Go For It.

Go for it.

Wondering if I should make a list of all the characters in Fate who are canonically way stronger than FGO portrays them. As in, in terms of actual Fate canon. If it were in terms of their IRL myths it'd be 50% of the cast...

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Abigail's Journey

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Abby goes to Bloodborne, It ends as well as you'd expect

Spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles 1, 2 and 3:

Thinking about how all the major villains in Xenoblade portrays our struggle with human nature’s worst aspects and our own capacity for evil.

Ok, that probably sounded super pretentious but seriously. The entire event that kicked off all of this was the reckless actions and selfish curiosity of a single man. Klaus performed the phase transition experiment out both a cynicism with the current state of the world and the arrogant belief that he could surpass humanity and all its flaws. And in doing so, he not only destroyed the world in a way that took millions of years to heal, but ripped apart reality itself so badly that, as we learn in Xenoblade 3, nature itself is STILL trying to repair the damage he did after god knows how much time, by bringing together the fractured universes he created.

Zanza is very clearly inspired by the Gnostic demiurge, a false god that keeps the world in their thrall. But the very thing that makes him a demiurge is that he has the power of a god, but he THINKS like a human. Because he once was one. His evil is rooted in human emotions, ego and fear. He sacrifices his creations because he fears death and would rather cut down his ‘children’ before they forget him than fade away. Zanza was once an ordinary man, but now he has the power of a god. And he demonstrates how disastrously wrong it would go if a single human ever had that level of power to do with as they wished.

Or look at Amalthus. His entire character is built on the dichotomy of a man who has seen the worst of people, has witnessed the lengths of peoples cruelty in war across so many years, but is incapable of perceiving those same flaws in himself. He’s a lot like Klaus was, waxing poetic about humanity’s evil while making the same mistakes. He’s right about humans on a lot of counts. But he’s also a hypocrite thinks he’s above those evils, paradoxically becoming just as, if not more monstrous than the people he hates.

Even when the villains of Xenoblade aren’t human, their villainy is often a product of humankind. The clearest example of this is Malos. Like all Blades, his personality is shaped by the Driver who awakens him. And Amalthus nihilistic outlook and hatred of the world bleeds into him and feeds his desire to destroy it. He’s a non-human living weapon, sure. But he’s a man-made weapon as well.

And now we have Xenoblade Chronicles 3 where the source of all the awful things in Aionios is a machine. Origin responded to the thoughts and feelings it recognised from the people of both worlds, their fear of death, of change, of the unknown. And that reaction created Moebius (and by extension, Z) who created ‘the endless now’ as a supposed escape from those ugly parts of the world, but only ended up repeating them, creating a hellish war torn false reality that kept everyone trapped in a pointless cycle.

Like Malos, Origin is a machine whose damaging actions mirror the flaws of its creators. Like Zanza, Z field himself with peoples lives, using the people of the world as a tool to escape his fear of his own inevitable end.

The villains of Xenoblade range from gods, to AIs to abstract metaphysical concepts but they are all ultimately human or born from humans. It’s never just, ‘humans against the monsters/a machine/god because those non-human entities were typically created BY humans in some way. When you combine that with how many of the more minor villains are disgusting, despicable people, (Mumkhar, Bana, Gort, most of the consuls, D especially), it’s easy to say that Xenoblade has a very cynical outlook on human nature, that it’s saying we’re all just self destructive monsters the world would be better off without.

And yet, the protagonists challenge that by showcasing the best of humanity. Shulk breaks the cycle of violence in Bionis and Mechonis and gives everyone a future. Rex witnesses the worst of Alrest but instead of letting it break him, remains committed to change things for the better. Noah, Mio and their friends question the system that control them, symbolically face the fear of all of humankind, and resolve to restore their worlds (in turn laying the way for a new one), even if they have no guarantee that they’ll see each other again. Their only certainty at this point is each other but they’re wiling to give that up to give everyone else a chance. Unlike Z or even Zanza, they choose self sacrifice and accept change even if they personally come off worse.

Xenoblade is a series where people are the cause of 99% of life’s problems, but they’re also the solution. Even when the villains are monsters, machines or even gods (all of which can be very stock tropes in RPGs especially) they’re nearly always man-made in some way. And triumphing over them represents overcoming our own capacity for evil.

It can be discouraging to accept how much we routinely ruin everything around us, but that’s the first step to realising what we can fix as well. It’s so easy to feel defeated and assume that we’re all awful and beyond saving. That’s the conclusion Jin and N both came to: The world is fundamentally awful and you can’t change it. Xenoblade’s stories show the best and worst of people, And I found that statement really moving. We can be utterly despicable, but we can also be better.

mutuals. get in the musashi car

this time, we're going to save las vegas.

it's weird because they are capable of drawing non-horny female characters. they just don't for FGO for some reason

ibuki’s color palette is fucking vile and her design is Peak Horny Raita but her character is so fun that i’m legitimately looking at the mess of a summer variant (and it’s a Raita Summer Servant so you know it’s going to be absolutely fucked) and going ‘well, maybe i can roll for her a little’

Zorua, Rufflet, Sneasel, and Wooper: Getting Regional Variants despite being in every gen since their debut.