Is the curse just bouncing off Taylor's thick skull?
Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
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- Crossover
Hmm. On one hand, Marie is absolutely making the right decision here, on the other, she's also factually wrong when it comes to the absolute terms she's talking on. Fate's the kind of setting where a strong enough will can and will literally bend the 'rules' of reality, it's how many Heroic Spirits did the things they did -- which goes double outside of the real world like in singularities, lostbelts, and illusory worlds like Prison Tower -- and Taylor's absolutely on that level.
But yeah, everything she knows at the moment at the moment points at going in blindly being a terrible idea. And while Taylor's will and determination is at least on the level of a Heroic Spirit's, Ritsuka's is unproven, and so the possibility of the curse being affected by her past might be disastrous for that reason alone (though I can't remember if it even works like that, not that Chaldea could know).
You can literally delude yourself into unlimited cosmic power in the Nasuverse. Take Soujuurou for instance, he spent his life in the mountains and was literally the most powerful Fate/ protagonist at the beginning, but gradually became weaker as he adjusted to civilization and limited himself to the common sense of man.
Evil Atlas
Inspector of Details
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- Denial
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For someone who would rather destroy herself than be a bystander, this is one of those nightmare scenarios. First aid rules apply here, and it's true that diving into this curse blindly would be hideously risky, so making sure they aren't just adding to the casualties is the higher priority, but that doesn't make sitting and waiting any easier. And her continued inability to contribute beyond telling other people to do things continues to gnaw at her, as it should.
As ever, I do wonder if she'll ever find a way around that, tactically questionable as it may be. Just learning to accept it doesn't feel like positive character development, you know?
As ever, I do wonder if she'll ever find a way around that, tactically questionable as it may be. Just learning to accept it doesn't feel like positive character development, you know?
I have to disagree on the character development part. If you look at the end, Taylor was, despite supposedly backing down at Marie's insistence, still trying to figure out ways around her orders and forcing her to accept it as a Fait Accompli, which is backsliding for her as if she managed to do so it'd cause unwarranted psychological damage to Marie and would result in at least the denial of the opportunity for growth in Ritsuka if not actively worsening the situation to the point of his likely death.
She still has issues dating all the way back to her Trigger Event and at no point had she ever been forced to not do something while somebody more qualified took care of the problem. The situation resolving quietly while she is unable to do more than be a therapeutic presence for Marie will bother her. Quite a lot in fact. But it's likely that it's one of the few ways she can be forced to confront the fact that her control issues and need to be in the thick of the fight are not only unhealthy, but also frequently MASSIVELY detrimental to what she wants to accomplish.
Eh debatable you could really see here her bad mental health poking through. Taylor has heavy issues with her self worth where she strongly desires to be worth something and the problematic bit is she defines herself being worth something by her personally achieving things and you can see she's been chafing from not being able to as much as she'd like.
It also really needs to be said but that whole she sacrificed herself so she could save everyone like she claimed here isn't true because despite what the fandom would have you believe she had no idea what the result of getting her corona messed with would be just that it would probably kill her. In fact if Ziz hadn't set it up she probably would have just died without achieving anything which she arguably did actually do anyway because what most of the fandom doesn't know is by the end they'd switched around so it was actually QA who thought she was Taylor in control before scion died. Frankly speaking it would be totally in character for her to just go back to Ritsuka's room and get Shakespeare to send her in while the others aren't around which is the real danger here if this drags on.
It's a nightmare scenario specifically because she already made that choice with the kephri thing where she chose to sneak behind the backs of people who would stop her and get her power jailbroken in the blind hope it would let her do something. The key part here though is blind she had no idea what it would do but did know it would probably kill her and she still did it when there were other things she could have done to indirectly improve the situation but just really couldn't handle that the best she could do against scion was surround him with bugs which confused him and messed with his senses a bit.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
This chapter is an amazing insight into Taylor's and Marie's relationship.
Not like that, bakas.
Like, holy shit. Taylor trusts her enough to stop throwing herself into danger, a feat literally nobody in Worm managed to accomplish. Too many miracles like this and somebody is gonna have an idea to connect Olga with Chaldea's main energy grid, since she's clearly a Holy Grail in human form.
Not like that, bakas.
Like, holy shit. Taylor trusts her enough to stop throwing herself into danger, a feat literally nobody in Worm managed to accomplish. Too many miracles like this and somebody is gonna have an idea to connect Olga with Chaldea's main energy grid, since she's clearly a Holy Grail in human form.
Doubtful, humanity was losing and Cauldron along with all their plans got rekt in like, five seconds, as did Dragon, not to mention most villians ran and hid rather than fight further crippling the defense. If Taylor just acted as support, humanity wouldn't have had any sort of future, guaranteed. Even with her forcing everyone into the firing line and administating was still a nigh vertical battle.
If anything, her experiences should confirm that she was 100% justified acting on her own, she just regrets it reached that point in the first place.
Honestly, I highly dislike the present trajectory of stuffing Taylor into a locker and saying 'no, Taylor, you aren't allowed to do anything but be an useless spectator and you're a bad person for wanting to be able to do anything', especially since this is one of the few opportunities where she could do something of use instead of sitting with a thumb up her ass, watching even a human Nero beat the shit out of top-tier Servants and cheerleading because she's completely outclassed and useless in every single way. Ever the moreso as the worlds and Servants become progressively stronger and the power gap becomes more ridiculous as it becomes ever more apparent.
Sure, the observations and internal commentary might change, but ultimately she has no agency or personal power and has been actively prevented from benefiting at all from, say, Aife's Hero Creation (which she should have to a degree), or even more than an absolute bare minimum Shakespeare's NP that would help make her even vaguely relevant, and is thus essentially on rails, easily interchangeable with Ritsuka or someone else. Almost any Servant is just better at everything no matter who, better at strategizing, better at scouting, better at combat, better at everything, with no exception. In FGO this is fine, since Ritsuka is basically a hollow SI with zero experience and hasn't gone through a bunch of shit and fought and killed a Type-adjacent like Taylor has, and is essentially defocused for the Servants. Here though, it's grating. I'm not asking Taylor to go full god mode, but being able to fight a low-tier Servant and have her be at least somewhat relevant against higher tier enemies would be nice.
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You say that as if she never tried to deescalate
Obviously it didn't work
The only thing that ever worked for her was escalation
Technically, while Ziz did ensure the outcome that happened, what she really did was ensure that it would cause Taylor to self-destruct
If Taylor had gone with her original choice (Bonesaw) she would have had better odds and a (technically) better outcome
But that would have resulted in Titan Taylor, so Ziz took the opportunity to nip the potential competition in the bud
Evil Atlas
Inspector of Details
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- Denial
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- He/Him
While this is obviously exaggerated (Taylor isn't useless, and has been putting in a lot of effort to coordinate, negotiate, give tactical ideas and emotional support, etc.), I do agree more generally about the trajectory. There's a fine line between learning that you don't have to do everything and learning that your contributions aren't meaningful enough to be worthwhile, and only one of those is a positive lesson. My understanding is that this story aims to end with Taylor retiring and leaving things to the younger generation (despite her being, what, twenty?), so I have concerns about where on that border we're walking.
I mean, I know getting in fights with Servants isn't generally a good use of her time, but it feels wrong to say to the living legend, "don't bother trying to help (and thus keep growing), the dead legends have got this." It's kind of self-sabotaging, you know?
I can sympathize with wanting to do something very badly about the situation. Taylor isn't wrong to be frustrated at being restrained.
But Marie and Romani aren't wrong either. Perhaps if they knew 100% that Ritsuka would only survive if she went in, they'd make the call to let her. But they don't know that it's needed, and in fact it could even make things worse if the curse affects Taylor badly enough, and they are close to positive that Taylor would be warped to one degree or another.
But Marie and Romani aren't wrong either. Perhaps if they knew 100% that Ritsuka would only survive if she went in, they'd make the call to let her. But they don't know that it's needed, and in fact it could even make things worse if the curse affects Taylor badly enough, and they are close to positive that Taylor would be warped to one degree or another.
I didn't say there were other things she could have done to beat scion (tho again it wasn't even her who finished it even ignoring the extensive number of clutch saves from over a dozen people outside of her control). What I said is there were other things she could have done to improve the situation since for example various groups like the yangban were causing problems by raiding and stealing supplies from both civilians and the fight scion effort so Taylor could have worked on countering them, gathering biomass for Amy or even trying to talk Amy into making enhanced bugs again.
Instead her issues meant even with those still on the table she instead went with an option that basically guaranteed her death with no idea of what if anything it would do which is really bad for the current situation since it means she may ignore Marie and dive in anyway despite knowing it would make things worse.
I'm also fine with Taylor not being able to throw hands against servants because she has still been able to leverage her experience to open up possibilities like against Medusa or Altera. It's also just the reality of things that worm capes just don't stack up that well to anime and games because of how their powers work. Fletchette for example has lets go with the most piercing power in worm since firepower isn't quite right when there are those who can fire bigger, faster and more shots than her but despite that while being a cluster cape means she has other powers she's still base human in parameters when servants simply aren't with even the lowest lvs people in the fandom say are 10x average human for every parameter.
Nero for the record also isn't even base modern human because people in the past of nasu were just physically better and from what I've heard from fgo players she was getting a power boost from heroic spirit Nero. Aife has also been focused on the twins as the newbies so getting them to a decent lv of fitness and training is more important.
- Location
- Oregon, USA
QA, presumably.
- Location
- Argentina
Yeah Taylor, go and keep your girlfriend company.
Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
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- He/Him/His
Yeah, the last thing Chaldea needs is for Taylor to become Khepri again, esp. since she'd Advent as a Beast pretty much instantly.
Just pointing out, if HS Nero can and does empower human Nero, why exactly can't HS Taylor empower human Taylor? People in the past were better, yes, but in the AoH, it's not to the extent of fighting Servants without some superpowered non-human bloodline or insane levels of training, neither which Nero has.
It's 10x at E-rank in F/SN. In FGO, the upgrades balloon to untold extents by making them become closer to their origin. Makes sense really, otherwise they wouldn't fight literal gods and goddesses, Beasts and so forth as a mere base level Servant. Early on the power differential is low, but by Babylonia it gets insane.
The point is that Taylor doesn't even have a niche. Everything she can do, any Servant can do better on every metric, universally, with no exception, and the narrative has to constantly justify why any better qualified Servant isn't calling the shots instead. Worse, instead of Taylor trying to surpass her limitations or game the system to surpass the limitations of her abilities or leveraging having numerous Heroic Spirits around to gain power, some of which are well known for training very powerful beings, something which she is very well known to have done with her bug control, she just stays stagnant and passive. This is even more glaring as of being disgrunted in France that she only managed to kill a weak ass Wyvern using everything she had, something which should have caused her to push herself to find a solution to her weakness, given her personality.
Even her bugs have been utterly useless on every level beyond mere resource collection from the get-go, while the OP stripped any sort of motivation for any semblance of personal improvement from Taylor, instead wasting time 24/7 training Ritsuka and co. that could easily be done by the Servants. It's OOC, in truth. Worse, we've gone through a bunch of Singularities and are like half way through them all, and she hasn't even started any form of personal improvement and prefers to sit around with a thumb up her ass in Chaldea or while travelling, she'll need a massive boost somehow, hyperbolic time chamber, author fudging training speed, or something so she can train up to any sort of relevancy while making up for swaths of utterly wasted time, but then again I'm not exactly holding my breath here, given how little she's improved and how reluctant OP is to let her do or improve in anything beyond acting and fighting exactly like canon Ritsuka.
Learn fucking runes, spearmanship or something, christ almighty, Taylor isn't this passive, part of her whole thing was hating passivity and leveraging her weak ability into something terrifying while running herself into the ground to do so, and it's not like she doesn't have a gorillion highly qualified trainers. Fuck, she can at a bare minimum get a huge equipment upgrade right now, merely by chatting with Shakespeare, but Taylor 'pragmaticist' Hebert is unwilling to do absolutely anything to improve her situation for reasons. Hopefully OP can fudge the learning process (that she'll practice even in the singularity) and/or give her immense actual talent in something instead of continuing to be artificially crippled and mediocre in everything, at best, to make up for lost time so she can have some new tricks in London.
Ultimately, at her core, Taylor has been reduced to a cheerleader with negligible personal impact, sure she can act as a therapist and train up the other two people in the exact same situation, but that's pretty much it. Despite her distinctive voice, Taylor has absolutely no personal agency due to having no personal capability in a world (FGO) founded on powerlevels, the equivalent of being a normal human in DBZ. If she's in trouble, ultimately the only thing she can ever do is to call for help from someone else, with no exception, no matter the level of the enemy. Considering she's coming into this having killed a Type-adjacent and yet has been reduced to being wholly interchangable with canon Ritsuka in every way, sure the minutia is different, but she has the same level of on-rails agency and lack of any sort of real power, or drive to acquire any sort of power to cause any sort of change.
Christ, is it too much to ask for her to even be able to beat the shit out of D-rank Servants like Mata Hari?
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Guitar
art instrument
- Pronouns
- They/Them
What's important here is that Taylor can see herself backsliding, can see herself going back to how she was doing things before. And while she clearly still has a lot of problems with her mental being and general life philosophy, the fact that she can identify that she has a problem to begin with is a step forward. (Considering how much of an unreliable narrator she can be in Worm, too)
Now we can only wait if she'll finally accept help for that. The woman needs therapy ASAP.
Now we can only wait if she'll finally accept help for that. The woman needs therapy ASAP.
Guitar
art instrument
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly, for me, yeah.
I personally just DON'T want Taylor to fight Servants. Or at least, Servants who are very clearly above her skill level in every way that both matters and doesn't matters. Having Taylor fight back more obviously, instead of the tactical position she's been shoved in, is really just a treadmill for her to go rushing back to how she was at Worm.
This isn't to say that Taylor shouldn't train to be stronger, I do agree with that, if only so that future battles would be easier to either run away from and go to the rear, or to find ways to support those who already have better firepower than her to begin with.
I do really want her to have some better weapons spells, because it is frustrating as an audience to read her frustration. Ya know, to feel her anger and annoyance at being forced into a strategic position.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Lots of moving parts. Sometimes, I honestly just forget them, and sometimes, I'm just trying to avoid overusing stuff like that. Based upon what little we know, Primordial Runes should probably have an answer to everything, since they can even do stuff like directly alter the Servant's class container and even summon Servants themselves.
But that's, uh, not conducive to good storytelling, so I don't just pop out the runes every time the team needs a solution to a problem, the same way Emiya doesn't "Have a NP for That" all the time either.
Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
Shirou could only keep up because of his particular skill set. He was using Reinforcement magecraft well beyond the level Taylor is at.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
Emiya v Shirou in UBW is misleading, because it's as much a battle of their mindsets and ideals as anything else, and Emiya was already running in power saver mode. Shirou didn't so much win with his strength so much as he kept shouting "NUH UH!" in Emiya's face until Emiya gave up.
Emiya's restrictions actually make sense so long as you don't go too far. Emiya is like a hoarder, every blade he's seen in millennia upon millennia is recorded in UBW, probably untold millions of blades. but needless to say he doesn't know where the fuck 99.999999% of the blades are, or even what he even has without rummaging around for a while. It's why he has his favorites that he uses that covers all roles and keeps regularly available along with utility.
Though, nerfing Primordial Runes is outright silly. They're supposed to be powerful and flexible, Scathach is OP plz nerf for a good reason, canonically, and Aife, being in the same ballpark is as well. They're limited by power, energy, creativity, preparation and so forth. I mean, it's outright stupid when you consider how ridiculous the powerlevels get in FGO to pick on runes in particular.
Also that just seems like another arrow in the coffin of Taylor's relevance, what grudge do you have against her anyway? I mean, she's learned absolutely nothing thus far and hasn't improved at all in any way shape or form since chapter 1 up to, what, the fifth singularity now? it's blatantly OOC, especially past the fight with the wyvern, when she was all about munchkining her weak ass bug control power to something powerful in canon, sucking her thumb doing nothing to improve her situation doesn't make an iota of sense, especially with her inferiority complex. Retcon it if you must to something else, but like, throw her a bone here, she may as well just be a reflavored Ritsuka at this point given how little she can even do or how little she's been permitted to grow or learn in any capacity. Fuck, it even makes sense for Taylor to go through a process not dissimilar to how Shirou was trained by Artoria in the VN, getting her shit pushed in while she desperately tries to survive more than a few moves with reinforcement, improving all the while.
There are Servants to learn from, some who are immensely good teachers, use them. If she was actively improving at a very brisk rate to make up for the sheer amount of lost time, it wouldn't be as rage-inducing. I mean, Taylor isn't mandated to be shitty or mediocre at everything, and prohibited from having any sort of talent whatsoever, even if it feels that way.
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So, reading some of the comments going around, I see some stuff I agree with and some stuff I don't. So, to throw my hat into the ring, her goes:
1. I'm pretty sure the whole 'was Taylor's decision to risk death by lobotomization argument was already covered in depth earlier in the thread, but I will say that in my personal opinion, she took the only option that had even. Sliver of a chance of leading to victory as opposed to just slowing defeat. That being said, that did not make it a GOOD decision, or even an informed one, just the best one she could think of, while desperate, in pain, and of the-firmly reinforced-opinion that nobody was willing to work together even with extinction on the line.
2. I do think that Taylor is overdue for an upgrade in power, but I also think that giving her the ability to take on a Servant would almost certainly be overshooting the mark. I'm of the opinion that Taylor needs some sort of Shakespeare NP to boost the effectiveness of her bugs. Nothing too large, but maybe some sort of ability that allows their bites to work on spiritually greater beings and their venous to work on anything without Poison Resistance of some kind. Failing that, perhaps just throwing more mooks into fights or having QA realize that she's falling behind and trying to give Taylor magic bugs of varying usefulness or the ability to force trash mobs to serve her. Because as it is right now, I have to agree that for all her experience and power returning, she might as well be a Peggy Sued Ritsuka or Rika.
1. I'm pretty sure the whole 'was Taylor's decision to risk death by lobotomization argument was already covered in depth earlier in the thread, but I will say that in my personal opinion, she took the only option that had even. Sliver of a chance of leading to victory as opposed to just slowing defeat. That being said, that did not make it a GOOD decision, or even an informed one, just the best one she could think of, while desperate, in pain, and of the-firmly reinforced-opinion that nobody was willing to work together even with extinction on the line.
2. I do think that Taylor is overdue for an upgrade in power, but I also think that giving her the ability to take on a Servant would almost certainly be overshooting the mark. I'm of the opinion that Taylor needs some sort of Shakespeare NP to boost the effectiveness of her bugs. Nothing too large, but maybe some sort of ability that allows their bites to work on spiritually greater beings and their venous to work on anything without Poison Resistance of some kind. Failing that, perhaps just throwing more mooks into fights or having QA realize that she's falling behind and trying to give Taylor magic bugs of varying usefulness or the ability to force trash mobs to serve her. Because as it is right now, I have to agree that for all her experience and power returning, she might as well be a Peggy Sued Ritsuka or Rika.