Forum - View topicANNCast - Chewing the Fate
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GhostStalkerSA
 Posts: 425 Location: NYC |
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Is cool. As I said in my own post, I haven't read the Fate route in its entirety for a number of years now, and skipped over the preliminary parts because they're so similar to that of UBW. I think the last time I read those sections of the VN deeply is when they were posted by seorin on the LP forums of Something Awful back in 2009/10 or so, of which you are quoting the archive of there. I don't mind someone correcting me about things that I've plain forgotten about due to time and poor memory. The scene of Saber being hurt by Berserker sticks out a lot more in my mind because it's easier to remember and explain Shirou's behavior with. I apologize if I missed something that provides an alternate explanation. |
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SeikaS
Posts: 4 |
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No need to apologise at all, and you did note it in your post. Just wanted to get some of that information out there and explain why I ... I guess I jumped on that bit of your generally good post. :p |
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.Eckilsax.
Posts: 48 Location: Toronto |
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I love this episode.
But the casual Kara no Kyoukai bashing physically hurts. Ow. And... what is with the extra disclaimer? For whom would he be speaking if not for himself? Do people often get appointed to speak for an entire fandom? So redundantly absurd I got a chuckle out of it. Also I did not realize Phantom Requiem was Urobuchi. That would explain why that show was actually better than it had any right to be. |
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Merostay
 Posts: 108 |
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i had heard that Phantom Requiem was written by Urobuchi, but later on i also heard that it was written by multiple Nitro+ writers with Buchi only doing specific sections and supervising.
i didn't care, just watched the show anyway... |
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Lili-Hime
 Posts: 569 |
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Thanks everyone for not getting upset about me addressing sexism. I don't really have an interest in VN's, but I plan on watching the new UBW anime. Seems like if there was sexism in the VN, it's not in that route.
I think I understand the VN more now thanks to your comments. Like FZ, the writing isn't inherently sexist, but the story contains sexist characters. (Giving benefit of th doubt to the SFW version, I'm not going to get into the NSFW version that's a whoooole different topic). Seems that Shirou's sexist remarks are mostly fueled by his romantic interest in Saber (in the Fate route), and his martyr complex. Also Shirou IS a teenage boy... and raised by Emiya; a guy who didn't seem remarkably feminist in FZ. That makes him believable, but not right. If the VN treats his remarks as a flaw, that's good enough. I suppose the whole magus culture is pretty old and traditional, and therefore a bit more conservative about feminism / gender roles- as well as the servants, who are all from the distant past. To me it only makes her character stronger standing up for herself in such a traditionally male dominated space. That's why Saber appeals to me as a strong female character, at least in FZ, which is all I've seen. Many woman know what its like to be told you can't do something or don't belong because of your gender, myself included. Saber don't care, she just continuously proves them wrong. My own personal subjective feelings though are that romantically pairing her with Shirou after he's displayed a sexist attitude towards her does feel like a 'Taming of the Shrew' situation, and kind of subverts her strengths. Luckily with the UBW anime I don't have to worry about that because it's not the Fate route. And the animation in the SN anime looks reaaaaaally bad so after FZ I just can't watch it. BTW I'd be happy to be pointed to a better summary or especially things to read about Saber's backstory, as long as it's the SFW version. Last edited by Lili-Hime on Mon May 18, 2015 6:34 am; edited 2 times in total |
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.Eckilsax.
Posts: 48 Location: Toronto |
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@Merostay
I mean, the show was a mess, but a beautiful mess nonetheless. So I fully buy that Gen did not have full control of the adaptation but contributed to it. |
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WyrmWithWhy
Posts: 4 |
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Jumping off that scene, I really like that it's a major element of the story that the only reason shirou survives his incompetence and idiotically chivalrous attitude toward saber and rin for so long is because he is leeching off the power of saber's legend without her or him knowing it for a long time. I'm kind of disappointed that the ending of Zero didn't hit this point a little stronger actually, because I love the irony of Kiritsugu's arc being completed, and him finally finding fulfillment, by making use of the power that he'd been so scornful of for the whole story, the symbol that most strongly represents Saber's success as a heroic/messianic figure. I think it's a bit of a missed opportunity for the UBW show to also skip over this point, not making any reference to the fact that shirou is only surviving by leeching the legend of a hero that he is not worthy of until he has completed his own inner journey. |
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Sweeter Knitter
Posts: 8 |
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Wow, talk about chewing the fat! It's nice to see how passionate people are about Fate.
May I just say to Hope, that as a Fate fan and a Kirei fan who read pretty much everything out there in the Fate franchise (in original Japanese too btw, since I am Japanese), I enjoyed your interpretations immensely! Aside from a few points, your interpretations are perfectly within canon imo. Stuff like whether Risei was a good parent or not is a subjective matter anyway so it's up to each of us to form our own opinion, regardless of whether Kirei/Nasu/Boochi thought he was or not. As to the born evil debate, a lot has been said so I'm not going to go too much into it, but I think it's very interesting to note that when Nasu wrote the vn, it was his intention to 'create a story without absolute evil in it' (I think the quote was from the Fate Character Material but I could be wrong). So yeah, in my opinion Nasu doesn't even consider Kirei evil, only defective, and therefore creates evil actions as the result of the defect... Also, All the Evil in the World, aka Angra Mainyu, was not even naturally evil, it was just a boy who was made to represent evil by his village and became that which he was forced to personify through the power of the grail. Hollow/ataraxia explores the question of what is evil. And personally, considering the creation of Angra Mainyu, his characterisations and all, his message seems to be that there are no such thing as absolute evil, but only acts of evil. |
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Parsifal24
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Seeing the discussion that is being had on Kiri's characterization I think an important part is being missed by Hope's understanding and that's the metaphysical element of the question even if Kiri is a Sociopath or an anti-social personality that explains the why but no really the how he is evil.
It seems like a strictly positivist or empirical understanding of human nature and it's ultimately a hard deterministic understanding of human nature rooted in biology, This could be how Urobutchi and not Hope's world view per say either way it's a severally limited view of humanity that does not take into question the greater metaphysical question of evil. Nasu at least tries to give credence to a semi-supernatural view of humanity (even if he has to use Angra Manyu as Dues Ex Mechina to do it.) In short Zero feels like two authors with differing views of humanity and the world forced to work together. Which is another part of the discussion that I think is being ignored it seems to be the discussion about wther Kiri is Evil simply “because” or because he is biochemically or psychologically unable and the idea of the author's world view or presuppositions about “the true, good or beautiful” (which are inseparable in my opinion). It's not so much the question of why Kiri is evil or how but the underlying philosophy in his creation that makes him so and what is “evil”, and that I think requires a person to think prepositionally. That hasn't been happening and instead it's turned into a discussion over “the text” of the work in question and what is “canon” in the greater meta textual sense of the Fate/Stay universe. These are helpful things to do in interpreting a work of art but they don't get down to what it all means and it's going to end up with people talking at each other convinced of their own rightness and certainty. Ultimately it is what the text says not what I think the text says and that means having to understand the presuppositions of the creator and the worldview of the fictional universe. An ultimately biochemical, materalist, or Positivist understanding of human evil denudes the very concept of evil of any intrinsic meaning as all is ultimately irreducible to chemical or materialistic structures of thought. Making moral condemnation illogical and presumptive. While an overemphasis on Psychiatric or Psychological takes away any real moral responsibility of the individual Kiri isn't “evil” he is simply maladjusted. Making the entire conversation about his evil and it's origin meaningless only through a supernatural understanding of man, evil, and creation (for lack of a better term). Can the greater ontological questions be answered with any satisfaction, if Urobutchi's ultimate worldview is a positivist world view it can not hold up under it's own scaffolding of despair and the only question he should be trying to answer is that posited by Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. In the final analysis it is a question of human nature and humanity's place in the universe that has to under gird an understanding of fiction if we are in a morally blank universe despair is the only logical choice. Again I think presuppositions and bias of both author and interpreter need to be taken into consideration to really understand a work all else is aesthetic and interpretative sound and fury signifying nothing |
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SeikaS
Posts: 4 |
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I remember a reference to something along those lines specifically regarding Kotomine, in Side Material*, but not that Nasu had that as a general goal. It'd be cool if you could dig that up. *悪党ではないが悪人。非道ではないが外道。 (Meanwhile, in Shinji's Character Material, 『Fate』という世界において"真正の悪"っていうのは、言峰みたいに最初からぶっ壊れている奴のことですから。 so ...) |
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WyrmWithWhy
Posts: 4 |
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Wow. "Taming of the Shrew", "Rape victims are scary"? I feel like saying these are uncharitable readings is an understatement. It's kind of weird, because Hope's reading of F/Z is not that far from my own. Especially the Kariya thing, he's such a "nice guy".
As for the Kirei bit, I really like the idea that childhood neglect is a big part of why he's so messed up. I've always taken a lot of his characterization from a line in F/SN where he says something like "suffering makes people better." So I've kind of always thought of Kirei as someone who sees himself as having come through hardship and been better for it, so obviously everyone else can only find real happiness through suffering. So a typical Ayn Randian jerk in other words. He's even got the whole thing where "everyone has the right to be born" and should only be judged afterwards. The way I typically think of the "king's feast" is as a conflict between collectivism, individualism, and integrity. Not that I think the emphasis on justice, charisma, and authority is incorrect, just a different way to look at it. Now, I'm not sure who frames the Nasuverse as overbearingly complex because the immediate appeal of each of his stories for me has always been how he breaks everything down to an extremely basic level. His actual prose is weirdly impressionistic given how much of a nerd he clearly is, but pretty much every time he introduces something or someone in-universe he basically tells you up-front what it is and what it symbolizes in the narrative, and I really love how un-pretentious that is. Hell, in F/SN, there's a tabletop style stat-sheet that explains exactly what Nasu is trying to convey with the Servants, their symbols, and their associated metaphors. In Fate and pretty much everything he's done after, there's a bunch of elements that interact with other parts of this ongoing universe, and that's a lot of fun if you're "in the know" but it's not necessary. I would use almost exactly the same description to explain the appeal of superhero comics, which I also see a lot of value in, so it might just be a taste thing. I've come to appreciate Urubochi over time but his writing always feels really cold and clinical to me. Like, he seems to sometimes have a hard time expressing emotions on the scale between having your greatest wish in the world granted, and having to shoot everyone who loves you in the face. Actually, a lot of people were criticizing Saya no Uta, but it's probably one of my favorite Urubochi works just because it favors the experiential element instead of his usual intellectual element. It's a story about small tragedy and big feelings, and it feels like it. It's also better than 90% of the Cthulhu stuff that Lovecraft actually wrote himself. |
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Daerian
 Posts: 167 |
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Thats true - stories are very basic, which also makes them interesting. Complex thing is his world building, entire magic and mythology system - they are very detailed and interesting and can be a little overwhelming for new readers - especially because Nasu usually builds his characters around breaking rules of his own universe. |
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