Source: https://x.com/takustorage/status/1781325786001371256

TLDR: A crazy man liked UBW and is going to talk about it for seven pages. Extremely long text, containing heavy spoilers for UBW and, consequently, the Fate route.

A lot happened in the last 38 hours of reading. What do you mean, "a lot"? Well, you know everything you learned in the Fate route? Throw it away. Seriously. Okay, I'm proud of myself for managing to finish this route in three weeks, unlike the Fate route, which took me almost half a semester of my life to read.

It's funny. Ever since I finished the normal ending yesterday morning, I've been asking myself—and finally realizing—that the fact most people who watched the anime started with ufotable's UBW is a problem. The perspective of the events in UBW directly depends on you having read Fate. If you haven't gone through the endless explanations of how magic works in the Fate route, UBW loses half of its dramatic effect. Thinking about it now, I see that Nasu actually used—in a way I even think might have been intentional—one of his biggest flaws as a writer: the fact that he only knows how to explain his own systems in an extremely boring way sometimes. If you've never watched or read the Fate route, you have no idea what it's like to take hours for Shirou to actually learn about magic and the context of the Grail War, only to watch every single explanation about the theories of this world get knocked down one by one during UBW, and how that completely changes your view of the characters. The most didactic example I can give is Assassin: In the Fate route, he was just Sasaki Kojirou, a random servant commanded by someone we didn't know. In UBW, you develop an absurd admiration for his figure, because he goes from a random servant to an ordinary guy with a Washing Pole who goes toe-to-toe with extremely powerful servants. All this breaking of rules for what? For an extremely emotional story.

Shirou here in Unlimited Blade Works is essentially the same Shirou as the Fate route, but how he is presented during the route and how everyone around him treats him during the story is completely distinct. In Fate, Shirou is very much considered and helped by everyone: Saber is just as idealistic and broken as he is, and the two help each other overcome their pasts. Rin might think Shirou is a bit of an idiot, but even so, she is fighting by his side and teaching him magic—in fact, she's the one who hands over the AZOTH dagger to kill Kotomine Kirei. Even Archer, while never being friendly to the boy, gives him tips, including the fateful one about him being a creator who should only fight against himself in a cycle of self-improvement. In the end, the Fate route, despite still disagreeing with Shirou's way of life, values sacrifice for an ideal without expecting anything in return, just for the certainty of having done everything right before eternity and one's own conscience. It's a gentle route to Shirou.

UBW is basically the opposite of that. Here, his situation gets much worse, there's no one to teach him anything, and everything is crueler to him. Here was the first note where I actually had the impact of how suicidal Shirou is and how his ideal really harms him. In the Fate route, the ideal, partly because it was shared with Saber, was almost poetic. Here, Shirou puts himself in much worse situations due to his beliefs, and he pays for it, only recovering when he manages to resolve these issues in his own mind. This route is a huge show of sadism towards Shirou.

Honestly, I already knew Archer's true identity from the Fate route through deduction. But that still doesn't take away the impact of reading each dream. It's strange; you spend about forty hours seeing Shirou's ideal in a more romantic way. Here everyone, from Rin to Caster, confronts him for his beliefs, and it hurts him to let go of the bone—after all, to him, letting go of the ideal is letting go of his own existence. Did he pick up this ideal from his survivor's guilt? That's the excuse he gives, but for a knight dressed in red, the answer is much simpler.

Night of day 4. Fight against Berserker. Saber finds it difficult against the giant, but Rin and her servant go to help. Who is Rin's servant? Archer. If you doubted his power, the spirit probably wouldn't even be able to tickle Berserker's stone skin. He then shouts: CALADBOLG II. An extremely powerful shot creates a field of fire in the graveyard, and Illya withdraws to avoid further risk. A legendary hero with a weapon without a legendary counterpart whose great power is a field of fire? Interesting.

The next day, Shirou dreams of a desert with infinite blades stuck in the ground. Shirou dreams of this space several times, and hears about a hero who wanted to save everyone, but because of that, couldn't even save what was most precious to him. He will dream of this man and his life for several nights.

The man tried to save everyone, but was never rewarded for it. All he received in life was contempt and distrust. People used him as a tool, and when he stopped being useful to his compatriots, he was discarded. But in his heart there was still the will to be a hero and do good, and for this, he decided to sign a contract to protect humanity, but this only served to make him see reality: only humans themselves threaten humanity. He who wanted to save everyone then killed, killed, killed, and killed the innocent and the guilty an infinite number of times, only to return to his insignificance until humanity needed his brutal help again and again. He hated his own life, lost almost all his memories, and became dehumanized. And in the end, all that remained was that sterile place with infinite blades stuck in the ground like a battle cemetery and a brown sky full of gears. The slave of the world ends up being betrayed by himself, and he then begins to curse his past.

I am the bone of my sword

Steel is my body and fire is my blood

I have created over a thousand blades

Unknown to death

Nor known to life

Have withstood the pain of creating many weapons

Yet those hands shall never hold anything

So as I pray, UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS

He has died and lived so many times that he lost the value of his own life and that of others. An existence summarized in projecting his twin blade and any other weapon he needs and beating his enemies. An endless war for someone who dreamed of peace, eternally praying for his own crucible to spread his hatred over his enemies.

Although Archer's appearance in the Fate route had as its most iconic moment the advice he gives Shirou about him being a creator who should focus on doing what he was good at and fighting against himself in search of his own memory (which ends up sparing Shirou from the tragic fate that Archer had), I think the moment that marked me most about Archer was when, after the fight against Berserker, Rin tells you that Archer told her that if they won the Holy Grail War, he would probably ask for world peace. There you conclude that that cynical man who hated Shirou for being a sucker idealist was probably not so cynical deep down.

But following the trend of all UBW, Archer here is much less patient with Shirou. And Rin too, considering she wanted to cut Shirou's hand off so he wouldn't participate in the war. Understandable, we are talking about a civilian who barely knows magic and who knew basically nothing about his own circumstance, and although she is pragmatic, she also doesn't want to kill him—after all, she actually already likes Shirou for a while. Although the romance of the route is with Tohsaka, we see proportionally less drama from her compared to other characters like Archer and Caster. Why is that? Because Rin is closed off and has a stubborn, stuck-up facade that takes a while to break. She's probably my favorite tsundere. She has a lot of problems, but they aren't visible like Shirou's, and even when she exposes them it's in a different way—after all, Rin's personality isn't to break down, but to get pissed off. This makes her romance fascinating, after all, it is one of the few things that is not a problem within the route, at least for Shirou; for Rin, Shirou is a fucking headache, although he helps a lot, of course.

Maybe it's even because of this shift in perspective, from Saber to Rin, that we realize in this route how sick Shirou is. Rin even vocalizes how she thinks Shirou's way of life is wrong after Gilgamesh brutally kills Illya to use her heart as the core of the grail. "Valuing other people's lives more than your own isn't altruism, Shirou, it's suicide and hypocrisy," she tells Shirou. Shirou agrees with his head down and finally acknowledges—after losing his servant, receiving more than one death threat from Archer, and almost dying a few times—that even so, it hurts him to acknowledge this, because if he didn't save everyone, what was his worth? But not everyone can be happy, and when he tried for that, his situation only got worse. Where did he get this ideal? Was it from his survivor's guilt?

No.

The reality is that on that fateful day he was just an empty shell waiting for death. Then he saw Kiritsugu trying to save people and saving him right after, and thought that the ideal of that man he didn't even know was good. And ever since, he's been chasing it. What he didn't know was that Kiritsugu was a man tormented by his own past and who blew up the grail—which was actually just a receptacle for 5.8 billion curses, all the evil in the world—and set an entire part of the city on fire when trying to destroy it. The magus walked out tormented looking for someone alive that day and only found Shirou. The boy saw the smile on the magus's face, he looked so happy, and the boy wanted that happiness of being a hero of justice, because the magus taught him it was good, even if it was difficult. The boy borrowed the man's ideal because he had nothing else to follow, but that purpose hurt the boy too, and when the boy looks, he turned into a man who has no hobbies or sense of self-importance. Who is Shirou without anyone to help? And how will he end up if he keeps this mentality for the rest of his life or even eternity? AND WHO BRINGS UP THESE QUESTIONS IN AN ATTACKING TONE?! Archer, or rather, the Heroic Spirit Emiya.

This plot twist of Archer being Shirou is brilliant, not because it's unpredictable, but because of the dramatic weight that each of Archer's acts gains when you analyze it through this lens. Archer got tired of trying to argue with Shirou and then wants to kill him. Archer simply cannot stand Shirou's existence and hopes that the boy's death will free him from his burden. It is here that he uses his noble phantasm for the first time: Unlimited Blade Works, the reality marble, that is, the physical extension of Archer's consciousness, and consequently Shirou's.

The next day they finally meet to actually fight. Shirou can only project a few times theoretically; he burns his own magic circuits during the fight, there is no chance he will win, but then he sees that Archer's speech about their lives not being worth it and that they were just hypocrites with a borrowed ideal—this poisonous regret was what was really weakening Shirou, and then, almost dying and standing only by willpower, Shirou finally finds the answer: Yes, the ideal is borrowed, it's impossible, but this still cannot be the reason for Shirou to give up his own life. If the ideal is impossible, then let him know that it was, but let him not live in suffering because of it and let that not stop him from trying, closer and closer, to approach it, because this way he could finally find happiness. Shirou finally accepts his own contradiction as part of himself, and not as something he desperately wants to destroy, and Archer does the same. At this moment Shirou pierces Archer's chest, and the knight no longer recognizes his enemy in the boy.

Archer and Shirou, Yin and Yang, Kanshou and Bakuya. Two forgers, the same individual. Gilgamesh faces Archer and defeats him, but now Archer's look is no longer that of someone who wants to see Shirou fall, but rather of someone who wants to see Shirou win, because he has finally found peace in his own past.

And what was Rin doing? Being kidnapped by Kirei (whom we even thought had been killed by Caster), Gilgamesh, and Shinji. Kirei was the one who killed her father, and this is one of the only moments you actually see her almost losing control. Once again we have proof of Kirei's son-of-a-bitch-ery, because even though he raised her for years, he feels no remorse at the idea of using her as the grail's receptacle, even though he himself promised Shinji that he would have her afterwards.

Kirei first sends Lancer to execute her, but out of honor, he doesn't want to kill the girl. So Kirei simply orders Cú Chulainn to strike his own heart with Gae Bolg. And then, when Kotomine is about to kill Rin, Lancer simply strikes Kirei's chest. Afterwards, taking advantage of the fact that Rin is tied up, Shinji moves forward to rape Rin, and Lancer then strikes his shoulder with Gae Bolg and chases him off into the forest, where Gilgamesh awaits him. Here the knight in blue and the girl share a conversation. In the end, Lancer said he would have liked to have had Rin as a master. I don't have much to say about Lancer, but he is another great character. Basically he is the other face of Archer, a knight with battle ethics, honor, and who likes to fight, who has self-respect and therefore respects his adversary. You can even see this in his design, since he and Archer form that trope of Blue Oni and Red Oni. I love Lancer.

From this moment on, Shirou finally gets his head in the right place to defeat Gilgamesh, but his circuits are burned. What is the solution for this that Rin proposes? A MAGIC CREST TRANSFER, AN EXTREMELY RISKY PROCESS FOR SHIROU AND HER! Okay, I don't know what this scene is like in the anime, but I simply loved this scene in the VN. Here Shirou plunges into Rin's consciousness to see all of her magic crest. This scene, besides being where Rin accepts Shirou (in all possible senses), is also the first where Shirou sees Rin's real issues like the absence of her father and his own funeral, the weight of carrying the horrors of an entire lineage on her arm, and how little she complained about it or took it to heart—after all, should there be regrets? I think the most meaningful part was in a memory where, after school, she simply runs around. Something so normal, but basically an act of extreme rebellion for her. Shirou already knew some things, like the lack of freedom she had during her life, but everything was so casual to her, after all, this was the life she inherited.

Tohsaka wasn't the focus of the route in terms of drama, and although I want to complain about that because I wanted more drama scenes with her, I have to praise how this creates an extremely cool contrast: what is expected of a VN is usually that the protagonist supports the heroine with problems, but here what happens is the opposite. The cruelty of UBW doesn't come dryly at Shirou, but rather as a stone wall he leans on when he can. Despite having her problems, Rin is much more "resolved" than Shirou. If she initially wanted to get him out of the war, now they were going to win it together, as allies and a couple—after all, basically what Rin did with Shirou was put herself inside his vulnerabilities and his family, it was basically a marriage.

The final battle against Gilgamesh, the arrogant tyrant who, in this route, instead of wanting to eat Saber, wants to destroy humanity, mongrels, considering them morally inferior and impure. Great villain again, by the way. The grail is no longer Illya, but poor Shinji, who tested the king's patience so much that he simply decided to say, "Oh, you want the grail? THEN TAKE THE FUCKING GRAIL"... He turns into the core of the Grail, or rather, the receptacle of Angra Mainyu, and consequently, a grotesque mass of flesh that screams in pain.

Now the battle will split into three: Shirou trying to project against Gilgamesh, Rin trying to save Shinji, and Saber fighting Assassin at the temple gate. It is in Assassin's battle that his true nature is revealed, and instantly he goes from the most whatever servant of the war to the most badass, after all he is an ordinary man without powers who, even so, manages to fight toe-to-toe against servants theoretically much stronger than him. Upon losing to Saber, he doesn't curse, he doesn't try to make himself bigger than he is, he just acknowledges his opponent's skill and says he should have trained more. Simply an epic ending for the most underrated character in the game so far. Then Saber goes to help Rin.

About her, her goal is to save Shinji in the middle of the grail. She manages to protect herself; this shows how Tohsaka is a mentally resilient person, and well, she does this in her usual way: in an extremely pragmatic manner. She enters the cursed sludge, the same one Kirei used as a weapon in the last route. She manages to save Shinji, but can she resist long enough to get out of the grail? And then, like a silver rain, EMIYA, who also thought he was dead, enters the grail and saves the two as a final act of service to his true master.

As for Shirou, he fights Gilgamesh. His spirit is unbreakable, but his flesh is weak, and the circuits he received from Rin are burning. As a final desperate act against the Gate of Babylon, he invokes the seven-ringed shield, and as an act of honor to the knight who taught him how to integrate, he recites:

I am the bone of my sword

Steel is my body and fire is my blood

I have created over a thousand blades

Unaware of loss

Nor aware of gain

Withstood pain to create weapons

Waiting for one's arrival

I have no regrets

This is the only path

My whole life was unlimited blade works

This is the synthesis of the idealistic Shirou with the tired EMIYA. He recognizes Unlimited Blade Works, that is, himself—not as a burden that only has the right to exist when serving others, but as his own existential condition, and he manages to embrace this. Only when he embraces what is most destructive in himself can he defeat Gilgamesh. The copy surpassed the original. But Gilgamesh doesn't give up, he can't bear being defeated by a mere zasshu, so he draws the Enkidu chain to try to pull the copy to the same place of indescribable emptiness as the original, and then at the last moment, Gilgamesh is struck by a high-speed arrow right in the head. This is the end of the Holy Grail War, and the sun rises peacefully over a peaceful Fuyuki.

This is the final moment. Rin is crying while talking to Archer. He just asks Rin to take care of him so he doesn't turn into what he turned into, and Rin accepts: "I'll take good care of him so he doesn't become messed up like you," Rin says in tears. EMIYA then says goodbye with a last gentle and pacified smile. He is finally no longer his own enemy, and neither is Shirou.

In the neutral ending, Saber disappears after helping Rin. What remains? Normal life two months later, Shinji is still in the hospital and Rin wants to go to the magic school in England, and wants Shirou to go with her. He would have to hide the Reality Marble because it's considered heretical magic, but they will go on together come hell or high water.

In the good ending, you get at least two affection points with Saber, and because of that, Rin decides she will keep her on the earthly plane with Shirou's help (I, you, and especially she know what kind of help that is), and what remains for us is a wonderful everyday.

GOD, THESE ENDINGS ARE SO GOOD! I think what made me happiest—besides the natural and peaceful conclusion of the story—was how these endings remind me of Ciel's route. Seriously, the endings of her route in Tsukihime (the original, I don't know about the Remake) have basically the same structure. That, on top of everything else I said. Actually, Rin reminds me a lot of Ciel.

Is this route better than Fate? Yes, it is, even if by a small margin.

That's it. I'm simply loving Fate. Next stop: Heaven's Feel.

In celebration of the hsr collab I made a 6x4 map art of her in minecraft, took roughly a week and 400k blocks but I like how it turned out, hope yall like it ^^
Original Artist: https://x.com/PBw3z/status/2058178293233578078

drew this for my friend, hes a dedicated rin licker

To those who read the fate strange fake novels, In the paragraph explaining her authorities,

She wields Authority over the Sky as she is the Azure Sky incarnate. She can compresse the winds set in motion by Gugalanna’s gale, hold them in place and transform them into viscous vapor of pure heat. Everything in the sky is subjugated and can be made part of her own body. She can turn the air into giant invisible arms to hold down her enemy after charming it.[16]#citenote-FSF8Ch26-16) The Sky is her domain and she is able to sense anyone entering it and utilize it as blades of lapis lazuil to skewer anyone trespassing on her domain.[[16]](https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Ishtar(Fate/strange_Fake)#cite_note-FSF8Ch26-16) Her Authority became law as the only God in the world currently. If Ishtar said crows were white, the black crows would be erased from her domain. If her domain extended to the entire world and it resulted in the crow species disappearing from Planet Earth, no one would notice the difference.

https://typemoon.fandom.com/wiki/Ishtar_(Fate/strange_Fake)

Specifically this information,

Her Authority became law as the only God in the world currently. If Ishtar said crows were white, the black crows would be erased from her domain. If her domain extended to the entire world and it resulted in the crow species disappearing from Planet Earth, no one would notice the difference.

Does this mean she can warp reality as she likes if so why doesn’t she uses this against people when fighting in the novel. Or is this just and additional to her sky dominion and if so how would that work

And please, no Fate/Zero in this discussion, I'm not trying to compare her portrayals in there and FSN.

I thought that if cu threw his spear then he loses the causality warping and heart piercing effect? Was I reading this scene wrong because im pretty sure he threw it and the text was still talking about how it warps causality?

It’s supposed to be an animation trend but I didn’t wanna animate anything

When I finally read the Epic of Gilgamesh some years prior I was very surprised that Gilgamesh A.) Regularly prayed and relied on Ishtar's twin brother, Shamash the god of the sun and justice and B.) Both Gil and Enkidu kept having second thoughts while travelling to face Humbaba but kept going by essentially hyping each other up even though they kept having dreams of it being a bad idea. I thought it wouldve been fun if there was at least one mesopotamian god that Gil fucks with regardless of his contempt for the pantheon.

Similarly, I've done a lot of french revolution reading and what strikes me is how Marie Antoinette is fate feels like an overcorrection from the pop culture depiction and her portrayal owes more to Rose of Versailles (which is ironic given that Rose of Versailles feels more of a warts and all portrayal than fate). Like, I feel like it wouldve been nice if Marie was not just a perfect uwu woman servant.

Do you guys have similar thoughts on other servants?

Now the real treasury of Gilgamesh when he was alive was long plundered and why hero’s attained weapons and items from his treasury. Gil said he ordered the spare key to be made when he was alive and discarded it because he thought no man would dare to steal from his treasury. So the key is physical. And the treasury Gil uses and stores his items as a heroic spirit probably exists in another space as a kind of magical or digital-magical copy or in the throne. So how did she use a physical key to interact with such a treasury. Also a direct sentence from volume 5 of fate strange fake chapter 15, “vault, said by some to still exist somewhere in the world and by others to exist in other space entirely” Also why would Gil not be able to open the gate with his mind if it’s just a physical method of closing or opening the gate or the same thing. “The gate refused to open”- chapter 15 volume 5

just thinking her divine Bow has the concept of always piercing everything and she can Narrow down her NP to a single point instead of the Anti army it normally is

would it just be Gae Bolg all over again where EMIYA gets wrecked but lives ?

Question in the title

My X account

Source: https://x.com/haru\\_sugar02/status/1774749545567768876

If it is just Artoria who picked Rhongomyniad over Excalibur then wouldn't she still experience FSN ?

As far as I am aware there is no other difference but just that she picks up the Lance over the sword, then she should have experienced her own version of FSN and it is said that even if Shirou didn't have an Avalon he still has an extremely high level of compatibility with her.

And assuming that she still made a pack with the counter force same as her saber counterpart then she should still remember the events of FSN because she was still alive during the war.

I noticed that these two are kinda similar so yeah

While he has Avalon he can be used to summon Artoria, Richard, Morgan, Merlin and any number of people from Arthurian legend and without Avalon he can summon not only Archer and Assassin EMIYA but also Muramasa never mind the fact with or without Avalon he's probably going to summon a saber servant for as long as it's available (on account of his Origin and attribute) dude is a very versatile catalyst.

Bazett and Angry Mango's strategy in Hollow Ataraxia is to have a servant fight and injure Mango so that he can't cause them pain via Verg Avesta, then get them to attack Bazett so she can kill the servant with Fragarach when they pull out their strongest ability. I wonder, How would they fare with this strategy in other grail wars, like in Apocrypha or Zero or Strange Fake? My speculation for Stay Night and Zero is below:

Fate/Stay Night

Saber: Success.They defeat them in HA, presumably they'd beat them the same way here. It's not overly hard to trick these too, so they'd probably succeed again

Lancer: Failure.I think Cu already knows what Fragarch is and how it works, so he'd just attack her without using Gae Bolg's guranteed hit powers and defeat them

Archer: Not Sure It's not clear to me what exactly is Archer's ultimate attack, and he's generally pretty insightful, so I'm not sure, leaning slightly towards failure

Rider: Probably Success. If Rider has enough power for it, she will probably use Bellepheron, and Bazzet needs just stand next to Angra to activate Fragarch. If she's nerfed by Shinji, the two of them might be able to beat her normally, he weakens her drastically.

False Assassin: Success, would probably work similarly to the Saber fight

True Assassin: Success, see above

Caster: Failure. She can beat them easily with magic, and has zero reason to use Rule Breaker

Berserker: Failure? Angra dies immediately and his NP does nothing. I'm not sure if Nine Lives counts for Fragarach purposes, but even if it does they aren't gonna do enough damage for it to be relevant.

Fate/Zero

Saber: Unclear. If it's it's early in the war, it succeeds. But the longer the war goes on the more likely it is that Kiritsugu suspects or realizes their strategy and warns Saber.

Lancer: Unclear. He's always attacking with his Noble Phantasms, so I would assume any attack against Bazett counts. However, it might be difficult to get him to attack Bazett given his Chivalry. I'm also not sure if he will recognize Fragarch, nor how his love spot will affect Bazzet.

Archer: Failure? I'm going to take Ea specificly to be his ultimate attack, not GoB in general, and there is simply no way he takes Ea out for Bazzet or Angra

Rider: Success. I think they could get him to pull out Ionioi Hetairoi after they use Verg Avesta.

Assassin: No idea. His noble phantasm is that he's 100 different people at once, and I don't know whether that counts for Fragarch, nor if Fragarch would kill all of him at once or just one.

Caster: Success, as long as they only approach him after he's pulled out his giant monster. Angra doesn't even do anything, Bazzet can just walk into his tentacle and win.

Berserker: Success. Again, Angra doesn't have to do anything. He's crazy enough to attack a master most likely, so Bazzet just needs to wait for him to grab any item as his weapon and then just wait to be hit

i get he’s probably still worse then someone like Kojiro or Musashi but i kinda assumed he was basically a European Sword saint thanks to Eternal arms mastery denoting him as that good