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I'm Not a Regular Mom (FGO OC)

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I'll chuck a 'Council of Evil' scene in after Septem resolves to answer these questions (and show why I'm excited for all of them). After all, I'm sure people are also dying to know what I've done with Beryl, too.
 
Blinktwice13 said:
I'll chuck a 'Council of Evil' scene in after Septem resolves to answer these questions (and show why I'm excited for all of them). After all, I'm sure people are also dying to know what I've done with Beryl, too.
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I, for one, am content with pretending that Beryl Does Not Exist. Knowledge is always a plus, however, although I'm sure that it'll only serve to raise more questions than it answers. Oh well.
 
Finagle007 said:
For those who believe Ishtar gets treated too badly in FGO, I direct you to The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI.
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Eh. The Epic of Gilgamesh is an artful and intentional distortion of the usual narratives and characterization of Ishtar/Inanna. It's not particularly useful for characterization purposes if you actually want to actually depict the Ishtar/Inanna of the mythology/religion, and not just the Epic.

To quote myself:
The first thing to keep in mind on the subject of the goddess, is that she represented an almost innumerable number of phenomena ranging from minutia like the flattening of the ground and erecting of cattle-pens all the way to such grandiose concepts as love and justice. But as her common descriptors, the 'Goddess of Love and War' and 'the Queen of Heaven' indicate, there are a few core attributes that are central to her character.

Perhaps the most central aspects of Ishtar are her associations with love. This very explicitly does include erotic love and lust (the Mesopotamians in general didn't really see the emotional intimacy and deep affection Christians associate with spiritual love as being antithetical to physical attraction and pleasure. They in fact viewed sexual desire and pleasure as a great creative force both in the liter/physical sense and in the mental one), but is in no way limited to it. One of the most historically popular and common depictions of Inanna and Ishtar is in love poetry, in which Inanna/Ishtar is cast as the archetypal young woman experiencing the changes in her body arising from puberty, and feeling the throes of love. While Inanna is in some compositions initially desiring to marry a farming god, her brother Utu eventually convinces her that Dumuzid the shepherd is the superior match. From there on (or from the start in other narratives) the love between Inanna and Dumuzid is depicted as very real and genuine. They worry about how their families will react, how they'll spend their lives together, Dumuzid even tries to get Inanna to sleep with her before they're married in one version, to Inanna's protests. Throughout the compositions, both the love and attraction between Inanna and Dumuzid are emphasized, but so too are the ties between the two deities and their families. Inanna is depicted as respecting the authority of her mother and wanting to live up to her expectations, as being particularly close with her brother Utu, etc while Dumuzid is almost always shown as having a deep bond with his sister Geshtiana and having pride in his family and lineage.

Her relationship with Dumuzid is admittedly complicated by the Descent of Inanna and the Epic of Gilgamesh, but in both of those pieces two critical elements of context are often overlooked. In the Descent, Inanna only gives Dumuzid over to the Galu after seeing him not only fail to mourn her death, but actively usurp her by sitting on her (sometimes just a) throne with servants dancing before him. It is only that treachery that brings Inanna to turn him over to the Galu, whereas those who were loyal to her were protected. Other stories made as direct continuations of that narrative often have Inanna/Ishtar grow to miss her husband and along with Dumuzid's sister Geshtiana entreat Ereshkigal for his release. Further, the version of events where Inanna willingly turns over Dumuzid to Ereshkigal is only one of many different narratives on the death of Dumuzid. In others, Dumuzid is beset by bandits (who may or may not be gods or demons) and is killed, inciting Inanna to weap and mourn him before hunting down and punishing the perpetrators. In others, unamed powers contrive the death of Dumuzid, or he's simply killed in some accident. The death of Dumuzid is universal to his narrative, and Inanna's yearly mourning of that death is the centerpiece of the one of her most famous and enduring ritual/festivities.

The rendition of Dumuzid/Tammuz' fate in the Epic of Gilgamesh is a topic that could rightly earn its own dissertation, but to summarize there are multiple issues present in the text. The first would be that the Epic of Gilgamesh is, in many ways, an active and artful subversion of the usual depictions of Inanna, and a twisting of the normal narratives into ones disfavorable of her. Within the corpus of Sumerian and Akkadian love poetry, the focus is on Inanna and her perspective. It is Dumuzid whose gaze is drawn lustfully towards Inanna, it is he who (usually, there are some notable and meaningful exceptions) takes the initiative to court her. Even when it is Inanna taking the initiative though, the emphasis is placed on the emotional intimacy as much as the physical pleasure they seek. In the Epic though, it is Gilgamesh who is spied upon while bathing, it is Gilgamesh who is with great detail described in a state of undress, and it is Ishtar who is described as leering after him. The description of Ishtar's past lovers too, is a notable subversion of usual depictions. In hymns and royal inscriptions, Inanna and Ishtar are described as giving life to the king, of extending his fated life, empowering his rule, and through his giving of pleasure to her and her love (both spousal and maternal) for the king the land is filled with prosperity and abundance. Gilgamesh instead describes Ishtar as a failing in all those functions, as one who destroys all she touches.

Gilgamesh's rendition of her past lovers is also an active and almost certainly intentional subversion of usual narratives. Dumuzid, usually taken to the underworld due to his betrayal or by unrelated factors, is depicted as a bird with his wings broken (an interesting side note, in his attempted escape from the galu demons, Dumuzid begged his brother in law Utu's aid and with his power took a number of different form to escape them before being caught), as well as another shepherd who is again discarded by Ishtar for unspecified reasons, and may be either literally the same Dumuzid or a separate incarnation of the deity (for the purposes of royal rituals, the King was considered to temporarily become or channel Dumuzid as a part of sacred marriage rites, and at least one Sumerian King literally identified himself as an incarnation of Dumuzid). The case of the gardener Ishullanu, who is propositioned by Ishtar and refused loudly, seems to be a near direct inversion of the older story of Inanna and Shukaletuda wherein the gardener Shukaletuda, who bears a similar relationship to the gods as Ishullanu (except that Shukaletuda is horribly incompetent), prays to the gods for aid in making his garden grow, and in response to a hard night's work in the heavens (somewhat odd, since Inanna and Ishtar are consistently depicted as literally tireless) Inanna takes a nap beneath the one plant Shukaletuda managed to grow, a tree. Shukaletuda, being the absolute genius he is, decides to rape the goddess in her sleep, with rather predictably apocalyptic results. As a side note, the other gardener associated with Inanna/Ishtar is Sargon 'the Great' of Akkad, the man who built the first empire and united Mesopotamia for the first time, thereby becoming the model all future Mesopotamian kings sought to emulate. And if we are to speak of the animals, need I explain the utility to mankind of making the horse rideable and the lion killable? (Early Mesopotamian religion also had fairly heavily use of animal-bodies gods and spirits).

In summation, while the Epic of Gilgamesh is a valuable text for analysis and highly thematic, it's use for analyzing Inanna's character is limited (though, if we want to be pedantic, the Epic also has Ishtar weep like a mourning mother at the destruction of humanity in the flood and in some versions has her angrily reprimand and threaten Enlil over it.)
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Actually, Blink, Ophelia's activation phrase for her eye (In the NA version of Gotterdammerung) isn't in English. I know the wiki says otherwise, but in NA, it goes:

"Phenomena, schufen auf."

"Ich will es niemals glänzen sehen."

Basically, the same thing as the wiki but in German.
 
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ladyonion said:
Actually, Blink, Ophelia's activation phrase for her eye (In the NA version of Gotterdammerung) isn't in English. I know the wiki says otherwise, but in NA, it goes:

"Phenomena, schufen auf.

Ich will es niemals glänzen sehen."

Basically, the same thing as the wiki but in German.
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Oooh. I like that better. Once I get a moment, I'll edit it in.
 
If she shows up here who else thinks Roman is going to suffer a mental break? On one hand its Merlin who he despises and was tricked by for years, on the other hand this is a legit female merlin who most likely hits every single one of his fetishes at once and is pretty much magi mari brought to life.
 
Thats whats funny it's Merlin he knows that, see's that but its also real life magi mari. My guess is he'll go into shirou emiya levels of stubbornness and mentally blank out that she's another version of merlin, he is weak to false idols after all.
 
Alright, here's what we know about Proto Merlin's abilities.

First skill is Dreamlike Charisma, though hers is only rank D while his is A. Next is her unique skill, Succubus' Vicinity EX. Party-wide Invincibility, just like Male Merlin's Illusion A, but instead of boosting party crit star drops and reducing enemy crit chance like he does, she drains enemy NP and charges party NP. Third is Hero Creation, though hers is rank B while his is EX. Last, her NP. Hope of Avalon: The Forever-Unsealed Utopia, rank A. Max HP up, NP gain up, and cooldown reduction to all party members.
 
Finagle007 said:
Alright, here's what we know about Proto Merlin's abilities.

First skill is Dreamlike Charisma, though hers is only rank D while his is A. Next is her unique skill, Succubus' Vicinity EX. Party-wide Invincibility, just like Male Merlin's Illusion A, but instead of boosting party crit star drops and reducing enemy crit chance like he does, she drains enemy NP and charges party NP. Third is Hero Creation, though hers is rank B while his is EX. Last, her NP. Hope of Avalon: The Forever-Unsealed Utopia, rank A. Max HP up, NP gain up, and cooldown reduction to all party members.
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I suppoused the NP is Arts?
Also, broken. Female Merlin + Merlin.
 
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