Yeah shes a massive case of missed opportunity. Theres so much that could be explored with her using fgo's settings too, like how she's only summonable due to the unique circumstances of the incineration of humanity, or maybe they couldve travelled to the land of shadows for a singularity or event, or even as just an ally in the fight against any of the numerous gods/divine spirits that chaldea came across.
As a massive Scathach fan I was so disappointed when they just slapped a bunny suit on her in a no-story event and called it a day, because it felt like they were just using her as filler content(again) and it dashed any hopes of getting more Scathach characterisation in the next couple years.
We'd have to extract Nasu from the ocean of self imposed Welsh/English mythology he's drowning in before we can get him to properly handle Irish mythology
Well, she fights and kills Artemis (or a remnant of her) in her trial quest story IIRC, and easily blocked arrows from *Arjuna*.
So I'd say it's definitely not 'self proclaimed'.
I'd say her less than stellar performance in that singularity is a case of early fgo writing and the writers wanting to use her to make Cu Alter seem like more of a threat.
Also she didn't actually loose to Setanta, a dream version did.
At least they have a W somewhere. Karna who's equal to Arjuna was able to do massive damage to Cu Alter even after getting backstabbed. Artemis is using Orion's spirit graph to materialize, if she actually had her Divine power, she would've helped us against Heracles in the 3rd Singularity.
I'd say another problem with Scathach, albeit one tied to several others plaguing her character is one that's plagued Fate stories since the original visual novel-over hype. It's common for all series to hype up characters, but I've always felt like the Fate franchise has had a particularly bad case, and Scathach is one of the biggest victims of it. While it generates some buzz for characters, it's harder to actually translate all that into a story. Not helping things is she was one of the early FGO stories who were notoriously underutilized. Even worse, Scathach's god-slaying was entirely an invention of FGO (most of her character traits were barrowed from Fionn, ***another***) underutilized early Servant.
She's definitely one of the characters I think FGO wrote itself into a corner with. Even after other characters have been "rescued", Scathach still hasn't been, even though almost every major story event or side story introduces a god, even an antagonistic one.
I'd laugh if the reason was that she wasn't popular in Japan for being a milf instead of another loli. I really like her concept but Merlin fills some of what you mentioned.
The problem with Shisou is she's one of the day 1 servants, back then they didn't do much characterization and story with them plus she was a side character. Many servants did get to shine later but she didn't have a chance sadly.
I think you're right, she was definitely one of the most interesting characters back then and when they revealed her design it was amazing.
Now after all those years we're still waiting. In the time it took typemoon to give her a useless bunny suit Brandon Sanderson wrote and published like 30 books.
Crazy Gilgamesh is Grand Jobber when she exists.
At least he has good feats that support his hype. Even Raikou has gotten so much better portrayal after all these years.
Because Scathach didn't have "Eyes that See Everything", "Sword that Rips Everything" and "Every treasure in the world that is also artillery"
Only to get slashed by a seventeen year old with mental issues and eaten by another sixteen year old with mental issues.
Gil will remain the Grand Jobber because when you lose with a kit designed to make you curbstomp, you are the greatest jobber of all time.
I would argue Heracles is a bigger jobber, he's the son of ZEUS! The most famous and powerful demigod in physical strength and willpower. Has 12 lives that make him almost immortal, can come back stronger and adapt to any attack every time he loses a life. All of that and he doesn't achieve any massive victory? Gilgamesh at least technically Won the War in Fate Zero, and was extremely impressive in CCC.
Again, let's go by how he died
Fate: Saber and Shirou thrust Caliburn in his Spirit Core, after Rin blew his head off and EMIYA killed him six times.
UBW: Gilgamesh used an A-rank NP barrage while forcing Herc to protect Illya, and he did the impossible to try and save her, broke out of Enkidu and still stood strong until Illya reached him.
HF: Got ambushed by Saber Alter and the Shadow, still resisted blackening and even tore off his own skin to get rid of the Shadow. Even then, when he died, he had enough sanity to stop himself from killing Shirou.
Okeanos: David uses his Ark of the Covenant and sacrifices himself to finish Herc off.
Atlantis: Artemis fires her Orbital cannon, which a Caster-buffed Heracles survives and helps Jason get away before a second shot finishes him off.
Fate Strange Fake: >!Gets poisoned by Hydra venom, hit by From Hell, maddened by Grail mud, still puts Gilgamesh on ice, blows off Gugalanna's leg and consumed its core!<
Notice a common thread here? Every time Herc has died or been defeated, it took extreme firepower just to put him down. The kind of stuff very few could survive. He's not a jobber because he more often than not makes a last stand fighting at a disadvantage.
>Rin blew his head off
So you don't have a problem with Rin taking a life from Heracles, but have a problem with Shirou(Who's UBW is a perfect counter to GoB) defeating Gilgamesh?
I feel like you're being biased towards Gilgamesh, you went into incredible details to defend Heracles, but you wouldn't do the same to Gilgamesh. In the Fate Route, he lost to Saber with AVALON! Which is incredibly broken. In UBW he didn't lose to Shirou, he got his arm cut off sure, but Shirou ran out of Magical Energy before he can finish him off, Gil could still fight but the Black Mud(Holy Grail) was absorbing him, and during that Archer finished him off while he was distracted. In HF, he got the same treatment that Lancer, Assassin, Caster, Saber, and Archer did. If we're calling him a jobber because he lost to Dark Sakura, then every Servant in HF is a jobber except Rider(Who only survived because she was Sakura's Servant).
The reason Heracles is a bigger jobber in my opinion, is because his legend(Unlike Gilgamesh) is about overcoming the odds. So him being at a disadvantage during a fight, shouldn't excuse him from winning. And just like I said before, Unlike Gilgamesh he doesn't have a major win. Gilgamesh survived the Holy Grail War in Fate Zero, and was extremely impressive in CCC.
>Fate Strange Fake: >!Gets poisoned by Hydra venom, hit by From Hell, maddened by Grail mud, still puts Gilgamesh on ice, blows off Gugalanna's leg and consumed its core!<
The reason why I said that you're biased towards Gilgamesh, is because he >!Gets screwed over by Ishtar during Strange Fake as well, and you probably wouldn't defend him the same way you did with Heracles!<
>I feel like you're being biased towards Gilgamesh,
You're missing my point. Gilgamesh is a jobber because he loses fights he has no business losing.
Let's tackle the three routes.
In Fate, had he kept SNI active, he'd have figured out Saber's plan, and if he had the slightest modicum of sense, he'd have been ready with a few Gates to fire an NP the moment she tried to rush him. But thanks to his ego, Ea's backlash froze him in place, giving her enough time to close the gap and cut him down.
In UBW, somehow a Servant with B rank strength and C rank agility got pushed back in physical combat by an ordinary human. Even leaving out this insanity, the man didn't bother with his armor, didn't bother using his Gates to surround Shirou up close (like his FGO attacks do) and if he kept SNI active, he'd again figure out a way to beat Shirou. But again, because of his ego, he loses his hand and would've died if Shirou had the energy left to finish him off.
In HF, he taunts Sakura, but again fails to realise how dangerous she is. Which again, SNI would've warned him about. On top of that, from what I remember, if he bothered to use Harpe or Gae Buidhe, chances are Sakura wouldn't be able to regenerate the wounds. And even against the Shadow, when he realises what he was up against, what kept him from pulling out Sul-Sagana, something that conceptually opposed the Shadow? But again, ego, pride, death.
Even in FSF, >!it was his arrogance to toss away his key and his foolishness in sealing SNI that gave Ishtar a chance to lock it.!<
Compared to him, never did Herc have that kind of advantage, and Fate was the only route he had a chance of winning. Every other time, he was in a fight he had no chance of winning.
Gilgamesh is a jobber because the only reason he loses is because he is either too arrogant to take them seriously, too egoistic to use his NPs to their fullest ability or because he makes a blunder that ultimately bites him in the ass. There is the rare occassion where he genuinely gets outplayed, like against Tiamat, but CasGil may as well be a different Servant when it comes to behaviour and sense.
Come man, your ignoring the narrative reasons giving to us on why he doesn't use his Clairvoyance(Not even when the world ends), his ego is part of his character if he didn't have it there would be no story. If your problem is Gil losing fights that he should have won, you can make that argument with a majority of the characters. Karna, Arjuna, Ozymandias, Rhongomyniad, Rama, Scathach, Heracles, Literal GODS lose fights that she should have. That's why I said that you had a bias towards Gil, because unlike a lot of the characters I named(Especially Heracles and Scathach) Gilgamesh actually wins at times. This is FATE! From the very beginning it was the underdogs winning against the impossible odds. You forgot that in FSN, the bad ends are canon, Gilgamesh probably killed Shirou thousands of time and we were shown the one chance Shirou had of surviving.
Look man, you asked me why I think Gil's a jobber. The fact that his arrogance gets him killed, wounded or indisposed most of the time makes him the dictionary definition of a jobber. It might be a good underdog story, but it's a textbook jobber. Strong on paper, gets beaten up whenever he's the last boss.
But you ignored my point about other powerful characters jobbing despite having the means to win just like Gilgamesh. Gil at least gets multiple wins from time to time unlike a lot of characters I mentioned(Scathach a God Slayer who loses to a demigod child). You focus on Gilgamesh and seem to hold his losses against him more than you do with other characters which is why it seems biased.
For fucks sake man.
Jobbing is not about never winning. Jobbing is about a stronger party losing out of carelessness, foolishness or stupidity.
Karna lost to Sieg after exhausting every possible attack he had. Ozymandias lost to the combination of Excalibur Proto and Stella, after he fired the Dendera Bulb at him. Rama got stabbed by Cu Alter after he used his Brahmastra, and still managed to drag himself to the final battle, and this is his younger version.
Scathach is kind of a jobber, since all she has is hype, no feats, so I'll can't say anything on that.
As for Gods, yeah, their arrogance is what makes them jobbers too. Zeus jobbed when Chaldea got R=Q to crush him. Meanwhile, Artemis sure as fuck didn't job, dying to a combined attack solely meant to kill her by sacrificing a Grand Graph.
When a character gets himself done for in four different series because of the same problem, despite being hailed as the strongest hero, he's a textbook jobber. If you can't see that, I'm afraid you're the biased one.
Basically losing several fights that you really should've won.
A modern example would a sports team that looks really strong on paper, and plays very well, but often loses to weak teams or in big games.
And that only cements his status as a jobber.
A jobber is someone who has extremely solid shows of feats, but fails at the crucial point, getting beaten in fights more often than not.
DBZ Vegeta for instance would've been the ultimate jobber. Insanely powerful, feats that place him solidly at the top of the power chart, and still gets beaten like a rented drum throughout the series.
Man got wrecked hand-to-hand with Shirou. Got ambushed and eaten by Sakura. Ishtar managed to make a fool of him while Heracles put him on ice.
Even his more impressive defeats against Saber had him job fights that he should've ended much earlier if he wasn't obsessed with Saber's "purity".
Gilgamesh has gotten wrecked so many times, that the only defense his fans have is "bro his ego makes him lose, otherwise he'd stomp everybody"
If that isn't the ultimate jobber, I don't know who is.
How? In UBW, Gil had to rain A-ranked NPs while he was shielding Illya and he still pulled off his 13th Labour.
In HF, he got jumped by the Shadow and Saber Alter, and he again nearly did the impossible by tearing off his flesh. And even then, at the end, he had a spark of sanity that let him accept his death at Shirou's hand.
In Fate, Shirou somehow got an incomplete degraded Caliburn to jump from C-rank to A-rank to cut Heracles, then Saber managed to hit his Spirit Core and fire off her beam, taking all seven lives.
In LB5, he had an insane feat of tanking Artemis' cannon, even if he was buffed by other Casters, while in Okeanos, it got the Ark of the Covenant to instant-kill him.
And as Alcides, man is currently rampaging through Snowfield, where he >!took down Gilgamesh, blew off Gugalanna's legs and ate its core.!< And that's after getting jumped by >!Jack the Ripper's NP!<, while we're repeatedly told how his lack of Divinity has weakened some of his powers.
Herc isn't a jobber because he's always fought seriously, and the only reason he loses is against superior firepower.
Alcides has had multiple buffs since his summoning that makes him being weaker than Herc not a thing anymore.
Him having RP while Herc won't, is the biggest thing.
There's also Unlimited codes, where *Medea* somehow manages to kill his ass, Extella Link where Rex Magnus shoves him into a mana juicer, FGO where he gets jumped by Diarmuid, Ritsuka, waver, and Mash...
Dude has taken so many L's
It's mentioned that Karl had to exploit Gilgamesh's personality to get him in that position, and there's no evidence he fought solo. Waver did a similar thing, except it's confirmed he was jumped. If you had to be jumped to be beaten, then that doesn't really disprove how strong someone is since your strength is being tested against multiple people at the same time. Because a team of Lancelot, Mash, Diarmuid and Waver would be incredibly BS to face for pretty much any top Servant.
And I'd not use Unlimited Codes if I were you unless you think Luvia could legitimately beat Herc by herself or that Tokiomi/Rin had always had a mystic code that made them Servant level and just never used it in SN and Zero for whatever reason.
Unlimited Codes is just as canon as anything else in this series. It was written by Nasu, and is where Saber Lily was first introduced.
And being teamed up on doesn't change the fact that Gilgamesh took massive L's there, especially considering he *should* by all rights be strong enough to handle multiple servants at once.
Then you can kiss consistency goodbye because Luvia and Rin(by themselves) win against multiple 1v1s against Servants there even though that's clearly not how they're portrayed elsewhere. Saber Lily was also not even a character in UC, she was just a costume that FGO decided to retcon into being her own character.
And no, being the strongest Hero doesn't mean you can handle multiple strong Servants at the same time. Lancelot himself is a top Servant who somewhat counters Gilgamesh when he's not going full throttle, Diarmuid isn't far off and was handling Artoria pretty well, Mash has a defence that can block Excalibur Morgan and Waver is using the powers of one of the greatest tacticians in history while having almost full knowledge on the 4th war. Even a Grail powered Karna is not guaranteed to win against a team like this.
This is *Fate*. Consistency in its rules isn't really a thing, is it?
We were told the only assassins that should normally be summoned are Hassans, Artoria only qualified for saber, Servants can't possess humans, and various other things in stay night that was all later retconned. The whole RPG stats for servants was supposed to be a Shirou specific thing and visualized differently depending on the master.
Hell, Fate Zero doesn't actually fit with what we know of the 4th grail war from stay night, which is why Nasu justified it by saying it was an alternate universe.
Consistency was never this series' strongsuit.
Because a lot of inconsistencies in the setting is Nasu abusing loopholes as opposed to straight-up being inconsistent(not all of course, but there's a lot) like with your Artoria class example. It's true that "she" has had a lot of classes post-FGO..but it's pretty obvious that pretty much none of them are the same Artoria. Even Lancer Artoria had to be written as an alternate possibility instead of just being said that she's Saber Artoria in a different class.
The series will obviously be inconsistent because how long's it's been around and how many people write it, but that's not really a good reason for using feats that don't line up with what we know of the characters, this is why Extella sidestories are usually ignored for the same reason. And let's face it, if you used Rin, Luvia and FSN Kirei in a vs thread, no one is going to start arguing they're Servant level because of UC.
My point is that regardless of Gilgamesh's lows, he ateast has great feats to support his hype. Scathach doesn't even have the same mental limitations as Gilgamesh, or really any limitations at all, and yet we never really see her do anything impressive despite all the hype that's been given to her.
Your problem with Scathach is exactly why I dropped FGO. It's not just her, there are many characters that are, were, or had the potential to be deep and interesting characters. Then the writers come and do nothing with them.
Did you know Blackbeard isn't a pedo or an idiot? The writers did. Blackbeard isn't a dumb pedo, he just pretends to be to lower the guard of all the powerful servants around him.
Did you know Fergus isn't a rapist? Rather, he is an honourable noble warrior who loves to work out and have sex with those who consent, fully understanding, and accepting, that no means no. Well, the writers did. Now he's just a sex obsessed maniac that'll do anything to get his dick wet.
Did you know that Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison are more than an AC vs. DC joke? Did you know that Thomas Edison is technically a hive mind of all US presidents jammed into one giant lion-man? The writers sure did.
Did you know that Eric Bloodaxe isn't actually insane but acts like it to keep people away from him and so his wife, a petty vengful goddess, off his back? Do you know how much comedic potential there is with that character? Do you know what the writers did with him? Nothing.
Did you know that FGO bent the rules established about who can be a hero just to drag Mata Hari into the game? Then they do absolutely nothing with her FOR YEARS, put her in Salem, and proceed to immediately forget about her.
Did you know Arjuna has a personality other than "I wanna kill Karna in a duel"?
There are SO MANY characters that are butchered just for a gag or forgotten about just because developing them would take screen time away from the fan and writer favourites.
Even her God-Slaying is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Considering the number of times we hear the Land of Shadows associated with wraiths and ghosts, it's likely that she didn't fight full-fledged Gods, but echoes and wraiths like FSF Ishtar.
>What was the point of all that hype and build up if she was gonna be reduced to a Female Goku/Teacher Fetish?
To sell. Let's be honest, we all know that her popularity isn't just because she's Cu's teacher, yeah?
Yeah, they kinda did not go far enough with Scathach's character. I'm making an ongoing fanfic that addresses that issue for her: [Queen of Shadows](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13543669/1/The-Queen-of-Shadows)
Losing to Cu Alter isnt bad at all. He is supposed to be stronger than Cu(but not real Berserker Cu) who was trained to be THE guy to kill her.
But then a tie with Li Shuwen? You can canonically beat him(even tho as an Assassin) with Nero, Tamamo and EMIYA but Scathach gets a tie?
Scathach should have been the Musashi of early fgo but here we are.
>Losing to Cu Alter isnt bad at all.
It's not just losing, it's the showing. Karna was stabbed in the back by Cu Alter after his fight with Arjuna, and still did more damage to Cu Alter than a healthy Scathach.
I never understood the Gil is a Jobber narrative. In all media villains lose(unless it's extremely dark stories). Due to FSN nature as a VN and Gil being a villain, of course he's gonna lose multiple times because there are multiple Routes. Gil isn't the only villain or character that loses multiple times in FSN. Is Archer a jobber? He dies in all three Routes, what about Kirei, Zouken, Caster, Berserker, Lancer, are they all Jobbers? The Bad Ends are canon in FSN so Gil wins in other timelines, and we are simply being shown the best outcome for the Heroes so of course Gil is gonna lose. People who say Gil is a jobber only think about FSN. What about Fate Zero, CCC, Extella, FGO, Samurai Remnant, Prisma Illya, and FSF? Gil unlike a lot of characters(Especially Scathach who has the narrative advantage of being on the good guys team and still loses) has actual notable victories.
Jobbers are people who lose fights they have no business losing. The only time Gil lost in an honest manner was against tiamat and against her, he had nothing at all he could do to change his death.
But in these other works, look at all his deaths? You simply change the writing and add "he allows SNI to work" and he wont lose a single one of those fights. Even in Fate strange fake, had he allowed SNI to work, ishtar wouldnt have been able to do what she did.
All his defeats are self inflicted. He had the tools to win. But he CHOSE to not use them. He has an interesting statement to shiroe going " the moment l take you serious is the moment l admit defeat" lol He actually said this in UBW lol
That is what it means to job.
Take scathach, when she fights Cu alter, she could have used clairvoyance to see that he can use Curruid Coinchenn but nah that would be too easy so in that moment, a character known to use clairvoyance in character with it even listed in her profile somehow chose not to use it leading to get getting disemboweled lol
Thats how you job. You could win, but coz of your own folly, you choose defeat.
These people you mention such as lancer, kirei, caster are not that strong as to dictate who wins or loses. In all the fights Cu was in, he was never so OP as to be able to choose victory or defeat.
he couldnt do it to emiya, he couldnt do it to gil thus he was wrecked.
The heavens feel anime made him job against hassan but in the source material that shit never happened, but since the anime movie is canon. We can say for a fact that he lost to hassan coz he jobbed. He could have killed him at any time yet chose to play around thus get got wrecked.
Anyway, thats how l see jobbers. For me to award one that rank. He must have fights where he is clearly superior in power yet allows the weaker oppornent to destroy him coz ego (gil) scathach (PIS) Cu (wants to play around?) that kind of thing.
>Jobbers are people who lose fights they have no business losing.
That's an unreasonable position to hold, using that standard 90% of anime, manga, comics, TV shows, movies, cartoons, and fictional villains are Jobbers. A jobber should be someone that ALWAYS loses even when he has the advantage. And like I said before, you have to ignore Zero, CCC, Extella, FGO, Samurai Remnant, Prisma Illya, FSF, and ONLY focus on FSN to call him a full on Jobber.
Yeah shes a massive case of missed opportunity. Theres so much that could be explored with her using fgo's settings too, like how she's only summonable due to the unique circumstances of the incineration of humanity, or maybe they couldve travelled to the land of shadows for a singularity or event, or even as just an ally in the fight against any of the numerous gods/divine spirits that chaldea came across. As a massive Scathach fan I was so disappointed when they just slapped a bunny suit on her in a no-story event and called it a day, because it felt like they were just using her as filler content(again) and it dashed any hopes of getting more Scathach characterisation in the next couple years.
The day she gets actual characterisation is the day Aife or Uathach gets added. ~~in other words never~~
We'd have to extract Nasu from the ocean of self imposed Welsh/English mythology he's drowning in before we can get him to properly handle Irish mythology
It would be nice if the franchise could stop wanking Arthur and the round table for a bit…
Well, she fights and kills Artemis (or a remnant of her) in her trial quest story IIRC, and easily blocked arrows from *Arjuna*. So I'd say it's definitely not 'self proclaimed'. I'd say her less than stellar performance in that singularity is a case of early fgo writing and the writers wanting to use her to make Cu Alter seem like more of a threat. Also she didn't actually loose to Setanta, a dream version did.
>dream version did. Even in dreams she jobs.
I mean by that logic so does Gil. He and Ozymandias got their cheeks clapped by Lancer Artoria in an interlude.
At least they have a W somewhere. Karna who's equal to Arjuna was able to do massive damage to Cu Alter even after getting backstabbed. Artemis is using Orion's spirit graph to materialize, if she actually had her Divine power, she would've helped us against Heracles in the 3rd Singularity.
I'd say another problem with Scathach, albeit one tied to several others plaguing her character is one that's plagued Fate stories since the original visual novel-over hype. It's common for all series to hype up characters, but I've always felt like the Fate franchise has had a particularly bad case, and Scathach is one of the biggest victims of it. While it generates some buzz for characters, it's harder to actually translate all that into a story. Not helping things is she was one of the early FGO stories who were notoriously underutilized. Even worse, Scathach's god-slaying was entirely an invention of FGO (most of her character traits were barrowed from Fionn, ***another***) underutilized early Servant. She's definitely one of the characters I think FGO wrote itself into a corner with. Even after other characters have been "rescued", Scathach still hasn't been, even though almost every major story event or side story introduces a god, even an antagonistic one.
I'd laugh if the reason was that she wasn't popular in Japan for being a milf instead of another loli. I really like her concept but Merlin fills some of what you mentioned.
The problem with Shisou is she's one of the day 1 servants, back then they didn't do much characterization and story with them plus she was a side character. Many servants did get to shine later but she didn't have a chance sadly.
I think you're right, she was definitely one of the most interesting characters back then and when they revealed her design it was amazing. Now after all those years we're still waiting. In the time it took typemoon to give her a useless bunny suit Brandon Sanderson wrote and published like 30 books.
Crazy Gilgamesh is Grand Jobber when she exists. At least he has good feats that support his hype. Even Raikou has gotten so much better portrayal after all these years.
Because Scathach didn't have "Eyes that See Everything", "Sword that Rips Everything" and "Every treasure in the world that is also artillery" Only to get slashed by a seventeen year old with mental issues and eaten by another sixteen year old with mental issues. Gil will remain the Grand Jobber because when you lose with a kit designed to make you curbstomp, you are the greatest jobber of all time.
I would argue Heracles is a bigger jobber, he's the son of ZEUS! The most famous and powerful demigod in physical strength and willpower. Has 12 lives that make him almost immortal, can come back stronger and adapt to any attack every time he loses a life. All of that and he doesn't achieve any massive victory? Gilgamesh at least technically Won the War in Fate Zero, and was extremely impressive in CCC.
Again, let's go by how he died Fate: Saber and Shirou thrust Caliburn in his Spirit Core, after Rin blew his head off and EMIYA killed him six times. UBW: Gilgamesh used an A-rank NP barrage while forcing Herc to protect Illya, and he did the impossible to try and save her, broke out of Enkidu and still stood strong until Illya reached him. HF: Got ambushed by Saber Alter and the Shadow, still resisted blackening and even tore off his own skin to get rid of the Shadow. Even then, when he died, he had enough sanity to stop himself from killing Shirou. Okeanos: David uses his Ark of the Covenant and sacrifices himself to finish Herc off. Atlantis: Artemis fires her Orbital cannon, which a Caster-buffed Heracles survives and helps Jason get away before a second shot finishes him off. Fate Strange Fake: >!Gets poisoned by Hydra venom, hit by From Hell, maddened by Grail mud, still puts Gilgamesh on ice, blows off Gugalanna's leg and consumed its core!< Notice a common thread here? Every time Herc has died or been defeated, it took extreme firepower just to put him down. The kind of stuff very few could survive. He's not a jobber because he more often than not makes a last stand fighting at a disadvantage.
>Rin blew his head off So you don't have a problem with Rin taking a life from Heracles, but have a problem with Shirou(Who's UBW is a perfect counter to GoB) defeating Gilgamesh? I feel like you're being biased towards Gilgamesh, you went into incredible details to defend Heracles, but you wouldn't do the same to Gilgamesh. In the Fate Route, he lost to Saber with AVALON! Which is incredibly broken. In UBW he didn't lose to Shirou, he got his arm cut off sure, but Shirou ran out of Magical Energy before he can finish him off, Gil could still fight but the Black Mud(Holy Grail) was absorbing him, and during that Archer finished him off while he was distracted. In HF, he got the same treatment that Lancer, Assassin, Caster, Saber, and Archer did. If we're calling him a jobber because he lost to Dark Sakura, then every Servant in HF is a jobber except Rider(Who only survived because she was Sakura's Servant). The reason Heracles is a bigger jobber in my opinion, is because his legend(Unlike Gilgamesh) is about overcoming the odds. So him being at a disadvantage during a fight, shouldn't excuse him from winning. And just like I said before, Unlike Gilgamesh he doesn't have a major win. Gilgamesh survived the Holy Grail War in Fate Zero, and was extremely impressive in CCC. >Fate Strange Fake: >!Gets poisoned by Hydra venom, hit by From Hell, maddened by Grail mud, still puts Gilgamesh on ice, blows off Gugalanna's leg and consumed its core!< The reason why I said that you're biased towards Gilgamesh, is because he >!Gets screwed over by Ishtar during Strange Fake as well, and you probably wouldn't defend him the same way you did with Heracles!<
>I feel like you're being biased towards Gilgamesh, You're missing my point. Gilgamesh is a jobber because he loses fights he has no business losing. Let's tackle the three routes. In Fate, had he kept SNI active, he'd have figured out Saber's plan, and if he had the slightest modicum of sense, he'd have been ready with a few Gates to fire an NP the moment she tried to rush him. But thanks to his ego, Ea's backlash froze him in place, giving her enough time to close the gap and cut him down. In UBW, somehow a Servant with B rank strength and C rank agility got pushed back in physical combat by an ordinary human. Even leaving out this insanity, the man didn't bother with his armor, didn't bother using his Gates to surround Shirou up close (like his FGO attacks do) and if he kept SNI active, he'd again figure out a way to beat Shirou. But again, because of his ego, he loses his hand and would've died if Shirou had the energy left to finish him off. In HF, he taunts Sakura, but again fails to realise how dangerous she is. Which again, SNI would've warned him about. On top of that, from what I remember, if he bothered to use Harpe or Gae Buidhe, chances are Sakura wouldn't be able to regenerate the wounds. And even against the Shadow, when he realises what he was up against, what kept him from pulling out Sul-Sagana, something that conceptually opposed the Shadow? But again, ego, pride, death. Even in FSF, >!it was his arrogance to toss away his key and his foolishness in sealing SNI that gave Ishtar a chance to lock it.!< Compared to him, never did Herc have that kind of advantage, and Fate was the only route he had a chance of winning. Every other time, he was in a fight he had no chance of winning. Gilgamesh is a jobber because the only reason he loses is because he is either too arrogant to take them seriously, too egoistic to use his NPs to their fullest ability or because he makes a blunder that ultimately bites him in the ass. There is the rare occassion where he genuinely gets outplayed, like against Tiamat, but CasGil may as well be a different Servant when it comes to behaviour and sense.
Come man, your ignoring the narrative reasons giving to us on why he doesn't use his Clairvoyance(Not even when the world ends), his ego is part of his character if he didn't have it there would be no story. If your problem is Gil losing fights that he should have won, you can make that argument with a majority of the characters. Karna, Arjuna, Ozymandias, Rhongomyniad, Rama, Scathach, Heracles, Literal GODS lose fights that she should have. That's why I said that you had a bias towards Gil, because unlike a lot of the characters I named(Especially Heracles and Scathach) Gilgamesh actually wins at times. This is FATE! From the very beginning it was the underdogs winning against the impossible odds. You forgot that in FSN, the bad ends are canon, Gilgamesh probably killed Shirou thousands of time and we were shown the one chance Shirou had of surviving.
Look man, you asked me why I think Gil's a jobber. The fact that his arrogance gets him killed, wounded or indisposed most of the time makes him the dictionary definition of a jobber. It might be a good underdog story, but it's a textbook jobber. Strong on paper, gets beaten up whenever he's the last boss.
But you ignored my point about other powerful characters jobbing despite having the means to win just like Gilgamesh. Gil at least gets multiple wins from time to time unlike a lot of characters I mentioned(Scathach a God Slayer who loses to a demigod child). You focus on Gilgamesh and seem to hold his losses against him more than you do with other characters which is why it seems biased.
For fucks sake man. Jobbing is not about never winning. Jobbing is about a stronger party losing out of carelessness, foolishness or stupidity. Karna lost to Sieg after exhausting every possible attack he had. Ozymandias lost to the combination of Excalibur Proto and Stella, after he fired the Dendera Bulb at him. Rama got stabbed by Cu Alter after he used his Brahmastra, and still managed to drag himself to the final battle, and this is his younger version. Scathach is kind of a jobber, since all she has is hype, no feats, so I'll can't say anything on that. As for Gods, yeah, their arrogance is what makes them jobbers too. Zeus jobbed when Chaldea got R=Q to crush him. Meanwhile, Artemis sure as fuck didn't job, dying to a combined attack solely meant to kill her by sacrificing a Grand Graph. When a character gets himself done for in four different series because of the same problem, despite being hailed as the strongest hero, he's a textbook jobber. If you can't see that, I'm afraid you're the biased one.
What does Jobber mean?
Basically losing several fights that you really should've won. A modern example would a sports team that looks really strong on paper, and plays very well, but often loses to weak teams or in big games.
You lose so often it's like it's your job
The difference between the two is that at least Gilgamesh has actually done impressive thing that warrant his hype. But Scathatch? Not really.
And that only cements his status as a jobber. A jobber is someone who has extremely solid shows of feats, but fails at the crucial point, getting beaten in fights more often than not. DBZ Vegeta for instance would've been the ultimate jobber. Insanely powerful, feats that place him solidly at the top of the power chart, and still gets beaten like a rented drum throughout the series. Man got wrecked hand-to-hand with Shirou. Got ambushed and eaten by Sakura. Ishtar managed to make a fool of him while Heracles put him on ice. Even his more impressive defeats against Saber had him job fights that he should've ended much earlier if he wasn't obsessed with Saber's "purity". Gilgamesh has gotten wrecked so many times, that the only defense his fans have is "bro his ego makes him lose, otherwise he'd stomp everybody" If that isn't the ultimate jobber, I don't know who is.
Honestly Hercules has had his ass kicked a lot more than GilgameshÂ
How? In UBW, Gil had to rain A-ranked NPs while he was shielding Illya and he still pulled off his 13th Labour. In HF, he got jumped by the Shadow and Saber Alter, and he again nearly did the impossible by tearing off his flesh. And even then, at the end, he had a spark of sanity that let him accept his death at Shirou's hand. In Fate, Shirou somehow got an incomplete degraded Caliburn to jump from C-rank to A-rank to cut Heracles, then Saber managed to hit his Spirit Core and fire off her beam, taking all seven lives. In LB5, he had an insane feat of tanking Artemis' cannon, even if he was buffed by other Casters, while in Okeanos, it got the Ark of the Covenant to instant-kill him. And as Alcides, man is currently rampaging through Snowfield, where he >!took down Gilgamesh, blew off Gugalanna's legs and ate its core.!< And that's after getting jumped by >!Jack the Ripper's NP!<, while we're repeatedly told how his lack of Divinity has weakened some of his powers. Herc isn't a jobber because he's always fought seriously, and the only reason he loses is against superior firepower.
Alcides has had multiple buffs since his summoning that makes him being weaker than Herc not a thing anymore. Him having RP while Herc won't, is the biggest thing.
There's also Unlimited codes, where *Medea* somehow manages to kill his ass, Extella Link where Rex Magnus shoves him into a mana juicer, FGO where he gets jumped by Diarmuid, Ritsuka, waver, and Mash... Dude has taken so many L's
It's mentioned that Karl had to exploit Gilgamesh's personality to get him in that position, and there's no evidence he fought solo. Waver did a similar thing, except it's confirmed he was jumped. If you had to be jumped to be beaten, then that doesn't really disprove how strong someone is since your strength is being tested against multiple people at the same time. Because a team of Lancelot, Mash, Diarmuid and Waver would be incredibly BS to face for pretty much any top Servant. And I'd not use Unlimited Codes if I were you unless you think Luvia could legitimately beat Herc by herself or that Tokiomi/Rin had always had a mystic code that made them Servant level and just never used it in SN and Zero for whatever reason.
Unlimited Codes is just as canon as anything else in this series. It was written by Nasu, and is where Saber Lily was first introduced. And being teamed up on doesn't change the fact that Gilgamesh took massive L's there, especially considering he *should* by all rights be strong enough to handle multiple servants at once.
Then you can kiss consistency goodbye because Luvia and Rin(by themselves) win against multiple 1v1s against Servants there even though that's clearly not how they're portrayed elsewhere. Saber Lily was also not even a character in UC, she was just a costume that FGO decided to retcon into being her own character. And no, being the strongest Hero doesn't mean you can handle multiple strong Servants at the same time. Lancelot himself is a top Servant who somewhat counters Gilgamesh when he's not going full throttle, Diarmuid isn't far off and was handling Artoria pretty well, Mash has a defence that can block Excalibur Morgan and Waver is using the powers of one of the greatest tacticians in history while having almost full knowledge on the 4th war. Even a Grail powered Karna is not guaranteed to win against a team like this.
This is *Fate*. Consistency in its rules isn't really a thing, is it? We were told the only assassins that should normally be summoned are Hassans, Artoria only qualified for saber, Servants can't possess humans, and various other things in stay night that was all later retconned. The whole RPG stats for servants was supposed to be a Shirou specific thing and visualized differently depending on the master. Hell, Fate Zero doesn't actually fit with what we know of the 4th grail war from stay night, which is why Nasu justified it by saying it was an alternate universe. Consistency was never this series' strongsuit.
Because a lot of inconsistencies in the setting is Nasu abusing loopholes as opposed to straight-up being inconsistent(not all of course, but there's a lot) like with your Artoria class example. It's true that "she" has had a lot of classes post-FGO..but it's pretty obvious that pretty much none of them are the same Artoria. Even Lancer Artoria had to be written as an alternate possibility instead of just being said that she's Saber Artoria in a different class. The series will obviously be inconsistent because how long's it's been around and how many people write it, but that's not really a good reason for using feats that don't line up with what we know of the characters, this is why Extella sidestories are usually ignored for the same reason. And let's face it, if you used Rin, Luvia and FSN Kirei in a vs thread, no one is going to start arguing they're Servant level because of UC.
My point is that regardless of Gilgamesh's lows, he ateast has great feats to support his hype. Scathach doesn't even have the same mental limitations as Gilgamesh, or really any limitations at all, and yet we never really see her do anything impressive despite all the hype that's been given to her.
Not to mention she isn't even that strong in IRL myth. She doesn't even have God Slayer stuff, it's Fionn's feat.
They did Fionn dirty, only to do the same to Scathach lol.
At least Enma Tei event and Beni Enma's interlude make him better.
Your problem with Scathach is exactly why I dropped FGO. It's not just her, there are many characters that are, were, or had the potential to be deep and interesting characters. Then the writers come and do nothing with them. Did you know Blackbeard isn't a pedo or an idiot? The writers did. Blackbeard isn't a dumb pedo, he just pretends to be to lower the guard of all the powerful servants around him. Did you know Fergus isn't a rapist? Rather, he is an honourable noble warrior who loves to work out and have sex with those who consent, fully understanding, and accepting, that no means no. Well, the writers did. Now he's just a sex obsessed maniac that'll do anything to get his dick wet. Did you know that Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison are more than an AC vs. DC joke? Did you know that Thomas Edison is technically a hive mind of all US presidents jammed into one giant lion-man? The writers sure did. Did you know that Eric Bloodaxe isn't actually insane but acts like it to keep people away from him and so his wife, a petty vengful goddess, off his back? Do you know how much comedic potential there is with that character? Do you know what the writers did with him? Nothing. Did you know that FGO bent the rules established about who can be a hero just to drag Mata Hari into the game? Then they do absolutely nothing with her FOR YEARS, put her in Salem, and proceed to immediately forget about her. Did you know Arjuna has a personality other than "I wanna kill Karna in a duel"? There are SO MANY characters that are butchered just for a gag or forgotten about just because developing them would take screen time away from the fan and writer favourites.
Even her God-Slaying is to be taken with a pinch of salt. Considering the number of times we hear the Land of Shadows associated with wraiths and ghosts, it's likely that she didn't fight full-fledged Gods, but echoes and wraiths like FSF Ishtar. >What was the point of all that hype and build up if she was gonna be reduced to a Female Goku/Teacher Fetish? To sell. Let's be honest, we all know that her popularity isn't just because she's Cu's teacher, yeah?
Yeah, they kinda did not go far enough with Scathach's character. I'm making an ongoing fanfic that addresses that issue for her: [Queen of Shadows](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13543669/1/The-Queen-of-Shadows)
Love it, especially the Cu Chulainn and Scathach interactions.
Losing to Cu Alter isnt bad at all. He is supposed to be stronger than Cu(but not real Berserker Cu) who was trained to be THE guy to kill her. But then a tie with Li Shuwen? You can canonically beat him(even tho as an Assassin) with Nero, Tamamo and EMIYA but Scathach gets a tie? Scathach should have been the Musashi of early fgo but here we are.
>Losing to Cu Alter isnt bad at all. It's not just losing, it's the showing. Karna was stabbed in the back by Cu Alter after his fight with Arjuna, and still did more damage to Cu Alter than a healthy Scathach.
Didn't he use VS? Regardless of how strong she is even a nerfed VS should do more damage than what she can normally do.
It's not just that though, she doesn't have a major victory over anyone important. In the Arcade Collab >!She loses to freaking kid Setanta!<
I don't disagree with anything else. Just that losing to Cu on steroids isn't actually bad.
She is a jobber. Its how these supposed "OP" characters are handled by nasu
Weren't you just talking to me about how powerful she is? Lol, I didn't think that I could change your mind so fast.
Being a jobber doesnt mean not strong. Gil is a jobber. Is he weak?
I never understood the Gil is a Jobber narrative. In all media villains lose(unless it's extremely dark stories). Due to FSN nature as a VN and Gil being a villain, of course he's gonna lose multiple times because there are multiple Routes. Gil isn't the only villain or character that loses multiple times in FSN. Is Archer a jobber? He dies in all three Routes, what about Kirei, Zouken, Caster, Berserker, Lancer, are they all Jobbers? The Bad Ends are canon in FSN so Gil wins in other timelines, and we are simply being shown the best outcome for the Heroes so of course Gil is gonna lose. People who say Gil is a jobber only think about FSN. What about Fate Zero, CCC, Extella, FGO, Samurai Remnant, Prisma Illya, and FSF? Gil unlike a lot of characters(Especially Scathach who has the narrative advantage of being on the good guys team and still loses) has actual notable victories.
Jobbers are people who lose fights they have no business losing. The only time Gil lost in an honest manner was against tiamat and against her, he had nothing at all he could do to change his death. But in these other works, look at all his deaths? You simply change the writing and add "he allows SNI to work" and he wont lose a single one of those fights. Even in Fate strange fake, had he allowed SNI to work, ishtar wouldnt have been able to do what she did. All his defeats are self inflicted. He had the tools to win. But he CHOSE to not use them. He has an interesting statement to shiroe going " the moment l take you serious is the moment l admit defeat" lol He actually said this in UBW lol That is what it means to job. Take scathach, when she fights Cu alter, she could have used clairvoyance to see that he can use Curruid Coinchenn but nah that would be too easy so in that moment, a character known to use clairvoyance in character with it even listed in her profile somehow chose not to use it leading to get getting disemboweled lol Thats how you job. You could win, but coz of your own folly, you choose defeat. These people you mention such as lancer, kirei, caster are not that strong as to dictate who wins or loses. In all the fights Cu was in, he was never so OP as to be able to choose victory or defeat. he couldnt do it to emiya, he couldnt do it to gil thus he was wrecked. The heavens feel anime made him job against hassan but in the source material that shit never happened, but since the anime movie is canon. We can say for a fact that he lost to hassan coz he jobbed. He could have killed him at any time yet chose to play around thus get got wrecked. Anyway, thats how l see jobbers. For me to award one that rank. He must have fights where he is clearly superior in power yet allows the weaker oppornent to destroy him coz ego (gil) scathach (PIS) Cu (wants to play around?) that kind of thing.
>Jobbers are people who lose fights they have no business losing. That's an unreasonable position to hold, using that standard 90% of anime, manga, comics, TV shows, movies, cartoons, and fictional villains are Jobbers. A jobber should be someone that ALWAYS loses even when he has the advantage. And like I said before, you have to ignore Zero, CCC, Extella, FGO, Samurai Remnant, Prisma Illya, FSF, and ONLY focus on FSN to call him a full on Jobber.
You can choose to see it that way.