Fate stay night/WMG: Difference between revisions

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== The [[Character Alignment]] in the [[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight]] universe is what the characters themselves believe it to be. ==

* On a different but related tangent... if Servants are actually '''massively-powered-up''' reincarnated heroes from both the past (like Saber-chan is) '''and''' the future (like Archer is), and if the [[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight]] - verse is crossed over with the [[Fist of the North Star]] - verse... Imagine how practically '''already-won''' a Grail War would be for a master who has someone like Souther, Raoh or ''Kenshiro'' as a servant... oh even Saber-chan (much as I love her and wanna hug her all day long) would be '''so''' fucked at that point.

* In the onsen omake of the VN, Taiga worries that Fate Shirou was going to become like Archer. Illya states that in all three routes Shirou becoming Archer is a very low probability. Then again, she also states that she was there for him in the Fate route and Taiga worries about Shirou being helped by "this devil child."

Earlier art showed that Saber was originally going to be male, and Shirou was originally going to be a [[Meganekko]] named Ayaka Sajyou. Considering the [[Deus Sex Machina|nature of mana regeneration]], and what happens to Saber in the other routes ({{spoiler|she becomes Rin's servant in UBW and Sakura's in HF}}), it doesn't seem so hard to fit it into that kind of game. Granted, it was probably changed due to storytelling convenience, or something like that, but [[Fridge Logic|in retrospect]], it seems plausible.

The Servants include a lot of beings who are just as dubious in terms of actual existence as Sasaki Kojirō, and yet all of them were real. However, there are some odd discrepancies: the rider of the Pegasus is not Bellerophon, and something else is; Mordred calls Saber "father," which fits with the Arthurian mythos but not with Arthur being female. Further, their abilities are explicitly beyond those of any living human, and (based on Archer's actions in Unlimited Blade Works) time paradoxes do not form if they use their time on Earth, let alone the Grail, to alter their own past lives/deaths. Most probably, every servant is just a magical construct, but all save the deeply flawed Assassin have fake memories so convincing that they think themselves real.

** ... Are you aware that this is [[Wild Mass Guessing]]? The place where people discuss things that twist, warp, and occasionally disregard canon? [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|For fun]]?

*** [[Armed Withwith Canon|Silence!!!]]

*** You would hope that a person editing a WMG page would be a troper before a crazy fan, but... yeah. This is not the place for [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys]].

* This theory has one major hole; It would be highly unlikely that Rin would create a "future Shiro" for her servant for two reasons:

** That wouldn't necessarily conflict with this theory, since the theory doesn't have to apply to Archer. {{spoiler|He's a Counter Guardian, contracted to the world, and not actually a Heroic Spirit.}} His memories are real, and unlike the others (besides Saber, who's in a similar position), he also has memories {{spoiler|before his current incarnation}}.

**** Maybe Lancelot cross-dressed?

*** Doesn't he duplicate Gilgamesh's phantasms despite Gilgy still hanging around?

* There's no way he would do that - [[Fate Zero (Literature)|Fate /Zero]] shows that his only pleasure in life is the misery of others, a tainted grail is ''the'' perfect tool to create that. In Heaven's Feel, it's revealed that his chief purpose was to try to let Angra Mainyu be born through it (for various reasons). Also, he never lies as a rule - he just withholds anything that he's not specifically asked about. This is just as devastating, and it's far more amusing once he says "you never asked".

Instead, Rin succeeded in summoning a Saber-class servant. Without Shirou's involvement, the resulting war was much bloodier, had a high degree of collateral damage, and resulted in the corrupted grail fully manifesting and causing widespread devastation. Almost everyone he knows and loves is killed in horrific ways. Lacking a servant or any instruction in tracing, he finds himself all but powerless; in desperation, he forms a contract with the world that destroys the grail and dooms him to life as a counter guardian.

**** Maybe it's a stable time loop inside a non-stable loop?

One word: Zouken. He's not even confronted -let alone stopped- in any route but Heaven's Feel, which means that he'll go through with his original plans in the other timelines. This means that Sakura is ''still'' infected with the crest worm, and thus still under his control and open to his abuse and manipulation; Zouken will continue with his original plan to gradually turn her into a vessel for the Holy Grail over the course of the next ten years or so.

* That's assuming there's going to ''be'' another Grail War. Even if there is, it's not likely to be another anomalously early one. (The Grail also wouldn't be at Ryudou Temple, incidentally). As for Sakura...sheesh, give the poor girl some credit; she's stronger than she looks. Otherwise, she would have snapped long before Angra Mainyu came along. She's still better off than she was at first in both Fate (abusive brother dead, still close to guy she loves) and UBW (abusive brother reforms for the better).

** Exactly why ''wouldn't'' there be another Holy Grail War? All that Shirou & co. achieved in Fate and UBW was destroying the summoned Grail, which is no different from what Kiritsugu did a decade earlier. There has not yet been a good explanation for why the Holy Grail Wars would have ended for good with the events of Fate or UBW. As for the odds of another early Grail War, you have a point; but Kotomine said that this unusually early Grail War was the result of lots of magical energy from the previous Grail War remaining around and creating circumstances suitable for the next war, which was in its turn the result of the destruction of the previous Grail... The similar circumstances might just force ''another'' abnormally early Grail War. And as for Zouken's schemes: his decision to turn Sakura into a vessel for the Grail was definitely ''not'' taken on a whim - he turned her into a vessel for the Grail when he implanted the shards of the previous holy grail in Sakura's body ten years before the events of FSN; and in his last face-to-face conversation with Shirou, he clearly says that it was his original plan to gradually change her into something like a Holy Grail over several decades. Indeed, Zouken was forced to play his hand and rush things in Heaven's Feel, but he would carry on with the original plan in the Fate and UBW timelines, too.

*** True. Since [[Melty Blood]] has Nero and Roa (instad of SHIKI), it would probably be a "Near Side" route, and so explain Arcueid's presence in the real world of Kagetsu Tohya (aw, man, I hope that doesn't mean Satsuki's True ending is like Ciel's Good one). If nothing else, [[Melty Blood]] would follow Kagetsu Tohya simply due to the weight of all the [[Shout -Out|Shout Outs]]. That would make, say, Hisui's and Kohaku's Arc Drives make a lot more sense. As for what this means for [[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight]]...maybe the "canon" route really belongs to Ilya or Taiga!

** Zouken dies a few times in Heaven's Feel, too. It only sticks once.

* But going back to the original question, yes she will become a heroic spirit (I don't know much about the Realta Nua ending, so anything might happen here). Heroic Spirits are not required to have an unfilled requirement, they are just required to do great deeds and be recognized as heroes. This causes the World to recognize them as "perfect existences", and take their souls outside the cycle of reincarnation into the throne of heroes. A contract with the world is not needed.A contract with the world forms a counter guardian, which is similar to a heroic spirit, but different. Counter Guardians are part of the Counterforce of Alaya, tasked with saving Humanity from destruction. Heroic Spirits on the other hand, are more like the World going "oh wow, this thing is just so perfect, it'd be a shame to lose it to the cycle of reincarnation, so I'll just take it and put it in my Throne of Heroes where it can be perfectly preserved for all of eternity." So in this case, after Saber dies, the World still gets a Heroic Spirit in the case of King Arthur, but Alaya loses a counter guardian. Short of never dying, there is no other way for Saber to avoid becoming a Heroic Spirit. And honestly, why wouldn't she want to become a Heroic Spirit? Generally, Heroic Spirit = or is supposed to = reward. It's the Counter Guardians that get summoned to hell over and over again. Also, if you think about it, Saber already became a heroic spirit due to the nature of Akasha.

Crack theory, based entirely on an entry on the main [[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight|Fate/Stay Night page]], the fact that Sakura [[All There in the Manual|apparently uses shadow magic]], the fact that [[Melty Blood|Wallachia]] who Altrouge helped create used something very much like [[Elemental Powers|shadow magic]], and the simple fact that [[OC Stand -In|we know so little about Altrouge]].

* [[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney|OBJECTION!]] [[Law of Disproportionate Response|Sakura's shadow magic]] [[I Take Offense to That Last One|is most definitely]] ''[[I Take Offense to That Last One|not]]'' [[All There in the Manual]] (unless you never played either of the games, nor watched the anime).

*** Altrouge is supposed to be a True Ancestor/Dead Apostle mix. Whether that's confirmation or not, I'm not sure (I'll have to read that part again).

*** She is, but does that necessarily exclude the Dead Apostle from being counted as a human for purposes of genetics? There's probably no direct evidence either way [[SchrodingersSchrödinger's Gun|possibly on purpose.]]

*** Arthuria's "mount" as Rider would obviously just be [[Monty Python and Thethe Holy Grail|a pair of coconuts Shirou's forced to bang together.]]

*** Even if there's nothing inherently special about Shiki's knife to begin with (pretty sure there's something odd about it, even if it's not on the level of a conceptual weapon), it almost certainly would be if it were associated with him (thus, the tool of a heroic spirit). As for "not that agile"...he slices and dices Arcueid into seventeen pieces in a matter of seconds, and he can [[Flash Step]] (hell, "Chokushi Nanaya" relies on it); his attack and movement speed are ''insane''. Even before he becomes Satsujinki, when he's easily on the level of the also-A-ranked True Assassin. Beings relying on "pure point blank fighting" pretty much describes every servant except Archer and Caster, and assuming servant spirits aren't too "weird" for Shiki's eyes to read if he becomes one himself, his physical attacks are potentially anywhere from instakills to [[Fate /Zero (Literature)|Gae Buidhe]]-style incapacitation (without the caveat of the wounds healing if he dies). Also, other assassins' one-hit kills don't usually have the added utility bonus of working on any physical object and even some concepts. He'd be an incredible assassin, and probably able to at least hold his own in a lot of physical combat (especially since, even if he lacks attack range, he's still incredibly tough to kill).

*** Monohoshizao ''is'' a noble phantasm. It was the catalyst Caster used to summon Assassin. The caveat was that the sword's actual wielder wasn't a heroic spirit, so the Grail summoned a random, nameless guy who kinda/sorta fit the legend behind the weapon (who was technically only a Wielder of the sword, rather than a User; hence his ??? ranking in Noble Phantasm). Its only special property was being absurdly long (and shows what would happen if Shiki were stupid enough to try ''blocking'' a sword with his knife...besides death by idiocy), meaning it ''is'' possible for a weapon to become a noble phantasm through fame alone, rather than special ability. This was also the case with the Houtengeki halberd...unless [[Fate Extra]] counts as canon enough to retcon that (the Fate/Stay Night description says it was the only halberd to become an NP, because it was used by a famous general; Fate/Extra says it was powered by the God of War and given to {{spoiler|Lu Bu}}). If Satsujinki became famous enough to become an Assassin, his antique, signature knife would undoubtedly go along for the ride (though probably D-ranked; its special property seems to be not requiring maintenance or sharpening). But no, Satsujinki still counts far more. Shiki Ryougi's not an assassin, let alone an Assassin; she's a [[Determinator|Determinating]] [[Knife Nut]] (secretly a [[Master Swordsman]]), more of a hunter (or Saber). Stealth was never the Ryougis' game, the way it was with the Nanaya. She wouldn't have handled the events of Prelude the way Satsujinki did...i.e. sneak through his entire heavily-warded and guarded castle [[Stealth Run|entirely undetected]] (by the vampires ''and'' the magi assault force outside) and [[One -Hit Kill]] a newly-promoted Dead Apostle ''Ancestor'' so silently Louvre didn't even realize he'd been killed before death took him.

Looking at the flowchart, on Heaven's Feel, you can get Rin and Saber points, despite them having no effect on anything in that route. Obviously originally there weren't exact "routes" so to speak. Instead the story flowed depending on the choices you made, narrowing down onto a "route." Ultimately resulting in one of the endings currently in the game. (Or maybe even more, like say, for example, getting enough Saber points in HF might have given her a better ending for her...) In the actual released game, the only remaining sign of this is the one Bad Ending you can get in Fate that shifts you into Unlimited Blade Works.

*** How many actually had a wish? Saber, True Assassin, Caster in FZ (until he decided his wish already came true) <s>Caster</s> Caster if she didn't decide while dying that she didn't need it... A lot of them actually explicitly state that they ''don't'' care about it, like Rider ([[Fate Zero (Literature)|Fate /Zero]]), both Lancers, both Archers, Assassin. One Berserker obviously didn't care, the other wanted to protect Ilya, Rider in FSN was protecting Sakura... The Magi are wrong, the Servants seem to want to hang out a lot more than they actually care about living again or anything. Lancer even says specifically says that a real hero is satisfied with their life and would not care about fixing anything or living again.

** Frankly, it always struck me that the World was being a [[Jackass Genie]] here. It sent her ''twice'' to a copy Grail created by mages a thousand years in the future that was so corrupted it wouldn't do what she wanted anyways. The [[Literal Genie]] would be that they at least called it "The Holy Grail." The reason Avalon didn't trigger the wish conditions is because nobody called it "The Holy Grail." Extra Irony points for [[God Was My Co -Pilot]].

* [[I Knew It!]]. "Saber Lily is a what-if version of Saber, passively made pseudocanon by Nasu with a [[Hand Wave]], saying she's a "refraction of the Kaleidoscope". In other words, she's not going to be in any real story. She's Saber if she took Caliburn but chose to take the title "Queen Arturia" and force the peasants to accept a female leader instead of becoming King Arthur. She never loses Caliburn but never acquires Excalibur, though she does receive Avalon from the Lady of the Lake. She was created by Takeuchi (Type-Moon's artist) making sketches of characters in alternate clothing, and falling in love with her design."

* Darn it. I was going to say that one! Or rather, that Saber Lily was a younger version of Saber. The outfit definitely makes her look as such.

** Thanks to the poorly implimented Alignment Modification System in D&D with many GM's out there who don't put Plot over Mechanics, she could've burnt england to the ground and killed everyone living there, and then found a temple to donate gold at and been 100% Chaotic Good.

In UBW True End, Rin and Shirou are both going to ''England''. Do you know where King <s>Arthur</s> Arturia is supposed to be resting until <s>his</s> her return?

Also, HF True End is the ''only'' ending where we don't find out the conclusion of Shirou's character development from his perspective, and has things like Rin dealing with her conflicting feelings for Shiro, and musings on the nature of the Second and Third Sorceries that they now have experience in.

Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, but work with me here.

The Enclave, wanting to get Armageddon over and done with so they can proceed with the Vault experiments somehow managed to find out about the Fuyuki Grail War and the destructive consequences of the the 3rd & 4th one. They then managed to manipulate the Magic Association into reinstating the Grail War and have the battles start anew. On the the final day of the War (October 23, 2077) the winner makes their wish on the Grail, which will wipe Fuyuki off the map. The Chinese, thinking the U.S. started a preemptive strike, drop their bombs. the U.S., thinking the same drop theirs. The rest, as they say, is history.

* And to answer the previous question, because the U.S. in the Fallout universe became isolationist and extremely paranoid. A preemptive strike on country close to China wouldn't be that hard.

*** In the Fallout universe, the US invades and conquers Canada.

== Shirou will eventually lead a [[Five -Man Band|Five Man team of Justice]]. ==

After the events of HF, [[The Hero|Shirou]] will eventually master his art in Gradation Air and be able to manifest UBW. Despite abandoning his ideal of a superhero, he'll still want to help others and the easiest way is to use his superpower.

Sakura becomes [[The Chick|the chick]] with an unlimited supply of Prana and technical control over the Third Magic.

They eventually meet up with Miss Blue, the freelancer who also joins up because their goals coincide, or rather she was just bored and they seemed very funny. Incidentally, she also becomes [[The Lancer|the lancer]].

Judging by his reaction to [[The Reveal]] [[Flash Back]] of Saber's true identity, he apparently has a sword fetish.

{{quote| Shirou: "I also thought Lancer's lance was beautiful when I saw it, but my interest in swords is exceptional. It seems Emiya Shirou is easily attracted to swords."}}

== In all three routes, [[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight|Archer's]] [[Time Paradox|plan]] ''worked''. ==

The expected effect just happened a bit slower than usual. [[Synchronization|The sharing of experience]] that results from the meeting of the selves resulted in knowledge being planted in Shirou that he simply should not have, causing the contradiction in Gaia that Archer wished for. After the endings of all three routes, Emiya Shirou eventually fades away and disappears, leaving behind neither trace nor memory of his existence. He lasts longest in ''Fate'', but he still pops out of existence due to the nuggets of Projection knowledge he absorbed from Archer before he died. <ref>The tipping point is him explaining to a happy Ilya the exact details as to how he projected Avalon, before the contradiction is resolved by him having never existed.</ref> In ''Unlimited Blade Works'', the paradox of a Reality Marble being manifested before the appropriate procedures are processed results in Shirou's thread of life being unravelled by the World when he attempts to manifest his Reality Marble after his climactic confrontation with Gilgamesh. <ref>He's on a date with Rin, and is attempting to show off.</ref> ''Heaven's Feel'' Shirou, despite having a large buffer due to his nature, still has had the most paradoxical future knowledge implanted directly into him, and dissipates three years after the Grail War, after Tohsaka cajoles him into using Archer's knowledge of projection. <ref>Sakura is rather happily watching him being bullied, before he ceases to have been.</ref> Archer does not get what he wanted, since his existence is maintained outside the three timelines, but his presence results in one new combined timeline, the common factor of which is Shirou's non-existence, thereby making ''[[Fate/stay Stay Nightnight]]'' [[Shaggy Dog Story|utterly pointless]].

Taking into account that it originally belonged to the Einzberns who excelled in making homunculi, this isn't a far cry. Also, the Holy Grail works by "taking souls to achieve a miracle." It's stated, or at least implied, that the Grail acts as a converter to [[Fullmetal Alchemist|change the souls of the Servants into a usable format...]]

** Shirou {{spoiler|isn't Avenger. At all. Shirou never had a clue of what happened in Ataraxia. Bazett isn't in love with Avenger (she cares for him greatly) ''or'' Shirou. The only reason why she's staying in Shirou's house for a week is to look for a job and settle down somewhere else so she can be with Lancer again (Shirou, Rin, Saber and Caren half-tease her obvious crush). Shirou's resemblance to Avenger does make Caren blush, so you might like to count her. Maybe.}}

No, really. By harnessing the grail's soul-containing abilities, he can take over the world without (technically) killing anybody. Then, once the world is taken over, he will have enough power to use EA at its full potential, and destroy the crapsack reincarnation/counter guardian setup, with the side effect of undoing the rest of history back to the beginning of the first grail war. Without the greatest souls being removed from the cycle of rebirth, the Nasuverse stops getting less magical over time, and everyone ends up happy.

* No need of a game for {{spoiler|Akasha/the Root}}; Nasu's already wrote about it, his very first, in fact. {{spoiler|It's called ''[[Kara no Kyoukai (Literature):|Kara no Kyoukai]]''}}.

* Because, independant action or not, there's no way he could have pulled of all that stuff at the end without running out of mana.

* Where else would Ilya have gotten that [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWCdeRzqCqY Tiger Tank?] Fewer than 2,000 models of it were produced during World War II (and that's taking both the [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_I:Tiger I|Mk. I]] and [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_II:Tiger II|Mk. II]] models ''combined''.

At some point, Shirou will see Archer use a sword and copy it. Except, Archer will have gotten that sword by copying when he was still Shirou. The insuing Paradox will destroy everything.

* There. Shirou will be a revered hero instead of a reviled one, Rin gets a nice husband and gets to become a great magus, Sakura herself can start enjoying life, shinji is less of a jerk, the Grail is gone, Zouken is dead, Archer and Saber live happilly ever after, and Shirou [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|gets to have foursomes with Rin, Sakura and Luvia.]]

**** Honestly, I don't think the reason Sakura may not be as popular as the rest is about blame. Personally, I think we have a [[What Measure Is a Non -Badass?]] issue here. We've seen Rin and Saber kick ass a lot, and Ilya gets points for the weird mix of cuteness and hilarious insanity she is. But Sakura's entire character is about her Woobie-ness. Personally, I think you need other aspects to make a character likeable before turning them into a Woobie. To me, Sakura felt kinda lacking in that department, and of course, that whole mess with Saber being turned evil for her didn't help, either. On that note, Saber Alter's loyalty. Dunno about that. To me, it always seemed like the corruption left her with her memories and basic personality intact, but changed her very nature. So, in other words, evil was forced into her personality. If Sakura is blameless, then Saber's only fault was not being able to avoid being sucked into the shadow.

* Well, yeah, maybe that mass-murdering abomination thing was a little undiplomatic. I just felt like being blunt. Kinda like what Rin did when she wa fighting Dark Sakura with Zelretch. Then again, that got her mind raped. Anyway, it's not that I hate Sakura. I have no reason to. It's just that I didn't feel particularly affected by her plight for some reason and seeing all the trouble that she's (indirectly and blamelessly) causing kind of made me wonder if it's all worth it. Fiction is a strange thing. So is affection. One person may get attached to a certain character, another may hate them. But the general consensus depends on how the whole thing is presented. I get what they want to say, really, the poor girl, suffering so incredibly much, yet still being brave and holding out. It just somehow didn't work that well on me. Really, we could launch an endless philosophical discussion here on morality, blame, inherent evil and the right to exist, but where would that lead us? The situation in Heaven's Feel is obviously a choice between two evils, saving Sakura and letting her alter ego go on killing sprees in the meantime or putting an innocent girl down. So, seeing the consequences, there would obviously be a few people who'd instead prefer the Mind Of Steel ending. My guess for why: Time. It's just that HF is the third and last route and players already went through two routes, got to know the other heroines and experienced a lot with them. Plus, we are talking about a verse here where the [[Dysfunction Junction]] runs wild. But in Fate and UBW, Sakura barely had a role bigger than Taiga. By the point HF starts, there's a good chance most players would've already picked their favorites. Of course, obviously every route has a new heroine, but still, certain appeals will already be present. Now not only in that route do we have to "really" get to know Sakura, while Saber and Rin basically shared the last two routes equally, we also get presented with her whole tragic backstory and all. It's further "shoehorned" in when they get rid of Saber to make some extra space for Rider (who, I think, still didn't get enough screentime). So, maybe it all would have been more effective if the routes had played out differently, had given the player more time to get to learn the "normal" Sakura before coming out with her own backstory and route, to create more of a "We've been through so much, I can't let her down now!" feeling, if you get my drift. Or that's my guess what went wrong, anyhow.

*** Yeah, Kohaku was kind of shoehorned in as well. If she's more popular than Sakura, that's because of how later materials mainly replaced her Woobiee-Persona with a more mad scientist-like one. So she causes hilarious insanity around the Tohno Household and that makes the fans like her. Or something like that. That said, I don't really like Kohaku. Can't forgive her for getting Akiha killed.

* Magi hate and fear the Counter Force, though. They're the ones who tend to show up when they're not wanted and screw up your experiment to get to the Root (if I heard [[Kara no Kyoukai (Literature):|Touko and Souren's conversation]] right). I guess that doesn't totally preclude her willingly joining the Counter Force, but it would still require a non-UBW route (she knows Archer's story in that, and he admits out loud that she's smart enough to keep Shirou ''reined in'') and for something really strange to happen to her motivation; she's not a total pragmatist like she wants to be, but neither is she the unquestioning, hardheaded idealist that Shirou, Saber, or Joan of Arc (the only Counter Guardians or equivalent we know of) were. Becoming a Heroic Spirit is right out. The last one to do that was 150-200 years ago; it's near impossible for someone in the present to do something that is literally so ungodly exceptional and awesome that the world considers them perfect enough to set aside. Rin's more likely to become the full practitioner of Kaleidoscope before that.

On the Nasuverse, when a person dies the soul is sent back to Akasha, where it is recycled and used to make more souls. All souls are made from the same source wich mean the more people running around, the weaker the souls made are. The problem here are the Heroic Spirits, when the Hero dies, his soul is sent to the Throne and left there. The souls of heroes and heroines aren't recycled, wich mean the stuff used to theirs souls never will be used to make other souls(Gilgamesh's soul alone is as "heavy" as the souls of hundreds of thousend of souls of modern day people). The material left will keep being divided in weaker and weaker souls.