Overanalysing the Waifu Gambling Game Pt. I-Backround
This Rabit hole shouldn't be too deep right? (Foreshadowing is a literary device where.....)
The following is what happens when you mix an english major, a double dose of ADHD medication, and friends who encourage your unhinged obsessions. Well really it’s worse then that. This Post and the next however many I end up writing are adaptations of the original product of my hyperfixation: A 33 page, 9000 word long, properly cited, academic essay I couldn’t convice anyone to read — much less talk to me about. So I’m re-writing it as a series of posts in the futile hope that these might find an audiance.
“Now Alan”, you might ask, “why spend all this time writing about this thing no-one cares about?” Well first of all rude, second I care so that’s at least half a person who does, and third because I think it’s genuinely interesting. I always think it’s a shame when interesting writing or ideas aren’t apriciated because of the context they appear in. Unfortunely Lostbelt 6 or “Avalon le fay“ is the king of inaccesable peak media. Not only is it a visual novel that will take most people days to get through, you need to play through almost 8 years worth of content before you can even start. Sure you could watch a youtube playthrough but then you’re missing a ton of context.
So the goal of this first post is to give a basic overview of where Lostbelt 6 sits in the grander story of fate, what the hell a Lostbelt even is, and the broad strokes of what you need to know to understand what I am even talking about. Am I shouting into an uncaring void? Probably, but this way I’ll have it out of my system and my friends will fell safe to talk to me again. With that let’s start at the start:
What the hell is Fate/ ?
Well it all started in 1999 with an indy anthology magazise themed around angels….. No? I’ve lost you? That’s fair— there’s a lot to go through. Long story short a writer and an artist become friends, did some indy stuff together, sold stuff at cons, founded a company called Type/Moon (don’t ask what a Type/ is, we don’t have time) together to make more high quality stuff and in 2004 they release:
Fate/Stay Night, a visual novel (That’s a mix between a choose your own advanture novel and a video game) writen by Kinoko Nasu and illustrated by Takeshi Takeuchi. The basic premise of the story is that seven mages fight a proxy war using their familiars for the right to make a wish uppon the holy grail in the aptly named Holy Grail War. Now since using Ravens or Wolves as familiars would make for an underwhelming war Series creator Kinoko Nasu asked the billion yen question: “What if, instead of your familiar being an animal, it was King Arthur, and also King Arthur was an anime girl you could romance?“. Add in a protagonist who takes “beating yourself up“ to an entirely new level, an irishman who can’t catch a break, and some philosphical musings about heroism and 400,000 thousand copies later Fate/Stay Night was cemented as one of the greatest visual novels of all time.
Part of the appeal of Fate/Stay Night is that, like all good alternate history, it really takes a look at how what it changes could effect things; or rather, how Arthur actualy being a woman didn’t change things, and what that says about her. Reading Stay Night and it’s reated works it’s clear that Nasu has a great love for the story of King Arthur, and a genuine interest in the questions it asks. In Nasu’s interpritation of the tale being the King is a sacrifice. Artoria pulled the sword from the stone knowing not only that she would die and Camelot would fall, but also that being the king ment abandoning her own personhood; everything from her wants and desires to her gender and sexuality were sacrificed to be the perfect king that Britan needed. Fate/Stay Night features a cynical Artoria at the end of her reign, her faith in her own ideals shaken. It deals with her anxieties: that she failed, that she wasn’t the right one to pull the sword, that a better king could have saved everyone.
After the run-away sucess of Fate/Stay Night Type/Moon went on to produce a bunch of loosly connected stories that take place either in the world of Stay/Night or in an alternate timeline. This connected universe is often called the “Nasuverse“ and quickly became a cornerstone of japanese nerd culture, and then wider internet nerd culture. If you’re as chronicly online as I was in the 2000’s and 2010’s you’ve seen references to this francise, whether it be one of the countless r34 posts, memes from the shows (people die when they are killed), or rants about how complicated the timelines are.
Now since award winning novles, classic anime series, and criticaly aclaimed video games weren’t bringing in enough cash to the company,Type/Moon teamed up with Delightworks (now Lasengle) and Aniplex to persue a more profitable venture, that leads us to 2015 and the release of…
What the hell is Fate/Grand Order ?
Fate/Grad Order (Or F/GO if you’re cool) is a japanese free to play mobile game that makes more money in a month then you or I will ever see in our lifetimes by getting people to play slots for .jpgs of anime-ified and occasionaly generbent historical and mythologial figures. It is one of the most effective money printing scemes in video game history that just so happens to have a frustratingly good story attached to it.
The basic premise of the game is that you work for the Chaldea Security Organization. A UN-backed, mage-lead organization that seeks to stop the end of the world. Unfurtunetly, about 15 minutes after you start the game all you have the wost first day at work ever as of histrory is literly set on fire (So much for saving the world). Fortunetly Chaldea has time travel and sends you back in time to stop it from being on fire. To aid you in this quest you can summon Heroic spirits, figures from myth and history, as your magical familiars. The so-called Servants can be anyone from Major historical figures like Napoleon or Alexander the Great to fairly unknown mythological figrures like Cú Chulainn or Arash Kamangir.
Your partner on this adventure is the ever adorable Mash Kyrielight. Mash is the only survivour of Chaldea’s first attempt to use the power of Heroic spirits, namely by creating artificial Humans and fusing them with said spirits in order to try and better control them. It didn’t really go as planned and the Sprit inside Mash never fully manifested itself. Since she wasn’t designed to be much more then a meat puppet for a Servant Mash has a weak constitution and has spent her entire life in Chaldea’s artic base. After the world ends the servant inside Mash (The grail knight himself, Galahad) decides to wake up and let Mash use some of his power.
After a bunch of whacky and harrowing adventures throughout history Mash and the Player character (Who we’ll call Ritsuka) confront the big bad guy. Following a heroic sacrifice from Mash’s father figure Romani Archiman we defeat the big bad, Mash becomes a real girl, and history is saved…….. That is until the forces of “The foreign God“ break into Chaldea, kill most of the people we care about, and put us on the run. Also the word has ended again, but this time instead of being on fire the surface of the earth has been bleached.
The foreign god is essentialy trying to bypass Earth’s imune system by sneaking in through dead timelines. These “Lostbelts“ are what-if scenarios based on major turning points in earth’s history. What if Ragnarok went wrong? What if dinosaurs stayed the dominant species? What if the Greek gods were still around? The only way to save our timeline is by “denying“ the lostbelts. Killing everyone in that timeline to have a chance at saving our own. To protect its plans the foreign god revives some dead chaldea staff, gives them a servant and tasks them with protecting their lostbelt. This all leads us too…..
Avalon le Fay, The Moment a Star is Born
Avalon le Fay is the sixth lostbelt you face in your quest, and the one this series is all about. It is also by far the longest one, being almost 350,000 words long, or about the size of two of the Lord of the Rings books. It’s a compex and harrowing story about loss, duty, destiny, trauma, and chooing your own path.
This timeline diverges from ours when… well we’ll get to that; for now let’s just say it’s a version of britan where the Fay never left, and, in fact, became the dominant group on the island, with humans being fairly rare. These Fay are discribed as “Innocent as a child“ and are ruled by the Tyranical Morgan le Fay. Joining us on our Adventure are Chaldea’s resident genius Leonardo Da Vinci (summoned as a small anime girl), the ever chearfull Oberon, and the lovably dorky Artoria Caster.
By the end of our story almost everyone we met will have died in some horrific way, those who survived will be traumatied forver, and Britan will be reduced to a collectrion of smoking craters.