#especially when someone like Cu has the VN to fall back on but couldn't they at least have given Calter a proper Riastrad

[300iqprower]

Howdy howdy hope you're having a good day. In the tags of one of your posts you mentioned feeling that you think Nasuverse Cú is "squandered" in some way. Is it just a lack of apperences? Characterization issues? Hope ya don't mind me picking your brain a bit. Personally I've always found Nasuverse's Cú Chulainn one of the better adaptations of the figure - mainly because it seems like he's the only one I've been able to find who actually *likes* being Cú Chulainn in a sea of adaptations that play him up in a morose, tragic, broody way were his own existence is a curse upon himself (Hound Graphic Novel you are my sworn enemy) - which feels like it carries the spirit of the hero a lot better. Hope ya don't mind this chunky ask and that little tangent I went on, and I hope ya have a great day!

Oh no prob. For me it's a combination of how his myth is incorporated and lack of appearances. Characterization wise I think he's amazing. I get why StayNight servants don't really do anything in FGO but I think only some of them deserved that treatment. Rider, Bersaka, Sabah, and Satan I get because they all had big roles throughout. Caster, both Assassins, and to a lesser extent GaShinda however I think deserved to have proper roles in FGO, and of those 4 the only one who ever got that was Carm. Kijiro was a complete joke in Shimousa, Medea got replaced with an objectively worse Lily in Okeanos and LB5, and proper Medea's only appearance in the main story was a fake out, and Cu somehow has 4 different servants (5 if we count Arcade) who have all done NOTHING AT ALL. Custer was our tutorial plot device, Proto Cu is a glorified Easter Egg, and Calter is just part of Medb's character rather than his own thing. Combine all of that with the fact that Cu's most notable thing in his original story is how no matter what he dies (and how none of those deaths are ones that take place at the center of the story, with only 1 being a major story moment. Funnily enough that's my preferred route for completely different reasons). I know he's a bigger deal in Hollow Atarxia and has a connection with Bazzett but I dont know jack about HA besides it's a time loop thing about Bazzett and Angry Mango. I do know that even in Extraverse he dies and it's so that Extra!Rin has a story excuse to get superpowers pretty much.

It feels to me like he's this really cool character who isn't undersold per se, it's just he also never...well, does anything, especially in FGO even when Castoria gets to be a thing, Carm gets to have a role, Emiya gets his Alter in a story role, and now Shirou and Kotomine are flat out major antagonists. What does Cu get? A berserker alter who doesn't even have Warp Spasm and whose entire character is how much he DOESNT have a personality beyond "Bored. Kill." When Custer finally got a real role in LB6, it wasn't even Cu who was doing the work, but Odin. Not Lugh, Odin. WtFUCK.

The irony is you're right about Fate feeling like one of the few depictions of him where he's allowed to just be content with himself and be cool, yet Nasu's writing has a seriously callous regard for Celtic mythology; he pretty blatantly leaves stuff out or appropriates it to fit British focused narratives, and his writing has heavy pro-imperialist themes in regards to British erasure of Celtic culture. He has the same attitude towards norse culture and I'm sure it's connected to Odin being in lb6 rather than Lugh. I honestly can't understand the thought process like why would make a Celtic hero one of your most well known characters with what seems like genuine fondness for their myth but then pull all that...?

But that's a whole other conversation. TLDR, I don't think he's a bad character - far from it. But I feel like I have no reason to care about him as his own character, and they don't even implement things that could expand on him so much like Proto Cu and his master or the Riastrad or Emer or Aife etc.

#I get that there's not enough time in the day to make every character special with a cast that size #especially when someone like Cu has the VN to fall back on but couldn't they at least have given Calter a proper Riastrad #fgo #fate cu chulainn #never thought i'd get an ask #character analysis #AND THE NAME CU CHULAINN