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Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

Scrree posted:

Fate's romance gets a lot better when you realize that Saber's the repentant protagonist, and Shirou is the tsundere girlfriend.

It gets kind of weird when you remember that Saber is about 25 and Shirou and Rin are about 17.

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Randallteal
May 7, 2006

The tears of time
Truly the Edward/Bella of their day.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

Randallteal posted:

Truly the Edward/Bella of their day.

That's Shiki and Arcueid, lol. (Actually a bit of a weird reversal of the trope; we're more worried about Shiki preying on Arcueid than the other way around.)

Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Dec 16, 2017

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

Silver2195 posted:

It gets kind of weird when you remember that Saber is about 25 and Shirou and Rin are about 17.

they're absolutely not treated like 17-year-olds by the story, they basically act like 20something adults outside of the fact that they occasionally go to high school

and there's quite a few things that make me think Nasu was at least subconsciously aware of this- for one, the high school element vanishes insanely quick from pretty much every route, and for two, they actively make a joke of how Taiga and Shirou are more like adult roommates than a guardian and child

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747
relatedly: is it just me or is it sort of hypocritical to rag on Nasu's stuff as hard as we do for the weird sex, given what's been Hot poo poo in the US for a while?

like, the original book of IT has an insanely graphic child orgy in it out of nowhere, The Magicians takes several dips into gross furry porn, and Game of Thrones is fuckin' wall to wall rape and incest. if F/sn were published as a traditional book and not a weird anime book-game, nobody would even remotely be batting an eye at it, even as far as HF, and we'd probably see an HBO series of it by now with all the gross poo poo intact and then some. i don't especially like the sex scenes in Tsukihime or F/sn but i'm pretty well done getting up in arms about them, because i'm starting to realize that they're way more the norm for the type of poo poo Nasu makes than not.

e: hypocritical might not be the right word here, but I'm not entirely sure what would be. i'm tired. :shrug:

cheetah7071
Oct 20, 2010

honk honk
College Slice
I thought the complaints were less that it's weird poo poo and more nasu was writing the least sexy porn on the planet

Space Flower
Sep 10, 2014

by Games Forum

Silver2195 posted:

It gets kind of weird when you remember that Saber is about 25 and Shirou and Rin are about 17.

except saber in multiple ways never actually grows for a good ten of those years and her character arc is all about regaining her humanity and living a shared story of adolescence with the other main chars. throwing numbers around without context is purposeless

WeedlordGoku69
Feb 12, 2015

by Cyrano4747

cheetah7071 posted:

I thought the complaints were less that it's weird poo poo and more nasu was writing the least sexy porn on the planet

i mean i'll grant that for the first one in the Fate route, but that's... kind of the only one that even comes off like it's meant to be sexy, and it sucks rear end for more reasons than just failing to be sexy (for one it comes out of loving nowhere and is never acknowledged again). the others are either supposed to help sell the central relationship of the route or be incredibly disturbing (with the UBW one as another outlier for basically being a straight-up comedy scene), and they do their job fine.

like, again, if F/sn was a regular book and not a VN we probably wouldn't even be referring to it as porn. it would just be... a book that has sex scenes in it. because occasional sex does not typically make something porn if 95% of it is about food and/or beating the living tar out of mythological figures.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

like, again, if F/sn was a regular book and not a VN we probably wouldn't even be referring to it as porn. it would just be... a book that has sex scenes in it. because occasional sex does not typically make something porn if 95% of it is about food and/or beating the living tar out of mythological figures.

True to a point, but the sex scenes in F/sn do tend to be longer and more detailed than most sex scenes in books. Also, there are times when porn logic overrides natural plot and characterization.

Space Flower
Sep 10, 2014

by Games Forum
they were definitely designed to be sexy. whether that feeling reached you or not via cheesy eroge music + an amateur, younger takeuchi's art + nasuprose filtered through a fan translation, is another matter.

Stairmaster
Jun 8, 2012

Wasn't king Arthur absurdly old when he died

Conspiratiorist
Nov 12, 2015

17th Separate Kryvyi Rih Tank Brigade named after Konstantin Pestushko
Look to my coming on the first light of the fifth sixth some day

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

they're absolutely not treated like 17-year-olds by the story, they basically act like 20something adults outside of the fact that they occasionally go to high school

and there's quite a few things that make me think Nasu was at least subconsciously aware of this- for one, the high school element vanishes insanely quick from pretty much every route, and for two, they actively make a joke of how Taiga and Shirou are more like adult roommates than a guardian and child

Rin and Shirou have very particular circumstances. Rin more or less raised herself, and her going to school at all is outright depicted as a childish whim (and excuse to see Sakura). She had to grow up fast and learn how to take care of herself, that's a given with her.

Shirou is sort of on a similar boat, since Kiritsugu tended to leave for long periods of time while the two still lived together, but he actually does get treated like a teen. His guardian isn't Taiga, it's Taiga's grandfather, and his living situation makes a lot of sense - they're satisfying his stubborn desire to be independent by letting him live on his own at Kiritsugu's place, BUT, the Fujimuras manage his estate and finances, and have Taiga watching over him (so he doesn't do anything stupid) much more closely than most families watch their own children. Consider:

- She's a teacher at his school, so if anything happened there she'd know.
- She spends time with him every morning for breakfast, and every evening for dinner, corresponding to when he's home.
- Up until recently she was even directly in charge of his afterschool activities, too.
- His part-time job, which he wants for spending money, is working for a friend of hers.

Taiga's played for laughs as the irresponsible twenty-something compared to Shirou's straight-man act, but she's doing her job watching over him superbly. In fact, besides Shinji, Shirou's entire social circle is composed of people who look after him because despite how diligent and responsible he is, they all feel there's something off about him that concerns them. And he honestly needs that.

In regards to the highschool element, it's actually the other way around, in that it appears because it's important to the characters and vanishes only because circumstances force it to. Rin keeps going because she'll be damned if she lets a little thing such as the Holy Grail War interfere with her daily life, and then she finds out there's a Master there so she has to take care of that, while Shirou is just an idiot and doesn't consider that maybe school should take a backseat to this life changing event going on around him. Once he forms an alliance with Rin this issue gets resolved, since it's convenient for both of them to remain close, and for the first part of the story they still are on watch for Shinji and in UBW's case Kuzuki.

It's only once the above is addressed, and the war has intensified to the point they no longer feel it prudent to keep attending, that they abandon school and Rin goes ahead and moves in with Shirou instead.

Cephas
May 11, 2009

Humanity's real enemy is me!
Hya hya foowah!
I think one of the things that made the Fate route interesting, but that doesn't age well, is the mysterious feeling surrounding everything. You don't know who the masters are, and you don't know the true identities of the servants, who tend to work hard to keep their identities as a trump card. And then there are shake-ups like fake assassin and a second archer being around. Part of what made Archer's identity cool was that he used all of these different legendary weapons from disparate locations and time periods so it was like "who the heck could he be," and that feeling of being suspended in the unknown is pretty neat the first time you experience it.

That's one of the things that I think F/SN did better than the other stories like Zero and Apocrypha, is that the narration was surrounded by a thick fog of war.

Aumanor
Nov 9, 2012

Stairmaster posted:

Wasn't king Arthur absurdly old when he died

Her rule only lasted 10 years in Nasuverse.

Stairmaster
Jun 8, 2012

Ah what a lovely king

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry

Cephas posted:

I think one of the things that made the Fate route interesting, but that doesn't age well, is the mysterious feeling surrounding everything. You don't know who the masters are, and you don't know the true identities of the servants, who tend to work hard to keep their identities as a trump card. And then there are shake-ups like fake assassin and a second archer being around. Part of what made Archer's identity cool was that he used all of these different legendary weapons from disparate locations and time periods so it was like "who the heck could he be," and that feeling of being suspended in the unknown is pretty neat the first time you experience it.

That's one of the things that I think F/SN did better than the other stories like Zero and Apocrypha, is that the narration was surrounded by a thick fog of war.
Yeah, not knowing anything about the overall world/story is the main crux that makes Fate work. After the genie is out of the bottle retreading that ground is really difficult.

I'm still plodding through FHA and loving just about all of it. The comedy remains delightful and there are still lots of good character moments. Sakura is surprisingly(?) kind of the MVP so far and I kind of really like her character overall. It's also easy to see why Saber became a bit of a joke character following FHA because it's become clear that after how kind of boring she is in FSN she really shines in her more comedic moments.

Space Flower
Sep 10, 2014

by Games Forum

Cephas posted:

I think one of the things that made the Fate route interesting, but that doesn't age well, is the mysterious feeling surrounding everything. You don't know who the masters are, and you don't know the true identities of the servants, who tend to work hard to keep their identities as a trump card. And then there are shake-ups like fake assassin and a second archer being around. Part of what made Archer's identity cool was that he used all of these different legendary weapons from disparate locations and time periods so it was like "who the heck could he be," and that feeling of being suspended in the unknown is pretty neat the first time you experience it.

That's one of the things that I think F/SN did better than the other stories like Zero and Apocrypha, is that the narration was surrounded by a thick fog of war.

oh yeah for sure. it's real good when the f/go singularities pick up on fog of war

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D

Nate RFB posted:

Yeah, not knowing anything about the overall world/story is the main crux that makes Fate work. After the genie is out of the bottle retreading that ground is really difficult.

I'm still plodding through FHA and loving just about all of it. The comedy remains delightful and there are still lots of good character moments. Sakura is surprisingly(?) kind of the MVP so far and I kind of really like her character overall. It's also easy to see why Saber became a bit of a joke character following FHA because it's become clear that after how kind of boring she is in FSN she really shines in her more comedic moments.

One of my favorite scenes in FHA is when they're cleaning up Rin's place, Saber finds the basement and starts playing around with Rin's exercise equipment. poo poo was hilarious.

I need to beat FHA, I keep getting stuck on certain parts. I think I was only 60% done, yeesh.

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
I actually literally just got to that part and it was certainly very :lol:. I also liked Saber getting so fired up about cleaning that she puts on her armor and you can hear her clomping around in the background.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

Aumanor posted:

Her rule only lasted 10 years in Nasuverse.

It's necessary to keep the age gap between Saber and Shirou from being even weirder, but it's definitely at odds with most versions of the legend and probably with actual history. (The Annales Cambriae has the Battle of Badon in 516 and the Battle of Camlann in 537.) It also requires Mordred to be a super-rapidly aging homunculus, of course.

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
This scene in FHA with Shirou preparing to cook an octopus with Saber/Rider might be a top 5 Fate franchise moment.

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


The Devil's Fish!

I kinda wonder if she is flashing back to Gilles' monster.

Dr Pepper
Feb 4, 2012

Don't like it? well...

Galaga Galaxian posted:

The Devil's Fish!

I kinda wonder if she is flashing back to Gilles' monster.

F/HA and Fate/Zero were being written at the same time, so yes that was a nod to the amazing Cthulhu monster.

Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012

Dr Pepper posted:

F/HA and Fate/Zero were being written at the same time, so yes that was a nod to the amazing Cthulhu monster.

F/HA also alludes to Uryu (a Master who "killed indiscriminately and daily") and Kariya (Shinji's "emo" uncle).

Rody One Half
Feb 18, 2011

And Irisviel

a kitten
Aug 5, 2006

Still working my way through the Fate route for the first time; Gil just turned up (RIP Caster) now the aftermath of that is turning everything on it's head; it's great.

I already knew a lot of this stuff, but seeing it actually play out narratively is honestly pretty cool. Like, "no this isn't just a battle royal with legendary figures after all, and all those rules? Well, turn's out they're more like guidelines really"


e: i first posted about starting the vn almost 3 years ago in this very thread. That little hiatus i took after finishing Rin's prologue was a bit longer than i had anticipated.

a kitten fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Dec 17, 2017

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

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

An uncountable number, to be sure.
The only rule of the Nasuverse is that rules exist to be broken.

Dr Pepper
Feb 4, 2012

Don't like it? well...

Clarste posted:

The only rule of the Nasuverse is that rules exist to be broken.

TBF this is pretty much true for any fiction that lays out clear rules for things.

Having somebody able to break em for dramatic effect is fun.

Terrible Opinions
Oct 18, 2013



Now if only they didn't waste so much time explaining them.

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
I wish I had a screenshot or even better a gif of Taiga putting up her finger guns while a giant "HMM~" floats by in the background because it might be the most I've ever laughed at something in a T-M work.

Fate/hollow ataraxia is super great.

Freak Futanari
Apr 11, 2008
f/ha is good

Galaga Galaxian
Apr 23, 2009

What a childish tactic!
Don't you think you should put more thought into your battleplan?!


Nate RFB posted:

I wish I had a screenshot or even better a gif of Taiga putting up her finger guns while a giant "HMM~" floats by in the background because it might be the most I've ever laughed at something in a T-M work.

Fate/hollow ataraxia is super great.



Didn't think to make a gif at the time.

Space Flower
Sep 10, 2014

by Games Forum
that's the foreground. i'm platinum mad now

Nate RFB
Jan 17, 2005

Clapping Larry
Would you say you're dagnabbit mad?

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
F/HA is good because it's somehow able to balance it's super serious story parts with gratuitous fighting scenes, with stupid and amazing dumb fun slice of life shenanigans and it kind of set the tone for future Fate works in my opinion.

cheetah7071
Oct 20, 2010

honk honk
College Slice
Is the F/HA translation actually playable? Last I had heard it had been crowdsourced then pushed out the door the instant it ticked up to 100% translated with no editing pass. That was a million years ago though.

Compendium
Jun 18, 2013

M-E-J-E-D
Yes. I just haven't finished my playthrough because there's quite a few flags you need to set off in order to progress the story. It's a hefty work.

DamnGlitch
Sep 2, 2004

cheetah7071 posted:

Is the F/HA translation actually playable? Last I had heard it had been crowdsourced then pushed out the door the instant it ticked up to 100% translated with no editing pass. That was a million years ago though.

Very playable. It not like a machine translation job, there’s just the occasional typo and formatting issue iirc

Dr Pepper
Feb 4, 2012

Don't like it? well...

cheetah7071 posted:

Is the F/HA translation actually playable? Last I had heard it had been crowdsourced then pushed out the door the instant it ticked up to 100% translated with no editing pass. That was a million years ago though.

Somebody did that, the people who had been working on the translation immediately took down the files the idiot had put up on their project wiki and fixed it.

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Kyte
Nov 19, 2013

Never quacked for this
Please do not besmirch the good name of gamecreater16, hero of justice.

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