Essentially more of the same as Harry Potter. Very little action or scenes of true hype, rife with meaningless navel-gazing, continuous angst and relationship bullshit. Reads like a romance novel, where everyone talks in long-winded paragraphs, regardless of character talking. Would not recommend to any Fate fan, as characters act very little like their canon counterparts and the two OCs work the spotlight for all they're worth. For supposedly competent and properly paranoid people, they honestly can't accomplish anything without fucking it all up, though this is attributed to the immutability of the HP-verse due to reasons.
Got into it for the sake of Shirou, reading the two prequels and making it all the way to the 4th year before I quit out of sheer frustration once. "Shirou", is incompetent, overly passive and utterly lacking any of the sardonic wit and smugness that characterizes anything resembling Archer, and the third and least significant of the "Trinity" is essentially sidelined for the two OCs until its his turn in the spotlight. Having previously read up till the 4th year, I felt that I should still finish what I started and managed to make way halfway through the 6th year before finally putting down the fic for good, having realized that the author has essentially zero respect for Shirou or Archer or whoever this Shirou Einzbern is supposed to be as a character. Stuck playing second fiddle to two OCs, all of his strong points have been stripped away and dealt to others who lack their own. His hard earned tactical ability, experience and his nerves of steel have gone to the SI Galen, as Einzbern never so much as points out a single flaw in any plan presented to him. The years of training in swordsmanship have been handed off to the OC—with the worst Japanese name I've heard in a long while, I might add, as it is the clunkiest girls name imaginable—Takara(Meaning "Treasure", which is supposed to be cute, I'm sure). Complaining about the lack of kendo partner to train with, the author—instead of using Shirou who is a master swordsman and intimately familiar with kendo from his time with Taiga and Saber—decides that Ginny who has been receiving some lessons in kendo is the most worthy sparring partner.
His relationship with ”Illya” is even worse, as her only moods are ”Fuck me Shirou!” and ”Oh, you boys...” Reduced to a blushing boy whenever someone makes an even vaguely sexy joke and almost always being on the defensive, simply accepting all criticism and never asserting himself in anything he does, this form of ”Shirou” is so degenerated from the original as to truly prove the rule that a fake will never compare to the original to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt.
For all the decent technical writing and faultless grammar, I can say without hesitation that I loathe and despise this fic, for how it denigrates and destroys Emiya Shirou. Fuck this, I'm going to go re-read FSN to purge this fucking travesty from my memory.
2/10
Essentially more of the same as Harry Potter. Very little action or scenes of true hype, rife with meaningless navel-gazing, continuous angst and relationship bullshit. Reads like a romance novel, where everyone talks in long-winded paragraphs, regardless of character talking. Would not recommend to any Fate fan, as characters act very little like their canon counterparts and the two OCs work the spotlight for all they're worth. For supposedly competent and properly paranoid people, they honestly can't accomplish anything without fucking it all up, though this is attributed to the immutability of the HP-verse due to reasons.
Got into it for the sake of Shirou, reading the two prequels and making it all the way to the 4th year before I quit out of sheer frustration once. "Shirou", is incompetent, overly passive and utterly lacking any of the sardonic wit and smugness that characterizes anything resembling Archer, and the third and least significant of the "Trinity" is essentially sidelined for the two OCs until its his turn in the spotlight. Having previously read up till the 4th year, I felt that I should still finish what I started and managed to make way halfway through the 6th year before finally putting down the fic for good, having realized that the author has essentially zero respect for Shirou or Archer or whoever this Shirou Einzbern is supposed to be as a character. Stuck playing second fiddle to two OCs, all of his strong points have been stripped away and dealt to others who lack their own. His hard earned tactical ability, experience and his nerves of steel have gone to the SI Galen, as Einzbern never so much as points out a single flaw in any plan presented to him. The years of training in swordsmanship have been handed off to the OC—with the worst Japanese name I've heard in a long while, I might add, as it is the clunkiest girls name imaginable—Takara(Meaning "Treasure", which is supposed to be cute, I'm sure). Complaining about the lack of kendo partner to train with, the author—instead of using Shirou who is a master swordsman and intimately familiar with kendo from his time with Taiga and Saber—decides that Ginny who has been receiving some lessons in kendo is the most worthy sparring partner.
His relationship with ”Illya” is even worse, as her only moods are ”Fuck me Shirou!” and ”Oh, you boys...” Reduced to a blushing boy whenever someone makes an even vaguely sexy joke and almost always being on the defensive, simply accepting all criticism and never asserting himself in anything he does, this form of ”Shirou” is so degenerated from the original as to truly prove the rule that a fake will never compare to the original to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt.
For all the decent technical writing and faultless grammar, I can say without hesitation that I loathe and despise this fic, for how it denigrates and destroys Emiya Shirou. Fuck this, I'm going to go re-read FSN to purge this fucking travesty from my memory.