So, I've been reading Fate. If you know anything about Fate, you'll know that's… an undertaking. The vndb puts it at about 89h, and even as a self-proclaimed visual novel fan with about… uh, 5? completed visual novels under my belt, that's still quite the number, making it about twice as long as If My Heart had Wings, which had been my longest read until now.

This was a project. I've been wanting to read Fate for a long time: I love reading in general and I find the visual novel medium particularly enjoyable. Fate has always had this status as “THE visual novel” in my head, so it was a natural candidate. But, being the large work that it is, for a long time I've had trouble to commit to it. In fact, the Realta Nua version has been lying around on my desktop since roughly 2021. I opened it a few times, but didn't even finish the intro chapter rom Toosaka's perspective.

At some point, two things changed:

1. the remake released on Nintendo Switch, which rekindled my motivation to get into it
2. I got a job offer in another country, and me and the other guy decided to take on the Fate/stay night and the newer Unlimited Bladeworks anime, as well as the Heaven's Feel movies and Fate/Zero, as our last big watch together before I left the country. We plowed through those over 3 weekends, and that felt like the perfect moment to continue with the VN.

I don't actually remember my impressions from the anime all too well. I do remember that I was confused about many things and asked about many of the details the adaption was missing or didn't make clear enough, so that contributed to wanting to read the VN too.

That said, I have a strange connection with Fate, even after finally finishing the VN the other day, though for many different reasons.

Disclaimer: from here on out the article may contain heavy spoilers about all parts of Fate. Proceed at your own risk.

Do I even like Fate?

As someone who's watched the entire adaption of OG Fate plus Fate/zero and even read the source material, this may be a strange question to ask. But it is also one I still cannot confidently answer. I obviously got some level of enjoyment out of Fate, otherwise I would not have been able to finish either the anime or the VN. At the same time, I would struggle to label myself as a Fate fan, I'm not sure there are any “lives rent-free in my head” moments, and perhaps most importantly, I don't think I take much away from Fate.

At the same time, I still consider myself as being somehow “into” Fate. I am invested now, and I am following the franchise as a whole to some degree, I have “accumulated knowledge” about the Fate universe and I've had a great time watching the Fate/strange Fake anime adaption when it aired recently. Many of the OG Fate characters have left an impression on me and I will remember them well for many years to come. But more on what Fate means to me at the end. Perhaps my biggest issue with Fate was…

Connecting with Fate's Themes

This is likely the main issue that makes it hard for me to fully embrace Fate. It's not a secret that I'm far from the smartest person when it comes to… how do you call this? Media literacy, understanding themes, picking up on subtle hints and getting something out of symbolism.

My personal shortcomings manifest themselves as mainly two concrete problems.

I don't get the hints

You can come up with the most effective situations to contrast your characters and their ideals and it'll fly right past me. You can think of the most wonderful metaphors and symbolisms to strengthen the delivery of your main narrative points, and I won't even realize they were there.

Most stylistic devices simply do not work on me. I won't even notice their presence. This is particularly obvious when watching anime where many things are not said but only shown, and I do not perceive most of them (I am the opposite of a visual person it seems). But even in the visual novel medium where almost everything has to be spelled out, I will often not draw the connections I am expected to make subconsciously, and I'm pretty sure my brain doesn't save a lot of the information that it would need at a later point to draw these connections in the first place.

A lot of the time when I read analyses about anime I've watched I find that there was a whole world beyond what I perceived - and a lot of it is super interesting and deepens my appreciation of the work. But unfortunately I am close to incapable of figuring out much beyond the literal text by myself, and need someone to walk me through it to be able to appreciate it at all, and that is a shame.

In my defense, I do get it sometimes, though rarely. In fact, I can only remember a single instance where symbolism clearly did something for me: In the 12th episode of Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku (薫る花は凛と咲く / The fragrant flower blooms with dignity), when the friend group visits the beach and everyone plays in the water, except for Subaru who is afraid to join in on the fun and “getting her feet wet”, the water and the waves being the metaphorical borderline between her and the people around her, the way that Saku splashes her with water in the most awkward attempt to involve her that I can imagine, and Kaoru pulling her over to her side only for her to stumble and fall… that was wonderful and I loved every bit of it. The other guy said “it was good, but the symbolism was a bit too on the nose” or something like that. This might give you an idea of how hard you have to drive your point for it to hit home even for me.

I cannot relate

When it comes to topics as abstract or far removed from our everyday lives as Shirou's hero complex, I struggle to take anything away from it. I couldn't get anything out of this theme specifically, which I consider the core theme of Fate, nor many of its other themes. I assumed that's natural, but seeing how, for many people, this seems to do something, even if irrelevant to their lives, I must have been wrong. This is nothing new to me, but it was particularly noticeable in Fate due to both the heavy skew towards such abstract themes, as well as the length of the work overall.

When I was thinking about writing this article for the first time, close to the start of the VN, I lowkey assumed this would go the way of the KoiChoco VN, where I would spend 10,000 words reurgitating the central themes of Fate and my feelings about them. But alas, that's not the case and you'll be spared a candidate for new longest article on this blog, because I have almost nothing whatsoever to say about the many themes of Fate - at least not anymore, now that most of it has been buried in the inscrutinable depths of my memory. That in itself is representative of what I take out of Fate, thematically, which is to say: probably nothing.

I find this profoundly sad: someone obviously put a lot of thought into writing this, and a lot of people take something away from it. But this something seems to be forever locked away at a place I cannot reach, an experience I will never make. Ultimately, this is not a critique of the visual novel itself in any capacity, but just me being who I am.

Again, in my defense: this is far from being the case with all works I read. In my opinion, the greatest thing a piece of writing can do for me, is to both hold a mirror in front of me and at the same time give me the words to describe what I see. Sometimes I deal with feelings and mental states that I barely recognize myself - until I see someone first lay out these exact feelings in writing to the point that I recognize them as my own, and then continues to describe what is going on in clear language, allowing me to categorize and understand this facet of myself. It is a rare occassion but I sometimes do encounter a work that gives me something substantial.

This is, in fact, one of the things I like so much about Chitose-kun wa Ramune-bin no Naka (千歳くんはラムネ瓶のなか / Chitose Is in the Ramune Bottle): the series managed to appear in my life at the perfect time, and it talked about some of the not-so-pleasant things I was feeling, which helped me understand them and feel recognized. At the same time, it had some discussions about what I consider one of my long-standing character flaws and helped me see it in a different light that might just help me do something about it. Maybe. But without a doubt, these novels have done something for my personal growth. That's something only very few media could say of themselves, and Fate is not one of them.

I think this is about it, in terms of things I had to say about the themes of the VN. I'll get into some of the lower-level stuff next.

Fate's Writing

Fate's writing is interesting in many ways. I'm also not sure I generally like it. I have no idea how to present my thoughts on this in a structured manner so here come a couple more or less unrelated points.

Fate is amazing at writing slice of life. I could feel my pace of reading picking up whenever I encountered one of the more extended slice-of-life sections of the VN, because I had so much fun reading them. The character dynamics are interesting, even characters that don't have a lot of substance like Fujimura contribute a ton to the atmosphere, there's some amazing humor and it is so lived in.

By the end of the visual novel, we have a very precise idea of how our main characters go about their everyday lives, their routines and so on. We know the rough composition of the Emiya-household as a physical building, almost every room having its own role, its own atmosphere and its own character and history that it accumulates throughout the story. Shirou's room is a barren and empty place with associations of mostly dreamt and very real variations of horror. In comparison, the living room is mostly a place of peace and calm and of fun, of social gathering and companionship. And sometimes, at the flick of a switch, of murder and bloodshed, which fits all too well with the overall tone of the series.

And this extends beyond Shirou's home. While we are never shown a map of the city of Fuyuki, we do get a detailed description of its geography, and this is infused throughout the entire story. We have a rough idea of what Shirou's way to school looks like, or the Ryuudou temple, the new modern Shinto part of the city etc. This is a very impressive feat to achieve through writing and background pictures alone.

Despite the overall setup of Fate feeling like it would lend itself incredibly well to many tried and boring character tropes, it manages to either avoid these or give them much more depth. Like, if you asked me to describe Rin in a single word, that word would likely be “Tsundere”, and while that is absolutely a correct descriptive to use, it feels far from sufficient. This is the first word I would think of not so much because it captures much of her character, but on the contrary, because there is too much “character” going on here to capture much in a single word at all.

There is not only depth but a feeling of completeness to these characters that allows us to think of them as more than just cogs in a story but instead as real human beings with complicated, deep and sometimes very random lives. This is particularly well-reflected in those characters’ relationships with each other. During the intro, there is a scene where Rin talks to a schoolmate and them having this fun rivalry vibe. You'd think this might be important and it certainly felt so enough that I remember this happening. I don't recall these characters ever having another interaction again after that. The same could be said about Rin's relationship with Issei: these two have an issue with each other, there is history, and we never find out why. But you know what? It just works! I can't explain it but yes, in my mind it makes perfect sense that to Issei, Rin is the personification of evil or something.

On a sidenote, I am a big fan of the idea of having a male main character who certainly gets his moments of “overpowered”, but who is otherwise surrounded almost exclusively by women who could beat the shit out of him, and in fact, most of them do end up literally killing him at one point or another.

One of the greatest things about Fate is how it has a very clear grip on everything that is going on in its setting, how there is a lot of actors doing different things at all times that affect everyone else, and at some points our main characters are only seeing the surface of it. This is compounded by the fact that very different things happen on different routes, but they all feel internally consistent. They also enable the amazing experience of going through the Fate route without ever finding out who Archer is, then going through the Unlimited Blade Works route and enjoying your happy ending, only for the memory of everything you've experienced so far to sour once you find out what Sakura has been going through the entire time you were busy flirting with Saber and Rin.

It's particularly funny to observe on the Heaven's Feel route where our main characters are more or less clueless about what's going on for 70% of the route, having a nice and sometimes not-so-nice mostly slice-of-life experience while someone is busy absolutely wrecking the competition as well as maybe a third of the population of Fuyuki city.

Fate managed to shift the focus between different characters mostly very well between routes. Characters like Sakura certainly have their role, but are also just kinda there for most of the first two routes, only to take center stage and live out their full potential in Heaven's Feel, and that is for the most part very enjoyable to watch. Only sometimes the game feels a bit incomplete, as with how Iliya is treated and the game giving you signs that there's a bit more to explore that it never does.

Besides, re-reading this after having just finished the Heaven's Feel route, I'll have to add to this:

I'm not sure there are any “lives rent-free in my head” moments

I'm still not sure there's anything in Fate that I would give this honor to, but some moments are incredibly strong. Sparks Liner High was one hell of a hype finisher, especially considering that it's a bad end of sorts, and the Normal Ending of Heaven's Feel is nothing but crushing, to name just the two most recent ones that I remember well.

Finally, Fate has some incredibly funny moments and managed to make me laugh out loud several times.

World-building and exposition

Fate has an interesting take on fantasy, or perhaps more specifically magic, and that's perhaps the most I can say about that. I'd be hard-pressed to characterize Fate's magic system in a few sentences because there's isn't much in terms of overarching principles that conveniently convey much of how it works.

I've said something similar about Rin's character above, but in this case, I will have to say that this is a decidedly negative aspect.

Fate's magic system, or it's relationship with it's fantastic, supernatural aspects as a whole, is very strange.

But before I dive into that more deeply, a bit of disclosure: I'm a mechanics guy. I love thinking about the rules that fictional works present us with, thinking about what these mean for the lives of our characters, for any given situation, trying to predict what will happen and setting expectations for what is possible in the first place. I love internally consistent systems that play out in ways that feel natural almost to the point of being scientific. This is the reason I am such a fan of Brandon Sanderson's works and what he calls hard magic, even though I've only finished the first couple Mistborn books, because everything is well thought-out and you could have predicted several “world-changing” discoveries in the book if you'd thought things to their natural conclusion after the first volume. I cannot put into words how satisfying it is to watch this unfold.

Anyway, most fantasy stories, or at least most that I read, are not good at this. It usually comes down to authors coming up with systems that they don't particularly care about so they frequently throw their own logic over board when it would be cooler to give their main character just one more power (or for any other reason you can think of). As you may guess from the example, this is a very popular direction with basically every power-fantasy fastfood light novel. This is a shame and I think the stories suffer as a result. While the fastfood stays fastfood either way, one could e.g. have a lot of fun coming up with very creative uses of a single weird power or fantasy element. But this is far from being restricted to those kinds of stories, and almost every fantasy story I've ever read struggles with this to some extent.

The other thing that often happens, although effectively the same flow, is when authors who do care run up against the limits of the rules they've created themselves. When they fail to reconcile what their story needs with the rules they created, the rules are usually the first thing to be sacrificed (not that we'd ever know if it were the other way around). This is partially understandable, and one may argue that bending the rules to write a better story is ultimately the better choice compared to writing a less interesting plotline that adheres to the rules.

But I also think it is lazy. There are different ways to handle this, such as bending the rules without making a fuss and relying completely on the readers’ suspension of disbelief to accept the rule violation without asking questions. The other option is to acknowledge the rule violation and come up with a bullshit explanation.

Fate is squarely, with strong conviction, in the latter camp, to a degree that maximizes the negative aspects from this approach and lives them out to their fullest.

But perhaps I should start with a slightly different, albeit related criticism: Fate is not very good at exposition. Exposition typically takes the shape of very extended info dumps. And while I am absolutely fine with, and in fact a big fan of, in-depth explanations of complicated systems, the way Fate does it is… weird. For example, even very technical info-dumps like the initial explanation of the servant system and similar mechanics tend to be too long. And when I say too long, I mean it: I ended up spending close to an hour on several of these exposition scenes!

This is simply tiring and way too much by all possible measures. It is also quite obviously not “necessary” length, as the scenes are often massively stretched out by what I can only describe as… posing? These exposition scenes do, at the very least, feel very “Fate” in how they are done, and I'm not sure exactly how to describe this. Fate tends to put a lot of “fluff” in these scenes in the form of similes and metaphors that neither help explaining the circumstances nor carry thematic meaning as far as I can tell. I guess they do express how these characters process information, but not in ways that are particularly interesting or add much to their characterization.

Back to bullshit explanations: these info-dumps are also deployed whenever Fate needs to justify a violation of its rules or otherwise explain circumstances that don't seem to make much sense based on what we know about Fate's magic system and the principles of the grail war. Now, you may have noticed I'm not giving you much in terms of concrete examples, and that's because I barely remember. It happens all the time so these scenes kinda just flow into each other. The one instance I still recall the best, was the introduction of Anri Mayu in the Heaven's Feel route, and even here I barely remember what happened. What I do remember is that I spent 45mins reading this scene with the only takeaway being “there is something very evil in the grail”. Like all the other exposition scenes, it felt very lore-heavy except that none of this usually feels relevant to the plot or the themes of the story.

To sum up, the way that Fate handles the limitations of its ruleset, is usually by trying to convince you that everything is alright in a one-hour monologue until you've forgot the point you initially complained about. I cannot describe it another way, because I don't see these scenes delivering much that would justify the amount of time spent in them, they are the most unfun parts of the entire VN and they are overall very weak attempts at expanding the lore of Fate.

Finally, we can circle back to Fate's magic system. This one is difficult to talk about because Fate doesn't have “one magic system” but rather several more or less independent systems that interact with each other, as well as a couple singularities that affect everything else.

Perhaps the most central part is the “grail war system” (I'm going to call it that now): it defines the rules of the very game that we spend watching unfold for 95% of the visual novel. But even that is nothing more than one random thing a bunch of mages came up with only a couple hundred years ago, and that fits into a world and a conception of magic that are much older. I am a fan of the idea that we spend most of the runtime engaging with a mere subsystem of something much bigger, and how Fate every once in a while drops hints of there being an entire world beyond what we see. This is the good “cinematic universe” kind of stuff.

The idea of servants being famous historical and mythological figures helps to anchor the Fate universe in reality, makes it easier to connect with and tickles my meagre culture knowledgebase in exactly the right way. At the very least, it's fun trying to figure out which servant is which well-known figure. That said, Fate does take liberty with the details of their backgrounds and the details of the powers and weaknesses, so if you're deep into that stuff you might find yourself frustrated with said liberties.

I generally like the idea that there are many unrelated systems, rulesets and anomalies in Fate that are intertwined in complicated ways. The world of Fate is chaotic, just like real life, and Fate does replicate this in a way. At the same time, it makes things feel a bit too chaotic at times, non-sensical at others, and overall often invites you to disengage when it comes to the details, because they usually don't get a lot of care and the VN doesn't reward you much for trying to understand how things work. A lot of very basic things are never explained or only very late into the story, and for some of them you'll only get a rough vibe or build your own mental model based on the interactions you've witnessed. In fact, I quite like the latter, but this doesn't work too well in Fate because it doesn't execute this very cleanly or consistently. To this day I couldn't tell you to any meaningful extent what the possibilities and limitations of magecraft in Fate are. This makes it difficult to frame a lot of the magic-related interactions in Fate beyond vibes like “Toosaka is stronk mage and Shirou is weak af”.

Overall, Fate's handling of its fantastical elements has some very interesting sides, but I was often disappointed that it didn't treat its own rules with more care or consistency.

The Mechanics of a Visual Novel

While I have some experience with Visual Novels, Fate, by far, makes the best use of the medium.

Fate is much more than character stills with voice lines in front of drawn backgrounds: the VN is extremely rich in CGs, unique backgrounds and visualizations, sound effects and even animation. This is particularly obvious in the fight scenes which feature animations of sword slahes and appropriate sound effects, moving character stills etc. for an overall very dynamic presentation.

While the animation is mostly kept to a minimum in other scenes, there is still a lot of art in Fate that helps bring it's various places and settings to life. Sound effects and background transitions etc. are employed dynamically, including in the middle of characters’ thought and voice lines, giving a strong “in the moment” feel.

Aside from that, as is standard these days, since the remake everything is voiced. As someone who is quite sensitive to voices in general, this makes me very happy and I cannot imagine the game without it. It's good to hear Kawasumi Ayako as Saber, who I remember very well for voicing Riveria in DanMachi, and Fate is the reason I remember not only the voice but even the name of Suwabe Junichi. Good voice acting is a delight as usual.

Finally, I am a big fan of how Fate handles the VN-typical decisions in some places. For one thing, the fact that a significant number of decisions might end up literally killing the main character or put him up for a fate worse than death, works extremely well. Due to the nature of quick saves and the VN expressly letting you jump back to the last decision etc. these do not add much in terms of stakes or pressure, but they are a constant and effective reminder of how merciless and gruesome the setting is, how our characters are constantly walking a tightrope where a single missstep will lead to death, and that the one or two good endings you see are the rare exception among a sea of calamities. They also allow us to see beyond the happy path and explore a few interesting ideas that would have been difficult to fit into the main narrative, such as what would happen if Shirou ignored all the good advice his allies (and sometimes enemies) gave him, or what happens when Shirou gets too gay with Issei finds out there's a sleeper agent planted into his best friend.

In some places, the choice works particularly well as a narrative device. For the first couple days of the Fate route, perhaps the main theme is Shirou insisting on solving all problems on his own without exposing Saber to danger, even if doing so is literally impossible and will kill him. After trying to do things his way and getting badly hurt or barely saved from death by pure chance several times, Shirou finds himself up in a direct duel against Rider. After trying to put up a fight for a while, he is eventually kicked out of a 3rd floor window, falling headfirst to his death. And that is the point at which the scales tipped just far enough to balance out, where the mere possibility of asking for help finally takes shape and you get a choice: call Saber to help you, or do nothing.

The choice itself is stupid: it might as well be “call for help” or “Taiga doujou”. But I love how it seems to reflect what goes on in Shirou's head. At no point before was there ever a hint of doubt, Shirou never even considered calling Saber and thus we didn't get a choice. And after having been brutally beaten down several times and being a split second from death, Shirou finally finds himself on the edge, where the idea of calling for help has, to him, become an alternative worth giving even the slightest bit of consideration. We get a choice, because this is the first point where following his heroic delusions or calling for help are both fundamentally possible for this character. I think this is an amazing way to use choices to express how your character works.

That said, I was sometimes disappointed when a bad end explores an interesting alternative, but then cuts things short. The biggest offender here, in my opinion, is when Shirou gets the choice to kill Sakura, or to stop Rin and let her live. Over the course of all 3 routes, this is the closest that we ever get to confronting Shirou with what his own ideals really mean, what he sacrifices by choosing one thing over another, and what reality looks like compared to the dream world he's been fantasizing about this entire time. It's almost funny how the core of Unlimited Bladeworks is about Shirou, sticking to his ideals, arguing with Archer trying to convince him that he's wrong. But the entire argument is kept at an absolutely ridiculous level of abstractness and the entire route flat-out refuses to ever make anything of this practical or explicit. And then we get Heaven's Feel putting the conflict right on the table in the most painful way possible. That's great!

What's not so great is that, when you decide to kill Sakura, it just… happens, with a short paragraph explaining how Shirou would go on to win the grail war, but wouldn't be himself anymore. Which is honestly very boring. Part of me can appreciate how clear the connection seems to be in the writer's head that Shirou choosing to kill Sakura is the end of the Shirou we know and that everything else follows as a direct, immutable consequence. But at the same time it is the writer's job to make me believe this. For one thing, I find it hard to believe that one moment we're on the happy path, and one bad choice later Shirou is an entirely different character. And the rest is just me wanting to watch things play out and unfold slowly, believably. I can understand that the Shirou we know could not accept Sakura's death. But I want to see him deal with this. I want to see him struggle with the consequences of his actions, to suffer and eventually break, or become something else entirely.

You know, I get it: we can't spend several in-game days worth of writing on a bad end, but this is, in my opinion, perhaps the most interesting branching point in the entire visual novel, and it feels so, so far from being utilized to its full potential.

On a side note, I am not kidding when I say that it took me until Iliya literally spelled it out right before this decision, to realize that there is a very fundamental difference between Shirou and Kiritsugu.

A part of my Life

Enough about the actual visual novel; It's time to time to talk about how this fit into my life and other meta-stuff.

One interesting part of growing up, is going through “phases” of my life where I'm intensely focused on one or a few things for months or years at a time, and a few relatively distinct factors end up shaping my perception of this period. In practice, this is usually a specific song that I used to listen to dozens of times a week while doing a specific activity, but it sometimes works for smell or other activities as well.

Perhaps the oldest example of this is how hearing Taio Cruz’ Dynamite immediately reminds me of flying through space in this one shitty Free-to-Play, Pay-to-Win browser game I used to play when I was 12 or something. There is a certain kind of smell that is “very Chinese”, and because my nose is broken I cannot describe it any better, but after having spent 3 weeks visiting my brother in China a couple years ago, that one time I got off the plane and entered the airport in Shanghai immediately transported me back to that period, and so does entering authentic Chinese restaurants here in Tokyo sometimes. I spent about a year intensely (by my standards, anyway) playing World of Tanks with a friend, and while most of that period wasn't that remarkable, I now closely associate World of Tanks with an internship I did in Munich for a couple months right during that time. I discovered the song Oshakashama by RADWIMPS at a time when I was working an extremely depressing job, and because I listened to that song on repeat during that period, listening to it again these days still makes me feel stressed by pure power of association. I spent over 3 years playing through the If My Heart had Wings visual novel (IMHHW), and because that overlapped mostly with my undergraduate program, this game really reminds me of undergrad, of the student dorm I lived in, and of Covid now.

This brings us back to Fate: I started playing Fate in November 2024. Around the same time, I started working remotely for a Japanese company, and then eventually moved to Japan. It has been a chaotic almost two years since then, and Fate has kept me company through all of that. My life has finally calmed down and mostly stabilized this year, but there's no doubt that Fate will always remind me of this specific phase of my life: the start of my professional career, and the start of my life in Japan.

Aside from that, as you may have guessed from the amount of time it took me to get through Fate, I've been struggling extremely hard to find the time for it. I took a while to go through IMHHW too, but that was mostly due to forcing myself to record all of this and publish it on Youtube, 30mins at a time. Fate was different, I technically had more than enough time to go through it (including a jobless period of several months), but I still found it quite hard to read Fate at times, for a variety of reasons. The Switch clocks it at exactly 150h of playtime for me, though I wonder how that's computed because that seems suspiciously high.

The most obvious reason is that I now have less time as a “working adult” and struggled to fit it into my day. But Fate is also shaped particularly inconveniently for fitting it anywhere. I have a habit of reading every night before going to bed, but that's somewhere between 10 and 30mins per day. Depending on what scene you're currently at, Fate doesn't really fit into those windows. It might be fine during the slice-of-life passages, but during the lore dump scenes, the more intense fight scenes or thematic showdowns, you don't want to put down the game after 10mins. Not even because it's that exciting necessarily, but because I'm afraid it'll break the immersion, make you lose track of what's going on, or both. Such scenes are very common in Fate, but often times you don't know what you're getting into, so you always have to plan for the worst. It's difficult to find the time for the worst case, where I sit down specifically and intently to read Fate. Aside from that, purely in terms of vibes, Fate doesn't lend itself too well to “my chill bedtime reading session”. I had the feeling that Fate demands a level of commitment and concentration that I was often not able to provide. This led to me taking a long, long time to finish. Even then, I still feel like I was not able to absorb the work in the most optimal way, partially because I did sometimes end up reading it in less favourable settings, and partially because waiting for “the perfect time” ended up sometimes enforcing breaks of a month or more between sessions. Often times I was just not “in the mood” for Fate, though sometimes when I felt that way I needed only to get back to it and immediately lost myself in the novel again.

Another part of the issue is me deciding I'd have to write most of this blog post before I finish the game. I often have issues remembering details from media I consumed even just a few weeks back, and I feared that if I didn't do this, I might end up finishing the game and then putting the blog article off until the point where I would no longer be able to write it.

I reached the last day on the Heaven's Feel route in February or March this year. You see when the article was published. This is how long the game sat mostly idle while I was “busy” writing this article.

In any case, that's about all I had to say. Fate was a journey, and I'm not sure it's a journey I would recommend to anyone in particular, but I don't regret doing this and it has left its mark on my life.

Now, on to see what I'll do/read next. There are a bunch of bigger reading projects (other VNs or novel series) that I've put off because I wanted to focus on Fate. I'm sure I have some catch up to do on DanMachi, maybe the next SAO arc has finished, I could finally get into the Unnamed Memory series or continue with Chitose in the Ramune Bottle. Or I could at least finish the intro chapter of the White Album 2 VN that I've started years ago and am already several hours into, or get into the Mahoutsukai no Yoru VN that's been installed on my Switch, equally for years already. I also need to write about the whole moving-to-Japan affair and reflections on becoming an engineer and working life.

Until then, see you at the next article