All-Purpose Nasuverse Fanfiction Thread

Speaking of Medea, can mages summon Servants outside of a Holy Grail War?

In theory? Yes, it is possible.

You'll just die without the Grail supporting your servant for you, unless you're Rin. And have help. And that's not even getting into a servant that's a mana hog instead of being one who has a big storage.

It's also hard as phuck to actually do. Chaldea took years to actually succesfully pull it off, and we know that Chaldea has some pretty incredible shit to their credit, including a former winner of a Grail war and goddamn Solomon himself helping them.

So, yes, in theory it is perfectly possible to summon a servant, just like the ones in the Fuyuki grail war, without a Grail to do the heavy lifting for you. Just like it's technically possible for Shirou to learn magic outside of his forte.

So, I was thinking about my FSN/RWBY crossover and I don't think I'll give Shirou's Archer's arm. While Shirou can pretty much obliterate everyone and everything in RWBY with UBW (probably without even needing to deploy it), there's no real instance where he'd have to during a time where it would change the plot outside of the end of Volume 3 (where I want it to happen anyway). Combine that with the fact that he'll be summoning Saber early into Volume 5, which would further inhibit his Tracing due to the prana drain from Saber, and I don't think limiting him even further would accomplish anything important. Especially since I have a reason as to why he can't deploy UBW until the end of Volume 3 anyway.

On a semi related note, is Rule Breaker absolutely needed to kill Saber Alter? Would Shirou nailing her with Caliburn when she's not putting up any defense work as well or does her contract with Sakura need to be broken?

No, Rule Breaker is not absolutely necessary for killing Saber Alter. It helps, but anything with sufficient strength will kill her.

Hell, he could do it with a reinforced and altered butter knife if she allows it.

Incidentally, if he has to sustain Saber on his own, he's dead.

edited 13th Mar '17 6:46:25 PM by IAmNotCreativeEnough

I know. It's not on his own. Remember, there is a Remnant Grail War going on.

Also, good to know about Saber Alter.

Are we still doing Servants who should never be summoned?

It's been a while, and I just came up with two new ones.

Plus, I want to see reactions to my Daedalus short from a while back.

Well, that depends on Overmaster, he's the one who's supposta be compiling them.

I think he still allows them, he just doesn't posts them on FF.net because he has yet to get around to making one for Touta and that Adventure Time character.

Cool.

So, back to my RWBY crossover for a bit, I've been contemplating a way to give Shirou some actual character development before we go into the final act (whatever that may be) since he really didn't have any in my current plans. The obvious thing to do is to focus on his survivor's guilt which has become even more of a problem since the events of his Holy Grail War (even if it doesn't really rear its head until the end of Volume 3). I have some ideas on how to work on his guilt involving Ruby and Saber but I need something big for him to overcome that's symbolic of him coming to terms with his survivor's guilt (which he'll probably never be truly rid of) and the fact that he puts absolutely no value in his life. Okay, I suppose I don't need something like that but it's more fun that way.

The way I see it, I need someone who can learn of Shirou's past in order to really challenge him on a mental level. They'd have a lot of similarities to Shirou- family died in a tragedy, was saved and raised by a man who introduced them to the Moonlit World, dreams of becoming a hero in order to save others- but they differ in that, unlike Shirou, they never lost their sense of self and, as such, actively fights because they want to see a better world. They differ in a number of other ways but that's the big one. Since they're basically Remnant's version of Shirou, they even have something akin to Tracing- Gradation Air powered by their Semblance- in order to explain why Shirou can't just curb stomp them. They don't have a Reality Marble, though, so UBW is still better through sheer volume (although they can Trace more complicated things like the weapons in RWBY). Their ability to gain knowledge about Shirou's past and character coupled with the fact that they're concept can be boiled down to "What if Shirou's life hadn't gone to absolute shit" would basically help to mentally break Shirou. From their, I can use the RWBY characters and Saber (but mostly the RWBY characters) to help bring Shirou out of his Heroic BSoD and push his character along.

What do you guys think?

You're thinking an OC?

I can't say in good conscience that it's a good idea. Writing a good OC is incredibly difficult. Especially when you're making that OC a very pivotal and important character, and the 'equal' to a canon character who doesn't really have such a thing.

For the record, Shirou doesn't actually need an equal to get character development - he just needs people to interact with.

Thing is, RWBY doesn't really give me much to work with. Of the main cast (Teams RWBY and JNPR), none of them have that much depth to them and none of them can do all that much for Shirou (hell, Ruby can only help him get over some of his problems due to the development she gets from interacting with him). Expanding the scope on the good guys, we have Professor Ozpin, who we know basically nothing about; Professor Goodwitch, who we even less about; Professors Port and Oobleck, who we kinda know some things about but nothing really useful here (especially since Shirou won't really be interacting with them much); Taiyang, who we know very little about; Sun, who's basically worthless in a lot of ways; Neptune, whose completely worthless in a lot of ways; Penny, who won't be around for this stuff; Team CFVY, who we only know a little about two of the members; Ironwood, who probably couldn't really do much here; Winter, who we know basically nothing about; and Qrow, who might actually be somewhat useful due solely to his character archetype but probably not by much.

As for the villains, there are eight of them right now (maybe) and we know basically nothing about most of them. The ones we do know something about can't really do anything here.

Really, I'd love to use more RWBY stuff but, even after four Volumes at 12 episodes a piece (most episodes averaging about 15 minutes), we know so little about everybody that I'd basically have to extrapolate character traits for most of them or just invent their character wholesale (in which case, they might as well be an OC). My only choice here is to use OCs or wait and pray that the show gives the characters actual characterization beyond some standard hero/villain traits.

You said it yourself. You can do the character development and make it go both ways. That's why I said you only need them to interact with Shirou.

Extrapolate, if you must. While it is definitely a possibility that you might get jossed later, you shouldn't let it stop you. I'm all for conforming to canon save for specific nails, but that doesn't apply to something revealed after you wrote your fic, and I'm a total nazi about it so if I'm saying that, you should know that means something.

Generally speaking, I think that Shirou interacting with normal, non-distorted people would actually be more helpful for his mental balance than interacting with distorted people.

I'd love to but I'm really not sure that's even remotely possible. Maybe a few pieces here and there but I'm not sure I could give him any truly major character development through that method without some sort of instigator to break him and force him to confront and admit his problems. Even in the canon, one of Shirou's big thing is that he never really saw his problems as actual problems even when people repeatedly pointed them out to him. This was clearly shown in the UBW route when Rin asks Shirou why he practices magecraft, gets pissed at his answer, gets even more pissed when he doesn't understand why she's pissed, and then takes him on a date.

The fact that Shirou helped Saber get through basically the exact same issue in the Fate route is really interesting. Perhaps he was so intent on getting her to realize her own worth because they were the same?

Anyway, even with extrapolation, I'm not sure how much I can do. The characters are all so basic and bare bones that it's eventually going to just be me creating their personalities almost completely wholesale. For instance, take the show's protagonist, Ruby Rose. She's energetic, optimistic, and was inspired by fairy tale heroes (a fact I intend to capitalize on). Aside from other basic hero traits, that's basically all there is to her. Jaune, the leader of Team JNPR, has more characterization than she does and has had more characterization since about halfway through Volume 1 (if that late).

I'd love to use them for more things but there just isn't much of anything there to work with. My grand idea for using bits of Extella's plot for the third arc was basically me using everything we currently know about Remnant. I suppose I could give Salem (the show's Big Bad) telepathy or something and let her be the instigator (the only things we know about her is that she's evil and she hates Ozpin) but that runs into its own problems due to her role in the story. I suppose there are also her underlings but one of them is batshit insane (of the Laughing Mad variety rather than something like the Joker), Cinder gets seriously fucked up by Shirou at the end of Volume 3, and we know nothing about the others.

Now, while this might not be a problem since who knows when I'd get to Volume 4 when this would start being more important, if we have extremely little characterization for the main cast after four years, I don't really expect them to give us more four years from now.

But you don't really need much more than that.

All you really need is for them to be basically good people. Shirou should trigger a lot of Sympathy Bones, and from then on, it just takes being stubborn and determined.

You don't need super deep characters with tons of complexities and parallels to Shirou in order to give him some character development. Shirou is an interesting personality, and there are those who would try to figure him out and help him simply because of that.

It's funny that it's me saying this, considering that when talking about a certain other series, I'm usually the one saying that certain characters would not attract the attention they attract from crossover characters. I'm singing a different tune, I suppose, because Shirou actually DOES have a mental distortion that would make people curious. It helps that he's not whiny about his mental health issues and is a genuinelly good person who other genuinelly good people would want to help on principle.

Hm. I suppose you have a point there. I still like the idea of having an antagonist mentally break Shirou then have RWBY + Saber slowly bring him back up before a climactic battle that's highly symbolic but there really is no one in the show who could do that. I'm also unsure as to how one would even get Shirou talking about his past in any real detail (although I suppose Saber could fill in some details thanks to seeing what she missed through dreams). Hell, they wouldn't even have any reason to suspect that Shirou is hiding something (or at least not anything that would lead to him revealing that he's from another world) since he's not an idiot and took time to learn as much basic knowledge of Remnant as possible and his name not following the color rule isn't that big of a deal.

I suppose I could do what a JJBA/RWBY fic did and have the Emiya clan exist in Remnant and be famous but they all died a hundred or so years ago (there was a world war around that time that led to the color name rule so it's feasible) and have smarter characters like Weiss and Blake play Sherlock by putting small but noticeable holes in Shirou's basic knowledge but I'm not sure how well that would work.

So, I've been reading that Fate Hollow Order thing that's been linked here a few times.

I am enjoying it so far, there are some things about the narrative and the narration that bug me but the characterization is strong enough that I am still liking it. The protagonist and Rider are great.

Also, Orochi is freaking adorable. I want to protect his smile unconditionally.

edited 25th Mar '17 8:09:01 AM by SaintDeltora

Orochi is best snek. 10/10, would whale for him in Grand Order.

How far in are you?

Re. Last page- Touta's already done, actually. Just waiting to finish writing one more or so before posting away...

doineedaname:Start of Rome.

NDC: I see,

You know, I actually considered writing Touta myself just to get you to hurry up but that was a long time ago.

I wasn't even aware there was anyone who wanted to see the next chapter up. I kinda assumed nobody really cared enough.

I don't know if I want to 'see it up', but I want to write snippets and I don't mind them being posted.

So, a couple of ideas I've ended up coming up with:

1. The main Hollow Ataraxia cast somehow end up in the Apocrypha universe, and need to win the Grail War against both Red and Black teams to get back home. Crazy shit ensues, Artoria and Mordred have an awkward reunion, the Shirous get a climatic final battle and a clash of ideals, etc. Could be fun.

2. On a whim of amusement, Merlin enlists Shirou and Artoria in a mission/test, sending them to an iteration of the Berserk universe around the time of the Golden Age arc, essentially sending their souls into special bodies for the purpose, meaning Artoria is deprived of Excalibur. Their mission: Prevent The Eclipse, or, failing that, kill Femto, but the problem is, they don't know what the former is or who the latter is. They end up joining the Band of the Hawk, and things happen from there. My thoughts:

• While Griffith wouldn't have such a big ambiguous man-crush on Shirou as he does with Guts, he'd greatly respect Shirou for having such a great ambition.
• Shirou and Artoria (the latter, at least) would see Zodd's warning as a big red flag about Griffith, and when Guts plans to leave the Hawks, they try to either to stop him or ensure that Griffith isn't nearly as depressed about it by informing him that Guts is trying to achieve the ambition he thinks he needs to become a true friend in Griffith's eyes.
• Basically, at this point, two routes potentially occur: The first being Shirou and Artoria helping Griffith achieve his dream by encouraging him to seek Princess Charlotte's hand in marriage legitimately and with the approval of her father, while making sure he doesn't screw up by having sex with her before they tie the knot. Of course, this means dealing with the issue of the King of Midland's own lust for his daughter. They also have to avoid/prevent interference from Apostles trying to force the issue. In this route, Giffith ultimately rejects the God Hand's offer with the help of his companions as emotional support, preventing the Eclipse from happening in full force, and defying fate. In the event of the God Hand attempting to force the issue and possibly kill the Hawks out of spite, well, see the below route for hints of what might happen.
• In the event that The Eclipse happens, Shirou invokes Unlimited Blade Works to protect the Band of the Hawk (not only with blade spam, but also by giving them access to Noble Phantasms to fight back against the attacking Apostles), and Artoria utilizes her charisma to take charge of the situation, using Caliburn to start cutting through demons, and Guts gets his hands on Nine Lives, which he is more than capable of using). They and Guts team up to fight back against the army of Apostles and the newly-awakened Femto, with Shirou binding the God Hand with a traced Enkidu (using all of his effort to project it) and Artoria, Guts and the Skull Knight slaying all five of them in one go. As they go their seperate ways, Guts and Casta thank the pair for their help, and take command of the Hawks as they try to figure out what to do in their lives now that they're basically outlaws.

I don't want the latter to be an outright Fix Fic in tone, it would still be a Berserk story in tone, but the conclusion of the Golden Age arc would still be less depressing, at least.

You're thinking Zelretch, because Merlin does not have dimension crossing powers. Merlin has access to one parallel dimension and, more importantly, he's trapped inside it.

I love Zelritch simply because you can use him to explain away basically anything.