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300iqprower · 2 years

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I don't know how to explain it—I'm sure someone else made a longer better post about how I feel but....

I really like Patxi. Five Lostbelts in and I still like Patxi. Maybe its the fact that unlike 2,3,4 and possibly 5—they use Patxi (a grown man) as a device to show how horrific the Lostbelts are (or how they've been conditioned to think its normal) the children in the LBs are used as a device to show how bad it is but it feels like they're pandering?

Liek they're using the kids as a way to gain sympathy (multiple dialogue choices and characters mention them being children) and that's all well and dandy but it gets real repetitive when you come across the third kid—Ajai was there but he wasn't at the forefront I'd definitely relate to a man wanting to protect his daughter from getting wiped from existence by excessive praying than the child not understanding why (probably should've worded that better) mostly bc my parent made a lot of sacrifices to make me happy.

Lostbelt 3 didn't even give the kid a name which is something I think is fucked up despite them being a minor character.

I also like Patxi as a person because he's a pos towards cast but slowly warms up to them when they do for him—which is extremely natural given his situation and the fact that we're basically staying in his house for the time being.

I also like his CE because its basically "f*ck you, I'm a Wolfman with a gun!" And it has some utility compared to the CEs you gain from the other LBs (they stopped giving out servants for some reason)

I swear I'm not a furry.

I'M FINALLY READY TO ANSWER THIS. OBVIOUS SPOILERS ARE OBVIOUS UP THROUGH THE END OF ATLANTIS.

POINT 1.

PATXI IS THE SINGLE BEST WRITTEN CHARACTER IN THE SERIES. PERIOD.

Like I know i say that's Goredolf, but i mean that in the sense of Goredolf is the best in terms of ongoing character development. As far as fully written characters go, who have had their big moment, and we've seen it all play out for them? From Solomon to Gilgamesh to Arash to Opehlia to Meltryllis to Jason to Jalter to Orion to Moriarty to Napoleon to Ivan to Salieri to Avicebron to even my beloved Asterios....none of them are as well written as Patxi.

And to explain why, I need to start with why, as you pointed out, the other lostbelt NPCs don't even compare, even when they're also well written.

Let's start with the nameless LB3 kid because I find myself typically playing devil's advocate with that one; I'd argue he's the second best of the lostbelt npcs after Patxi. People are, understandably, quick to think of the kid as throwaway given they're never even named, but I always say who I will refer to as "Kid" being nameless as a representation of what life was like in LB3. In SIN, all life is deemed valueless compared to Qin Shi Huang. They bear the "burden" of being the only "true human" and in the name of that all other humans are seen as meant to live short, productive, content lives of never wanting for anything but never achieving anything. Kid is nameless, but not faceless. Unlike most nameless NPCs, he still has a face and varying expressions. He has a role in the story, accompanying us throughout a lot of it and forming an explicit connection to us, particularly Spartacus. And at the end of the lostbelt, when Qin Shi Huang wanders his dissolving world, who should he meet but Kid, a nameless boy reciting a poem he learned from the emperor's greatest enemy, standing side by side with the "True human", the two brought down to the same level as they both dissolve into nothing. To sum it up, Kid both gives us exposition about the world like the rest of the lostbelt NPCs, but crucially gives us insight into what life is like there. He never had any ambition towards anything until we came along, until Spartacus taught him what it meant to have hopes and dreams, and by the end of the chapter that "nameless nobody" is just as much a person both in the mind of the audience and the context of the world as the "True human" emperor who believed that he was carrying a burden for his people.

Now contrast this with another one I see get treated as a throwaway nobody but I would argue gives us important insight: Timi. Whose name you probably dont even recognize and I sure as hell had to look up. The kid from Lb5.1 who had an almost comically small role and a DEFINITELY (probably unintentionally) comical demise, if only for the looney tunes style "Heel-turn realization followed by atomization". But regardless it establishes what Kid did in the opposite sense. The crux of LB5's obligatory "world destruction guilt trip moral conundrum" thing is that not only is this world devoid of suffering like LB3, but on top of that seems to have the genuinely fulfilling lives that LB3 lacked; these people still have hopes and dreams...But that ends up thoroughly disproven when we realize what those hopes are. We see these established people, a named character and everything, unquestioningly throw their life away for a cultish desire to be so much as noticed by higher beings. In the same way Kid having no name emphasized they are still their own individual, Timi's fully established identity and motivations show us how hollow their "fully realized" existence truly is.

Of course now is the one that's....divisive, to say the least. Or at least that's the case from everything I've seen on Asha. I'm kinda in both camps. On the one hand, they're overly reliant on her being an "innocent child" type character, on the other hand though she's genuinely the most emotionally impactful lostbelt NPC after Patxi IMO, and a fantastic reminder of why no matter how much it may feel like cruelty to kill these worlds, leaving them to continue with their fundamentally warped existence would be an even greater cruelty. That said, her Ajay was underutilized in the name of that "feel bad for the child" schtick and so Asha's writing flip flops between heartfelt/impactful and saccharine/pandering, but that's more a core issue of the scenario's two lead writers than a character-specific issue (just another example of how Lostbelt 4 has everyone's strengths AND everyone's weaknesses from how basically everyone pitched in). At the very least though, she fulfills her role of informing us and getting us attached to the world she inhabits, and providing a new and meaningful perspective when its end comes that reflects why we must keep pushing forward. Yes there's the annoying pitiful child thing, but it's far from just taking the easy way out or skipping on the role that's meant to be filled by the character.

...That'd be Gerda. I really don't think I need to go over why Gerda does not work but I will. Gerda's entire character is "look how cute and innocent I am UwU don't you feel bad about me???" and she tells us nothing intrinsic about the world in which she lives. She's EXACTLY the kind of character I would expect from Sakurai not having any pre-existing material to work off of. Her dialogue is entirely redundant at best, with all her exposition dumps being repeated or told in more detail by Ophelia, NotSkadi, or NotSitonai. In the case of that first one they are flat out told in a far more meaningful way because we actually see Ophelia's traumatized perspective on the whole "Sunday" thing. Then, at the end of it all, Gerda doesn't even really give us insight to what the world fading is like, instead giving the only example thus far of the post-tree scene telling us nothing new and not showing us any consequence to our action, instead simply having it all vanish like a dream with no direct relevance to Gerda herself. Her role is supposed to be showing the naïve and transient life the stragglers of humanity live out under NotSkadi, but the contrast between that perspective and the reality in which they live in is never explored; it's simply stated to be bad as if the reason is self-demonstrating in a way that would not even required Gerda to exist to be conveyed. All of this isn't even getting into her sheer lack of characterization beyond "child." From start to finish Gerda tells us nothing unique about the world in which she lives, and there is no role she has that another character does not fill more effectively.

And it's for all those reasons that Gerda is the exact opposite of Patxi.

Patxi is unique from the rest of the major lostbelt NPCs in multiple ways. He's the only non-human. He's the only non-child. Most importantly, [of the first 5 lostbelts] he's the only one who opposes us at any point. Like you said, whereas the other ones are all children and that makes it feel pandering, Patxi being just some guy eliminates that and makes him feel a lot more real, and that's amplified by once again like you said him being the only one who ever acts antagonistic towards us. A big part of all this ties into why Lostbelt 1 is the perfect execution of a "first lostbelt", how it perfectly sets up the premise and moral dilemma as well as set an incredible standard for what a Lostbelt should even be, and I don't wanna be here for eternity going over all of that so I'm going to hone in on the stuff specific to Patxi. Unlike all of the other Lostbelt NPCs, Patxi is set up and treated as his own character. He's named, has unique portraits, we see his POV frequently, he's fully characterized with his own goals, he plays a major role in the lostbelt's events, and he's given even more focus than most of the mainstays who joined in the same chapter (Goredolf, Chihuahua, etc). None of the other lostbelt NPCs fulfill all those things, heck even if we axe that last and most notable qualifier, Patxi is still unique in that list. Kid has no name and was not present for the latter part of the chapter. Asha had no unique role in the story and existed only to give us a perspective rather than to do something specific. Timi's entire purpose is to be killed off frighteningly quick with no actual role. This isn't to say I think they're all bad - I've outlined why I think all three of them are effective enough characters...but they still very much pale in comparison to Patxi, because Patxi was treated as his own individual who was important to the story. Who is important to the story, because he's the one Ritsuka made a promise to that they still need to keep.

The restate the point of the lostbelt NPCs, they are there to give us insight into the world we're destroying, and conveying that in order for our world to survive, other worlds with people just like us must die. They're there to make the worlds feel alive; Rituska is constantly cautioned against forming attachments because of these reasons, but by their nature Ritsuka inevitably finds people they want to help even if only in the moment. Where this diverges is how most of the lostbelts try to make you care. I say most because one of the many failings of Lostbelt 2 is its inability to make up its mind on this. Lostbelt 3 shows you a stagnant world where people live meaningless but happy lives. Lostbelt 4 emphasizes that it's a world where (supposedly) suffering is systematically erased. Lostbelt 5 is presented as a utopia. Lostbelt 1 is different. There's no unravelling why "this is bad actually." It's shown from the word Go to be a cruel and uncaring world with nothing to live for but another day of survival. There's no attempt to make you care on the grounds on "People seem happy here" and instead a wholehearted commitment to showing you something far more direct: These are people too. The reason you care that people might seem happy in the other lostbelts is that same reason, because they're people too. Rather than just imply that though, or focus on one specific thing wrong with the world, through Patxi we're shown all of it. We're shown what a miserable existence that world is, we're shown why they want to continue living regardless, we're shown how the yaga are people just like us, and we're shown how they came to believe that their life which seems so unbearable to us is still one worth living to them.

"Gerda" could be a thousand other people in fiction There’s only one "Patxi"

#fgo #fate grand order #long post #wall of text #literal essay #lostbelt 1 #lostbelt spoilers #writing analysis #patxi #character analysis #probably has a ton of typos but eh too tired. Post.#never thought i'd get an ask

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