#fanservant stuff

First of all, aw thank you! It really means a lot to know those lostbelt/event concepts and fanservant ideas stuck with people!

Secondly, a fun thing about Blackbeard is that we actually have only a vague idea of what his real name was. We know his first name was Edward, but his last name is up in the air. Potential spellings include "Thatch, Thach, Thache, Thack, Tack, Thatche, and Theach."

The two largely agreed upon potential names though are Edward Teach, and Edward Thatch.

Edward Teach the 2 star rider is explained as being less the actual legendary pirate blackbeard and more a representation of the eccentric tales people would tell about Blackbeard and the general greed and selfishness of piracy itself as the archetypal idea of a pirate (or at least this is the paper thin excuse given to explain why he's a sleazy NEET pervert gag character)

So if all that is Edward Teach, then there's two other identities to work with, Edward Thatch and Blackbeard.

I personally agree with what, last i checked, is a general consensus of the true Blackbeard being a Berserker or Berserker-adjacent rider, but he could also very well be Pretender class as a reflection of how he's more an identity than an individual person. So Edward Thatch would be Blackbeard the Pretender, the tyrannical lord of the seas who would light fuses in his hair just to scare someone and was as cunning as he was brutal.

Okay, so those last two positions indicate there’s a beast viii and a beast is, and when someone takes a beast’s position, they add :L to that title.

oh he's a piece of shit. Thats the point. In my version, anyways. Idk and idc what official fgo intends for Berserker, @agnerd-bot's idea was so insanely good I had to find a way to use it for my Lb7 rewrite.

Like i said, he's an objectively terrible person. Not even in the Columbus sense where there's like, a sort of deluded idealism to it, no Cortez is just a selfish bastard and the whole point of him being a grand is that it makes you realize that grands arent the "best" of humanity, they're the peak of humanity. That means the bad as well as the good, and even with Daybit actively helping it's everything some of Chaldea's servants (namely Nitocris-Ammit) can do to not try and kill the bastard before their mutual enemies even get a chance. I also want him to be berserker rather than pretender because i don't want to lean into so much as the same post code as the pseudoscience of "white gods" and all that if I can help it. The idea of someone flagrantly and falsely claiming godhood is more interesting to me than someone convincingly imitating it anyhow.

TLDR Cortez's role specifically plays on his connection to the indigenous peoples of the lostbelt. It's not a good connection and its not meant to be, its meant to be vile and infuriating and it's never portrayed as anything different or more glorious than that. Just as a Beast of Humanity isn't necessarily evil, a Grand Servant isn't necessarily righteous.

I'm gonna give an actual answer instead of slagging off on Nasu again because this is like the only good faith ask I've gotten about this. There's two components, the problematic aspect and the "frankly i agree with your idea of paralleling the other lostbelt populations through the idea of evolution, but I dont think they even did that idea well with lb7."

Even removing the "black people = apes with guns" thing, it's still an issue when this is the only lostbelt to have a distinctly non-human population. Even the fae and yaga are still humanoids, but for South America they literally said "animals with guns" its just a matter of whether its as on the nose as making them primates.

Then there's the obvious issue of tone. Even discounting the problematic stuff, this is obviously presented as a joke. It's literally a punchline in itself of being a childish fantasy of "dinosaurs with guns". Not even dino people, just straight up literal dinosaurs with guns. It's at BEST lazy in how its not anything unique, compared to something like the Yaga which are distinctly their own thing as opposed to just "werewolves with guns".

So even if we swallow our morals about the racism, I think we can do better than this. It's shameful that the racist "monkeys with guns to represent POCs" designs are actually much better and more interesting than the dinos. Hence why I'm specifically reusing a couple of those designs (without the guns and racist context of course) but throwing out the dinos entirely.

Which brings us to my rewrite and how it actually does the idea you mentioned of focusing on an "evolution" of humanity.

Without going into too much detail before I ever do a proper write up of things, the equivant to the dinofolk in my rewrite is instead the Zonbi. As in the original meaning of the term from Hatian Vodou (and using the Creole spelling to match) of a being that has died but has yet to be granted release from life - a being whose proper time has come and gone but it has not been allowed to leave the mortal coil. The world of this Lostbelt 7 has been reset countless times in a way certainly inspired by Lostbelt 4 but with some crucial differences that result in humanity being reset along with everything else. Up above in the surface of Xibalba humanity is constantly evolving at extreme pace and being reset just as often for "deviating". These deviations are wiped away and whatever remnants are left get cast into Mictlan below, creating a colony of "imperfect" humanities.

can i just say as an aside i dont mean these in terms of general vibes I mean i can go over them note by note/line by line explaining how and why I picked that for who :)

Main themes:

Prologue: Rekindled

7.1: Pandora Palace (Khamydrian Lyrics)

7.2: Red Sun (Go Light Up!! Cover) 

“Final Act”: Eater of Worlds

Battle themes: 

Hell’s Rejection (7.1)

Temperance and Vengeance (7.2)

Za Hando (Requiem) (7.2 Alternative)

Time For Your Medicine (7.1 Alternative) 

Operation Pyrite (Lyrical)

Grand Battle themes [Depending on current arc]:

Invasion 

[BIG SHOT] (Hobo Habo Remix)

Warlord -> Courage (Requiem)

Broly’s Rage and Sorrow

Various chapter/ambiance BGMs:

Meeting Mictlantecuhtli (Awestruck): Resurrection

Kukulkan’s Past (Flashback): Observatory

So much grief, never enough time (Contemplation): Tooth Paste

A shepherd’s gaze never wanders far (Foreboding): Shipwreck

Even in death, life persists (Community 7.1): Moongrains (Seiiccubus remix)

The Land of Death is ALIVE (Community 7.2): Fractured Shrines

 “The Swarm” / Endurance Battle cue: Megalo Strike Back (Rednas Remix)

The End: Is Nigh

Chaldea/NPC themes:

Ritsuka: Dreaming of Me -> Your World Will Fail  Mash: Need Somebody ->Sweet Dreams are Made of Seven Nation Army Daybit: Come With Me Now Bacab: Chirality Huitzilopochtli: Fading Light Tzitzimitl: Hailstorm / Sacralize or Strike

Servant themes:

Long drawn out reason as to why the will-be-victor "Conceptual Advantage (TM)" over their opponent