The thing about Emiya (either of them) being an aimbot is that almost all their attacks are variable range. Just turn the sword into an arrow and shoot it.
Fate/Revelation Online
- Thread starter daniel_gudman
- Start date
Let's not forget the magic angle here: Kirito is a programmer/engineer who has been taught maths-magic. At the moment it's a bit handwavy and kabbalah-ish, but I can't see him keeping it this way given the chance.
While we're playing armchair psychologist: Kirito. In cannon, the guy lies (or at least withholds information), constantly: he played the bad guy after the first boss, he lied to the Cats about being a frontliner, he lied to his sister about... everything before he knew she was Leafa while simultaneously lying to Leafa about his goals, he tried to keep the GGO stuff hidden from his wife/girlfriend.... I'm sure I'm missing more.
It's pretty clear that Kirito feels he should keep people ignorant, for their own safety and/or happiness. He'd make a great mage.
(I mean, the guy's a saint compared to the bunch of messed-up psychos that make up the F/SN cast, but candour ain't his strong point)
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Hm, I dunno. I guess it'd be the difference between visceral satisfaction and intellectual satisfaction?
Kotomine enjoys people suffering, but that doesn't mean he does a little fistpump every time the economy crashes or he reads about a suicide in the morning obituaries. He likes seeing people suffer – it's aesthetically pleasing to him, it triggers the parts of his brain labelled "good times" that get so much attention in electrode-studded mice. Similarly, Shirou likes people being saved, but that doesn't send him to his happy place when he sees a news report about a little girl whose cat was rescued from a tree. He likes seeing people be saved.
It's why he's so upset by Kotomine's point about "saving people from distress" inevitably having the prerequisite of "people in distress". To someone else, that might have been nonsensical. They're saving people because they don't like seeing people in distress, and are therefore returning them to the neutral state of "not being in distress". In their ideal world, the "saving" part would have been unnecessary to begin with. To Shirou, the "saving" part is why he does it in the first place, so the dig hits home.
Right now, Shirou is "saving people" by making swords so that they can save themselves. I can't help but think he'd find this far, far less satisfying than actually going out and saving people himself, even if it's more efficient in terms of lives saved. It's a form of self-denial, like eating salads because you know it's good for you when there's a big juicy burger dripping with toppings right there and absolutely no-one would condemn you for grabbing it and taking a bite. He's doing it to prove a point, if only to himself. I think that's why he's throwing himself into personalizing each blade to such an absurd extreme – quite apart from his natural perfectionism, it keeps him distracted from the temptation to go out and find Little Timmies he can drag out of wells, which is what he'd actually like to do.
The thing is though Shirous is intimately connected with blades (being able to see it's entire history and keeping a record of every blades you see will do that) that I think he might see each blade he creates as a sort of extension of himself. Every times he gets to see Tyrfing he get's to 'see' just how that blade has helped Hexideciaml and an updated copy of it in his mind.
I think his personalisation are also just related to just how many of the best swords he's ever seen are nobled phantasms. Weapons that are so intertwined with their wielders that they are literally inseperable. Having a sample set like that no wonder you would personalise each weapon you make.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Revlid, you're kind of right and kind of wrong.
First, I want to get this off my chest:
How the hell did Kotomine even know that distinction would bother Shirou? Nasu tended to cheat whenever it came to Kotomine knowing people's inner motivations (esp. Shirou) but I think that was the most blatant example.
Anyway you're right about what Shirou's doing with swords designed to specifically help this exact person, and you're right that it's not quite as satisfying to him as directly saving people.
But habituation and training to do the right thing is moral growth, and even if I just complained it was cheating, it wasn't a coincidence that Shirou's inner monologue in chapter 6.2 was worrying about that "Rejoice, Emiya Shirou" line, immediately before he decided to switch Jobs from [Wandering Hero] to [Swordsmith]. Yeah I had him doing that thing where he doesn't admit to himself what's really bothering him, but even so.
I think you're treating the desires of these characters as fundamentally static; but changing your mind about stuff, that's character development.
Yeah Shirou wants to save people from disasters and that requires they be caught up in disasters... But he was also ashamed that he felt that way and wanted to change it.
Addressing that and having Shirou become a "better" Hero is the backbone of what I'm doing with his character arc here. What makes that work differently from a theoretical "regular" post-VN route is that rather than Rin discouraging him from it, here he's got friends and allies that are helping him improve as a Hero.
First, I want to get this off my chest:
How the hell did Kotomine even know that distinction would bother Shirou? Nasu tended to cheat whenever it came to Kotomine knowing people's inner motivations (esp. Shirou) but I think that was the most blatant example.
Anyway you're right about what Shirou's doing with swords designed to specifically help this exact person, and you're right that it's not quite as satisfying to him as directly saving people.
But habituation and training to do the right thing is moral growth, and even if I just complained it was cheating, it wasn't a coincidence that Shirou's inner monologue in chapter 6.2 was worrying about that "Rejoice, Emiya Shirou" line, immediately before he decided to switch Jobs from [Wandering Hero] to [Swordsmith]. Yeah I had him doing that thing where he doesn't admit to himself what's really bothering him, but even so.
I think you're treating the desires of these characters as fundamentally static; but changing your mind about stuff, that's character development.
Yeah Shirou wants to save people from disasters and that requires they be caught up in disasters... But he was also ashamed that he felt that way and wanted to change it.
Addressing that and having Shirou become a "better" Hero is the backbone of what I'm doing with his character arc here. What makes that work differently from a theoretical "regular" post-VN route is that rather than Rin discouraging him from it, here he's got friends and allies that are helping him improve as a Hero.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Revelation C (Plot)
I dunno, I guess maybe it rubbed off on him after a decade of hanging around Gilgamesh and his magical ability to immediately understand someone (except for all those times he totally misunderstood someone, which mysteriously doesn't show up on any of his Servant matrices but is totally real you guys).
will408914
(slouching towards bethlehem)
- Location
- California
Also the whole "heart literally made of a god of evil" thing. That might have helped.
In other words, weird conceptual handwaving.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
When Gil screws up he screws up like a King
And yeah the thing is, if Kotomine had something like the King's Eyes of Discernment, but granted to him by Angra Mainyu when it rebuilt him after the 4th War, where he could see the dark parts of human desire but not the good parts like some kinda Mystic Eye of Pandora... that could have really worked, it would have fit him (and it still would have preserved scenes like Shirou refusing to make a Wish on the Grail even when he was dying in the Orphanarium, which tots surprised him).
But that never really got addressed, so instead it was kindof a fridge logic plot hole to me.
And yeah the thing is, if Kotomine had something like the King's Eyes of Discernment, but granted to him by Angra Mainyu when it rebuilt him after the 4th War, where he could see the dark parts of human desire but not the good parts like some kinda Mystic Eye of Pandora... that could have really worked, it would have fit him (and it still would have preserved scenes like Shirou refusing to make a Wish on the Grail even when he was dying in the Orphanarium, which tots surprised him).
But that never really got addressed, so instead it was kindof a fridge logic plot hole to me.
In the Nasuverse, the Luck stat is a measure of one's ability to defy Fate. Gil's high Luck is why it's possible for his arrogance to let him defy his fate of winning
OverReactionGuy
Verified Sanity
In the Nasuverse, the Luck stat is a measure of one's ability to defy Fate. Gil's high Luck is why it's possible for his arrogance to let him defy his fate of winning
That actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it. He was easily the strongest servant, he had the best advantages in the fourth war, and he had the best information gathering service. By all rights he was fated to win that grail... but then he went and been himself.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Gil just fucks around while protagonists do stuff" was pretty much what he was like in the VN too though, so it wasn't like Gen was using him different than Nasu.
He's that trope about Pride Goeth Before The Fall dialed up so high it's kinda ridiculous, that's part (most) of the charm of Gil.
He's that trope about Pride Goeth Before The Fall dialed up so high it's kinda ridiculous, that's part (most) of the charm of Gil.
OverReactionGuy
Verified Sanity
Exactly, he was being himself.
NewAgeOfPower
Engineering Pornagrapher Extraordinaire
- Location
- An Certain Hive of Scum & Villainy, known as NYC
When Illya said "Shirou is becoming a Hero, huh." It was touching for reasons I did not understand.
About Gilgamesh: I'm not sure he is the "best" servant, for most masters; most of his moves look like they should burn through his MP bar like it's going out of fashion. I don't know how much energy you get from a basement full of orphans, but I suspect Gil's apparent arrogance is a mixture of genuine, undeserved arrogance and intimidation tactics.
- Location
- Singapore
No_Meaning
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- Location
Any chance of seeing Lind from DDD, the rp ninjas working for Diabel or one of the other major guilds in these interludes?
Be interesting to see their take on Shirou and Ilya.
Do they all think Shirou is an AI or a professional martial artist brought on by the devteam for the sword skills or something along those lines?
About Ilya's stats, couldn't that just be because she's on a GM toon?
Really hope to see how some of the other characters view her insane stats and abilities in more detail.
Did she ever try to cash in on Shirou's favours?
There are Noble Phantasms that reduce mana costs to trivial amounts (such as Tamamo-no-Mae's).
Gilgamesh has almost every Noble Phantasm at his disposal, with the only exceptions being things not derived from human knowledge (mainly just certain Divine Constructs, such as Excalibur) and POSSIBLY things that can't be embodied by an object, such as God Hand.
He's bound to have something that reduces his own mana costs, and his pride is too great to allow himself to be weakened by mana deprivation.
The thing with the basement full of orphans is that the A+ Independent Action he gains after the fourth war lets him exist indefinitely without a master and without an external mana source, but only if he isn't using any Noble Phantasms. The orphans are just so that he has some form of mana source, regardless of how weak it is, because that's all he needs.
Literally the only reason why Gilgamesh isn't the best Servant choice for most Masters is that he will never follow any orders.
Last edited:
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Because Kotomine was the same, but opposite. I always interrupted his ability to see through Shirou as seeing his own dark (light?) mirror. Like, it doesn't make sense in our world, but the idea of nature shining through makes plenty of sense in a fantasy world, and Shiou shares Kotomine's incompleteness, even if he expresses it in a different way.
Eh, that depends more on who is his Master.
Gil's arrogance is interesting since it's isn't even based on his utterly broken nps and abilities but a core part of who he is. Which is why he is able to accept something like Angra Mainyu and even use it to make a physical body for himself. Even when facing someone that he fully accepts that he can't beat like in CCC with the mother goddess, he just accepts that he screwed up while still acting the same.
Gil is actually not that problematic if you go by the book when summoning him. He didn't like Tokiomi but he wasn't going to betray him even when he used a seal to try and get him to retreat. It was only when he learned that about the command seal suicide that he decided to screw him over.
No, he will NEVER obey an "order" from anybody. Depending on the Master and his mood, he might honor a "request" though. Tokiomi was at least smart enough to know to never even attempt to give Gilgamesh an "order".
If you can somehow earn his respect, he might treat you more like a monarch's advisor or a general, which is about the best you can hope for, and pretty much what the protagonist of Extra achieves through sheer audacity and balls.
They don't really cost near anything. The only mana Gil has to use is to activate GOB. Firing NPs from the GOB doesn't cost him anything. Hes noted to be hilariously efficient in terms of mana usage.
Yes this means that once the gate is open Gil can fire at you all day and the only mana he uses is the normal amount of him existing/amount any other servant would have to spend in a fight.
- Location
- Elsewhere
I always assumed he didn't so much have a perfect insight into people's character as he was good enough to understand what mattered to people then came up with the most hurtful spin.
If it's close enough and painful enough then people won't be thinking clearly enough to split hairs.
If he's good enough, then they might be so off-balance that they question their motivations even when they actually were different.
"I wasn't thinking like that... was I?"