How I Saved History (Fate/Grand Order SI)

Flynn wouldn't know. He barely pays attention to Mash, much less what he thinks of as Mash's dog.

 

So Mash lost one of her closest friends...

... God dammit, just... fuck....

Flynn the character may not know, but Flynn the author probably does.

Will he at least show up again?

 

Probably.

After all, Flynn managed to accidentally destroy his faith in humanity. He'll definitely show up again.

You can count on that.

 

Flynn destroyed his faith in humanity...

...

Somehow I'm not all that surprised.

Cath is going to attack Flynn if he shows up again, isn't he?

Hopefully he still has some faith left in Mash at least, and Fou will come back instead of staying in Cath form aka Primate Murder.

 

Merlin is going to see him and go "Good job, Flynn. I sent Cath Palug to where he'd stop being a threat to Humanity... AND THEN YOU FUCKED IT UP."

And crow to Galahad "Artoria always blamed me for shit. But now? Now it really isn't my fault."

One, Solomon was not punished for his Sheba shenanigans.

Two, I'd find it funnier if a certain carpenter from Nazareth appears in answers to prayer.

Since, you know, Rin Tohsaka can be summoned to serve as Ishtar's vessel.

 

I really want to see this now.

Yeah, but people can make exceptions for some people, and while he may have let Solomon off the hook others weren't so lucky, like full on genocided unlucky.

This may be possible given the fact that summoning Servants can also summon one's from different points in time, like how they summoned Merlin despite him being born way after ancient Babylon.

 

To be fair, Cath Palug obviously had extremely high standards. Charles isn’t that bad a guy when it comes down to it compared to the sorts of bastards the typical magi would produce.

I'm tentatively hopeful for another clash of “doing what I can with what I’ve got for an impossible task” vs “you should have been impossibly, unwaveringly good” ala Ozymandias, although probably not quite as reasonable.

 

True, but being morally better than your average magus isn't exactly all that difficult to accomplish.

 

Yeah, but when it comes down to it I haven’t seen him as being really that bad. Got huge, gaping flaws, but reasonable and wanting to be good, even trying to, and being committed to saving the lives of all humanity.

Way to go making me dislike Fou for once Charles Flynn

 

And, in truth, the entire reason that it was Flynn that destroyed Cath Palug's faith wasn't that he was all that bad a guy.

It was that he was a perfectly normal, average guy. Which was why he, entirely by accident, managed to convince the Fourth Beast of Gaia that all of human existence consisted of inevitable suffering, and the only way to help them would be to put them out of their misery.

Flynn is, ultimately, a perfectly average human being, a representative of humanity as a whole. He can and has pulled off incredibly feats...

But he also constantly ends up shooting himself in the foot, and rolls 1s just as often as he rolls 20s.

 

No wonder there’s a legend about Ccarb Palug coming into conflict with King Arthur's Knights, Kay specifically.

She strove for the ideal whereas Cath Palug was focused on the general.

 

Fou didn't do anything wrong here aside from having some high standards.

Charlie was also the guy that poisoned several of Chaldeas workers in a game, so there's that.

And he has admitted to being a bit sadistic, and somewhat enjoying killing people.

 

80% of servants are like that and worse, no one gives them shit about that.

 

True, but the author did say that the reason it was Flynn that destroyed Fou's faith in humanity was because he was an average and normal guy, and playing games where you poison those around you, enjoy killing people a bit, and viewing most interactions like a manipulator would aren't exactly the traits of an average and normal guy.

 

There's really no such thing as a truly average human being, in the end.

Flynn is nothing special, really. Just a flawed and self-destructive person whose vices are equal to his virtues, forced to deal with something way above his paygrade.

As he's admitted himself, he's not entirely sane anymore, no matter how good an act he puts up. Because no one could go through the Grand Order without ending up a bit fucked in the head.

 

If anything, Flynn's workplace practices are very tame. Depending on infinitely powerful "servants" on whom you depend for almost everything who will never respect you: I bet mc realized it on the very first day. Then there are people who are pissed at him for doing his job well, I mean did he ever face a demon god pillar? He killed the villains beforehand. Fearing defeat and failure is something only complete humans can sympathize with, not Heroic Spirits.

As for Magi and Engineers, in the game, they lived only because Ritsuka/Gudao were not normal human/magi at all. I mean try working in a group of 10 people in a simple office project. There will be a good amount of disagreements. The disagreements, the fights, and strong negative feelings will pile up the longer the project runs. Very good leaders can mitigate this, but consider the higher cadre of mages and engineers they will have infinitely larger problems. Chaldea would not have survived during the grand order if Olga was there, it is Roman that carried them. I say Roman, because I do not remember Ritsuka/Gudao interacting with the staff much.

A normal man will go mad in the prologue itself, then the subsequent singularities are more and more brutal. Camelot/Jerusalem is like Noah from old testament, but this Noah fires nukes and you are a sinner, not an animal/Noah's family. And Babylonia is almost the setting of Berserk [Manga/Anime].

I do not know what will happen in lostbelts, but I know the story will remain good.

 

Servants are very much capable of fearing defeat and failure.

They're not beings incapable of sympathizing with ordinary humans, they're complex characters that have complex human emotions.

 

As of now there is no servant who has faced a circumstance as dire as Flynn. Unless there is parallel grand orders going on and the servants share the experiences. Frankly speaking we will not know what they feel. Author limitations aside, as there are too many servants to make interludes to, even in game we did not get much inner depths of servant thinking. We got their responses, but not their thoughts, not in very details at least.

In this story it is entirely possible that there are servants who have positive feelings towards flynn, but have not got a chance to speak of it. Maybe there are some who want him to be better, whether they have something to help towards it or not. As for coworkers, most are not likely to help him.

Charles Flynn we will go for lostbelts, psuedo singularities yes? And did I miss the various events? I read about the Fuyuki event , any more planned?

 

Many of these Servants lived lives in which they had to protect potentially millions of people from death and protect their nations from destruction.

Some of them weren't some kind of super powerful beings during their lives, but were still human, so they can sympathise with Flynn in protecting the world, the whole becoming Servants thing have them their current powers.

Some Servants already feel positive feelings towards Flynn, like Cu, Cursed Arm and Georgios, who cares about Flynn even if he doesn't always agree with him.

 

Yes, he mentioned Cosmos in the Lostbelt and Nero only showing up then at the earliest.

 

True. I think I'll leave Cosmos in the Lostbelt for a sequel series, once canon has finished with the arc.

 

No Servant ever actually went through a situation where the whole of human history was incinerated, however. Even for the incredibly superhuman standards of heroic spirits, that IS beyond the scale.

And no Servant who was a leader in life ever had to lead a group like Chaldea's contingent. The task is simply too unrealistically hard. In the practice, it should be unfeasible and Guda only gets to do it because the plot plays for him and has every Servant magically attracted to and respecting of his generic blandness.

I realized this when I tried to write Grand Order myself. It can't be done without ringing hollow and false. Usually, even connecting in a believable way with a single warrior from the distant past is a major task on itself, as prior Fate stories will tell you. Handling more than 200 at once while being a token Japanese Protagonist Cipher only can work if the story is outright making it so that works.

 

Servants in the Fate franchise have sometimes led lives in which they saved the world, at least according to some of their myths and stories, so they may have some understanding of what's happening and how Charlie feels.

They also sometimes belonged to groups that were very diverse in their behaviour and even led them, so they also have some understanding of that as well.

 

Again, not the same thing.

The whole world never died during their watch. Even the most dire circumstances they had to face pale in comparison to having all of mankind ever die on them and then having to command every major figure of history ever, including the very same betrayers and enemies who felled those same Heroic Spirits, all living under the same roof for months if not years (depending on how you look at the Grand Order sliding timeline).

That goes way beyond the usual 'save the world' fare. Heroes from the past, more often than not, only had to lead members of a single culture, more or less uniformly organized, not people from literally every background ever. I repeat, in the practice, that is an impossible task. It'd be impossible even for the best, most charismatic individual on their own (the originally intended multiple Masters system Chaldea had would've had much better chances), and the fact it works when a cardboard print like Guda is at front only functions because of plot fiat.

 

True, but even if they didn't have to restore the world to how it was they still struggled to save it and can sympathize with Charlie over his circumstances because they've faced similar challenges in their lives, even if it isn't exactly the same kind of challenge he is facing.

Think of it like a cop sympathizing with a soldier over taking another persons life. Yeah the soldier fought in something much bigger than the cop, but both of them still went through something very similar and can sympathize with each other.

While true that a lot of the diverse groups tended to have members from one culture, there were some groups that were made up off members from different cultures, like Iskandar's armies, which had members from the various cultures he conquered in them.

The Servants are also most likely mentally struggling with the situation.

Remember that while some of them have an unusual, somewhat inhuman, outlook on the world, others are still very much more human, incredibly brave humans, but still humans.

Yeah the fact that they have incredible powers and can be re-summoned after being killed makes it easier for them compared to Charlie, whose an ordinary human that can't be brought back if he dies, but some of them still fear death, Scherezade being a prime example of a Servant terrified of death, because if they die then whatever killed them can also kill their Master, who is the last Master Chaldea has, and if he dies then the mission if basically over and the world stays dead.

 

While we like to make fun of Ishtar, she is a war goddess and those tend to be the types of gods you run away from when they're pissed.

Charlie really has the habit of being attracted to lunatics doesn't he?

First Nero and now Ishtar.

Now I can't help but hope that Nero and Ishtar fight for Charlies affections, even when he doesn't want their affections and is terrified of them.

If things between Charlie and Ishtar actually go anywhere then he needs to be careful not to upset her, unless he wants to become impotent.

Not sure that they can reverse an impotence curse from a goddess, though maybe Paracelcus would like the opportunity to see if he can.

 

This reminded me of a scene in Sandman Presents: Lucifer.

In the comic Lucifer and a Native American girl go out to kill a bunch of ancient gods that are causing chaos and to get to the place they take a ride with a truck driver that works for an ancient middle eastern god that has since become a travel agent.

During the trip the driver becomes so annoying and assholish that when they reach the destination Lucifer curses him with impotence.

This has a whole lot of similarities to the comic.

Ancient religious figure working in the modern world.

Relatively ordinary human with some magic in them travels to kill some evil beings and on the way meets a god like being that helps them, but may also present an obstacle to the mission.

Charlie even has the risk of permanently losing his family like that girl in the comic lost her brother.due to the meddling of said god like being.

 

Charles used flatter.

It's...super effective?

 

Kissing up to people that could kill him in a heartbeat is something that, by necessity, he has become very good at.