I was going to add other aspects to this, such as the ending of Hazbin and the Lostbelts from the same game I'll be discussing, but then I realized I wrote a ton about just this one section.

So, the one aside I'll note is: I switched over to Quobuz some months ago, but Spotify still made a wrapped for me and it said my "listening age" is 82. I don't know if what is an average, because none of my top 5 artists were even from 80 years ago, but if you average out Holst and Nightwish... perhaps?

As Fate/Extella Link did get me to go back to Fate/Grand Order:

The final part of the first plot arc I had was a bit underwhelming, but everything after that? Some of these plot lines deserve far more than to be locked behind the first whole arc of a gatcha game.

First off: Salem. Yes, that Salem. Likely the most famous material about Salem, Massachusetts is The Crucible, a play from the McCarthy Era meant to connect the hysteria of the witch hunts to McCarthyism. It is effective at that, but it also focuses more on personal drama. For example, it makes Abigail, who was a child historically, into a fully grown adulteress. It also avoids focusing on some of the major underlying factors behind the witch hunts, many of which were inherently misogynistic.

To that end, this gatcha game with an ample amount of fanservice actually does... a better job at portraying the overall picture?? Sure, a fair amount of Fate material already proved their merit in writing, particularly Fate/Zero, but try to explain this being an optional chapter of a gatcha game.

Which starts out with an anomaly of unknown proportions originating in Salem that could nonetheless impact the future of the world. Da Vinci and Sherlock Holmes coming up with the brilliant idea to send a group of servants into the village. These servants are given instructions to be pretend to be traveling theatre trope. The plays are written directly by Shakespeare and Hans Christian Anderson while they were drunk the night before.

... and the servants (translation: effectively familiars who take on the forms of historical/mythic figures) they send are: Mata Hari, Charles-Henri Sanson, Robin Hood, and Nezha. Circe accidentally shows up.

And, if that doesn't sound like the beginning of some truly unhinged crackfic that could be either phenomenally shitty or brilliant, then I don't know what does.

Yet, there is some logic behind it as most servants would be incapable of keeping a low profile. Hell, many are divine or monarchs with 0 concern with any such things. They directly call out how puritans would be fundamentally opposed to plays to begin with - and they are at first, so the first one they pick is a biblical story - and starting out as obvious outsiders is less of a hurdle than attempting to blend in more.

The puritans are also, accurately, offended by: the servants showing skin, their outfits having color, and Sanson being French.




The character choices here ends up being fascinating in what they represent relative to the plot here:

Mata Hari - For some background, as she's not the most well-known figure: Mata Hari was a Dutch exotic dancer/courtesan who preformed in Paris. She was accused of spying for the Germans during WWI, but there is a lack of evidence of that. Today, it is widely believed she was scapegoated because the French army wanted to blame someone for their intelligence leaks. Her F/GO version insists in her backstory that she was loyal to France.

She had what I can only describe as a horrible, abusive life between her father, a headmaster (she was taken out of school because he was hitting on her), her husband, and men she'd have to deal with in the profession she fell into.

As for why she is a servant, her story is considered the main origin point of the modern "femme fatale" archetype. Something that, once you know the horrors of her life... well, you can draw your own judgments from that.

Charles-Henri Sanson - Someone you've likely never heard of unless you're really into the French revolution, executions, or the history of executions. Sanson was the primary executioner during the French Revolution, and as such, is recorded to have executed nearly 3000 people.

Still, he did not actively choose that profession. He was born into a family of executioners, was shunned in life for what his family did, and in essence continued the profession he was born into. It would be inaccurate to say he didn't have a say in it, and he actually did initially go to study medicine instead. Still, he gave that after his father became paralyzed, so he took over his father's executioner position to ensure the livelihood of his family. I'm not going to pass any personal judgments here, but it's clearly a more complicated situation than one would assume upon reading "killed 3000 people."

His fictional version reflects all of that. He has healing skills from his medical background, and he will happily aid someone back to health... or summon a guillotine at them, as he's also relatively proud of the whole installing guillotines over older forms of execution thing. He tells himself that everyone he executed was guilty, which is a very human thing for someone to try to tell themselves to sleep at night.

Robin Hood - Would need no introduction, but now that we're far back enough that it's partially the realm of myth, Fate rules come into play, so he does need some introduction.

Fate is extremely lore-extensive, but the short version is: servants are made up of a "spirit origin" which is impacted by humanity's collective unconscious. In other words, if enough people believe something to be true of a historical figure or myth, it can become true. The awareness of this can vary a lot from individual to individual servant.

Robin has a core individual backstory and personality, but is also aware that he's been combined with aspects of other people. Plus, Robin of Loxley - the figure associated with Richard the Ist who was respected enough to have such a title - is considered an altogether different person who is summoned as part of Richard's entourage. He additionally has some aspects of an older 'May King' forest-man pagan concept.

To which end, this Robin was the son of a forest druid in the 1100s. The relevant point there is it was an era when Christianity was actively routing out any last remaining vestiges of paganism. After his father died, the village refused to take in a boy touched by such things.

He becomes the forest bandit you'd expect, but he keeps on protecting the village from cruel and authoritarian lords using a variety of subterfuge tactics. It is pretty apparent that, despite often claiming to be a cynic and a variety of other such things, one of his core motivations is a yearning for acceptance. Yet, for his efforts, he too gets eventually scapegoated and blamed by the very village he protected.

Far less serious aside: His first act in this chapter is stealing hard cider for Shakespeare and Anderson. In exchange, Robin gets a lot of it himself as the authors challenged him to a drinking contest. We have no clue who won, but Robin has a massive hangover while the authors seem perfectly fine.

Circe - Not just a witch, the "QUEEN WITCH!" as she calls herself. Many times over.

Honestly, she's a delight and more power to her.

She's more well-known, but not necessarily a household name, so in brief: the key thing to know here is she is one of the originally "evil greek witch women" in such stories, perhaps most famously appearing in the Odyssey. She has her own island where she turns men into pigs. She follows the goddess Hecate, something that isn't painted as anything wrong. Rather, it's simply a different culture with spiritual beliefs of their own.

As an aside: Read Circe by Miller. It's one of the best modern Greek retellings out there.

Nezha - Is there. Does things sometimes. Gets upset at the injustice and suggests violence a lot?

Anyway, I'm never going to bring up Nezha again in this, so let's just ignore that.

That last one aside, you can likely already see how the others have points which make them thematically relevant to this particular plotline.

The true power of this chapter is when the witch hunts turn around and start including your own party. The first to get accused is - of course - Mata Hari.

Which comes in a one-two punch of misogyny. First, the main witch hunter - Matthew Hopkins who is here in the wrong country because this is Fate so why not - berates her because she was speaking her mind, to which he says women need to know their place. After hearing that, a village man accuses her of "harlotry." She points out that he is always the first to rush backstage to greet her once their shows are over. Everything about that last point is exactly the key factor that needs to be in any discussion of these types of accusations.

She isn't accused of witchcraft, but since the village is already in a stage of mass hysteria, it's effectively treated the same way.

The dialog during the trial is honestly A+ research. I was in earnest awe of one dialog option and response, as you can tell him that Jesus also blessed prostitutes, which is both a fact and something you see progressives today often bring up.

... but, his response was equally Biblical and focused on how that blessing only came after she prostrated herself in front of Jesus, renounced her ways, and swore loyalty to him. Hopkins then asks "Is (Mata Hari) willing to do the same?" ... which, no, of course not. For one thing, she, like many women, appears to have fallen into that profession initially out of a lack of other options. It creates a lose-lose situation if someone must renounce their main means of putting food on the table.

Similarly, twice it is pointed out that the villagers do drink hard cider (the unexpected return of hard cider!), especially after the harvest, and the second time they just respond that *they* deserve it after working hard. That is a mentality I can easily place when people defend their hypocrisy in reality, because you know, they're clearly the only people who work hard and everyone they dislike are just conveniently draining society somehow! That one is also historical fact, as drinking (so long as it was to unwind for hard work instead of partying) was, funnily enough, one of the few activities puritans were allowed to do other than worship God.

Mata Hari is sentenced to be executed, but Circe manages to use magic to allow Mata Hari to fake her own death.

The next to be put on trial is, likely more surprisingly, Sanson.

He is effectively in the opposite situation that he was in life. At one point, he uses his knowledge of medicine to save one of the village children. When that child's parent speaks up for Sanson later, that parent is then punished for it and ends up in the next round of executions. He actively begins hanging around Hopkins, observing his methods, and seeing directly how the evidence of the guilty can be flimsy at best. Or, even if someone is guilty, as one child is, that might mean the rules that cause such judgments are the real problem.

He defends that child - a child born to a family of eldritch-magic-users - and allows her to run away to save her life. She is actually one of the most directly "guilty" people in this whole mess, but she is just a child who had no say in this. Although it's not stated, I imagine the fact she simply... inherited that magic and her family's role was also likely a sticking point since it's a mirror of himself.

Still, as he does this directly in front of Hopkins, Sanson gets put on trial, immediately admits his guilt, and goes to the gallows while actively refusing Circe's help. At this point, the guilt of all the people he personally executed is weighing on him, and the game goes out of it's way to point out that all public executions - even "fast" and supposedly more "humane" ones like the guillotine - are also a form of psychological torture due to their public nature.

Sanson is a servant, but because of the specific magic they're being influenced by in Salem, all servants are rendered severely weakened and near-human levels. As such, this isn't going to erase his spirit origin, but it does have a permanent consequence in that it's going to erase a portion of his memory of being a servant.

Which causes Robin to go on a rant about how shallow they must be that they feel the need to cause suffering and kill good people in order to give their hollow lives meaning. Honestly, an extremely relevant mood considering some current situations.

The day prior, Robin started the day by "jokingly" saying he might as well just off himself, suggested violence as a solution (he was previously opposing all suggestions of violence), and then proceeded to suggest that it's pointless since the more good someone does, the more they'll be punished for it. He's likely re-living some highly specific emotions there. Just about everyone is going through it at this point.

Also after Sanson's execution, Circe uses magic in front of everyone to protect them from zombies (more on that soon enough). She immediately gets confronted about it, to which she once again declares herself QUEEN WITCH.

Well, we know who is going to be next.

Sort of.

Both Circe and the main character - as you're meant to be in of this performance trope and you've clearly done nothing except bring in sin - are placed in jail together to be next.

The final part of this is where it goes full eldritch. You're clearly going to be found guilty, but the whole situation has fallen off the rails to the point that now half the courtroom is zombies and no one is even reacting like they should to that. While that part is fantastical, the reasoning given for all of this is a good one: basically, an eldritch god specifically picked this moment in time to come to in order to feed off the hysteria, guilt, and ultimately bloodshed.

Abigail, who I haven't managed to mention but is a central figure here, is effectively picked as a type of vessel for said eldritch being. As I stated at the beginning, she was a child historically, and she is one here as well. You spend most of this interacting with her as simply an orphaned kid who wishes she could see more of the world, but behind the scenes she's been manipulated by adults (and their supernatural forces) all the way through. Historically, Abigail is known as the first person to accuse another of witchcraft in Salem. ... but, given how she was a child, the responsibility there is on the adults and how they reacted to it. We simply don't know the details, but it would not surprise me if the historical one was merely repeating what an adult said or something of that ilk.

We have a more modern version of that in the Satanic Panic, and for that one we have documented records of psychologists manipulating children to get the desired story out of them. Mata Hari has an observation near the beginning of this arc about how some of the villages, despite being pious on the surface, seem to be fighting over land rights. That is an accurate and all-to-common situation in rural or small towns. I bring that up because "accuse your neighbor of being sinful to settle the dispute" would be effective in such an environment.

Other random aside notes:
- There's a joke play they have to put on before it takes a turn for significantly darker. Said play is basically... Anderson wrote an actual crackfic involving the 3 Jeannes in the game (regular Jeanne, Jeanne Alter, and Jeanne Santa Alter). The plot is ripped off of the 3 little pigs while also being meta enough that it's aware it's ripping off the 3 little pigs. The 3 Jeannes keep on having their buildings destroyed: first by "pyromaniacs" (Nero is included), then by sun-based mythological servants, and finally by "THE WHOLE GOD DAMN BRITISH ARMY" (translation: this was just some of the knights of the round). Again, they were canonly drunk while writing these.
- Robin makes snide remarks at Sanson every chance he can get, but the ending epilogue has him actively reaching out to the Sanson who doesn't remember anything. He jokingly calls his sandwich a guillotine sandwich and Sanson seriously wonders what condiments look the most like blood. Medea shows up and reminisces about Circe with mixed emotions. That's the note this whole thing ends on.

... it also notes that Robin hasn't been sleeping well, although... servants shouldn't even need to sleep. And certain parts of that have apparently made fujos happy.
- Implied a bit when I wrote up their characters, but you can draw a line from Circe as an ancient version of this myth - > the attacks against pagans (or other religious minorities) in the medieval era - > the witch hunts in the renaissance, and all 3 would technically be present all at once here. Culture and technology change, but people really don't.
- Servant cards range from 1-5*s. Robin is only a 3*, but I grailed him twice soon after this. Honestly, no regrets.
- Seriously, this needs to be studied in how it's so well written and yet so absurd.


Sometime in the future (possibly? likely?): why the Lostbelt where Ivan the Terrible is a giant mammoth and Anastasia (the famous Romanov girl, not Ivan's wife who is also confusingly named Anastasia) is running around with ice magic is actually a realistic tale of survival and the lengths humans will go to for it.

Even though

if I were to make an impromptu soundtrack for it, inspired by the random songs I kept on getting stuck in my head it during it would be:

Ice Ice Baby - Vanilla Ice
Mother Russia - Iron Maiden
The Ballad of Billy the Kid - Billy Joel
Rock Me Amadeus - Falco
Let it Go - Frozen, but pretend it's sung by Anastasia (I'm sorry yet not sorry)
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (although this one is... in the actual game)

Although perhaps that insane combination of things doesn't seem quite so random after everything else I just wrote.