Type-Moon: Fate/stay night, Tsukihime, and Kara no Kyoukai discussion

Divine Spirits didn't just poof into existence as someone's imaginary friend, though. I mean, in theory they could have, but basically all the ones we know of came from somewhere else or represent some aspect of primordial Earth.

@Unlikelyauthor 2: He likely just didn't know just how much of a issue stuff like rape is, considering he used it as his go-to "traumatic backstory".

As I said, the world was a different place back in 1999.

Yeah thsts why I meantioned the reincarnation bit as well. Gods have similarities to to Tulpa but aren't a perfect 1:1

tbf, Kohaku is a better character than Sakura, but the fact that there always seems to be a 'rape victim turned evil' type in his prominent works isn't exactly wonderful, yes.

Has he made any characters like that since Sakura? If not we could count that as an improvement. I... think?

Kind of explains why Sakura is downplayed then.

Caenis unfortunately falls in line with that archetype from what's implied by her behavior and Skadi's comments and also brings a bucket of issues related to gender

but technically she might not even be written by Nasu because FGO's writing credits are pretty oblique at this point

also re: Tsukihime and its dated writing, I remember that Takeuchi commented on the remake's rating with the implication that only violence would bump its rating from being the same as Mahoyo so there probably are some definite rewrites in regards to some of the sex stuff

Edited by Nouct on Feb 24th 2019 at 11:42:29 AM

I remember the SAO author also said rape was a very common element from stories written in his time, and apologized to people offended by it.

Yeah, but Caenis' rape is part of her myth, and we still haven't got a full picture of her entire personality, so she might not fall in line with the whole "rape victim turned evil" archetype.

It's kinda early to judge that particular case, is what I'm saying.

I mean, it is a bit preemptive to fully state what her thing is but she does revel in antagonism so far to pretty much everyone who isn't Wodime which is primarily what I was thinking of.

Definitely lot more brash and outspoken compared to Sakura or Fujino, which I'm not quite sure is progress

Edited by Nouct on Feb 24th 2019 at 12:33:16 PM

Skadi deliberately antagonises her by calling her a woman defiled by the sea fwiw

She's kinda psychotic, but for all we know, she's always been like that.

And as says, Skadi went out of her way to pour salt in that wound.

I'll just wait and see how it all turns out.

Can't be worse than Agartha and Scherazade, if nothing else.

...I hope.

Edited by HailMuffins on Feb 24th 2019 at 5:43:35 PM

iirc Caeneus was a dickhead in myth so being a dick in FGO isn't exactly shocking. It's really not the same thing as Kohaku, Sakura and Fujinon anyway where they kind of have a breakdown due to rape and go on a revenge fueled rampage.

Though with Fujinon I guess the subversion is that she just likes murder and the rape didn't actually have that much to do with it.

I was actually gonna mention that: while quite insensitive regardless, Fujino doesn't quite fit the pattern (which, granted, didn't really exist yet) because her rape trauma was a bit of a Bait-and-Switch.

Either way, I'd argue the biggest problem isn't that Nasu employed Rape as Drama so much that he kept going back to it as his default "tragic backstory" whenever he couldn't cook up anything else, and by the time of FSN it was getting pretty gratuitous.

Because it's not as if emotional abuse and lifelong torture aren't tragedy enough, right?

And all I ask is that Caenis' backstory doesn't use Karmic Rape, anything else I might be able to swallow, but that one would be too much.

Edited by HailMuffins on Feb 25th 2019 at 3:04:45 PM

Caenis became such a shit after the rape I recall and becoming a man.

The Kohaku backstory was more effective with using it as a tool for storytelling, unpleasant as it was

@OmegaRadiance:

@Arha: Except that's literally how the Gorgon sisters came about, from humans wishing for "perfect idols" ^note not sure if it's meant in the modern sense or the classical one of "object of worship"; I checked the Japanese line, and the kanji can actually mean either one of those senses.. Which ones are you talking about that "came from somewhere else", anyway? The "represent some aspect of primordial Earth" kind is explicitly mentioned in the TM wiki article that I had linked to as falling into the "born from human thoughts/wishes" category, incidentally. Or, to be more precise, they're of the "things that were already there that became gods after becoming objects of worship" kind.

Most Divine Spirits are reincarnations of Gods that predate humans.

It's Bunreis that manifested when humans built pantheons around their concepts.

IE the entire Roman/Greek Olympians are the reincarnation-Bunreis of the Twelve Pillars, who were ANCIENT ALIENS.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Feb 24th 2019 at 3:07:13 AM

Kohaku's case also has sort of Bait-and-Switch element to it, since it was sort of a Mercy Kill disguised as a revenge plot.

EDIT: Just got the Archer Ending on CCC. Gotta say I was really caught off-guard. Wasn't expecting a Downer Ending for a game silly as CCC was, especially considering how the Nero Ending was just the Bride stuff.

One of my biggest complaints with the original /EXTRA is how builds its Crapsack World and then the narrative kinda completely ignores it. Now that this ending finally addressed it, I actually feel kinda glad we don't get to see much of it. Stuff is real depressing.

Edited by Comun on Feb 24th 2019 at 9:56:57 AM

I totally disagree that the original EXTRA ignores the crapsack world.

The entire motivation behind Rin and Leo is how they want to stop it and Twice wants to uphold it forever. You also have scenes that exclusively talk about how the world is falling apart and how the grail is mankind's last hope.

Hell, the plot twist with Hakuno is that they slowly died (until it's revealed that the original person was barely kept alive in stasis) after some sort of bomb destroyed whatever city they were in.

And then the ending for Rin is about how she's going off to finally fix the world now that Hakuno made their wish. I don't remember if Rani addresses it, though.

Edited by EpicBleye on Feb 24th 2019 at 11:45:29 AM

The Harways don't want to stop it. They want to keep things orderly, when stagnation is why things are getting progressively worse, and why Twice wants to instigate chaos fo help bring change and growth. Twice goal is too extreme for Rin who has similar worldviews, but as CCC went on, he had very similar ideas to Gilgamesh in that regards.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Feb 25th 2019 at 3:16:50 AM

That's what I meant by building it up. It's extremely important for Rin and Leo but Hakuno never stops to take a serious look at it. And since that's our POV, we only get the vaguest image of it.

Granted, Hakuno has more things to worry about, more urgently being finding out WTF is going on.

Earth is fucked anyways because of he Harways. Thats why Last Encore has the Moon Cell becoming a new world for people to live on in the ending.

sure is convenient digitization doesn't count as stagnation