#celticpyro

I just…hm…I think Lostbelt 2 had its flaws, for sure, but I don’t think all the criticisms being hurled at it are entirely fair.

First, people saying the “girls need to have kids by 15″ thing is a gross kink thing: I disagree. It’s fully intended to be disgusting, disturbing and unsettling. A clear sign of how dystopian this world is for humans that everyone who isn’t Gerda only reacts to with horror and shock. Gerda herself merely states it as a fact of life in the human settlements and there’s no moment where anyone is pressuring her to have children by 15 (beyond the implicit societal pressure at least). What bothered me about Agartha a lot was the way the female-on-male abuse was framed in an almost fetishistic context and jokes were made about it, like Astolfo joking about how he’d look cute in chains (bonus points for character derailment there). We don’t get that in LB2. I don’t mind ‘dark’ themes within a work as long as they’re handled in a way that doesn’t glorify or fetishize them and LB2 definitely did neither of those things.

Second, certain comments made by characters that caused many to cry “Romani’s law” over. Caenis’s remarks about Ophelia in particular were…interesting, at least in the context of his/her relation to Wodime. Their name escapes me but I saw a REALLY good analysis on him/her that put many of Caenis’s early dialogue in LB1 and LB2 into perspective (I’m so sorry my brain’s kind of fried so I forget what your name is!). I’d like to say overall that Fate is a franchise dealing with characters from history, so unsurprisingly they’ll sometimes say something politically incorrect (looking at you, Napoleon!). Plus, given the society she lived in and her own personal traumas, Caenis making that “cracked jar of oil” comment about Ophelia seemed fairly in-character, because it may have been how she saw herself when That happened.

Third, Napoleon’s one-sided crush on Ophelia. While he started off pretty immature about it, he recognizes that pursuing her may not be what she wants, and furthermore, could end up jeopardizing the mission. This is why he forms a temporary contract with you. I was fully expecting him to go off the rails obsessing over her (as one other FGO player had claimed he did) but I actually like how he ended his role in the Lostbelt chapter. Selflessly using his final moments to reach Ophelia so she could free herself of Surtr’s control and get to safety. It reminded me a little of Cu Chulainn’s (equally one-sided) crush on Rin, and how he similarly ends up saving her at the cost of his own life. (Alright it’s no secret Napoleon was my far my favorite thing about Lostbelt 2, he was just fantastic all around and added a lot of flair to cutscenes on top of being a top-tier free anti-Divine unit with great gameplay)

Fourth, Scathach=Skadi. I’m still less than happy that the devs went and made her a ScathachFace, and the in-universe explanation didn’t really do much in the way of telling us why Scathach, specifically, was chosen to be merged with Skadi, beyond a clever nod to a very niche, New Age conspiracy of the two being one and the same person. Having said that, this chapter warmed me up just a tiiiiiiiny bit to Skadi as a character. I really wish she’d simply been her own character separate from Scathach, just one with similar themes in her backstory, but I digress. I ended up not hating Skadi, only that she effectively body-snatched my wife the Godslayer.

Fifth, the dialogue apparently being repetitive. I didn’t really notice it too much? I guess the overarching themes were repeated a lot (love, hate, killing and sparing, ice and fire etc) but it didn’t seem that overbearing. Maybe it’s just me but I wasn’t noticing it getting to be a bore.

EDIT: One more criticism I don’t agree with, that Napoleon had no place in the Lostbelt chapter and should’ve been in Lostbelt 1. Yes, getting to shine in Anastasia would’ve let him finally take revenge on his Grand Armee’s defeat against the Russian Winter, and he also fittingly represents revolution and enlightenment. But otherwise he doesn’t really tie into the overall plot of the Russian Lostbelt, nor would he be much good against the Yaga or Ivan. Gotterdammerung, meanwhile, is full of Divine enemies where Napoleon’s anti-Divine Noble Phantasm was a huge boost.

Plus (and I made another post about this) he’s a literary foil of sorts to Salieri. A similarly fictionalized identity of a person who really existed in history, who offers something to that Lostbelt that both its people and its Crypter either didn’t have or were missing. Russia didn’t have music, and while the Yaga had no need for it, it was something Kadoc missed and something that helped us defeat Ivan. The children of Gotterdammerung had no heroes, nor wishes or dreams, but it was something Ophelia desperately needed, and it was through the things Napoleon represented that Surtr was defeated and Ophelia saved.