#admin rambles
a story in two parts
Being obsessed with a game isnt enough i need to eat it
Immediately, without shame or regret
Everyone, please do Qin Liangyu’s Interlude if you have her. It’s amazing and wholesome and wonderful and I want to say more but I don’t want to spoil it.
Simultaneous Bond 10s
I’m mentally stuck between being excited that this happened and finding a way to explain to explain it narratively.
Regardless, they both deserve only the best and I will never stop rooting for either of them
Bonus: The CEs themselves will be put under a spoiler just in case.
A few of you guys who have been around for the early days of this blog might remember a particularly legendary 10-roll, wherein both Karna and Arjuna arrived thanks to the Dayman Song being used as a catalyst.
Well everyone. I return to you years later to once more confirm the effectiveness of the catalyst.
Ladies, gentlemen and everyone in between… we got him.
He knows what he did.
I have to imagine that somewhere in Waver’s curriculum is/was an assignment to compare actual magecraft with the interpretations of popular media. I mean, it’s the Modern Magecraft Theories department. How could you not add something like this to your course?
Granted, I imagine there’d be A LOT of students that talk about Harry Potter, but that’s not exactly without merit. From what I understand, both lineage and study play a role at least in terms of the society therein. But think of what could be used as subject matter outside of that.
Someone using Fullmetal Alchemist as an example of the complexity of magic circles or what they do and don’t get right about practical application.
Maybe one or two would use Dungeons and Dragons to draw parallels between the varieties of casters. Things like the Wizard’s focus on study, the Sorcerer’s emphasis on bloodline, and the Warlock’s reliance on invocation.
On a rare occasion there might be an essay on The Inheritance Cycle and the emphasis on spoken word and pronunciations in its casting.
Then there’s Flat, who writes about Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and describes Stands as a form of Familiar. Waver almost tears it up immediately, but gives him a passing grade regardless because he just read his fifth Harry Potter-themed essay and the structure of the writing is decent enough.
I was looking into where and how I could watch the El-Melloi Case Files Dub while grinding the new event, and somehow my search led me to this:
He looks so fed up and disappointed by everything.
I want ten.
Let me just start by clarifying that I don’t think it’s weird that they have Protection of Faith. King Hassan was the founder of a religious assassin cult, while Vlad III was referred to as “The Shield of The Christian World”. This isn’t a question of if they are qualified for the skill, but of why it’s as high ranked as it is. The only other servant with Protection of Faith is Martha, a literal saint, and yet it’s only ranked “A”. So what separates them from her?
Unfortunately, none of the servant’s profiles or bios go into detail about the skill or why they have it, so I’ll have to begin by highlighting the buffs themselves and go from there. Protection of Faith A gives two buffs; an increase to debuff resistance and a heal. Meanwhile, Protection of Faith A+++ gives the user all of the above, plus an Attack and a Defense buff. This’ll be important later on, so keep it in mind, but I want to very quickly go back to the question of “why?” It’s not a question of deeds since we know she tamed the Tarasque (which is especially amazing if you’re looking at this from the perspective of a DnD Player), so there must be something else at play.
There are two reasons/possibilities. The first is that it ties into Martha’s possession of her second skill: Miracle D+. Her profile describes it as “A miracle that makes the impossible possible. A Personal Skill.” If this miracle was a product of her faith, hence the ”personal” aspect, then it would make sense that the Protection of Faith would be ranked less; because both the source and the result are present as separate skills. The only problem with this is that what the Miracle skill offers doesn’t match what would’ve been taken from the Protection of Faith. Though it could be that the taming of the Tarasque was a non-violent act and would therefore not lend itself to Attack and Defense buffs, there is still one thing that Vlad and King Hassan have that Martha didn’t: Conviction.
To be honest, I thought it might’ve had to do with their alignment at first, but while both Martha and Vlad III are Lawful Good, King Hassan is Lawful Evil, thereby rendering that comparison moot. This is why I believe that it runs much deeper.
Since we’re given no context as to the qualifications for the Protection of Faith skill, let’s put together the Venn Diagram and assume that each character has the mindset of “by my faith, I will _____.” Each of the three Servants would have their own response to fill that blank. For Martha, “by my faith, I will quell this dragon.” For Vlad, “by my faith, I will defend my people.” And for King Hassan, “by my faith, I will root out the sin and corruption before me.” This is a very broad statement, so there will likely be holes in its logic, but as a qualifier for Protection of Faith, it’s serviceable.
However, in terms of the “A+++” ranking, there’s more to the statement. Instead of simply “by my faith, I _____”, in reality it’s more along the lines of “by my faith, I _____, even if it means _____.” So Vlad’s statement instead becomes “by my faith, I will defend my people, even if it means committing these atrocities.” and King Hassan’s becomes “by my faith, I will root out the sin and corruption before me, even if that sin and corruption is of my own people.”
Martha doesn’t have this condition to her skill or the buffs associated with it because for her it’s an action built on belief for the sake of peace and compromise, even if it’s propelled into actualization by a miracle. But for King Hassan and Vlad III, it’s not a compromise, because there can be no compromising for their beliefs or their ideals, and it can only be actualized by the conviction to see these two things through to the very end.
- Extra Class Servant.
- They sought dominion over the world.
- Highly revered by their followers to the point that those who did not were viewed as evil by society at large.
- Views self as a true human in comparison to the rest of “humanity”.
- They have at one point resided within a computer.
Am I referring to Qin Shi Huang or Sessyoin Kiara?
Fascinating how the biggest difference in character between a Pseudo-Grand and a Pseudo-Beast is selfishness.
Very quick PSA/Reminder for everyone. We’re very close to the new Valentine’s Day Event, which means that it’s finally time for the voiced exchange dialogues. So with that in mind, don’t forget to either sell or enhance away your previously acquired Valentine’s CEs, as you won’t get the voiced exchanges if you already have the CE in question. Conversely, if there’s an exchange that you don’t want to repeat, then by all means keep the CE and save yourself the grinding.
Final Thoughts on The New Years 2021 Event
I just finished the Enma-Tei event not too long ago and, for as much as I could say that I loved it and leave it at that, I don’t think I could convey those emotions accurately without explaining why.
Mechanically speaking, the event is pretty straightforward. The more you build, the more points you get each day, and since you’re doing all that grinding for building materials the shop currency builds up pretty quickly. What surprised me though was the fights. So many of them had creative twists to them. Building a strategy to take down Musashi, going ham with Old Man Li, and even letting Anastasia darken the sky with mudballs felt like a refreshing change of pace from previous events.
Then there’s the dialogue. I think I’ve said it before, but one of my favorite things about this game is the characters interacting in ways that they probably wouldn’t have gotten the chance to in the main series. So the fact that we had so much high quality content for these characters made it all the more enjoyable to read. I still can’t help but smile thinking back on the GUDAGUDA Pillow Fight and Jing Ke’s Drunk Karaoke, and I couldn’t recreate my noises I made when the Hassans showed up if you paid me (especially for Gramps).
Lastly, there’s the personal connection that this event made with me. A lot of people will probably talk about the Spirited Away vibes of this event, and that’s fair, if not justified. Unfortunately, circumstances have only allowed me to have seen half of Spirited Away (which I fully intend to rectify in the near future), but that didn’t change the connection I was able to make. One of my favorite jobs that I’ve ever had was when I worked for two summers as an assistant cook at a summer camp. The pay wasn’t great, but room and board were covered and it was altogether just a really good place to work. Anyway, between the cast working at this inn and Beni-Enma’s dialogue about things like kitchen etiquette, cooking for yourself vs cooking for others, and cooking being about more than just following a recipe made me feel a nostalgic sort of happiness that I haven’t felt in a while.
Overall, 10/10. When even the feeling of pulling a rate-up 5-star is overshadowed by your enjoyment of the event as a whole, you know you’ve made something good (it was Tamamo if you’re curious). Easily one of my top 5 (if not top 3) events in this game so far, even if my reasons for liking it aren’t the same as everyone else’s.
Señior Tsar, the numbers don’t lie, and they spell out disaster for you at Christmas 2020!!!
Just in case any of you didn’t have one of these already
So are we just going to ignore the fact that this line in Ozymandias’ 2nd Interlude essentially confirms that Proto-Arthur is the Grand Saber? That his constant wandering has likely been in pursuit of a Beast(s)?
Don’t mind me. Just lowkey spent my entire day thinking about the fact that both King Hassan and Vlad III (Extra) have “Protection of Faith: A+++”
Does anyone know where/how to obtain the Quick/Arts/Buster Shirts? Asking for a friend
