irony is that she would then risk her life because she believes that saving her stepbrother was important for her.
And then the triple irony is that it was, but the caveat makes me cross eyed.
When you look at things in hindsight, its all just a big mess of fucked up.
This is part of why I'd want to see a dismantlement story. Rin would probably have to confront the truth for the first time in a non-HF setting, and it'd be interesting how an older and wiser her would take it.
Why not? Either way..
Spoiler:
I dunno, that is kinda like where people don't acknowledge that Shirou is Shirou regardless of the route.
There was always this prevailing thing in the fandom that he was a totally different person in HF, despite evidence to the contrary shown in multiple places in the past routes.
Like how they thought Shirou going so far, and reacting how he did for Sakura didn't gel with them, despite them kinda throwing it in your face how seriously Shirou takes the people closest to him. Like how in the final battle in Fate, where he was walking with Saber to the temple, where he considers how badly he didn't want to lose her and considers backing out of the fight.
Hell, that in itself would be as much of an abdication of duty than people imply HF was imo, given in HF Shirou is diehard wanting to solve the issue entirely, not just saving Sakura, he just wasn't willing to sacrifice Sakura for it.
But in that scene in Fate he very much considers for a moment running away with Saber and only really pulls back because he considers she would dislike him for that. Plus, his whole mentality is that he wants to "replace the chair for himself in his heart for her", which you could make the argument that wouldn't be healthy, as a counter in an argument for Sakura/Shirou where its not that he wants to replace "himself" for Sakura, he wants to be with her as a couple and get through their trials together (what the final walk before using RB on her, was about his talk of atonement, which considering his character, should be something you pay attention to with his words).
Then you have UBW, where Taiga gets kidnapped, and Rin muses on the decision to give up on her rather than take Caster's deal. Shirou considers killing Rin, but self censors it in his head. He was totally looking to take the deal and was willing if not chomping at the bit, ready to fight Rin if she was going to try sacrificing Taiga, but that is often put under the radar.
Its amusing, but I think people tend to, even if its a little harsh to say so, project themselves a little bit on Shirou(their idea of what the ideal means to him, the enforcement of it, the execution), and not understand the totality of his character running through all these routes, so no surprise if they break them up mentally based on that.
Last edited by Altima of the Gates; October 9th, 2021 at 08:06 AM.
I think the most fairest argument one can make is that each routes execution of the themes of the story it's trying to tell are what's personal preference, not the actual messages themselves. Each route is objectively valid as a path forward for shirou and despite the human versus non human element, "healthy vs unhealthy" doesn't factor into any of it.
In fate route shirou settles the demons of his past directly through negating the choice to undo his present, surpasses archer by saving the person he regretted being unable to save and uses what she gave him as a means to weather the storm while still subconsciously seeking his own happiness(her)
Ubw has shirou confronts the image of the ideal he had been following literally, and upon defeating said ideal and symbolically and literally defeating archer, promises to never let it consume him.
And heavens feel deconstructs the two previous paths, setting shirou on the path to discarding his previous self for Sakura, while again eventually seeking his own happiness (Sakura) and surpassing archer by denying "emiya shirou".
All 3 results although different in execution lead shirou down a more positive path for himself that he won't ever come to regret and that's the most important thing.
Whether I have issues with heavens feels depiction of altruism vs selfishness as "more or less humanlike" and how that concerns Sakura or shirou is irrelevant to how it all fits into the wider themes of fate stay night.
Tldr all routes are valid, the constant thematic roadblock that is "archer" and stuff like mind of steel and such are the only actual "unhealthy" routes for shirou. And anyone who says otherwise is wrong.
very well put together, Inu. As a quite HF guy, both the "HF is a betrayal" people and "HF is the only good shirou" are missing the point
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