Reaction Shot: Original Flavour Fate/Stay Night (or, *deep breath* BOY.)

[spindizzy]

Fate route Shirou Emiya left his brain in the grave he crawled out of and I'm mad about it. Spoilers all over the shop, specifically through the first like twelve episodes, but probably just... Everywhere.

• Like, I've ranted about this at Lex, and I accept his position that this route is all about Shirou digging into his survivor's guilt and thus his ridiculous insistence on keeping everyone else away from battles is thematic and looks worse than it is because he's surrounded almost exclusively by women, BUT ALSO. 1) Someone can have valid emotional issues and be a misogynist, these are not mutually exclusive states and sometimes the one will manifest as the other! 2) SHIROU EMIYA DOES NOT KNOW A SINGLE WOMAN WHO COULDN'T MURDER HIM WHERE HE STANDS. SOME OF THEM HAVE. AND HE HAS THE GODDAMN NERVE TO SUGGEST THAT THEY DON'T BELONG ON THE FRONT LINES WHERE THEY WANT TO BE.


• That said, between the chauvinism and the "Saber doesn't care if people see her naked" and the entire way that Rider is posed and viewed and the "I know Tohsaka is trying to kill me, but I can see up her skirt! D:" I see they are leaning into the "Our show about smashing mythological figures together like dollies is TOTALLY FOR DUDES."


• You ever learn a fact about someone and suddenly everything about them makes sense? Taiga's grandfather was a yakuza boss. LITERALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT HER MAKES SENSE NOW.


• Me: Shirou "People die when they are killed" Emiya died and got better TWICE IN THE SAME DAY.
  Me:
  Me:
  Me:
  Me: LAZARUS GEORG IS A STATISTICAL OUTLIER AND


• I think what I'm learning from this is that I continue to find Shirou more interesting after he's had a chance to go fucking feral and it took until like episode TWELVE to get to that point.


• I find the idea that Masters summons Servants that match not only their artifact, but their... Mental resonance I guess. It works for what it's intended to, which is "How the fuck did Shinji manage to summon someone who isn't as warped as he is?" and "Oh god, Shirou and Saber have the exact same set of issues," but I'm interested by what it means about the other characters! Like, two of the Masters die pretty much day one; how much about them can we extrapolate from their Servants? Is this canon across all of the series? Do we get to horribly overthink all of the ways that people match or don't match with their Servants?


• Oh, thing that I pitched Lex on: if Rin hadn't summoned Archer first, would Shirou have summoned him instead? Does it prioritise by strength of the legendary item and/or hero (meaning that because Saber was more famous, it prioritised her), or does it go off the strength of the connection (in which case Archer would have priority)? ... And what would happen if someone used Shirou as a summoning focus, actually, because that could end... Interestingly.


• No matter what universe it is, Shinji continues to be an abusive shitstain on the arse of the universe, and Shirou is 100% too trusting of him. STOP ENABLING YOUR SHITTY """"FRIEND"""" BEING DISGUSTING, SHIROU. THAT'S LITERALLY THE LEAST YOU CAN DO.


• Kotomine and Rin both know that Shirou wants to save people, and neither one has told him that for that to happen there needs to be something to save people from, but they know it. The Grail is a Monkey Paw wish-granter, and they know how it's going to go.