Alright, addressing the Avalon thing first.
Avalon works without Saber. It just doesn't work as well. If it did nothing without her, Shirou wouldn't have been able to survive the fire at the end of Fate/Zero. All Saber does is pump it into overdrive; hell, if Shirou got stabbed after contracting with Saber his heart probably would have regenerated on its own. Without Saber, it just seems to have a passive "You will live but you're going to have to heal on your own" effect. And I just checked the Prologue. While Rin does note that she only needed to use so much prana because she wasn't skilled at healing, she also notes that if Shirou were completely dead no amount of magic could save him. And, well, we're talking about heart injuries. I'd think that'd kill you pretty quickly. Not sure though. Not even close to being an expert.
Moving back to the whole Sakura thing, the thing is her entire purpose is to be used in the Holy Grail War. She literally has no other uses besides from that. Sure, killing her would be a waste, but there's really nothing Zouken can do with her. I'll admit I'm not certain of what Zouken would do in such a scenario, but I am pretty sure he can both use the worm in Sakura to see and control her with a thought. They try to Rule Breaker her (which would kind of require stabbing her in the heart, so that'd be kind of hard to miss), he has her move out of the way/attack/whatever. Because if he does want to keep her, no way in hell is he just going to let something like that happen.
As for how Sakura only has one happy ending, that's just how the cookie crumbles. Nobody complains that Akiha or Hisui only have one happy ending (at least I think). And while you may not accept that Rin would just ditch her sister, sorry but she does.
Really, Rin ignored Sakura's hair color, eye color, and native magical element changing. There's precedent.
Finally, this isn't really a perfect ending. Lancer and Rider are dead (they are actually pretty good people), Caster and Kuzuki are also gone (they're eviler but their ultimate goal of marriage wasn't the evilest of things), and Kotomine wasn't really satisfied with his death like in HF (and maybe Fate). Oh, Ilya's dead too.
Really, a perfect ending would lead to a scenario like HA, where everyone lives.
Avalon does not work without Saber, at least not to a significant extent (certainly not enough to restore a heart). It worked following Zero because it had a small amount of prana remaining in it. Whilst it is possible that you are correct that Avalon kept Shirou alive for long enough for Rin to get to him (I'm also not an expert on the matter, but I believe that heart injuries shouldn't be immediately fatal, although it'd be damn hard to recover from the blood loss), that shouldn't matter for Sakura. If they were intending to remove Sakura's worms, then they'd have planned it such that she could be healed prior to her death (it's not like they're going to totally obliterate her heart and then leave her lying on the floor for a minute or so, like Lancer did with Shirou), so there isn't a problem. Plus, the damage will likely be less severe, because Rule Breaker is not as destructive as Gae Bolg is, so they'll need less prana to fix it.
Moving on to Zouken's use of Sakura, it is distinctly not true that her purpose is to be used in the Grail War. When Zouken originally got her, he didn't even know that there would be a Grail War in her lifetime. He intended to use her heir in the next War. Whilst the early coming of the fifth war meant that he got her to summon a servant, he was never really intending to get heavily involved in that war (only the fact that Sakura was highly compatible with Angra Mainyu made him even consider it, and even then he only got involved if he could find a way to activate her connection, like in HF). So, with the fifth war gone, the original plan still stands. Zouken needs an heir to replace Sakura, and it would be stupid of him not to use her to provide one. Until she does, at least, she's safe, and I don't see him having an easy time of it. Even once the Great Grail is dismantled (although, given what's been said about the final dismantling, which happens ten years later, I don't see him living past that point regardless), he still has potential uses for her. She's a damn good magus, potentially, (better than him) and, more importantly, an ideal mother for his next subject. Even if he's no longer got Grail Wars to fight, having an heir is still useful. There are other issues to consider too. If he kills Sakura, she will be missed. Taiga will wonder where she's gone, Shirou will wonder where she's gone and, by extension, so will Rin. He'll have great difficulty covering up her disappearance (even supposedly natural deaths wouldn't work, because there would likely be an autopsy to determine the cause, and that would cause his worms to be discovered), and he can't use the resources of the Magic Association to do it because that means asking Rin to cover up the murder of her own sister. In all honesty, if he really doesn't need her any more, he's better off letting her just live her life (although probably with the worms still inside her...), because there's less risk of him being discovered.
As far as him controlling her is concerned, that's simply not true. Zouken's worms allow him to kill her with a thought and torture her on a whim, but they don't allow him to directly control her body, and nor do they allow him to see what she sees or what she is doing (remember that he is inside her heart). If he could do that, then he could never have lost in HF, because he'd have just controlled her body and made her kill Shirou (and everyone else) consciously. She'd have turned Dark pretty quick, most likely, and then he'd have controlled her body in that state too. If they try to Rule Breaker her, there's nothing he can do to stop it, barring possibly killing her very rapidly (and, given that that most likely involve stopping or damaging her heart, even that probably wouldn't work if they had a good enough healer on hand).
As for Rin ditching Sakura post-UBW, if she does that, then to me it's not a happy ending at all. In all honesty I'd be hoping that that selfish bitch gets run over by a nice big red bus, because it's what she fucking deserves after screwing over her sister in that way. She knows how important Shirou is to Sakura, and she misses so many blindingly obvious signs that something is wrong with Sakura's situation (like you say, her hair colour etc.) that she almost has to be intentionally deluding herself (which, admittedly, she and Shirou quite possibly do in HF with regards to Sakura and the nature of the shadow). It's not that she can't find out what's going on with Sakura, she doesn't want to find out, because then she'll feel obliged to actually do something. It's convinient for her to leave Sakura to suffer rather than have to make the hard choice of whether to break her promise to her father and the Matou/Tohsaka non-aggression pact, so even though she is fully aware that Sakura is never happy and that Shinji is not treating her well, she just prods at the edges of Sakura's life (admittedly, that includes giving up her trump card to save the guy Sakura loves (who she then takes to the opposite side of the world...) and saving her adoptive brother (who has been abusing her for years...) but, still...) trying to make things better there rather than looking deeper, because she knows damn well that, if she does look deeper, she might not like what she finds. Sakura is her fucking sister, and just outright abandoning her to her fate (having taken the only guy who can make her smile away from her) is just not right. And, given that the only other remotely important character (excluding ones like Taiga and Ayako, who get happy endings in every scenario, at least until Sakura suddenly disappears and they get killed by Zouken when they go looking for her...) who gets a good end in that route (other than Shirou) is Shinji, who most definitely doesn't deserve one, I simply can't see any redeeming features in that ending (Shirou might be happy for a while, but if he finds out about Sakura, he'll be devestated, and it's still possible for him to become Archer). On the other hand, if we suppose that Rin does try to help Sakura, but can't find a way (and, honestly, IMO if she really tried she'd succeed), then that will likely destroy her life totally and drive Shirou back into heroism (and, thus, becoming Archer). Again, a shitty ending.
But, in any case, I don't see it happening that way. Even if Rin is willing to abandon her sister entirely(which I'm not convinced of), at some point she's going to have to tell Shirou her past, and he sure as hell won't be willing to let it go, especially once he realises that Rin genuinely does care about her sister. What would happen from there isn't certain (reconciling the two doesn't automatically mean saving Sakura), but at least it gives Sakura a chance.
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I'll admit that I've been outgeeked on the whole Avalon and Zouken issue (mainly because I really don't want to slog through more text to find evidence). As for Rule Breaker... I dunno. It just makes HF lose a lot more impact if all Shirou really had to do was just stab Sakura's heart.
So I'll just address the Rin-Sakura thing.
By all accounts, Rin really does just abandon Sakura to her fate. It's admittingly really cruel, but even in HF where Rin finally expresses her love for Sakura, it took a bunch of re-bonding between the two. That... doesn't happen in UBW.
Anyways, to truly get a perfect ending, the routes themselves would have to be tweaked.
And, honestly, the best possible route would probably resemble HF the most, with one key difference: Shirou and Saber (and maybe Lancer too) don't go to Ryudei (that how you spell it?) temple that early, and thus do not encounter the Shadow. Saber still lives (though we'd lose the epic Shirou VS Saber battle), Rin gets her bonding moments with Sakura, and Lancer gets to continue being awesome. And if the Shadow needs heroic spirits, Gilgamesh will do.
The only real roadblock to a perfect ending is Ilya. She's even more screwed than Sakura.
Edited by BlitzBlast
Oh, right, even in the route I propose Caster and Kuzuki die (pretty horribly actually since the Shadow got them/True Assasin ate them), and Assasin never really got the last fight he wanted, but eh.
The thing is, I don't actually buy that about Rin. She clearly does care about Sakura (why else do you think she sacrificed her trump card to save some guy who she barely knows and risked her life to save a guy who had not long ago been planning to rape, torture and murder her?), she's just not yet willing to get over her retarded "I must be a true magus" thing and go and talk to her, or look into her past. Even when she was first getting involved with Sakura in HF, she still wanted to save her. If she'd genuinely didn't care until they bonded, then why was she moping around the church and asking Kotomine if she was alright. That whole "I don't care about Sakura" thing was just a mask, because her 'ideal' says that she shouldn't. In reality, she never wanted to kill Sakura, and only the fact that she simply couldn't find a way to justify doing otherwise made her do so in the MoS ending (and, even there, Kotomine states that it will drive her mad, and destroy what's left of her humanity). If Rin found out about Sakura's situation, there's no doubt that she would save her (or, at least, try, and break down horribly if she failed), so the only question is whether she will find out. Which, with Shirou around, is probably pretty likely, because he will find out about their relationship (eventually) and when he does so he will pressurise Rin into going and reconciling with her sister (because that's what she really wants). Plus, being with Shirou will surely soften her up somewhat, which will make her more inclined to throw away her father's moronic teaching and actually do what she wants to do (like she does in HF).
If not, however, then honestly I have nothing but total and utter contempt for her. If she puts some retarded "non-aggression pact" above the happiness and welfare of her own fucking sister, then honestly being run over by a bus is too damn good for her. In that case, I just hope UBW Rin dies horribly, like her sister did....
Edited by Cherry_Lover Visit forums.darksidemoon.net, a new Type-Moon forum.
"Some guy she barely knows"?
Aside from the fact that Rin is Shirou's classmate, Rin was watching Shirou do those high jumps too that day. It's also implied that she had a crush on him as well.
So yeah, while part of the reason Rin saves Shirou's life is for Sakura, she did have some selfish motivation too.
And if we're going to be honest here, Rin doesn't know how she feels about Sakura. She's nice to her and all, but she's really confused about the whole thing. it's not until she's about to stab Sakura at HF's climax does she truly realize she loves Sakura. And again, that was after a lot of re-bonding.
As for why Rin was moping around Kotomine's church during the beginning parts of HF, while you could claim it was because she was worried about Sakura, you could just as easily claim it was her checking to see if a citizen of the town she supervises is going to be a danger (remember, she went out of her way to help that random girl that got drained in... UBW? Fate? Gah.). And even if she was worried about Sakura, she does decide at the end to kill her if Shirou doesn't intervene.
So yeah, Rin is in denial at best.
In any case, I think we can both agree here that the only real roadblock in your WMG is Sakura's fate. And, as a minor one, how exactly Shirou becomes a revered hero.
Erm, you know that I never actually wrote that WMG, right? I was just responding to your comments. Honestly, the bit that I find most unbelieveable is number 1. Archer isn't going to get himself erased, no matter what he does. We could replace number 2 with "Shinji secretly slips Sakura some dog-worming tablets, freeing her from Zouken's grasp" and it would still be more plausible than Archer getting erased by accident is.
As for Rin's attitude to Sakura, sorry, but you're entirely misinterpreting her character. She quite clearly does care about her, it's just that she thinks that she shouldn't. Whilst she has a crush on Shirou, I don't think that by itself would be enough to cause her to 'waste' her trump card on saving his life (plus, the first thing that comes to her mind when she sees who it is is Sakura, and how sad she'll be), and she sure as hell wouldn't have risked her life to save Shinji if it wasn't for the fact that Sakura cares about him. Even outside of HF, there are lots of signs that Rin cares for Sakura and tries to watch over her. In UBW, for instance, she is watching over the Matou house when Shirou goes there to check up on Sakura. And, if you look at HF itself, she uses the fact that Zouken is involved in the war to check up on the Matou house, and then catigates herself for not visiting Sakura earlier, then she mopes around the church and asks Kotomine whether she's alright (and not in a "well, I need to know so I know if she's a danger" kind of way, either). If she truly wanted to kill Sakura, she could have done it at almost any time in the first few days she was there and she shows a huge amount of concern for Sakura when she has problems. The only conflict in Rin is between her true feelings (which are pure love for Sakura) and the true magus ideal that her father told her to follow, which tells her to keep away and uphold the non-interference pact with the Matou family. However, in UBW she loses most of that true magus ideal, so it seems unlikely that she'll be as willing to remain distant from Sakura.
Rin does care about Sakura, and it's quite clear that she does if you actually look at her actions in more detail. The problem is that Rin is a Tsundere, and that nature is very much in evidence in HF (more so than in UBW, even), which throws people off because the Tsundere character archtype usually applies to romantic relationships, not relationships with your sibling. Rin spends most of HF berating Sakura and telling her that she doesn't care, but in reality she's trying to convince herself, because her magus ideal is telling her that she must kill Sakura, but her heart simply won't let her go through with it. That is also the reason for the final talk she gives in the last battle (the one where she drives Sakura totally insane by showing zero sympathy for her...). She's not trying to convince Sakura of anything, she's making one final plea to herself, to attempt to convince herself that she really doesn't care about Sakura's plight and, thus, is going to kill her like she thinks she should, as a good magus.
Edited by Cherry_Lover Visit forums.darksidemoon.net, a new Type-Moon forum.
Alright, first off I apologize for assuming you wrote the WMG.
Second off, it looks like we're never going to agree on how Rin really feels about Sakura. And since that's pretty much what this argument boiled down into, we may as well stop the debate with a tie.
Alright, since the WMG creator seems to want to debate about this, moving it here.
- 1.) Wait. Okay. First and foremost, by comparing her own life to Archer's, Saber is able to come to terms with the same thing as she did in Fate. That's canon. This being such, after going back and dieing on the hill with Bedivere, she goes to Avalon. Meanwhile when Archer disappears he had just the right amount of impact on the past that he managed to Time Paradox himself out of service to Alaya. Since he managed not to kill Shirou or make him sway from his path, Archer is either rewarded with or ends up accidentally shows up in Avalon. Here he can finally be with Saber for all eternity as they fall in love again. Aw~
- 2.) Canonically Shinji is less of a jerk after being turned into an abomination. Before Shirou leaves with Rin to the Clock Tower, Shinji gives in to his guilt and admits everything, throwing himself on Shirou's mercy. Shirou has all ready seen Rule Breaker, knows what it does, and doesn't have Rider cockblocking him at every turn anymore. He simply walks up to Sakura, Rule Breakers her and voila, her entire route accomplished in a few minutes. Naturally they take her with them, probably to the clock Tower where Rin has decent facilities to help her.
- 3.) Zouken no longer has Servants to save him, Plot Hax Goo to swallow people up, his worm in Sakura should have been terminated with the rule breaking, and with some intel from Sakura, Zouken is pretty much up shit creek.
- 4.) With either Waver's dismantlement of the Grail or Kiritsugu's Leyline bump, the Great Grail is destroyed and there are no more Holy Grail Wars. Well, until some other fool magi try to make another.
- There. Shirou will be a revered hero instead of a reviled one, Rin gets a nice husband and gets to become a great magus, Sakura herself can start enjoying life, shinji is less of a jerk, the Grail is gone, Zouken is dead, Archer and Saber live happilly ever after, and Shirou gets to have foursomes with Rin, Sakura and Luvia.
- Rule Breaker doesn't work on Sakura until Angra Mainyu has fully possessed her, and even if it did it wouldn't destroy the worm in Sakura's heart. She's still screwed.
- Actually, Rule Breaker most likely could destroy Zouken's worms, because it acts to return any magical item, familiar or contract to it's original state and destroys magecraft, and Zouken's worms exist solely because of magecraft. Despite what many people think Rule Breaker is not only a contract-breaking weapon. It has other purposes too. But, even if this isn't true, I'm sure that they could find some way to remove Zouken from Sakura's control. After all, Rin was able to heal Shirou's heart when it got damaged, so it's clearly possible for the same to be done for Sakura, and thus even if they couldn't get rid of the heart worm with Rule Breaker, they could just destroy and then recreate her heart (or, hell, even just give her a heart transplant).
- Shirou only survived Gae Bolg stabbing him in the heart because of Avalon and Rin had to use that super charged jewel her father passed down to her to even heal him. Besides, Zouken can kill Sakura or at least send her berserk at any time if he wants to. If he finds out what they plan to do, BAM, there goes Sakura. Which, admittingly, would piss Shirou and Rin off even more but eh.
- Erm, where the hell do you get "Shirou only survive Gae Bolg because of Avalon" from? There's nothing in canon that says that, and even if it's true, the only thing Avalon did was allow Shirou to shake off the "no healing" curse of Gae Bolg. The game explicitly states that Rin re-grew his heart, and whilst she did indeed use her pendant to do it, is she was better-trained (or had a specialist healer to help her) she might well be able to do it on her own. As for Zouken killing Sakura, whilst he can do it whenever he likes, it would serve no purpose for him to do so, because it means throwing away his only bargaining chip for no tangible gain (and, indeed, a net loss, because Rin and Shirou will then be absolutely determined to terminate him with extreme prejudice, as opposed to having it as a secondary goal after saving Sakura). Also, if you used Rule Breaker on his main worm, he'd likely be dead as soon as it was done, because it's where his soul resides and I don't think he'd have the time to get out if it was done unexpectedly. So, they'd just have to do everything in secret (keeping it from Sakura too, of course...).
- So you're saying the magical sheath inside Shirou that is literally the only reason he survives most of the routes was in no way responsible for saving his life from getting stabbed in the heart. And that the passed down jewel of a family of mages whose main skill was the ability to concentrate a huge amount of prana into inanimate objects held about the same amount of prana as any specialist mage. And that people who get injured in the heart can just pass out, get a new heart, and be just fine with no damage at all from lack of oxygen. Just confirming.
- Yes. Avalon doesn't do anything until he's contracted to Saber. The game explicitly states that Rin reconstructed Shirou's heart, and a specialist healing mage wouldn't need as much prana as Rin did, because they're specialists. As for Shirou surviving the initial trauma, whilst you may well be right that it's unrealistic, so is about 90% of what Shirou does (even without Avalon).
- In your scenario the Great Grail gets destroyed. If that happens there's no real reason for Zouken to keep Sakura, and killing her would essentially just be a way to flip off the Tohsakas one last time. I'd think Zouken would do it. And really, Rule Breaker isn't the most secretive of items. Aside from being a really weird looking knife, both times it's used to do its thing (Caster stabbing Saber, Shirou stabbing Sakura) there's a surge of magic, so I don't really think they'd be able to keep it secret from Sakura.
- Well, even if the Great Grail is gone, Zouken is still going to want to keep living (and, if he doesn't, then he'll likely just give up on life and die without fanfare), so Sakura will still be of potential use to him. As for "flipping off the Tohsakas", he has no reason to want to do that (they're actually Matou allies, and Sakura was given to him willingly), particularly if it happens before the Grail is dismantled (which, according to the newest book, didn't happen properly until ten years after the war, which is plenty of time to get Sakura out of there). As for Rule Breaker, it only produces a surge of magic when it is in the process of being used (if at all), which is too late for Zouken, and in any case even if Sakura did work it out, she's hardly going to tell Zouken (and he won't be able to detect it since he can't see what she sees...). Zouken would probably think they were going to kill Sakura, in which case he'd just let it happen (there's no point in him doing the job for them, after all). More likely, though, if he saw them trying that, he'd get the fuck out of there ASAP, to keep himself safe. Zouken has no fundamental hatred of Sakura (he actually 'likes' her, in his own twisted way, because she's damn useful), and whilst he does seem to be a little sadistic, I see no reason why he would kill her just to upset Rin and Shirou. He's not Kotomine.
- Also, I think you're severely underestimating Zouken's ability to survive. As long as one of those worms is alive, he's alive. It wasn't until he himself decided to die that he actually died.
- Once Sakura crushed his soul worm in HF, he was essentially dead. Even though it took him consciously giving up to finally die, he was no longer capable of taking any meaningful action, and would have faded away eventually even if Ilya hadn't shown up. Whilst killing him would not be easy, UBW Shirou and Rin are capable enough and determined enough (once they find out what he's done to their friend/sister and how he remains alive) to make damn sure that he won't survive very long once they're cured Sakura of his worms.
- The problem here being that they can't really crush his soul worm without killing Sakura in the process. And if they do that, well Zouken gets the last laugh.
- Well, firstly that's not true (there are several possible ways given above, and the Nasuverse has a lot of weird magic flying around, including (most likely) spells which allow the worms to be destroyed directly), and secondly even if he does do so, it wouldn't really class as him having the "last laugh", because it will result in the loss of his pawn (and best chance at immortality) and the likely loss of his own life. He may well be able to prevent them saving Sakura, but in all honesty he couldn't give a crap about whether Sakura gets to live a happy life or not. He just wants immortality for himself.
- There's no more Holy Grail War in your scenario. Zouken doesn't need Sakura anymore. So yeah, killing her would totally give him the last laugh. Really, Sakura does not get a happy ending outside of HF True End. Anyways, if we're going to turn this into a debate we should probably move to Discussion.
- Well, if Zouken gives up on immortality, then he'd probably just die (because he has no more reason to keep himself alive), and I don't see why he'd want to "flip off the Tohsakas", especially since he likely isn't even aware that Rin cares. As for Sakura not getting a happy ending, fuck that. I just can't accept Rin fucking off to London with the guy her sister loves (and who she knows damn well is the only person who makes her happy) and then leaving her to die as a "happy ending". Rin gets a little extra happiness because she's too blind, selfish and wedded to her retarded "true magus" idea to take any notice of her own fucking sister. If she were just some random girl, then perhaps, but Rin actually cares about Sakura, and would be devestated if she found out what she'd done. But, because of her father's stupid "instructions", she doesn't think she can do anything for her, so she shuts her mind off to Sakura's suffering and pretends that she's OK, even though she knows damn well that Sakura is never happy except around Shirou (who she's taking to fucking London with her, the other side of the damn world). Plus, Rin gets five happy endings, Saber gets one properly happy ending (two if you count Last Episode) and another reasonably decent one. Why the hell should Sakura fans he satisified with only one happy ending for her?
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