#fgo rant

okay i finished lb4 finally and oh god i'm so mad about this. like what the fuck, what the actual fuck. how can THAT still support guda in destroying all the lostbelts

first of all, WHAT FUCKING LOGIC IS IT TO SAY A HISTORY WAS PRUNED AWAY FOR BEING TOO PEACEFUL AND HAPPY??? AND HOW CAN YOU BE PROUD ABOUT "PROPER HUMAN HISTORY" BEING LITERAL HELL?

like just, oh god this pisses me offso much. how does any if what holmes say there justify or explain this—, how could you think it's okay to be proud of your history to be damn hell

lb4 is a happy, peaceful world where there wouldn't be wars, or as much suffering in general. pepe literally said this himself, but rather we are suppised to choose a world that is utter hell compared to that?

up until now i didn't really get people siding with the crypters all too much since the previous lostbelts really were fucked up/horrible, but oh god i do now.

how can guda even get motivated by what holmes said, how can anyone even think that that makes sense and give you what you need to continue fighting? there's the option of a way better world than phh, and holmes saying you are supposed to be proud of your fucked up world is enough of a reason to destroy such a world?

we literally had the chance in the game to choose to possibly live in a happier world, but rather we choose to destroy it??? for what? for a slim chance of restoring our history when we DON'T EVEN KNOW if it'll restore it? we never had the guarantee doing this would bring phh back, and up until now it still made sense in a really twisted way since well, the other worlds were pretty damn horrible too. but now, now we fucking destroyed a way better than phh lostbelt with no evidence of it in the end doing anything to fix what the foreign god did.

and even ignoring all that i'm fucking pissed at this, we're literally being toldthat phh is not allowed to be a haply, peaceful world. we're told it was too happy to be proper human history and that we are supposed to be proud of that. what the fuck. that's just so fucked up in so many ways

i'm not gonna lie, if i actually had a choice i'd just say fuck phh. who would want to be part of a horrible world and be proud of it when there's literally a happier option right in front of you.

So here is the thing, Edward Teach, AKA Blackbeard, is bad, but parts of him are good. Let me first say everything about Blackbeard being a perverted lolicon is fucking awful and needs to stop. What this is about is that aspects of Blackbeard and his portrayal are good, and he could have been a good character.

So firstly his physical design. See the reason I like his physical design is because years, and I mean years before Fate/Grand Order was even a concept I watched a history special on Blackbeard, and the thing is that FGO Blackbeard’s design actually matches up with certain Wanted Poster illustrations of the real world Blackbeard. This is both interesting and very rare for FGO. Another thing is that he ends up with fuses woven into his beard, which is a thing the real world Blackbeard actually did. He’d weave canon fuses into his beard, and then light them so his beard would smoke and give the appearance of being on fire. Blackbeard very much understood the power of dramatics, the power of an infamous name, and the power of his own image in the eyes of others. The power of people thinking you’re more than a mere man. 

To that degree I also just like that Blackbeard has a Guts skill, seeing as that when he died, reportedly he had been shot and stabbed multiple times, had been blinded, and kept swinging and fighting. The man has earned a Guts Skill. 

Now let’s go on to his portrayal. Again. The lolicon shit is awful. The perverted weeb shit is awful. I groan and die a little every time it happens. There is however physical narrative evidence than written without that stuff, Blackbeard can be good. The most often sited example is Blackbeard’s portrayal in Summer 3, where he wasn’t a lolicon, he was just a scumbag. Scumbag is good. Again, not everyone, especially among Servants, has to be a good guy. (I hate Columbus, but I also agree that is how Columbus should be portrayed, because the real Columbus was an awful fucking person.). Here’s the thing though, the BEST example, at least to me, of what Blackbeard could have been comes in the form of an Interlude. Not one of his Interludes either, but one of Drake’s. See in this Interlude, Blackbeard is tagging along while we hunt down someone for Drake. There’s a point where Blackbeard is going full pirate as he interrogates someone, describing all the horrible things he’s going to do to this guy in a dead serious fashion. The thing is Blackbeard was told explicitly he’s not allowed to harm or kill this guy, Blackbeard knows this, and it’s shown that he will honour it; however he’s also keenly aware the guy he’s interrogating? He doesn’t know this. He doesn’t know Blackbeard can’t and won’t do any of the things he’s describing. He buckles like a house of cards. Blackbeard used the power of his image, the power of his enemies imagination against them, and it was brilliant. It was peak Blackbeard. It was everything Blackbeard should be. A cunning manipulative man who uses dramatics and fear to get what he wants without having to fight, while being ready for a fight if it still comes to it. Someone who will manipulate morale on both sides to his advantage!

My second unpopular opinion, though I’ve seen more agreement to this, and there’s a post somewhere that I reblogged which gives a much more comprehensive explanation as to why this is, but “Lostbelt 3: Synchronized Intellectual Nation, SIN” is bad. There’s a few reasons it’s bad.  I will however say this first. Everything about Spartacus? Was good. It was very good. This was a Lostbelt that showed just what Spartacus can be to the narrative. He can be more than just manically shouting about “OPPRESION!!!” in the right setting. My significant other was right when she said the reason he had to die so early in Apocrypha was because had he lived any longer than that, he absolutely would have joined Sieg in starting a Homunculus rebellion. 

So why is Lostbelt 3 bad? A few things. One is that the narrative is very poorly managed. It starts very slow, and almost nothing introduced in the first half actually goes anywhere. Then when we hit the second half of the story the narrative suddenly goes “Oh shit! We’re half done! Better pick up the pace!” and jams it’s foot on the accelerator so that things escalate so quickly barely any of it has time to matter. 

Focusing on the first half of the story, that Vitch was releasing beasts and giants on villages, a point which took up a large chunk of the story, actually went NOWHERE. It really had nothing to do with the story, and the quests themselves brought me back to Orleans where every node and notch was “Here’s two blocks of dialogue. Now fight some Wyverns!”. It was a massive backwards step in FGO’s storytelling. Another issue is that in every Lostbelt so far they’ve tried to give us some sidekick from the world we’re going to prune so we can feel bad about it later, but the one in Lostbelt 3, which he at least got eyes unlike the other anonymous villagers, the kid didn’t even get a NAME. How are we supposed to care about a character with no name and almost no personality to speak of? The kid was quite literally barely more than a generic NPC. 

Speaking of generic NPCs. Let’s talk about how DEEPLY Lostbelt 3 mistreated it’s characters, which is the real crux of why Lostbelt 3 is bad. So Nezha and Mordred just did not matter at all, to the extent they literally got shoved out of the story part way in. Mordred was there for comparison and pairing with Spartacus, but the moment he died she became unimportant and basically didn’t do anything. Nezha started off alright, but then the moment other characters showed up she was likewise shoved to the side, and ultimately out of the story. She basically existed solely to identify that Xiang Yu was a similar existence to herself. Speaking of, Xiang Yu and  Yu Mei-ren’s romance was completely unbelievable. For multiple reasons. Again there’s another tumblr post by someone who’s put more thought into this than I, that explains this better. I’ll try and find it and reblog it again. Anyway. It’s bad and unbelievable. I’ll try to summarize why. Part of the problem is that there’s no real build up to it. It’s a lot of Mei-ren fawning over or being overtly protective of Xiang, and Xiang just being confused. It’s entirely one-sided till almost the end of the story. Then he just does some magic robot calculations and he decides he loves her just like the other Xiang Yu. Which is the other thing the narrative doesn’t pay enough attention to in this “romance”. HE’S NOT THE SAME GUY. Like he’s the “same guy” but an alternate reality version. Mei-ren basically found her husband’s doppleganger and decided to cling to him hoping it’d be the same/because she couldn’t bare to watch another man with that face die. Which could have been very interesting! Really! But it wasn’t paid enough attention to or written properly to BE interesting. Honestly the relationship between Xiang and Mei-ren could have formed an emotional backbone to the story, and instead it’s just kinda off to the side and comes up occasionally, but it’s “super important really!” by the end of the story. 

Related to this is also Gao Changgong, Prince of Lanling, who was UTTERLY UNIMPORTANT. Like he should have been! The Lostbelt started off super strong with that exchange between Gao and Mei-ren in the past, and then the narrative did nothing with it. Gao barely said anything the whole Lostbelt when he should have been more relevant to the plot! He should have been a confidante to Mei-ren! It should have come up that he was happy to be able to see her again in “another life” (such as being a Servant is like living again, albeit briefly). He should have been more involved with Mei-ren and Xiang Yu! Like it could have been done so many ways! He could have been her wingman! Or he could have been her confidante who she talked to about her struggle with Xiang Yu being Xiang Yu but not being HER Xiang Yu. Instead he just didn’t do much, died earlier than any Crypter servant so far in their own Lostbelt, and became utterly irrelevant. 

Red Hare and Chen Gong appeared part way into the story, and served no purpose beyond being Comic Relief, which was a real disservice; especially because their summoning was supposed to be important. It follows after the death of Spartacus, where the Lostbelt suddenly becomes connected to the throne of Heroes because the people regain hope and the concept of a Hero. Their arrival is SIGNIFICANT and then the narrative goes on to do nothing with them. Literally anyone could have been summoned and it would have played out the same. That’s how much their appearance mattered. 

Old Man Li was there, but he also didn’t matter. Specifically it didn’t matter that he was Old Man Li. It doesn’t even come up. It literally could have been anyone. Could have been just some dude, and narratively it would have been the same. 

Which is largely the biggest problem with the narrative. Most of the Servants/Characters present could have been literally anyone and it would have been almost exactly the same. Who anyone was largely did not matter. 

Now let’s address the insect in the room, Emperor Mothman himself,  Shi Huang Di. He was bad. Not like “he was a bad guy”. I mean he was just bad. Poorly written and uninteresting. He was unsympathetic and poorly written. Now. Let me be clear, a villain doesn’t need to be sympathetic. My problem here is that he was unsympathetic, but at the very end of the story they tried to act like he was. I felt nothing for this character, and still do not. He was poorly written and the aspects of him that could have been interesting were under utilized. Also not a fan of his design personally, or at least not compared to images I’ve seen of what he apparently looked like before he became a super-computer, followed by his new moth bod. That’s just a matter of personal preference though and I have no real issues with his physical design. Point is he’s boring. Like everyone else in the story, and despite being there for most of it, he was under utilized, didn’t do much, and his role could have been filled by just about anyone and it would have played out the same. 

Well, at least I got Oberon in 2 multis, gonna throw some pulls at banner 2, Baobhan is the only that I actually liked, maybe Melusine will look cool too.