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jellycat
Nov 5, 2012

it's a nice day
His body is "made of swords" after all. Archer's arm was definitely the catalyst for it going out of control in HF, though.

Anyway, in Hollow Ataraxia, Rin jokingly (:airquote:) raises the possibility of Shirou projecting copies of valuable things and selling them and they have a discussion that IIRC concludes that he could fool skilled magi with his projections if they didn't look too hard, with some practice.
So Rin at least believes he could improve his general projection skills as well.

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Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
Shirou's internal dialogue when he summons UBW seems to imply that all of his abilities, projection, reinforcement, affinity for swords, etc., are simply things that stem from his reality marble. Everything is just a byproduct of having that. And he obtained that by basically being a crazy person who was broken by surviving the fire. "The truth obtained by one who lived as a sword all his life" or however it was phrased. Having Avalon just made him harder to be killed, as well as enabling him to contract with Saber.

Rody One Half
Feb 18, 2011

Nate RFB posted:

Shirou's internal dialogue when he summons UBW seems to imply that all of his abilities, projection, reinforcement, affinity for swords, etc., are simply things that stem from his reality marble. Everything is just a byproduct of having that. And he obtained that by basically being a crazy person who was broken by surviving the fire. "The truth obtained by one who lived as a sword all his life" or however it was phrased. Having Avalon just made him harder to be killed, as well as enabling him to contract with Saber.

The fire made him "empty" and Avalon filled him by setting his Origin and Element.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
I think it's much more interesting an explanation (and more consistent thematically in the case of HF) to say that Shirou's abilities reflects his worldview, than claim that it's a result of some magical artifact that happened to be there by chance, even if you can dig out some Nasu quote from some interview somewhere that states it is the case.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this

Serious Frolicking posted:

So let me see if I've got this right. Shirou has a natural affinity for projection, which is normally pretty useless. But because he had excalibur's sheath inside him for most of his life, he became attuned to swords and by extension weapons in general. So, he can create swords and such far beyond what projection is normally capable of at the cost of being incompetent at all other forms of magic. Two possible end states for his ability are Archer's reality marble and HF's weirdness where his body turned into swords.

More or less this.

BlitzBlast posted:

It's simpler than that, actually. Avalon gave him his sword origin/affinity, but his real talent comes from an extension of the one spell he used most of his life: reinforcement. Shirou's really good at analyzing an object's inner workings (it's how he fixes things), to the point he can understand any given item's essence. This lets him use projection, which normally just copies an object's appearance and most basic qualities, to create perfect replicas.

All Avalon did was make him better at tracing swords. UBW too is just a database of all the information he's ever gotten. As for what happened in HF, that was a side effect of grafting on Archer's arm. It's constantly sending magic into his body, and since Shirou/Archer's magic affinity is sword...

But not this.
His projection pulls out swords from UBW. It's why they're almost perfect replicas. UBW's doing the heavy lifting of forging them. UBW also instantly analyzes any sword he sees and stores it within. The thing with Archer's arm was because it was literally invading Shirou from inside.

Fangz posted:

I think it's much more interesting an explanation (and more consistent thematically in the case of HF) to say that Shirou's abilities reflects his worldview, than claim that it's a result of some magical artifact that happened to be there by chance, even if you can dig out some Nasu quote from some interview somewhere that states it is the case.

It's neither.

He survived the fire with massive psychological trauma and a guilt complex. Then he got a scabbard shoved inside him, which altered his Origin. This change in turn altered his element. Since all magecraft is done through the element, and traditional magecraft presupposes a normal elemental alignment, Shirou is crap at normal spells (same with Sakura, actually). On the other hand, he is very very good at sword magic. UBW is a sword magic.

Going back to Shirou's mind, he's a ball of issues stemming from the fire, then witnessed Kerry rescuing him and thought "ah, I want to be happy like him" and latched onto that. Thus he copies Kerry's ideal to save people. ("If I save people I will be happy"). His lack of a sense of self-worth is probably from the fire as well (since it 'burned away' at him), with influence of his Origin. His Origin influences the way he manifests this ideal, in that he's most successful when fighting, but it's not the cause for it.

UBW is the result of his extreme aptitude for sword magic, not his mindset. His mindset, however, affects how UBW looks. UBW is not the product of his psychological issues. They just derive from the same source (the fire).

Kyte fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Dec 16, 2014

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
I just think it is a less interesting story that way. It is a better story for Shirou's proficiency in projection to be a mirror of his personality, the borrowed nature of his ideal from Kiritsugu, his absence of his sense of self. It is sufficient to explain how his magic is different by the fact that unlike other mages, he thought of his magic as purely a tool to be used, that he self trained via a method that no mage with a sense of self preservation would ever tolerate. The fact that the invocation of UBW is an incantation of Archer's mind state is a great device, and one that delivers meaning to the modification of that incantation by Shirou.

Going back and explaining it all with prana and Origin and other crap is like going back and explaining the Force with midichlorians. It's just meh, and gets in the way of the themes of the story. No one gives a poo poo about Saber's sheath, so why invoke it?

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
I know it's on the wiki that Avalon may have changed his Affinity/Origin to "Sword" but it doesn't seem to be cited from anything, such as interviews, which the wiki usually does for tidbits like that. At the very least even if it did steer Shirou in the direction of Swords it would not have afforded him his reality marble, which in the narrative is presented as being a product of his worldview and experiences. Maybe if we're being charitable, we could say that sans Avalon (assuming he survived and became the same basic person) he may have developed a reality marble that excelled at crafting something other than swords? Shields or guns, for example.

Rody One Half
Feb 18, 2011

Fangz posted:

I just think it is a less interesting story that way. It is a better story for Shirou's proficiency in projection to be a mirror of his personality, the borrowed nature of his ideal from Kiritsugu, his absence of his sense of self. It is sufficient to explain how his magic is different by the fact that unlike other mages, he thought of his magic as purely a tool to be used, that he self trained via a method that no mage with a sense of self preservation would ever tolerate. The fact that the invocation of UBW is an incantation of Archer's mind state is a great device, and one that delivers meaning to the modification of that incantation by Shirou.

Going back and explaining it all with prana and Origin and other crap is like going back and explaining the Force with midichlorians. It's just meh, and gets in the way of the themes of the story. No one gives a poo poo about Saber's sheath, so why invoke it?

Because it's not a retcon like midichlorians is, it's from the game.

jellycat
Nov 5, 2012

it's a nice day
I guess I'm seeing it very differently.

Avalon is what figuratively shaped Shirou's life, as the thing that allowed him to survive the aftermath of the Fourth Grail War, so the fact that it literally did so as well (in a manner that fits within concepts previously established in the Type-Moon universe) doesn't really bother me. It's the most physical link between Kiritsugu, the end of the Fourth Grail War, and Shirou, and I think it's a very fittingly symbolic one, too.

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry

Kyte posted:

UBW is the result of his extreme aptitude for sword magic, not his mindset. His mindset, however, affects how UBW looks. UBW is not the product of his psychological issues. They just derive from the same source (the fire).
This, at the very least, I don't think is accurate.

quote:

"…That's right. I don't create swords.
I create a world that contains infinite swords.
This is the only magic allowed for Emiya Shirou."

A desolate land.
A graveyard of swords, devoid of life.
Every sword exists in this world, as swords are reproduced just at a glance.

This is Emiya Shirou's world.
A Reality Marble.
It is the greatest forbidden magic that embodies the caster's internal world.
This is heroic spirit Emiya's Noble Phantasm and the only weapon I possess.

Everything is here, and nothing is here.
That is why this is called Unlimited Blade Works.
This is the only definite answer obtained by the one who lived as a sword all his life.
I can't read that in any other context other than it trying to showcase that UBW is intrinsic to Shirou's very being and soul, rather than something that naturally "grew" out of his ability to project swords. And since he lost Avalon after Fate, is his Origin/Affinity still the same? Would he somehow lose the ability to project in the first place as a result?

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Rodyle posted:

Because it's not a retcon like midichlorians is, it's from the game.

I don't recall any mention of Shirou's Origin, or any explanation where his magic came from, in the game. In terms of the story, it really seems like Avalon essentially disappears from the game except for that one scene at the end of Fate, where Shirou gets rid of it without any apparent ill effect. So making it sorta pivotal can't help but seem an unwelcome retcon to me.

Given the fact that the sheath essentially doesn't exist in the story outside that one scene, it's hard for me to see it as representing anything, except I guess how forgetful Kiritsugu is that he would leave an uber-powerful healing artifact just lying around, instead of using it to, say, save his own life?

Fangz fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Dec 16, 2014

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

"According to Wikipedia" there is a black hole that emits zionist hawking radiation where my brain should have been

I really should just shut the fuck up and stop posting forever
College Slice

Nate RFB posted:

This, at the very least, I don't think is accurate.
I can't read that in any other context other than it trying to showcase that UBW is intrinsic to Shirou's very being and soul, rather than something that naturally "grew" out of his ability to project swords. And since he lost Avalon after Fate, is his Origin/Affinity still the same? Would he somehow lose the ability to project in the first place as a result?

Makes me wonder if every Magus can have a in theory their own reality marble that reflects their specialty? Its just otherwise normally possible to achieve that level of magic though?

Zasze
Apr 29, 2009

Nate RFB posted:

This, at the very least, I don't think is accurate.
I can't read that in any other context other than it trying to showcase that UBW is intrinsic to Shirou's very being and soul, rather than something that naturally "grew" out of his ability to project swords. And since he lost Avalon after Fate, is his Origin/Affinity still the same? Would he somehow lose the ability to project in the first place as a result?

I mean dude got burned by hosed up tainted grail magic fire and then had some sort of end all be all of sheath shoved into him that was made by fairy's and probably not meant to be inside people for like 10 years, I don't think it takes anything away from his character that his ability to have magic at all in a world where magic seems to be waning came from being given a crazy fairy magic sheath that may or may not be trying to turn him into a sword :v:

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Raenir Salazar posted:

Makes me wonder if every Magus can have a in theory their own reality marble that reflects their specialty? Its just otherwise normally possible to achieve that level of magic though?

Worth noting that Assassin mastered a variant of the Second True Magic by just practising swinging his sword a lot because he wanted to kill a bird.

Cake Attack
Mar 26, 2010

Unlimited Blade Works is really loving cool, imo

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Fangz posted:

Worth noting that Assassin mastered a variant of the Second True Magic by just practising swinging his sword a lot because he wanted to kill a bird.

Assassin never actually existed to begin with though.

Rody One Half
Feb 18, 2011

Xoidanor posted:

Assassin never actually existed to begin with though.

He did, he was just a peasant swordsman. It's the person called Sasaki Kojirou that didn't exist.

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D

Fangz posted:

Worth noting that Assassin mastered a variant of the Second True Magic by just practising swinging his sword a lot because he wanted to kill a bird.

Can't forget about Iskander. Guy wasn't even a magus in life, but that didn't stop him from being able to create his own ridiculous Reality Marble that encloses his ideals, philosophy, and his life of conquering with his best buds and army.

anglachel
May 28, 2012

Fangz posted:

Given the fact that the sheath essentially doesn't exist in the story outside that one scene, it's hard for me to see it as representing anything, except I guess how forgetful Kiritsugu is that he would leave an uber-powerful healing artifact just lying around, instead of using it to, say, save his own life?

I think it was stated that Avalon does pretty much jack and poo poo unless Saber (and only her) is around and giving it mana. The explanation on why it still worked after Saber disappeared at Fate/Zero was that it still had a store of mana in it. All the remaining mana in it was drained when Kiritsugu used it to survive the grail explosion, and then put it into Shirou and it healed him. This would also explain why the Einzberns never sent someone to get back the super powerful artifact back, sense they knew it did pretty much nothing without Saber around, and was only useful as a Catalyst to summon Arthur (and Einzberns wouldnt care about trying to use Arthur again in a future Grail War sense she had failed previously)

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.

Nate RFB posted:

This, at the very least, I don't think is accurate.
I can't read that in any other context other than it trying to showcase that UBW is intrinsic to Shirou's very being and soul, rather than something that naturally "grew" out of his ability to project swords. And since he lost Avalon after Fate, is his Origin/Affinity still the same? Would he somehow lose the ability to project in the first place as a result?

The way I read it, Avalon simply changed his Origin after the fire (since he was empty after being burned by pure evil, etc etc). After that, it stopped being relevant. And, well, his origin could have been "swords" in the first place, but that would have been more coincidental and random.

And your Origin is, of course, basically just fortunetelling. It gives a general shape to your life that might only be noticeable in retrospect. There's magic that taps into it, like Kiritsugu's bone bullets (which tap into the "binding and severing" thing that is demonstrated by him constantly losing the important people in his life), but Shirou isn't doing anything like that, he's just living as a sword all his life. Your Reality Marble is just your internal reality, so it's just his state of mind. That not unrelated to his Origin, since that's what shaped his life in the first place, but UBW is the result of his life and nothing else.

Maybe I'm wrong, but this is the way that makes the most sense to me. And also corresponds to how Origins have been presented in other works like Kara no Kyoukai.

Angry Grimace
Jul 29, 2010

ACTUALLY IT IS VERY GOOD THAT THE SHOW IS BAD AND ANYONE WHO DOESN'T REALIZE WHY THAT'S GOOD IS AN IDIOT. JUST ENJOY THE BAD SHOW INSTEAD OF THINKING.

jellycat posted:

His body is "made of swords" after all. Archer's arm was definitely the catalyst for it going out of control in HF, though.

Anyway, in Hollow Ataraxia, Rin jokingly (:airquote:) raises the possibility of Shirou projecting copies of valuable things and selling them and they have a discussion that IIRC concludes that he could fool skilled magi with his projections if they didn't look too hard, with some practice.
So Rin at least believes he could improve his general projection skills as well.

I seem to remember Rin having a zany profit scheme in the ending of Heaven's Feel, too.

Shyrka
Feb 10, 2005

Small Boss likes to spin!

Fangz posted:

I don't recall any mention of Shirou's Origin, or any explanation where his magic came from, in the game. In terms of the story, it really seems like Avalon essentially disappears from the game except for that one scene at the end of Fate, where Shirou gets rid of it without any apparent ill effect. So making it sorta pivotal can't help but seem an unwelcome retcon to me.

Given the fact that the sheath essentially doesn't exist in the story outside that one scene, it's hard for me to see it as representing anything, except I guess how forgetful Kiritsugu is that he would leave an uber-powerful healing artifact just lying around, instead of using it to, say, save his own life?

I think we can thank Avalon for Shirou being active and doing stuff every day, otherwise he'd be hospitalised for the rest of the war everytime Berserker or really any other servant grazes him.

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

Raenir Salazar posted:

Makes me wonder if every Magus can have a in theory their own reality marble that reflects their specialty? Its just otherwise normally possible to achieve that level of magic though?

I think you have to be single-minded to a point that's not really healthy. Ordinary people can't be distilled down to a single concept like that.

Scrree
Jan 16, 2008

the history of all dead generations,
This is gonna be the nerdiest nitpick I've ever made, but Shirou doesn't live 'as a sword', he lives with a body/soul ' composed of infinite swords' . It's why Avalon being a sheath is important.

Avalon is a good plot device because it explain things that would otherwise be too coincidental, like how Shirou could be the only one to survive the fire or how he could summon Saber with no training, while also getting played with differently in every route. It's of critical plot importance in Fate where it's how Shirou/Saber turn the tides on Kirei/Gil, and in Heaven's Feel it's lack of effect makes Shriou rely more on his magic's 'Healing(?) Through Swords' technique and breaks his body down faster.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Scrree posted:

This is gonna be the nerdiest nitpick I've ever made, but Shirou doesn't live 'as a sword', he lives with a body/soul ' composed of infinite swords' . It's why Avalon being a sheath is important.

Avalon is a good plot device because it explain things that would otherwise be too coincidental, like how Shirou could be the only one to survive the fire or how he could summon Saber with no training, while also getting played with differently in every route. It's of critical plot importance in Fate where it's how Shirou/Saber turn the tides on Kirei/Gil, and in Heaven's Feel it's lack of effect makes Shriou rely more on his magic's 'Healing(?) Through Swords' technique and breaks his body down faster.

1. Shirou survives the fire because he's the one Kiritsugu chooses to save. Whether he used Avalon or some other magic makes no difference. (Also there are other survivors, see also the orphans that Kotomine takes in.) Adding blah about how Avalon usually only works when Saber is around, oh except this one case because some exception, oh also Rin heals Shirou later by an entirely separate method, oh also healing magic exists in this setting anyway, just enormously complicates things.

2. Shirou could summon Saber because the Grail chooses the Masters, and the Grail is an arsehole. That's the first explanation we are given, and that explanation is fine enough. See also F/Z Caster. Avalon doesn't explain jack, in any case, because by the time we learn the existence of Avalon, we had *already* accepted that (a) Rin expected to summon Saber without a catalyst, (b) Shirou apparently did summon Saber without a catalyst, (c) It's the same Saber as previously etc. Suddenly we get told, No Wait Catalysts Are Important, and suddenly we throw in Avalon to explain what really didn't need to be explained. Wouldn't it have been more powerful to have Kotomine be essentially correct, that actually the Grail chose him because of his wish to be a superhero? But nope, the fact that becoming a Master lined up with Shirou's character is just a coincidence.

3. By the time you get into the later stages of the non-Fate routes, we've pretty much forgotten about it. It isn't mentioned again, for sure. Limitations and effects of it are also not spelt out. No one realises it even exists. So like, when Saber dies in HF, we don't think, 'oh poo poo, Shirou can't regen any more!' At least I didn't.

But my big problem with Avalon is that it moves the emphasis of the narrative away from the main theme - Shirou's choices - towards ambiguously described and vaguely powered magical artifacts. The fact that Shirou became Archer becomes not something he decided, but instead ultimately something a neglectful Kiritsugu accidentally decided for him by implanting him with the sheath and not removing it afterwards. Even stuff like the sword-plosion in HF become not a result of Shirou choosing a route where he would save Sakura at the cost of his own life by using the magic of a diametrically opposed worldview, but instead an accidental thing due to Saber having died early on.

We've got a narrative where characters are defined by their determination, where random peasants attain True Magic by pure effort, where Archmaguses became worms with no will except to survive, where we are told that Shirou's real virtue is that he would stubbornly fail to give up (see Rin having watched him attempt a jump over and over again). Explaining Shirou as the product of someone else doing something to him, and not instead as something he did to himself... that just feels weaksauce.

Fangz fucked around with this message at 02:40 on Dec 17, 2014

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
Narratively speaking Avalon is only important for Fate, which is sort of reasonable if you consider it to be an important plot device for Arturia's story in the lone arc where she takes center stage. Personally I don't really mind its use there, and I don't think it really cheapens Shirou's reason for being a master in the first place if it's the main reason he was chosen. By that reckoning Rin summoning Archer because she has the same pendant was also pulled out of Nasu's rear end, when really it works fine in the framework of the story in UBW. We have to be able to concede that a series of many small and not so small events and seeming coincidences had to transpire for the clusterfuck that was the 5th Holy Grail War to occur. Not everything necessarily has to have some sort of direct thematic or narrative importance.

Rody One Half
Feb 18, 2011

It isn't as if having or not having these powers/artifacts makes the characters choices less important. I mean Rin has a bunch of magical bullshit tied to her, but she wasn't forced to summon a servant or anything, following up on her family's legacy was a choice she made herself, not because she had a small pile of magic gems that made her do it.

Myurton
Jan 2, 2004

I <3 Asuka,
omg anime fag
Um yeah I should remind you guys that in Heavens Feel Zouken states that the grail is not choosing people to be masters. He never exclusively states who or what is, but it is heavily hinted at that the guys who setup the grail war have a say in who gets to be a master and who doesn't. So it wouldn't really surprise me if the Einsberns choose Shiro to be a master cause they wanted Illya to murder the poo poo out of him cause his dad betrayed them.

Rody One Half
Feb 18, 2011

Myurton posted:

Um yeah I should remind you guys that in Heavens Feel Zouken states that the grail is not choosing people to be masters. He never exclusively states who or what is, but it is heavily hinted at that the guys who setup the grail war have a say in who gets to be a master and who doesn't. So it wouldn't really surprise me if the Einsberns choose Shiro to be a master cause they wanted Illya to murder the poo poo out of him cause his dad betrayed them.

Completely wrong. Grail makes selections based on wishes and magical power, along with a few bits of other criteria that affects priority (like being a member of the founding families).

Iretep
Nov 10, 2009
The impression I had is that the great families can decide who is master but the grail will do it automatically if they don't. Who chose Ryuunosuke Uryuu to be master if it's not up to the grail?

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

Iretep posted:

The impression I had is that the great families can decide who is master but the grail will do it automatically if they don't. Who chose Ryuunosuke Uryuu to be master if it's not up to the grail?

From Fate/complete material III:

quote:

Q: By what criteria does the Holy Grail choose its Masters?

A: They have to be magi possessing magic circuits, be of sufficient stature to summon a Heroic Spirit, and be heretics, of a sort. Of course, the Three Houses take priority.

quote:

Q: Is the will of the Greater Grail, which selects Masters, the same will of Justicia who was offered as a sacrifice for the ritual that created it? Or does the Greater Grail lack any kind of volition?

A: The Greater Grail does not have a will. Justicia’s soul was completely sublimated.

So in other words, the three houses are guaranteed a position so long as they have someone who fits the criteria, but anyone who fits those criteria can join the war by summoning a Servant.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012
"Stature" and "heretic" are rather ambiguous words here, but I take it to mean that a totally ordinary person who happens to have magic circuits can't become a Master; you have to be a weirdo like Shirou or Ryunosuke. Note that even the people who managed to become Masters without magic circuits (by taking other people's Command Spells) were someone who knew about magi and wanted to be one since childhood (Shinji) and two amoral :geno: people (Kuzuki and Reika). For some reason the Nasuverse doesn't seem to do stories about ordinary people discovering the supernatural.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

Silver2195 posted:

"Stature" and "heretic" are rather ambiguous words here, but I take it to mean that a totally ordinary person who happens to have magic circuits can't become a Master; you have to be a weirdo like Shirou or Ryunosuke. Note that even the people who managed to become Masters without magic circuits (by taking other people's Command Spells) were someone who knew about magi and wanted to be one since childhood (Shinji) and two amoral :geno: people (Kuzuki and Reika). For some reason the Nasuverse doesn't seem to do stories about ordinary people discovering the supernatural.

I'm guessing that what is meant is that you have to have the power or other means to call up a Servant by "stature", and you have to be at odds with the general trend of society by "heretic".

Blhue
Apr 22, 2008

Fallen Rib

Silver2195 posted:

"Stature" and "heretic" are rather ambiguous words here, but I take it to mean that a totally ordinary person who happens to have magic circuits can't become a Master; you have to be a weirdo like Shirou or Ryunosuke. Note that even the people who managed to become Masters without magic circuits (by taking other people's Command Spells) were someone who knew about magi and wanted to be one since childhood (Shinji) and two amoral :geno: people (Kuzuki and Reika). For some reason the Nasuverse doesn't seem to do stories about ordinary people discovering the supernatural.

Well Shinji's not technically a master. Kuzuki is a weird case too, I forget what his deal was but he wasn't the one who summoned caster, she contracted with him after killing the guy who did summon her. Neither were chosen by the grail in any way.

Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Caster was all "wizard needs mana badly" at Kuzuki's doorstep after murdering her old Master so he picked her up and proceeded to hot dickings CG animals.

Nate RFB posted:

This, at the very least, I don't think is accurate.
I can't read that in any other context other than it trying to showcase that UBW is intrinsic to Shirou's very being and soul, rather than something that naturally "grew" out of his ability to project swords. And since he lost Avalon after Fate, is his Origin/Affinity still the same? Would he somehow lose the ability to project in the first place as a result?

Ok I s'pose I need to clarify. An RM refers to two things: A spell that takes out your soul and puts it on the world, and the end result of casting said spell. UBW is indeed Shirou's soul. But that's not the special part. Everybody has a soul, after all.
In Shirou's case his abilities with it aren't a byproduct of his mental issues or anything, except perhaps as evidence of his Origin. He's a bit of a special case in that his Origin manifests unusually strongly. Most people can walk their entire lives having no idea what's their Origin and it won't do one lick of a difference, but in Shirou's case it actually punched through the normal filters and set his magical element as 'Sword'. (normally you get boring stuff like 'Fire' or 'Water')
And that's why he's exceptional: Normally achieving RM-the-spell is something that takes decades of work and tons of power (which is why most RM users are vampires. Plenty of time to amass research and power) but Shirou's natural +10 to Sword Magic made him capable of casting the ultimate sword spell, UBW. And then he cheated some more with Emiya Cloud Sync.
Otherwise it'd've just remained internalized. He'd prolly keep his projection abilities, but no manifesting it as a bounded field.

From UBW flows the rest of his projection-related abilities.

He already grew up full of swordstuff, it's not gonna go away even if the magnet's gone.

(The Origin, as the name implies, is the starting point from which your existence is made. You can imagine it as a magnet, which attracts metaphorical 'stuff' that eventually becomes a 'thing', such as a person (or a rock. or an animal. or anything else). The thing with Avalon is that it's a super strong artifact on its own, so it sort of acted as a second magnet that attracted sword-aligned 'stuff' and stuck it on Shirou, thus altering his existential development)

Raenir Salazar posted:

Makes me wonder if every Magus can have a in theory their own reality marble that reflects their specialty? Its just otherwise normally possible to achieve that level of magic though?

In theory yes. In practice... sometimes.
Nrvnqsr Chaos succeeded, for example.
But I s'pose it's not a particularly useful avenue of research for most magi. Can't be passed down, after all.

Rand Brittain posted:

I think you have to be single-minded to a point that's not really healthy. Ordinary people can't be distilled down to a single concept like that.

Nah. It's just a spell that turns you inside out. The problem's that it's crazy expensive to research and cast.

Fangz posted:

We've got a narrative where characters are defined by their determination, where random peasants attain True Magic by pure effort, where Archmaguses became worms with no will except to survive, where we are told that Shirou's real virtue is that he would stubbornly fail to give up (see Rin having watched him attempt a jump over and over again). Explaining Shirou as the product of someone else doing something to him, and not instead as something he did to himself... that just feels weaksauce.

One of the things with Nasu is that if you don't get some sort of special feat in your character sheet you aren't gonna amount for jackshit, especially if you also have a 'Modern World Human' penalty.
Anyways, he becomes Archer by his own volition, but he only has the capability to become Archer because he received the plot coupon.

He can only become a protagonist because he's got protagonist power, but he's still got to do the protagonist's journey.

E: I need to lay off the urge to answer everything.

Kyte fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Dec 17, 2014

YggdrasilTM
Nov 7, 2011

Fangz posted:

3. By the time you get into the later stages of the non-Fate routes, we've pretty much forgotten about it. It isn't mentioned again, for sure. Limitations and effects of it are also not spelt out. No one realises it even exists. So like, when Saber dies in HF, we don't think, 'oh poo poo, Shirou can't regen any more!' At least I didn't.
It's mentioned by Archer in UBW, during their duel.

"Her sheath…! Its protection is still there, even though the contract does not exist anymore…!"

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
Well, I look forward to how confused the other thread is going to be about that line then.

jellycat
Nov 5, 2012

it's a nice day

Kyte posted:

In theory yes. In practice... sometimes.
Nrvnqsr Chaos succeeded, for example.
But I s'pose it's not a particularly useful avenue of research for most magi. Can't be passed down, after all.


Nah. It's just a spell that turns you inside out. The problem's that it's crazy expensive to research and cast.

The other problem is that being able to manifest a Reality Marble seems to mean an automatic Sealing Designation from the Mage's Association, which is why Rin wants to keep Shirou's on the downlow from the Association, and keep him away from Bazett in Hollow Ataraxia. Achieving a RM comes with its own severe drawbacks, doesn't help with reaching the Root, and can't be passed down, so it's basically most meaningful for weirdo mages like Shirou whose goal is to be strong, rather than bother with the Root or continue any research.

Fangz posted:

Well, I look forward to how confused the other thread is going to be about that line then.

It was a fairly recurring plot point in Fate/Zero, up to and including the part where Kiritsugu uses it to save Shirou. They'll probably be fine!

jellycat fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Dec 17, 2014

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
If a Reality Marble is "just" a spell, and the underlying soul doesn't really matter, then why can't it be passed down like any other spell via a family magic crest? It should be possible with this line of thinking. Even if you go the route of "well, it's a spell that only works if you have the same aptitude/affinity/origin for the element in question" that doesn't explain how Shirou was unable to utilize Archer's UBW in Heaven's Feel. At the time he rejected it because Archer's world and Shirou's world were "different" and thus incompatible.

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BlitzBlast
Jul 30, 2011

some people just wanna watch the world burn
A Reality Marble is defined as inverting existence to physically manifest your soul. Not much is known about them because actually doing that is really god drat hard (everyone has a different soul after all, so it's probably a huge case-by-case thing), but it's a thing that people know about and have an understanding of how it "works" and whatnot.

rin's reality marble turns the entire world into money

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