Interesting. Do you think a modern conspiracy theory could generate a heroic spirit? You could probably find a few ones nowadays that have a similar ratio of people who believe they are fact to people who know they are fiction as Sherlock Holmes did at the turn of the century.
Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
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- Crossover
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Genuinely curious to see if mages could successfully gaslight enough of the world into believing that their own custom designed hero did exist for the purposes of winning grail wars with it.
And if its possible how much effort would it require.
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On the other hand, we have Emiya, and we have Illya and Miyu, the temporal component of the Throne has been proven quite well not to matter. And it's not about him being a modern hero at all, but a strong enough modern interpretation overwriting the historical truth.
And that. It's not there yet, but the possibility is there, and the Throne clearly records those possibilities.
To me, it would be like having Carmilla and Elizabeth Bathory summonable as fully separate and distinct forms of the same legend, one with more historical weight, one with more fantasy. Davy Jones exists on the throne as himself by legend, and Davy Jones the squid face exists as a summonable possiblity because the legend of such a version of him exists.
Exactly. Davy Jones the crab monster would be an effect added to Davy Jones the actual sailor.
All of this isn't saying you should include it in the story, or have the jar of dirt actually work. It's just, you know, I can completely believe that the Nasuverse has room for Squid Face Jones. I wouldn't even have to try half as hard as the whole Fox Girl Sun Diety Actually A Comet thing.
SilverShadows
Under autumn skies
- Location
- US
None of those three are actually Heroic Spirits though.
And as for Squid Face Jones, the issue isn't "what is the first thing people think of" when they hear Davey Jones, but "what do they belive it is in reality".
Everyone who watches PotC KNOWS it's a work of fiction, so no one will BELIEVE that the Davey Jones spoken of in legend is actually a squid man. Hence that not effecting the Heroic Spirit.
Dracula and Liz get effected the way they do because they lived, and their legends were formed and modified, in a time when people as a whole didn't KNOW quite so much about the World.
As such the possibility of some aristocrat who did terrifying bloody acts actually being a real, true, vampire is "a possibility that exists."
That's what Mystery in the Nasuverse is. That niggling doubt that "maybe it could be literally true" which basically doesn't exist anymore in modern day when science has explained and given a hard finite definition to so much that used to be unknown.
Stahor
BookWorm
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
I would say that Superman would in some way related to Nursery Rhyme - literally picture book and champion of innocents.
If not for licensing, i totally see Superman as modern "face" of Nursery Rhyme.
On subject of Davy Jones - consider that many summoned servants _look_ not in any way how the looked historically, without any specific modern filter. I don't need to go further than Cu Chulainn, who certainty did not weared blue bodyglove. So tentacly look may lie in same category as Cu Chulainn's (or Scathach's) bodyglove, or say, Arthuria's skirt.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
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So @James D. Fawkes was that Davy Jones, the Flying Duchman or David Jones the 17th century Indian Ocean Pirate who is considered as one of the possible sources of the Davy Jones saying? Or some mixture of the three?
Also Sherlock Holmes can be said to be considered the spirit of British Enlightenment Medicine as his real life inspirations were all from the field of legal medicine of the time.
Also Sherlock Holmes can be said to be considered the spirit of British Enlightenment Medicine as his real life inspirations were all from the field of legal medicine of the time.
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It wouldn't surprise me if it was a heroic spirit that was the combination of all the ghost ships stories.
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- USA
And who believes in the reality of, shall we say, the Fate version of Black Beard or Osakabehime, and what Mystery is there backing up the legend of Emiya and Ilya? Voyager, just, existing.
The only hard rule of the Nasuverse is that any limit you think to put on something, someone will break. I'm not trying to say the Davy Jones on the Throne is going to look like he came from the movies, but the setting that gives us Frankenstein and Nursery Rhyme is capable of having a Squid Face container that Jones can be summoned as. Especially, with Orion as an example, if a certain Diety decided to play loose with the rules to have some fun.
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*Raises eyebrow, and looks at Holmes and Moriarty*
I sincerely hope Rika remembers this conversation in the future.
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- Canada
Blackbeard is voluntary on his part because, in a place with hundreds of Heroic Spirits, setting one's beard on fire doesn't cut it anymore. So to keep people off-guard, he act like he does.
IIRC Osakabehime is a kitsune, but she took the bat theme to not piss off Tamamo, though that might be fanon.
Emiya is a counter-guardian, not a heroic spirit. He made a contract with Alaya. Same with Illya IIRC.
I believe Voyager is a Servant because he is Humanity's Foreigner, as the first man-made object to leave the solar system.
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That's the point. Nasu can justify anything and we'll accept it because it's cool. Arguing that something can't be just doesn't fit in with a multiverse made of exceptions.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Thank you, Rika.
I'm sure there's a perfectly
I mean Rika was the one arguing that he did exist, it's Marie who might end up eating her own words in the future.
Jaesten
The Eye in the Abyss
- Location
- Canada
That's where things get complicated though. You can't just use fiction as an excuse for them not existing because Fate exists in a universe where Arthur and Merlin and such are real when they're not here. Lancelot is later added fanfiction of the Knights of the Round Mythos isn't he? You can't judge servants that appear in Fate by real life standards because it's inherently not.
Davy Jones the Squidface could've been actually real and said PotC movies got hilariously right after all. Who's to really know?
Davy Jones the Squidface could've been actually real and said PotC movies got hilariously right after all. Who's to really know?
We're judging based on an in-universe perspective. Sure, Lancelot might be obviously fictional in our world, but everyone in the Nasuverse that's in the know seems to consider it obvious that he (and the rest of the KotRT) existed, even if details have been lost. Meanwhile, Olga says that Davy Jones didn't exist in this chapter, and that the PotC movies are just movies -- meaning it's likely that Davy Jones is fictional in-universe.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
The recent Singularity with Pope Johanna tries to explain this phenomenon with something like this: a lot of heroes that we consider to be fictional used to be real people who performed most of the deeds attributed to them, but with the depletion of Mystery in the modern world, people believe less and less in their existence, until historical reality retroactively rearranges itself so that their existence isn't covered in the umbrella of Proper Human History.
Basically, just as people can believe in someone so hard they wish them into existence, they can also disbelieve in someone so hard they retcon them out of it.
For example, Artoria gets by because modern scholars consider King Arthur might have some historical basis, so people can reasonably believe that someone like Arthur did live.
Dunno what to tell you about Hellenistic demigods, though. Logically, the summons of heroic spirits should be more and more difficult the further away from their time period they are, and the less their existence is verified by Proper Human History.
Basically, just as people can believe in someone so hard they wish them into existence, they can also disbelieve in someone so hard they retcon them out of it.
For example, Artoria gets by because modern scholars consider King Arthur might have some historical basis, so people can reasonably believe that someone like Arthur did live.
Dunno what to tell you about Hellenistic demigods, though. Logically, the summons of heroic spirits should be more and more difficult the further away from their time period they are, and the less their existence is verified by Proper Human History.
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I've been reading the story and been really enjoying it so far! What I find funny is when someone says something can't be done in the Fate universe when the author of the Fate series is pretty well known for retconning and "super-special" exceptions to the rules. So anytime I hear someone say it can't be done or it doesn't work that way, I'm fully expecting a Fate/GO event/chapter or Fate-spinoff to invalidate that statement eventually.
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My bad, I meant that Rika shoves this into Marie's face in the future.
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The real fun of all this faffing about with how various beliefs and superstitions intersect with the situations that create Heroic spirits and thus Servants- is that plenty of canon servants are exceptions due to forces cobbling together various folk tales and similar into something like a Servant, whether or not the source material qualified to be a servant. Well that and the fact that as has been pointed out some things might have functional, or merely cosmetic aspects due to various popular beliefs.
This ghost pirate could be a servant, probably something like the flying dutchman, or the product of a Servant summoning something, for all we know some servant with necromantic powers was just taking a ride in the ghost ship and we never saw them, basically a situation like with false assasin being summoned by Caster in Fate/Stay Night.
I love how the nasuverse has cultivated a feel of both having solid rules about its magic and mystery, but a similar feel of none of that mattering because people constantly cheese things into being exceptions. Once you accept that the magi that tells you the solid rules that are later broken can just be wrong or not know enough, then it all comes together to make the setting feel more real. Though I do want more Magi characters that can just straight up say that they just don't know some things because their whole deal is studying mystery and that there are always exceptions.
This ghost pirate could be a servant, probably something like the flying dutchman, or the product of a Servant summoning something, for all we know some servant with necromantic powers was just taking a ride in the ghost ship and we never saw them, basically a situation like with false assasin being summoned by Caster in Fate/Stay Night.
I love how the nasuverse has cultivated a feel of both having solid rules about its magic and mystery, but a similar feel of none of that mattering because people constantly cheese things into being exceptions. Once you accept that the magi that tells you the solid rules that are later broken can just be wrong or not know enough, then it all comes together to make the setting feel more real. Though I do want more Magi characters that can just straight up say that they just don't know some things because their whole deal is studying mystery and that there are always exceptions.
This is probably going to be a very unpopular opinion and this is my own personal opinion. And I'm pretty sure I'll get a bunch of people saying how I'm wrong.
When everything becomes an exception to the rules, then the rules are pointless. Except we've got all the Fate fans who goes around arguing with everyone about how this is/isn't possible because of the rules as defined by the source. Except, they are completely ok with exceptions because those exceptions are only supposed to happen in special circumstances.
But when new characters and stories keep introducing special circumstances after exceptions, then you might as well as get rid of the rules because they are obviously broken. Except all the people arguing about how this is or isn't possible because the rules says so will completely say that they aren't wrong because the source says so.
That is not how you make a setting where the rules are supposed to be important. Because all those constant exceptions? The ones that keep happening over and over? They make the rules worthless because there will always be an exception that will break the rule.
And honestly with things like mystery they are probably a case of things being solid and semi-consistent right up until their not and their are going to be people who delibrately try to break them or do so unintentionaly by simply not knowing better not to mention the current situation is the absolute opposite of things working as intended so you end up with wierd shit happening
I kind of view it like the English language. Every single rule in English is broken at least once (partially because English isn't really a single language, it's 2.5 languages mashed together), but that doesn't mean its rules are useless either; they are perfectly valid benchmarks most of the time and are still worth knowing for the majority of cases.
On the Real/Fictional divide, I personally like to think of it as them being real somewhere in the Kaleidoscope of worlds, rather than the fiction creating such a fictional hero, the fiction establishes a pathway to a hero that doesn't exist in this time and space, but is similar enough to the fiction that you could throw a whole bunch of magic in and bridge the difference.
Which neatly explains why some fictions work, and others don't, by the same principle of calling up a nameless wraith similar to a hero because you called for a hero that doesn't exist. Its like dialing a wrong number, and the phone going on random seek until it either finds the nearest valid number or you run out of energy.
Throw enough energy in and it might even be able to pull from fundamentally different metaphysics entirely. We already know Servants carry their 'home' metaphysics with them to some extent.
If you just act mysterious and give limited, generally good advice you'd never be proven wrong.
Which neatly explains why some fictions work, and others don't, by the same principle of calling up a nameless wraith similar to a hero because you called for a hero that doesn't exist. Its like dialing a wrong number, and the phone going on random seek until it either finds the nearest valid number or you run out of energy.
Throw enough energy in and it might even be able to pull from fundamentally different metaphysics entirely. We already know Servants carry their 'home' metaphysics with them to some extent.
Given his experiences I like to think he just defaults to being mysteriously smug because he knows nobody knows jack shit about reality, especially Magi, and triply so for himself. Every single well informed explanation he got in the VN gets subverted, inverted or played with by the end.
If you just act mysterious and give limited, generally good advice you'd never be proven wrong.
she's not detecting any shrimp? krill? no isopods or bugs on the ship? i am fairly sure she should feel something, especially with sea weed having bugs on them pretty often. mainly just wondering if this is yet another example of singularity 3 wierdness and those just legit don't exist, or whether taylor just didn't feel them worth mentioning or something, though with the 'i was back to my normal, human senses' line i am not too inclined to think it's option 2.
SilverShadows
Under autumn skies
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- US
Even if no one's actually gonna read this multiple paragraph rant about the Metaphysics of the Nasuverse, all the many many hours of my life I have wasted on learning about this stuff demands I post it anyway.
Emiya and Illya ARE NOT Heroic Spirits, they do not have a Legend that requires Mystery and Belief to ascend to the Throne of Heroes.
"Servant" and "Heroic Spirit" are not interchangeable terms.
A Servant is a container, like a jar, that has a limited capacity and comes with a number of variations that fit different things. A Heroic Spirit is one of the variety of things you can put into a Servant Container, but you can only put so much of one in a given Servant because a Heroic Spirit in its entirety is MUCH BIGGER than a Servant Container. This is why Servants of the same Heroic Spirit are frequently very different between classes, like Saber and Lancer Arturia, because different facets of the complete Heroic Spirit were what was placed into the container.
Voyager is an explicitly mysterious existence even within the ALTERNATE UNIVERSE he originates from, and we don't fully know what his deal canonically is yet. It is a canon aspect of the Nasuverse that different Alternate Universes frequently have different underlying metaphysics.
For example, "The 12 Dead Apostle Ancestors" and "Heroic Spirits" explicitly CANNOT NATURALLY EXIST in the same universe as they rely on an opposite state of the same underlying metaphysics.
"Servant" and "Heroic Spirit" are not interchangeable terms.
A Servant is a container, like a jar, that has a limited capacity and comes with a number of variations that fit different things. A Heroic Spirit is one of the variety of things you can put into a Servant Container, but you can only put so much of one in a given Servant because a Heroic Spirit in its entirety is MUCH BIGGER than a Servant Container. This is why Servants of the same Heroic Spirit are frequently very different between classes, like Saber and Lancer Arturia, because different facets of the complete Heroic Spirit were what was placed into the container.
Voyager is an explicitly mysterious existence even within the ALTERNATE UNIVERSE he originates from, and we don't fully know what his deal canonically is yet. It is a canon aspect of the Nasuverse that different Alternate Universes frequently have different underlying metaphysics.
For example, "The 12 Dead Apostle Ancestors" and "Heroic Spirits" explicitly CANNOT NATURALLY EXIST in the same universe as they rely on an opposite state of the same underlying metaphysics.
The people who believe in Blackbeard and Osakabehime are the exact same people who would've believed in them in history in our own reality. Their Behavior does not have anything to do with their Legend. Especially since humanity knowing them THAT WELL would itself weaken the Mystery they operate under.
As for their behavior itself, it should be blatantly obvious that Blackbeard did not act like an anime and loli obsessed Otaku when he was actually alive, hundreds of years before either concept was a thing. The same goes for Osakabehime. However both of their behaviors aren't actually as out of character for their historical inspirations as they might initially appear.
The "real" legendary Osakabehime is explicitly known for haunting Himeji Castle and being incredibly reclusive. Sticking to extremely out of the way areas and generally not liking to be seen. And also never actually leaving the castle. Traits that translate very easily to a hikkikomori when applied to a human.
As for Blackbeard, a famous historical anecdote about the man is him tying lit fuses to his beard. Something he did to supposedly make himself "look crazy" and "devilish" in order to intimidate victims into surrendering peacefully. The anecdotal reasons given for WHY he did this vary from moral; he didn't actually enjoy killing or hurting people and preferred to only do so when he had no other option, to pragmatic; he didn't want to risk injury on the high seas if he didn't have to.
In either case he is known to have put on an act in order to get into his opponent's heads. As a Servant, he would primarily expect to be fighting Heroes and Monsters, things that won't be intimidated easily by acting crazy. So he instead plays the fool in order to get them to underestimate him. This is CANONICALLY SEEN in FGO proper, where Hector states that even at the height of his act Blackbeard was ALWAYS ON GUARD around Hector to the point the trojan hero couldn't find an opening until Chaldea beat him up.
As for why they act like Otaku? The Throne of Heroes is Outside of Time, and Heroic Spirits DO gain knowledge of what their Servant selves get up to. They receive it at a remove, as if they read about it rather than lived it, but they DO receive it. And subsequently this CAN have an impact on them to the point of affecting future summons if it's something they feel strongly enough about.
Literally all it would take is them being summoned to a point where they could interact with that culture, ever, across all the infinite timelines regardless of if they later get pruned, and have a strong enough reaction in some form to those aspects to decide to identify with it.
As for their behavior itself, it should be blatantly obvious that Blackbeard did not act like an anime and loli obsessed Otaku when he was actually alive, hundreds of years before either concept was a thing. The same goes for Osakabehime. However both of their behaviors aren't actually as out of character for their historical inspirations as they might initially appear.
The "real" legendary Osakabehime is explicitly known for haunting Himeji Castle and being incredibly reclusive. Sticking to extremely out of the way areas and generally not liking to be seen. And also never actually leaving the castle. Traits that translate very easily to a hikkikomori when applied to a human.
As for Blackbeard, a famous historical anecdote about the man is him tying lit fuses to his beard. Something he did to supposedly make himself "look crazy" and "devilish" in order to intimidate victims into surrendering peacefully. The anecdotal reasons given for WHY he did this vary from moral; he didn't actually enjoy killing or hurting people and preferred to only do so when he had no other option, to pragmatic; he didn't want to risk injury on the high seas if he didn't have to.
In either case he is known to have put on an act in order to get into his opponent's heads. As a Servant, he would primarily expect to be fighting Heroes and Monsters, things that won't be intimidated easily by acting crazy. So he instead plays the fool in order to get them to underestimate him. This is CANONICALLY SEEN in FGO proper, where Hector states that even at the height of his act Blackbeard was ALWAYS ON GUARD around Hector to the point the trojan hero couldn't find an opening until Chaldea beat him up.
As for why they act like Otaku? The Throne of Heroes is Outside of Time, and Heroic Spirits DO gain knowledge of what their Servant selves get up to. They receive it at a remove, as if they read about it rather than lived it, but they DO receive it. And subsequently this CAN have an impact on them to the point of affecting future summons if it's something they feel strongly enough about.
Literally all it would take is them being summoned to a point where they could interact with that culture, ever, across all the infinite timelines regardless of if they later get pruned, and have a strong enough reaction in some form to those aspects to decide to identify with it.
The Meme about the Nasuverse having no rules is actually...just a meme. Most of the things people claim are "Rules that were Broken" were never presented as actual Rules of the setting.
A significant portion are the "Rules" of the "Fuyuki Holy Grail War Ritual" which are not actually setting rules so much parameters of that specific competition and that specific Holy Grail... Rules that were explicitly put in practice by three different mage families who were planning to then compete in that same Ritual for a way to the Root. To absolutely NO ONE'S surprise, especially not the people themselves, everyone involved added in loopholes and abusable conditions in order to stack the deck in their favor.
Those "rules" were explicitly designed to be broken IN-UNIVERSE.
Another portion are Rin Tohsaka explaining the metaphysics of the World to Shirou Emiya. Rin being a genius and prodigy is generally taken as a valid source of information.... Except she isn't. Rin is a 16 year old girl from the magical equivalent of the sticks who was trained by a sadistic priest that actively messes with her for his own amusement, does not care for magic as a field of study or culture in the slightest, and barely meets the bare minimum qualifications to be called a magus at all, never mind a teacher. And maybe some books she has to figure out on her own.
She literally Doesn't Actually KNOW What She's Talking About.
And finally a lot of these cases are people on the internet deciding to only remember part of a "rule" and ignoring all the stuff after that gives context to how that's less a "rule" and more an "assumption" based on a characters limited context. That is to say: Characters who also don't REALLY know what they're talking about.
The rare few times someone who DOES, assuredly, actually know what they're talking about regarding the Rules of the World says "this thing is a hard rule of the universe" it actually IS.
Far from "There are no Rules, Chaos is the TRUE ORDER" it's generally more a case of "Are you sure about that? Are you sure that's a fact?"
A significant portion are the "Rules" of the "Fuyuki Holy Grail War Ritual" which are not actually setting rules so much parameters of that specific competition and that specific Holy Grail... Rules that were explicitly put in practice by three different mage families who were planning to then compete in that same Ritual for a way to the Root. To absolutely NO ONE'S surprise, especially not the people themselves, everyone involved added in loopholes and abusable conditions in order to stack the deck in their favor.
Those "rules" were explicitly designed to be broken IN-UNIVERSE.
Another portion are Rin Tohsaka explaining the metaphysics of the World to Shirou Emiya. Rin being a genius and prodigy is generally taken as a valid source of information.... Except she isn't. Rin is a 16 year old girl from the magical equivalent of the sticks who was trained by a sadistic priest that actively messes with her for his own amusement, does not care for magic as a field of study or culture in the slightest, and barely meets the bare minimum qualifications to be called a magus at all, never mind a teacher. And maybe some books she has to figure out on her own.
She literally Doesn't Actually KNOW What She's Talking About.
And finally a lot of these cases are people on the internet deciding to only remember part of a "rule" and ignoring all the stuff after that gives context to how that's less a "rule" and more an "assumption" based on a characters limited context. That is to say: Characters who also don't REALLY know what they're talking about.
The rare few times someone who DOES, assuredly, actually know what they're talking about regarding the Rules of the World says "this thing is a hard rule of the universe" it actually IS.
Far from "There are no Rules, Chaos is the TRUE ORDER" it's generally more a case of "Are you sure about that? Are you sure that's a fact?"
And as for some god deciding to turn Davey Jones into a squid man, yes an Author COULD asspull that if they wanted to. Seeing as Davey Jones has never been adressed in canon there's nothing to contradict you saying he made a pact with Cthulu, or he saw the movies and decided to do it to himself with his Pirate Magic, or whatever.
However, if you want it to be at all accurate to what HAS been established in the setting, would it have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with his Legend or Humanities Perspective ? HELL NO.