Things that annoy you in TM

[Menwearpink]

Skills don’t just go up and down like that with energy. Also you’re implying Kiritsugu is good enough at magic to mess with a servant container or servant parameters.

[asterism42]

I think I have mulled over it enough to confidently say that A Thing that annoys me in TM is Foreigner class Servants

probly a common opinion, but I wanted to say it

[Byegod]

My issue is them using none lovecraft characters for foreigners, using actual people just paints over the original with retarded lore

Adbul ahzerad, nyarly, herbert west, theres a huge plethora of lovecraft characters you could use instead of van gogh, van gogh offends me quite a lot

[mami-kouga]

I think I have mulled over it enough to confidently say that A Thing that annoys me in TM is Foreigner class Servants

probly a common opinion, but I wanted to say it

I've never had strong opinions on it before admittedly (though that had more to do with me regarding it as mostly a waifu class and thus not really worth my attention. Voyager doesn't count) but the latest event made my feelings tip a bit more in the negative. I'm not an art student so I'm not particularly attached to Van Gogh, but I found myself kind of dissatisfied with what they decided to go with even if the intention was to have a sort of foil for Nemo present. The latest revealed classification "someone tied with destruction" feels kind of vague as hell and the people they've chosen feel like reaches, but that's applies to most classes anyway at this point, so what do I know

[eddyak]

My issue is them using none lovecraft characters for foreigners, using actual people just paints over the original with retarded lore

Adbul ahzerad, nyarly, herbert west, theres a huge plethora of lovecraft characters you could use instead of van gogh, van gogh offends me quite a lot

It's more the outright use of Lovecraft characters that annoys me. You don't have to use the man's pantheon and characters, writers, you can just take the general idea. It just adds another layer of disbelief you need to get through when they outright name characters from a very different series.

[asterism42]

Abby being, like, the Dunwich Horror I was kinda okay with, since Salem is, y'know, Lovecraft country adjacent; but since then it's been a steady downward slide.

XX is also fine because she's unabashedly a gag character, and as for Voyager, I am pretty certain it's just a stand-in for his actual class.

but the rest, yuck

[Comun]

Voyager is very explicitly not a Foreigner in /Requiem. Like, Erice asks the Foreigner if he is a Foreigner, and she answers "No, he's from a Class I've never seen before".

[Mattias]

It's more the outright use of Lovecraft characters that annoys me. You don't have to use the man's pantheon and characters, writers, you can just take the general idea. It just adds another layer of disbelief you need to get through when they outright name characters from a very different series.

I thought, aside from Abby, none of the Old Ones were named as the source of Foreigners? Heavily implied yes, but never out right coming out and saying Hokusai is Cthulhu.


I'm still hoping for an event once we have enough Foreigners where we get Lovecraft as a servant and it turns out he's the Solomon to the Old Ones Demon Pillars.

[Byegod]

Feel like that goes against the point of lovecrafts setting view
i mean they fucking used randalph carter his insert for christ's sake.

[EgoFra]

Skills don’t just go up and down like that with energy.

Not necessarily, taking Gilgamesh as a model CM3 says otherwise. And there is a similar quote even on saber case and her riding skill.

https://imgur.com/a/Te8CrVK

[Menwearpink]

MR's kind of weird about that tbh because of what MR is and how it works.

Regardless if that's the stance you want to take then we return to Rin vs Kerry, with Rin being someone that's suppose to completely max Saber out.

Also in the case of Gilgamesh CM3 talks about the details and its Incarnation/Angra Mainyu mud stuff.

Since the Fourth Holy Grail War, the ability to freely operate without regard for the Master remained unchanged. However, the ability to remain materialized after the Holy Grail War was not gained until he was showered by the content of the Holy Grail. At the end of the Fourth Holy Grail War, Gilgamesh was absorbed for a while after being showered by the black mud spilled from the broken vessel of the Holy Grail. However, Gilgamesh could not even be digested by the mud that was filled with All the World’s Evil – Angra Mainyu. On the contrary, he was given a flesh body and regurgitated back into the present world. As a result, Gilgamesh was completely incarnated and continued to survive as an existence with a physical body. It is also of note that the super egotistical Gilgamesh was able to live in the human society for 10 years without much trouble, thanks to the changed shape and personality granted by the elixir of youth.

So.

[EgoFra]

I agree with you about Rin being better than Kerry, no argument there. What I want to say though is that exactly because he's weaker on magical energy, he prefers reducing some stats like luck to boosts other stats and skills. It's not an impossible thing to do and there are various examples of that till now, not only on MR.

Also, Kerry is not the best magus around, but he isn't an idiot either. If I remember correctly he managed to sneek inside Tohsaka's mansion bounded field even if after a lot of time and effort to break through.

But whatever, we don't see it in the same way I guess.

[Menwearpink]

Well there’s a difference between prioritizing what to fill up, and somehow inexplicably having a higher cap in some place. Let’s say Kiritsugu somehow has the offscreen inexplicable ability to adjust and alter his servant’s container to minmax it so he can raise its cap in certain stats the way hacker man Rin managed to shift things around for Cu.

Do you really believe that would never be mentioned?

To begin with you’re saying Saber in the fourth war somehow manages to break the cap of agility and endurance because she’s not fully supported to the best extent like Rin can? If sabers stats were able to go that high normally they would be under Rin.

I’d say you would have better ground with your argument if you argued that Dark Saber could get to A, but the blackening of servants has always been odd with those things since they become physical and out of control and mad and all that. Kind of a big shift all in all.

Blackened Servants undergo true incarnation through the power of the Grail, changing into powerful beings with an increased connection to the present world. Physical interference power is greatly increased, but at the same time it is no longer possible to change into spirit form.

from this it points out that they lose control (hence a reduction in things like instinct and agility) and gain more physical interference power and such. Honestly the boost to endurance to A being a cap break due to being blackened seems a reasonable argument to make.

All in all tho there’s also the fact that Kerry is kind of pointed out to be terrible at magic beyond the knowledge of how to kill people

[Ratman]

XX is also fine because she's unabashedly a gag character, and as for Voyager, I am pretty certain it's just a stand-in for his actual class.

With the 'eldritch god of capitalism' thing, watch as XX is revealed to be a reference to a random but very popular wordpress story, and turns out to be a better Foreigner than everyone else besides maybe Abby.

[Dullahan]

and i've got a bridge to sell you

[Ratman]

Go back to your incredibly politically incorrect twitter, zerohplovecraft

I mean, it makes perfect sense. XX herself is a late stage propagation of a meme, the meme of Saber. The commodification of ideas is pretty capitalist, Sabers being cashgrabs need not be explained. Once we took a look on the Servant Universe, we see it be dominated by capitalist memes - like Star Wars. This means that the entirety of the universe has been 'translated' to a language of capitalism, like oh no I just saw a sharp angle I'm going insane where is my cat at? But it appears to be normal to you, because you are already indoctrinated into the cult, to 'understand', even though your human logic cannot make heads or tails of what Star Wars Sequels are supposed to be about.

XX's character reveals memes for what they are: An infection. Impractical ideas of cute blondes taking over man's will to power... but to what end?

[Dullahan]

it does not make 'perfect sense', not as you have formulated it. if you mean to say that the Servant Universe motif or concept (i struggle to find an appropriate word; a 'meta-setting' or 'para-setting' perhaps) develops toward an immanent critique of the overall form of FGO within which it appears, i would find this difficult to accept. on a superficial level i would say that my objection to readings of this type is that they impute to TM writers a level of self-awareness which does not seem credible. more to the point, I would point to the way the kind of 'parodic' or 'meta' discourse found in the Servant Universe moves in the same kinds of orbital patterns as Koha-Ace and Riyo comics. this is to say that whatever 'critical' thrust it contains is driven - not toward a critique rigorously conceived - but back in the direction of an ironic detachment or fetishistic disavowal ("I know very well, but even so-") which is ultimately ancillary to the subjective position of the consumer. one might say that in whatever sense the Servant Universe 'deterritorialises' the regularities, fixations, and absurdities of Fate 'proper' into its parodic exaggerations and memetic references, they are 'reterritorialised' just as quickly into a familiar pattern amenable to database-oriented consumption. Fate is able to laugh at its own stupidities because it knows that it's "laughing all the way to the bank".

[Ratman]

It comes back to how self-aware Saber Wars is, huh.

The thing is that neither TM nor Disney are being very smart about laughing all the way to the bank. They both took a thing that was too big to fail and then fucked it up beyond the market's imagination. If Saber Wars was merely TM's boast that they can get away with any sort of bullshit, made at the time of The Last Jedi, then they should see the writing on the wall now. But they just keep digging, which makes me think that they're trying to make some sort of a point about identity overdose or whatever with these semiotic messes like Alteregos and Foreigners and all the other Moetrons they've added into the game over the past years. Like this is all building up to U-Olga's character as a fragmented being, and it's quite some buildup at that. Can't imagine the payoff being worth the price, but I'd give them more credit than 'Nasu likes Star Wars because they themselves are a consumer'.

[Dullahan]

i don't think they're "trying" to make any kind of point. i think they're "trying" to make money. such points as are made are accidental

[Ratman]

More obvious take though would be that Saber Wars is indeed made with self-awareness, choosing Star Wars in a self-flaggelating way as the absolute worst example of capitalist influence over creative work just creating a bunch of increasingly disfigured fascimiles of the original. In which case it seems pretty sensible to me that it is a world of capitalism, and XX would very much be a spirit of capitalism in that sense.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, well, it just seems to me they could be making more money if they were trying to make less points and just presented heroic spirits at face value.