It's a month or two late, but...
Jul. 18th, 2024 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waltzoidOh, right. I guess it's Savior King dunking time again, even though sarajayechan and I said "enough is enough" on it a month before TMG. But since we made it to the halfway point in the game's story, a summary of events since my last blog post is in order.
So, uh...after Jeralt gets murdered in a death scene Reyna evidently though was too awesome to show the readers, the Blue Lions drag Byleth's mopey ass to Fraldarius territory so they can reunite Glenn (he's alive in this continuity, remember?) with his and Felix's dad Rodrigue.
Then Chapter 40 delivers three anticlimaxes (including two back-to-back), starting with Atra (once again offscreen) telling Rodrigue of the Tragedy of Duscur and absolving Duscur of all involvement in King Lambert's murder. Sylvain says "this is huge", but everyone reacts to the news with the same gusto as someone dropping a sandwich on the dining hall floor. After they return to the monastery, they track down Kronya so Byleth can exact revenge on her for killing Jeralt. She does so by recreating the opening scene where Seiros stabs Nemesis to death with a dagger, and neither Kronya nor her OC sister exchange a single word of dialogue with one another despite supposedly being bitter enemies. Brilliant!
After Kronya gets her lungs punctured, Solon shows up to start the second part of the fight...which lasts all of three paragraphs and ends with Yuri leaping out from a bush and stabbing him with a sword, thus bringing an anticlimactic end to the suffering he inflicted upon the people of Remire. Way to go.
Then, for no adequately explained reason, the rest of Solon's backup arrives, and Marianne goes berserk at the most inopportune time when her Crest activates and she turns into a hybrid of a Demonic Beast and Corrin's Dragon form from Fire Emblem Fates. Naturally, Sara and I were...not pleased, to say the least, because the story goes on to say that Marianne's bloodline is cursed (and one of her ancestors' parting words was that you're better off dead than burdening your friends with the curse of the Crest of the Beast, which is pretty damn offensive considering how consistently the other societal downsides of Crest culture are swept under the proverbial rug), which is the opposite of the lesson her character development takes her in her supports in Three Houses and Three Hopes.
After a brief, pointless side trip to Fodlan's Locket, the gang gears up to defend the Holy Tomb from the Flame Emperor's gang, which includes such highlights as Byleth passing out yet again during the Throne of Knowledge ritual, leaving her unable to contribute to half the fight, and the class contemplating abandoning her and the almost-stolen Crest stones when the Demonic Beasts sprang up. But it's okay, because this is the moment that Byleth's "true potential" unlocks and she splits the Demonic Beasts in twain and tosses the fully-armored Flame Emperor across the tomb like a ragdoll.
Surprise, surprise, the Flame Emperor turns out to have beenVince McMahon Edelgard all along, and everyone stops calling her by name and switches to using variations on "that woman" or "that witch"...you know, just to show the readers how seriously they take this threat (i.e. not at all, if Byleth's "fucking idiots" speech in Chapter 47 is any indication).
Oh, and Dorothea and Linhardt, who've been mostly window dressing up until now, are so scared that as soon as Edelgard releases her manifesto and intent to wage war on the Church of Seiros, they readily jump ship to the Kingdom/Alliance/Church army. Why, though? They're both from the Empire. She isn't threatening them.
Just before the big clash with the Imperial army, we're treated to Reyna not even bothering to hide the fact that she's using Atra as a mouthpiece by calling Edelgard's speech a "complete farce", with everyone in the room parroting this opinion.
Then the big battle happens, and just like the fight scenes before it, it's predictably simultaneously underwhelming and over-stuffed, as it takes a full four chapters and over 20,000 words to resolve. The author explicitly compared the Battle of Garreg Mach to the battle depicted in the "Helm's Deep" chapter of The Two Towers, and it manages to be almost twice as long and 0% as good as that. And yes, I really did go on Google Books that night to buy the Lord of the Rings book trilogy at a deep discount just to compare the two scenes in length. (I will start reading it for real soon, after I'm done reading The Hunger Games.) Whereas The Two Towers book and movie famously has Gimli and Legolas trying to lighten the mood by comparing who can kill more orcs, the most "exciting" scene of Savior King's big battle is Claude ordering Ignatz to fire a hundred-pound golem piece to plug a gap in the monastery walls...with a ballista (at least the author spelled the word correctly this time), and the scene not being played for comedy.
And after all the bloodshed and property damage (some of it caused by the invading army), no one even sniffs in Edelgard or Hubert's direction during the battle despite Yuri plotting to use his Nightcrawler Crest powers to sneak past the growing pile of dead Imperial soldiers and Demonic Beasts to shank Edelgard with an armor-piercing sword. Yup.
But the chapter that finally convinced me and Sara to bail on the story for good was Chapter 51, in which Atra appoints herself the Navi to Byleth's Link and decides to relay the message that she's in charge of the monastery now (and Rhea couldn't tell Byleth this information directly herself because...? Wait...why did Rhea even go missing to begin with? The church successfully drove back the Imperial army! She should be there to help plan the counter-invasion with them!) And then Atra once again pleads her case to Rodrigue and a few other nobles from the Kingdom and Alliance, including Count Gloucester, eventually proving her Agarthan heritage to the disbelieving Gloucester by...speaking...German...to him?
Oh...
Ohhhh.
Oh, fucking hell...
Yeah, so Reyna readily admits she wanted to depict characters speaking in their mother tongues, but isn't that good with foreign languages. To get around this, we saw Claude's out-of-nowhere Japanese apology to the Duscur general in Chapter 13 (along with a few Japanese swear words at the beginning of Chapter 26), and now this.
Representing the Persian/Middle Eastern-adjacent Almyran culture with Japanese was dumb enough (is Claude also part-Hoshidan?), but deciding to use German as the language of choice for a group of villains named after ancient Greek sages and philosophers is, uh...definitely not the best choice of language when your story also describes the villains' underground homeland as a dystopian hellhole/totalitarian dictatorship and compares its ruling government to the Nazi party at the height of World War II. (Don't like that I went there? Well, I don't like that the author went there, so...there!)
My immediate reaction to Rodrigue telling Atra it's not her fault that hundreds of Kingdom soldiers died due to her only being 13 at the time (after I'd unclenched my fists over the "Agarthan speaks German" thing) was "Dude...Roddy. Your other son was fifteen when he and Dimitri fought rebels who were less heavily armed than your kingdom's knights. Age shouldn't be a mitigating factor. She wants to atone, so let her atone. Don't tell her she didn't do anything wrong when she clearly agrees that she did!"
And then they decided to crown Dimitri king right there in the monastery even with the overwhelming stench of dead bodies in the air and Dimitri having done nothing in-story to justify it. Hell, you may as well have given the crown to Atra since she's the one who solved your country's biggest mystery surrounding its darkest period in history. Or, you could have...you know, taken everyone back to Fhirdiad and held the ceremony there where there was no risk of Imperial spies or assassins looking to murder your idiot prince.
That's when I decided that if Savior King isn't going to start making any sense after its halfway point, then I'm not going to start saying good things about it, and it isn't worth my time to review it any further knowing that the second half sees the fic disappear even further up its own ass. With every passing chapter, my decision to jump on the "this fic was never good to begin with" train early seems recklessly prescient.
sarajayechan and I said "enough is enough" on it a month before TMG. But since we made it to the halfway point in the game's story, a summary of events since my last blog post is in order.So, uh...after Jeralt gets murdered in a death scene Reyna evidently though was too awesome to show the readers, the Blue Lions drag Byleth's mopey ass to Fraldarius territory so they can reunite Glenn (he's alive in this continuity, remember?) with his and Felix's dad Rodrigue.
Then Chapter 40 delivers three anticlimaxes (including two back-to-back), starting with Atra (once again offscreen) telling Rodrigue of the Tragedy of Duscur and absolving Duscur of all involvement in King Lambert's murder. Sylvain says "this is huge", but everyone reacts to the news with the same gusto as someone dropping a sandwich on the dining hall floor. After they return to the monastery, they track down Kronya so Byleth can exact revenge on her for killing Jeralt. She does so by recreating the opening scene where Seiros stabs Nemesis to death with a dagger, and neither Kronya nor her OC sister exchange a single word of dialogue with one another despite supposedly being bitter enemies. Brilliant!
After Kronya gets her lungs punctured, Solon shows up to start the second part of the fight...which lasts all of three paragraphs and ends with Yuri leaping out from a bush and stabbing him with a sword, thus bringing an anticlimactic end to the suffering he inflicted upon the people of Remire. Way to go.
Then, for no adequately explained reason, the rest of Solon's backup arrives, and Marianne goes berserk at the most inopportune time when her Crest activates and she turns into a hybrid of a Demonic Beast and Corrin's Dragon form from Fire Emblem Fates. Naturally, Sara and I were...not pleased, to say the least, because the story goes on to say that Marianne's bloodline is cursed (and one of her ancestors' parting words was that you're better off dead than burdening your friends with the curse of the Crest of the Beast, which is pretty damn offensive considering how consistently the other societal downsides of Crest culture are swept under the proverbial rug), which is the opposite of the lesson her character development takes her in her supports in Three Houses and Three Hopes.
After a brief, pointless side trip to Fodlan's Locket, the gang gears up to defend the Holy Tomb from the Flame Emperor's gang, which includes such highlights as Byleth passing out yet again during the Throne of Knowledge ritual, leaving her unable to contribute to half the fight, and the class contemplating abandoning her and the almost-stolen Crest stones when the Demonic Beasts sprang up. But it's okay, because this is the moment that Byleth's "true potential" unlocks and she splits the Demonic Beasts in twain and tosses the fully-armored Flame Emperor across the tomb like a ragdoll.
Surprise, surprise, the Flame Emperor turns out to have been
Oh, and Dorothea and Linhardt, who've been mostly window dressing up until now, are so scared that as soon as Edelgard releases her manifesto and intent to wage war on the Church of Seiros, they readily jump ship to the Kingdom/Alliance/Church army. Why, though? They're both from the Empire. She isn't threatening them.
Just before the big clash with the Imperial army, we're treated to Reyna not even bothering to hide the fact that she's using Atra as a mouthpiece by calling Edelgard's speech a "complete farce", with everyone in the room parroting this opinion.
Then the big battle happens, and just like the fight scenes before it, it's predictably simultaneously underwhelming and over-stuffed, as it takes a full four chapters and over 20,000 words to resolve. The author explicitly compared the Battle of Garreg Mach to the battle depicted in the "Helm's Deep" chapter of The Two Towers, and it manages to be almost twice as long and 0% as good as that. And yes, I really did go on Google Books that night to buy the Lord of the Rings book trilogy at a deep discount just to compare the two scenes in length. (I will start reading it for real soon, after I'm done reading The Hunger Games.) Whereas The Two Towers book and movie famously has Gimli and Legolas trying to lighten the mood by comparing who can kill more orcs, the most "exciting" scene of Savior King's big battle is Claude ordering Ignatz to fire a hundred-pound golem piece to plug a gap in the monastery walls...with a ballista (at least the author spelled the word correctly this time), and the scene not being played for comedy.
And after all the bloodshed and property damage (some of it caused by the invading army), no one even sniffs in Edelgard or Hubert's direction during the battle despite Yuri plotting to use his Nightcrawler Crest powers to sneak past the growing pile of dead Imperial soldiers and Demonic Beasts to shank Edelgard with an armor-piercing sword. Yup.
But the chapter that finally convinced me and Sara to bail on the story for good was Chapter 51, in which Atra appoints herself the Navi to Byleth's Link and decides to relay the message that she's in charge of the monastery now (and Rhea couldn't tell Byleth this information directly herself because...? Wait...why did Rhea even go missing to begin with? The church successfully drove back the Imperial army! She should be there to help plan the counter-invasion with them!) And then Atra once again pleads her case to Rodrigue and a few other nobles from the Kingdom and Alliance, including Count Gloucester, eventually proving her Agarthan heritage to the disbelieving Gloucester by...speaking...German...to him?
Oh...
Ohhhh.
Oh, fucking hell...
Yeah, so Reyna readily admits she wanted to depict characters speaking in their mother tongues, but isn't that good with foreign languages. To get around this, we saw Claude's out-of-nowhere Japanese apology to the Duscur general in Chapter 13 (along with a few Japanese swear words at the beginning of Chapter 26), and now this.
Representing the Persian/Middle Eastern-adjacent Almyran culture with Japanese was dumb enough (is Claude also part-Hoshidan?), but deciding to use German as the language of choice for a group of villains named after ancient Greek sages and philosophers is, uh...definitely not the best choice of language when your story also describes the villains' underground homeland as a dystopian hellhole/totalitarian dictatorship and compares its ruling government to the Nazi party at the height of World War II. (Don't like that I went there? Well, I don't like that the author went there, so...there!)
My immediate reaction to Rodrigue telling Atra it's not her fault that hundreds of Kingdom soldiers died due to her only being 13 at the time (after I'd unclenched my fists over the "Agarthan speaks German" thing) was "Dude...Roddy. Your other son was fifteen when he and Dimitri fought rebels who were less heavily armed than your kingdom's knights. Age shouldn't be a mitigating factor. She wants to atone, so let her atone. Don't tell her she didn't do anything wrong when she clearly agrees that she did!"
And then they decided to crown Dimitri king right there in the monastery even with the overwhelming stench of dead bodies in the air and Dimitri having done nothing in-story to justify it. Hell, you may as well have given the crown to Atra since she's the one who solved your country's biggest mystery surrounding its darkest period in history. Or, you could have...you know, taken everyone back to Fhirdiad and held the ceremony there where there was no risk of Imperial spies or assassins looking to murder your idiot prince.
That's when I decided that if Savior King isn't going to start making any sense after its halfway point, then I'm not going to start saying good things about it, and it isn't worth my time to review it any further knowing that the second half sees the fic disappear even further up its own ass. With every passing chapter, my decision to jump on the "this fic was never good to begin with" train early seems recklessly prescient.
