Presumably because DaVinci can't heavily mitigate the single greatest drawback of IT certification, time/workload.
Hereafter [Worm x Fate/Grand Order]
- Thread starter James D. Fawkes
- Start date
- Crossover
You omitted a bunch though to mislead the point, but that's okay, I'll help you list all my grievances!
- Taylor not improving on any level, even one iota from chapter 1 despite nearly being at the halfway mark. Started weaker than Skitter, and is still weaker than Skitter/Weaver, due to no access to Amy's bugs like repeaters and the complete and utter uselessness of her ability. Servant senses make their primary function, recon, redundant as well. Hasn't so much as lifted a finger to learn anything from any Servant, despite numerous opportunities to do so and the desire given her continued inferiority complex. Plenty of ways exist to allow her to grow, but OP has actively artificially crippled and severed any and all avenues for even the remotest progress, even physically, to force her into being always being a useless spectator instead of an active participant. Not even doing something as basic as learning to survive a Servant for a number of exchanges like Shirou did in canon. She desperately needs a huge windfall to make up for 4 singularities of jack shit, but it will never come.
- Shifted into a 'backrow role'... if you consider a 'backrow role' as literally doing nothing even vaguely useful 99.9999% of the time and any and all things she can do is done by basically any Servant better, including strategy, sure. If OP even wanted Taylor to be be backline support, they'd let her grow in that direction and she'd have learned runes and shit by now, but nope, Taylor must be as useless as humanly possible.
- Taylor lacks agency entirely. Very little has changed from canon thus far, she's interchangable for Ritsuka, and may as well be a peggy-sued version of him. She has the exact same role, the exact same level of capability, the exact same level of agency, the exact same abilities (sans insect control, which is utterly useless), and the exact same lack of improvement so there's absolutely nothing distinctive about her aside from her personality. She's on rails, and she can't bring any level of power or strategy to the battlefield that even a mediocre Servant wouldn't eclipse entirely, the most she can ever do in singularities is tell her Servants to handle enemies and stand around being useless. She can't interact with enemies in an interesting or useful way, she can't interact with her allies, she can't modify the environment, she can't deal damage, she can't heal, and she can't even block a single hit. Fundamentally, the most she can ever do is merely cheerlead. Basically, she may as well not exist.
You... you do realize that there are intermediates between 'Taylor is OP and stomps everything and everyone' and 'Taylor is literally as useful as canon Ritsuka for everything, except the sole thing which Ritsuka is actually good at', right? I can't believe I had to actually point that out. I just want her to be able to do things. It's just depressing seeing a literal god killer being reduced to doing fucknothing and being ineffectual on every level, and actively being lobotimized to never seek improvement on any level. Fuck, if I was OP, I'd have had her learn runes early on while not artificially crippling Aife's teaching abilities, and let go Taylor go full in on sheer utility in lieu of being a frontliner, and she was learning them, but nah, apparently runes aren't allowed either, because fuck you. Instead, she'll get a useless puppet, almost guaranteed to be far worse than Ritsuka's shadow servants, because fuck you. She couldn't be more Ritsuka if she tried, her abilities are basically the exact same on every level at this point, it makes her even more of a joke.
It's never happening though. If I were writing the fic, I'd have the next summon be Chiron, get her to the gym and learn to block like Shirou and make up for 4 singularities of fucknothing improvement, so she can actually participate, even if she wouldn't be fighting anyone with stats above E/D-grade any time soon, and she doesn't even have the skill the back it up, but at least she'd be able to fight weak phantasmal beasts and could hypothetically be forced to fight one, if her Servants are distracted, or something. Anyway, it'll never happen, we all know that Taylor isn't allowed to learn anything, even magecraft, potentially cause any degree of harm to Servants, or even be able to fight on any level for reasons. The overall direction the fic is on is horribly disappointing.
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- Location
- just a bit south of nowhere
I think a lot of people arguing that Taylor is insignificant are kind of missing the point.
She's a pre-death human with two years of magecraft who:
She's already a terrifying opponent. Giving her a Servant boost along with the conceptual advantages that she has earned would just make her unfair.
She has NEVER BEEN a character focused on punching out other characters. She has always been what she is here and now more than ever. Someone with a keen mind for tactics, who uses deception and reputation to punch above her weight consistently. Whose weaknesses were that she gets hot headed and may lose strategically because the reputation she continued to build pigeonholed her into direct tactics.
She doesn't need ancient Celtic martial arts. What she needed was therapy and the ability to think more calmly about the bigger picture, and to be able to resolve conflicts without direct threats.
This is what she was given here and it has only made her even more effective.
She's a pre-death human with two years of magecraft who:
- Has her very own Noble Phantasm. Sure, it was created for her by a Servant, but Shakespeare CANNOT DO THAT for people who aren't already in the queue to end up on the Throne in some way.
- Murdered the fuck out of a minor dragon without needing a Servant.
- Made a suit that DA VINCI thought was conceptually interesting enough to base the new mystic code uniforms on.
- Has on several occasions after seeing the gulf between Human and Servant, had to be reminded which weight class she's currently in by Servants themselves.
- Currently has more mystique about her strangely impactful past than fucking EMIYA.
- Has lead nearly every major engagement against historically significant military leaders and won more often than not.
- Her passenger has already been strategically significant with just the bug control, and there have been small hints here and there of the potential for contact.
She's already a terrifying opponent. Giving her a Servant boost along with the conceptual advantages that she has earned would just make her unfair.
She has NEVER BEEN a character focused on punching out other characters. She has always been what she is here and now more than ever. Someone with a keen mind for tactics, who uses deception and reputation to punch above her weight consistently. Whose weaknesses were that she gets hot headed and may lose strategically because the reputation she continued to build pigeonholed her into direct tactics.
She doesn't need ancient Celtic martial arts. What she needed was therapy and the ability to think more calmly about the bigger picture, and to be able to resolve conflicts without direct threats.
This is what she was given here and it has only made her even more effective.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Their
First, my apologies for making this a reply to you that brings you back to the thread.
It's pretty obvious at this point that we don't agree on a lot of things about the fic, but I think we can both agree on three things. First, neither of us will be able to convince the other of their viewpoint through conversation in this thread. Second, since you find the story so disappointing, I should probably stop replying to you so that you stop being pinged back to the thread and reminded of the source of your disappointment. And third, that Hereafter probably just isn't going to be a story that you want to keep followed since reading it is evoking such feelings of disappointment.
James D. Fawkes
Court Scribe
- Location
- Avalon (Isle of Mists)
There's a reason why I suggested some people might want to wait until Chapter CXX and then read through these next few chapters all in one go. Taylor's frustration is going to bleed through the pages, and having to wait a week between each chapter might be a little rough for some of you, and if there are parts of the story that you already find frustrating, I don't think that's going to help at all.
- Location
- Void
That's not at all how that works, Soujuurou was literally living in a place set apart from normality, that had Mystery backing up the techniques they've learned, by integrating back into society Soujuurou's "Mystery" has decreased. It isn't so much there's an intentional or active limiting of his capabilities, that process is all passive and largely out of his control beyond retreating from normalcy again.
On the Primordial Rune front...I suspect that they wouldn't be anything easy to teach, given the fact the art went extinct, and the part where P-Runes are Age of God Magecraft; which I'd expect to be more difficulty to learn how to use, if they aren't also dependent on a contract with Odin to access as a foundation. Though an unideal and unwanted compromise may be for Aife to provide Rune-inscribed mystic codes for the Masters to use.
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- Location
- United States
To be honest, Okeanos was my favorite arc so far BECAUSE you couldn't divert from the original as you wanted. My biggest criticism of this story is the underutilization of the Canon Servants. Okeanos had fun moments with Brademante and the pirates, the start for an entire Character arc for Rika and Emiya, and Brobeard's everything. Frankly the weaker parts of that arc were the new stuff.
That's not to say you can't add new stuff. Alfe is fun and Bellamy too, but you're not leaning into the big advantage the SI nature of Fgo has for fanfics. Namely, the base singularities were written as if you had no Servants. If you're not gonna make Taylor into a rofl badass like she and your other readers want, give her that alternative.
You have 375+ Servants at your disposal. Please use them.
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which heroes are these? cause from what i understand, when she actually became a hero and proved herself, people listened, hell she was book palls with narwhal of all people
eh, that's not totally true, there's been fights where she was needed elsewhere so she couldn't actually do what she wanted while everyone else fought 'her' fight for her, usually someone hard countering her while she was useful elsewhere, and also all of the simurgh fights, she was forced to not participate in them and just had to watch
i mean, fighting even a low tier servant is beyond taylor i think, specifically cause of stat difference, and that kind of stat buff she needs takes time to build up, or some real resources, not sure how much chaldea has access to to manage that. at least, that's if you wanna win, her holding her own or keeping herself from dying is more realistic, but still gonna take effort, and will be needlessly risky if there are any servants able to fight in her stead
kinda yeah? i mean, as she is right now anyway, and with the resources she has, depite it all, taylor isn't gonna be able to do much against mata hari specifically, her whole thing is kinda a hard counter to taylor, she's a master/stranger that's gonna be able to fool taylor, the M/S protocols are only so effective, being in field things like patroling, passwords, going in pairs and focused on noticing your thinking is impaired (there's a whole training thing where someone noticed cape powers tend to go for either logical mind control or emotional, and figured out that to counter it, you lean into the other one, if your logic is empaired? lean into emotion, if your emotions are out of wack, focus on what is logical) but that's not really gonna help against the arsenal of mata hari, it's too varied
that's actually primordial runes, the same god who gave fragarach to her family, also gave a couple of primordial runes to them, and altered their DNA to be able to use the NP and runes
also this yeah, taylor should not get close to any enemy servant if she can help it, it's not her niche as a master in either sense, but i can see a bit of an issue even here, cause she kinda doesn't use the worm niche for it, she doesn't swarm with her insects, doesn't hide them on servants, doesn't try to poke their eyes etc. like i get they're gonna be able to ignore the bites, and moving too fast will crush or push off most of them, but it's something at least ya know? the issue is that she doesn't even try to use her bugs much, it's just overwatch she's doing mostly, the thing she did best as a cape was hamper the enemy, visibility, poking eyes, making bugs go into face holes etc. very distracting in combat. hell, she said it herself in the early chapters, even brutes still have the same instincts to blink if something comes for your eyes, regardless of if it'll do anything, many servants are gonna react that way still, and a blink in servant combat? that can mean a lot
if i recall, primordial runes require divinity to make full use of and survive, to my knowledge there is not a single user of primordial runes, besides bazzet who has special circumstances, that lacks divinity, and that's for a reason. but also, like, while primordial runes can do just about everything, that's when fully mastered, taylor doesn't need to do everything, she just needs to do enough, make some flashbang runes, she's already good at using them, make some stone grenades or rune mines etc. simple but effective things, like how you don't need to be a perfect master chef cook to cook basic pasta, if you can follow the recipe you're usually good
edit: found the source for my 'need divinity' thing. it's from brynhildr.
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Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
If ya'll want Taytay to get powerups, then she just needs magical bugs. Like the crabs she could control in the last singularity, or bladed wing insects (an enemy type yet to appear, though iirc considering the host of the London Pillar may be around then)
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That's so untrue it hurts.
It was sometimes like that pre-FGO, when the plot usually pitted people around the same realms of power against each other. Like, the biggest disparity was usually stuff like Shirou (peak modern day human) vs top tier Servants he had the perfect counter for. But then you get to FGO where Servants might as well be ants and bigatons are king. Like, it doesn't matter how much conceptual bullshit, tactics, teamwork, counters and whatever the other guy has, the bad guy can just flex their bigatons and neutralize all that for no reason, so they're literally invincible until the plot kills them with some Deus Ex Machina or another.
It sucks, hard, but that's the way it is.
It makes me miss the days of Tsukihime, where almost every important character was a top-percenter of the modern-day Nasuverse and yet you got things like Shiki (a modern day human) killing Arcued (literally the strongest creature of Earth), because he had the ability to ignore durability and regeneration.
If the same thing happened nowadays and Shiki stabbed someone like, idk, Goetia or Lostbelt Zeus, it'd just fail to work because bigatons I guess.
The bugs wouldn't do any damage even if they went for the eyes, but you're absolutely right that she should still try. Harmful or not most Servant aren't going to take too well to a black mass of chitin and legs trying to force itself in whatever orifices it can find, nor will they respond well to splattering a big, fat cockroach's guts all over their eyeball at 200 mph. It's viscerally distracting, and straight up impairing to their senses.
Not that it would happen as Goetia can see the future and thus would know whether or not it would be able to kill him, and Lostbelt Zeus doesn't have the same concept of death that most creatures do and Shiki's ability only works on those with a concept of death. That's why he didn't actually kill Arcued. He kinda killed her and then she got better because she has no concept of death as most creatures see it.
If memories serve from when I played Tsukihime a decade ago, there were pretty good reasons behind Shiki being able to take her out. Most DA Ancestors don't even bother dodging or blocking, their regeneration is so busted and most average mages or most average demon hunters are helpless to them, they're essentially strong Servants, while weaker DAs are closer to low-tier Servants that can be dealt with. Arc was no exception there to that mentality, not to mention that she was distracted, severely weakened by her bloodlust suppression, and that any normal attack wouldn't have done anything. A confluence of those issues and psychologies let him deal an unexpected lethal blow.
Yeah, FGO is all about biggatons and sheer escalation, so prohibiting and handicapping the MC from growing is actively narratively destructive.
FSN/Apocrypha/FZ all stayed within 'normal' ranges, where Servants are like 10-50x humans, though this is mostly a comparative abstraction rather than any sort of literal assessment of their prowess, and purely mundane equipment without Mystery can't harm them. They're extremely strong beings, but not invincible, and many of the depicted mages or even entirely mundane people can fight weaker Servants on some level, if not above it in certain cases (e.g. Gray, Barthomeloi, Satsuki, Kotomine, Shirou, Akiha, Souichirou, Bazett, Shiki, Shiki, etc). For instance, Rin took out a couple of Berserker's lives, Souichirou rekt Saber with mere physical enhancement even if Saber was operating with a shit master and fuckall mana, and Shirou defeated Saber in a 1v1 in the famous Sparks Liner High (and she had infinite mana and huge stat buffs from Sakura, though she limited herself to no Excalispam, despite Shirou being severely limited in projections and acquiring massive brain damage). Hell, Shirou successfully blocked several casual blows from Lancer with a fucking rolled-up, reinforced newspaper, of all things, and this is at the absolute beginning of the VN and he didn't even have his circuits unlocked.
So like, being able to fight a Servant on some level isn't even particularly special, let alone rare with the suite of depicted characters. It's just the psychology that Ritsuka can't do anything himself in FGO, so therefore Taylor must never be able to do anything herself.
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Stahor
BookWorm
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
I'm pretty sure lore-wise Guda is pretty good in combat. Most of narrative implies that Guda and Mash basically beats up everyone. Later stories are better with giving support characters, but still it's hey G&M go beat this and that horde of phantasmal beasts.
Combat summons are only canon when Guda gets super-suitcase, as i understand it.
she only took a single one to my knowledge, with that being while he was holding her up to his face, letting her do it, and illya not caring enough to prevent her from doing it, and she had to burn out a gem she'd poured energy into her entire life or something like that. not that it isn't impressive, but uh, there's exceptional circumstances present in many of these cases, often something like a straight-up counter (kirei's heart thing, UBW v GoB), some unique skill/hack (fragarach, primordial runes, mystic eyes of death perception), a caster buffing (which says more about the caster than the normie that got buffed) or holding back on the servants part, like those casual blows from cu? dude was barely trying given the speed he attacked at. i assume most people want our mc to hold out against someone who actually tries. of course, there's definitely differences between servant classes here, if taylor got the needed stat boost, say what medea gave her husbando, i can see her holding up against an assassin or caster for instance.
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- Location
- United States
Technically, Combat summons (Or shadow Servants if you prefer) become a thing in Epic of Remnant as you explicitly use them in Shimosa. But those relied on OG FATE and the shutdown of chaldea stopped it. The suitcase was Da Vinci giving him the ability permanently without needing a connection to Chaldea or the Throne which became vital in a lot of the Lostbelts.
Edit: Actually, thinking about it. The Epic of Remnant in general was a soft retcon of part 1 as a whole. Not so much for the events in the singularities itself, but for the mechanics and world building that were glossed over initially. Namely that, the reason Servants were never brought is because the Singularities prevented them and that the combat summons were what we were using the entire time. I say soft recton because it doesn't outright contradict any events, but only serves to lay the ground work for gameplay that, honestly, should have been present from the start, but wasn't because the game was initially treated like a cash grab and only got serious development around singularity 6.
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- Location
- Southern California
Honestly most people forget this but Souichirou is kind of a freak of nature. Even Medea was was surprised by how strong he was- which is saying something considering she lived during the age of gods.
Nah Guda is able to summon Shadow Servants in Shimosa Manga.
The point isn't that Shiki would've lost against FGO villains while he won against Arcued. The point is that his eyes worked on Arcued (she didn't die the first time because he cut her lines, which cuts something perfectly with no room for regen, instead of ending her by stabbing the dots as he wasn't able to see those yet -- in the end, she couldn't regenerate which was why she used up most of her power basically remaking her body from scratch), but wouldn't have worked even if he did somehow manage to stab a stronger Beast like Goetia or almost any lostbelt king (Lostbelt Zeus was admittedly a bad example since he might still be alien enough not to have Earth's concepts like Death).
Also that's just one example, the same could be said for any conceptual ability. Nowadays strategy and matchup barely matter, because any big bad has enough bigatons to just ignore anything someone on the level of a Servant can throw at them, even if it should be the perfect counter. Even Grand Servants usually have to make grand sacrifices on the level of erasing themselves from the Grand Servant roster just to do anything against secondary antagonists. It's pretty freaking stupid.
(Note that this isn't actually new, just way more blatant than it used to be -- even Tsukihime flirted with the concept, as after regaining her full powers, Arcued became immune to Shiki's Eyes at night since she was supposedly so powerful she no longer had a concept of death -- Not that it changes how much it sucks)
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Isiri Pudireach
Predictive text can go duck itself
Personally I'd say the Nasuverse actually began with the bigatons, way back when Notes started it all with the Types.
- Location
- Ohio
It's super touching to see that Taylor and Olga are close enough where they can have an argument like that and not be mad at each other.
Lol. LMAO even.
Lol. LMAO even.
In Notes conceptual weapons actually worked as intended on the Types.
Plus everyone was OP anyway, so it's not like it mattered too much.
The problem with the bigatons is that it invalidates pretty much anything potentially cool about the setting's power system and how it works in fights... so the problem isn't that it's a plot hole or a retcon, just that it sucks.
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- Location
- Some City
this is true
but with that said, the funny thing that I realized awhile back...is that Mata Hari is the exact type of Servant that would be fantastic for Taylor to summon.
Mata? normally not fantastic in FGO, because FGO is built as a fighting game...and Mata by her own admission is not great in a fight. terrible, actually.
but she is STACKED in Skills, and even if the enemy can recognize who and what she is...as long as she doesn't attack anyone she will walk out of there- info intact- just fine
Mata in the fighting game that is FGO? generally trash. Put in narrative context? with someone like Taylor giving her commands? She is fucking terrifying
(that and Taylor's greatest fear at the beginning of the story was summoning an Assassin. realizing that Assassins in general and Mata Hari specifically are actually pretty professional and even friendly if you're not on the receiving end would ALSO be great character development for Taylor)
This was something I brought up earlier in Okeanos. if the big concern with her bugs is that normal bugs aren't much use against Servants...get better minions? was honestly kind of disappointed that the Phantasmals weren't a bigger deal when Taylor kept finding more and more of them. harvest them for parts, bring some in to Chaldea to be deployed later. Hell, during the last battle it could have been made a bit easier if while they had Herakles distracted trying to fend off the Servants a bunch of crabby boys popped up and started dragging Medea away. Jason? might be able to swipe them away (maybe) but Medea wouldn't have that much luck, and with her dragged into the ocean she couldn't protect Jason or summon the Demon God.
or, something else i noticed when they were on the wyvern island: the local bugs at least could take the wyvern to pieces. maybe it's bugs further back in time when there was more mystery, maybe it's the deviance of the Singularity, maybe it's just that they're more native to the monsters; whatever. doesn't matter. if bugs from an older or more deviant era can at least come back up to average par, then Taylor could at least perform her standard tricks and have them be useful.
one problem i WILL agree with is that they really do need to start picking up more Servants. Granted, I don't think they need to suddenly have 200. that is one feature of the narrative i actually appreciate. Hereafter does not treat this as a gacha game, and gives the Summoning and Contracting of a Servant weight...but they've struggles to kill single Demon Gods in both of the most recent singularities. Given what happens at the end of London canonically...and given what will happen at Solomon's Temple at the end? they just Do Need more firepower, overall.
hell, I like Bellamy, and Hippolyta looks like she's going to be a powerhouse, but while it makes sense it was kind of disappointing that after all the build-up and all the interpersonal connection...our heroes didn't get to contract Medea. maybe she'll be summoned later (fingers crossed) but that was a big missed opportunity both in terms of character interaction/drama and in terms of ability.
If the fights are going to get bigger and badder from here on out- if Herakles ISN'T supposed to be the most dangerous thing they face- then they've really got to start stepping up in padding out the roster at this point (halfway through the overall mission). hopefully there are some gains to be made between now and then; Time alone will tell
(on a personal note, i'm really holding out for Taylor to be contacted/contracted with either Anansi or Grandmother Spider. both of them feel narratively perfect for both the feel of the story, place in the story at this point, and would be perfect for Taylor, both in terms of tactics and style and for character growth)
(that and Taylor getting her spider puppet, it acting weird on-mission, and her finding out it's being possessed by one of the above two would be objectively hilarious)
i mean, that's kinda on purpose, grand servants aren't meant to fight and win against a Beast in single combat, that defeats most of the point of Beasts, they're sins of man, thus man must defeat them, what grand servants do is help facilitate that, they make it possible. and also, grand assassin, old man hassan didn't lose his grand status because he removed tiamats immortality, but because he joined chaldea as an organization to my understanding, he made himself summonable as a normal servant to help directly, while the grand assassin needs to be impartial or something, just the mission, nothing else, helping against goetia wasn't his job.
Stahor
BookWorm
- Location
- Russia, Moscow
Arachne. The OG spider. If Medusa can be Servant, Arachne can be too.
Can also replace Crane in the shop
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- Pronouns
- male
What I'm annoyed by is the implication that Taylor has anything but excellent karma, saving the world and humanity across billions of realities.