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If you've ever read the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, you'll have run across Letter 210, in which Tolkien comprehensively deconstructs and slams a prospective Lord of the Rings movie script. He pulls no punches, and along the way manages to give us an excellent view of both what he thinks is important in his books - and what Zimmerman thinks is. (They don't really match up.)

If this is a genre of letter that interests you, good news! Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians &c) has just shared his own version:

Memories from my TV/Movie Experience, by Rick Riordan

Featuring scathing comments on the Lightning Thief movie like:

"The dialogue needs to sparkle. I’d like to see it be fresh and original and funny. Right now there are some good areas, but mostly it is flat, tired, and uninspired. It’s certainly not funny. I’m not expecting lines to be lifted from the book verbatim, but it would be nice if they resembled the source material at least in tone and spirit."

"These kids are the seed audience for the movie. They are the ones who will show up first with their families, then tell their friends to go, or not go, depending on how they liked it. They are looking for one thing: How faithful was the movie to the book? Make Percy seventeen, and that battle is lost before filming even begins."

and of course:

"If the script goes forward in its present form, I don’t need to be the Oracle of Delphi to foresee what will happen. You will lose the fans of the series 100%, but more importantly the script will fail to impress even regular moviegoers who haven’t read the book. The movie will become another statistic in a long line of failed movies badly adapted from children’s books. No one wants that, and a year from now I really would prefer not to be saying: “I told you so.”"

hS

WARNING: Major spoilers for the Dragonriders of Pern series. If you haven't read All the Weyrs of Pern or The Dolphins of Pern, you should probably click Back right now.

Still here?

Okay then.

Season's Beginning

Project Overkill had been a triumph. Days later, its success was confirmed by the oddly anticlimactic bloom of fire on the surface of the Red Star, but E’rik and Skepnadth had nearly slept through it. The extraordinary plot to alter the path of the Red Star by detonating the great star-engines of the Yokohama, Bahrain, and Buenos Aires at carefully picked sites had required the participation of nearly every bronze and green dragon on Pern. The extreme distance and effort involved had left many of them drained.

It had been the thrill of a lifetime, a historic moment the likes of which would never come again. Despite their torpor, everyone was riding high, especially after the browns, blues, and golds got their share of the glory, pushing the empty husks of the old ships toward their final rest in the heart of Rukbat.

Later again, man and dragon had fully recovered. The deep, antique luster had returned to the bronze’s hide. They and some of their wingmates had taken a late morning jaunt east along the coast from Monaco Bay on what was ostensibly a hunt, but was really just an excuse to put the wind back in their wingsails. The hot season was months away, and although Thread would still linger for the remainder of this Pass, the promise of a future in which only rain would fall from the sky gave the air a fresh, heady vitality.

They were midair, flying low and slow for home, when it happened. Out of nowhere, Skepnadth gave a sharp cry of distress and backed air, keening.

Terror lanced E’rik’s heart. What is it? What’s wrong? He thought wildly that some delayed effect of space exposure must be afflicting his dragon and urged him to land at once, but Skepnadth shook his great head.

The Weyr needs us, he said, sorrow lading his thoughts, and pumped his wings. A keen trembled in his throat even as he flew.

Only then did E’rik realize every dragon with them was keening, crying a death-knell. A lump of dread rose in his throat. But what happened? Who . . . ? Not Amaranth, surely? Monaco’s queen was young, healthy. Could something have happened to T’gellan’s Monarth?

No, said Skepnadth. The Harper has gone.

There was no doubt who he meant—everyone on two legs and four knew of Masterharper Robinton. Further, Skepnadth knew him from E’rik’s memories of his first five years in the Harper Hall, before the Masterharper’s heart attack had forced him into retirement. To E’rik, as to many harpers of his generation, Robinton was an awesome figure, someone he admired and strove to emulate, who despite his great importance had always been as a beloved father to his hall full of sons and daughters. His heir Sebell was a worthy master of the crafthall, but Robinton would always be the Harper.

E’rik couldn’t believe what he was hearing. That’s not possible. Someone’s telling you tales.

He felt more than heard the sad, apologetic rumble in Skepnadth’s chest. Tiroth’s man sees. Ruth’s man sees. They know. The little cousin has gone, too, he added, meaning Robinton’s bronze fire-lizard, Zair. Admiration for draconic devotion on the part of a mere fire-lizard colored his tone.

But . . . Though dragons couldn’t lie, E’rik’s heart still denied what his mind knew. He was rescued. He recovered from the abduction. We just saved Pern! How could he die now?

Skepnadth took a moment to reply. No doubt the air was thick with telepathic messages flying back and forth in a jumble of confusion and grief. They say he was with Aivas. It is as though they simply went to sleep—the Harper, the little cousin, and Aivas. There is a message: ‘And a time to every purpose under heaven.’ I don’t know what that means, he answered before E’rik could ask.

He shook his head. It was too much, too impossible to process. Let’s get home.

The news was confirmed back in Monaco Bay Weyr, many times over, yet it still refused to sink in, though the tears of others loosed his own. E’rik found himself cossetted and fussed over along with the official Weyrharper and anyone else who had ever served in the Harper Hall. He lost track of how many times he said thank you, or that’s kind of you, or I’m sorry, I really didn’t know him well, he left when I was just an apprentice. He took it all in a daze until finally someone was kind enough to settle him down in his weyr with a dose of fellis to stop his mind’s turning and spare his dragon a sleepless night.

He finally wept in earnest the day of the burial at sea, which he and Skepnadth overflew along with what seemed like every dragon and fire-lizard on Pern. The air was so thick with wingbeats that the sound was a physical force, but somehow the voices of Menolly and Sebell cut through, raising up in tribute the songs that were not the least part of the legacy the Masterharper of Pern left behind him. The cruelty of it, that those who had been closest to Robinton must hold their tears in check to do their duty by him, that struck home. He cried for them first, and all the others who felt the Harper’s loss most keenly. Then for himself, that he had taken the man for granted as a child, hadn’t had the privilege of knowing him as an adult, and now never would.

The mystery of Aivas’ final words rankled in his mind. All he could get anyone to tell him about them was that they were a reference to a passage from an ancient’s ancient book of myths about some invisible lord and his laws, which seemed harsh and changed arbitrarily from tale to tale. How was that a fitting epitaph for his Master, who was known for being just and forgiving at all times, even to people who didn’t deserve it?

E’rik finally got so fed up with second- and third-hand nonsense that he reserved a time for himself with one of the all-knowing Aivas consoles to see if he could find a more satisfactory explanation. He didn’t like the Ancients’ computer system—its visual language of alien symbols and the mixed-up letters of the keyboard made him feel slow and clumsy, which he wasn’t, even with one eye blinded by his near-fatal Threadscarring three Turns ago. It was agonizing to hunt through text files all relating to this “Bible” of Old Terra, but finally, he came across an audio file. His eye had glazed over to the point that he nearly missed it and had to scroll back up.

“The Byrds?” he muttered aloud. “‘Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season).’ Three Turns; that’s many seasons.” It was a bad joke, just to wake himself up. He knew well enough that the Terrans had used a different term for a world’s orbital period.

He felt Skepnadth rouse and listen with him as he played the file. The words as sung were nearly unintelligible, but he knew their meaning by now, and the mellow voices of the singers and their guitars touched him bittersweetly. So did the six new words at the end. “A time for war, and a time for peace—I swear it’s not too late.” Six simple words changed the message from one of passively accepting the inevitability of change to one of embracing hope.

Did you hear all that? he asked Skepnadth.

Yes. I like it. You feel better now, and that’s good.

E’rik chuckled. High praise. And you’re right. You know, everyone has been talking about things ending. The end of Thread, the end of tradition, the end of Aivas . . . the end of Master Robinton. But that’s only one face of the mark.

When one season ends, a new one begins.

You really were listening!

Of course. The bronze sounded almost offended. This is important to you. If I didn’t listen when it was important, what sort of dragon would I be?

You’re the best dragon on Pern, said every rider to his beast, and E’rik meant it now as much as all of them. And you’re right again. It’s a new season—a new Turn—a new era. It’s ours, and now it’s up to us to make it a good one. That’s the message he’d want us to remember.

E’rik shut down the console and left the building. His fingers were already shaping the chords he and Skepnadth hummed.

---

Aivas' Bible reference bugs me in a way I can't fully articulate. No argument that it's an important enough facet of humanity's history that it should be preserved for study, but making an artificial intelligence in an otherwise completely agnostic SF series talk about it like it's our greatest achievement is so jarring. The Pernese deliberately eschewed religious superstition in favor of ennobling real-life, down-to-earth heroism. It's just a weird move on McCaffrey's part.

~Neshomeh

"Yup! And I'm 15 by the way...Yeah. There are a bunch of different timelines but After Colony is my favorite. So I based my Gunpla off the Gundam Sandrock Kai, piloted by Quatre, the guy I'm dressed as. The original had giant curved swords that could each bisect a mobile suit. But I gave it a flail instead so that I could make better use of its physical strength..."

Leonidas let his young companion ramble, his eyes roving around the room.

... does that make Finrod the monkey? :D

And the corpse bat-fell of Thuringwethil the flying carpet?

DIGRESSION: did Middle-earth have tigers, monkeys, or flying carpets?

Tigers: kinda! Tevildo was Prince of Cats, and the villain in the original version of the Tale of Tinuviel. He and his court were giant cats, in the same way that Huan is a giant dog; they ended up shrinking to house-cat size when Tevildo's magic collar was removed. So not tigers per se, but felines on the same scale, yes. (Amusingly, Tevildo's cook is named Miaulë - 'meow-ley'. Tolkien has a strange sense of humour.)

Monkeys: Yes! Specifically in the form of apes (okay, traditionally 'monkey' applies to all primates outside the apes, but that's paraphyletic and I reject it). They first get a mention from Grishnakh the orc, of all people:

'You speak of what is deep beyond the reach of your muddy dreams, Uglúk,' he said. 'Nazgûl! Ah! All that they make out! One day you'll wish that you had not said that. Ape!' he snarled fiercely. 'You ought to know that they're the apple of the Great Eye.

We later get a narrative mention in the battle of the Hornburg:

Many were cast down in ruin, but many more replaced them, and Orcs sprang up them like apes in the dark forests of the South.

Flying carpets: Yes! Wait, no. But! Among Tolkien's drawings are a beautiful pair of Numenorean carpets:



So if he had written about flying carpets, we at least know what they would have looked like. ^_^

hS

I think it's the tiger, as Huan was more Luthien's than Beren's, but the tiger didn't have much role in the plot, so maybe flying carpet? Also, I don't think Middle-earth actually had any of those things, but that's just a minor detail.

Does this make Huan the tiger, the monkey, or the flying carpet?

hS

And I mean really insane. This idea has been floating around in my head for a little while, and I thought the Board might enjoy it.

In which I merge the plots of Aladdin and The Silmarillion to come up with something that (hopefully) makes sense. And if it doesn't, I can just say that was the whole point!



“Father,” said Jasmine, “please! He might be a mortal man, but he is as valiant as any prince of Elves, and I love him more than anyone else in the world!”

Sultan Thingol stared at her without compassion. “Be that as it may,” he said sternly, “I will not marry my daughter to any but an elven prince.”

Aladdin met the Sultan’s eyes, unafraid. “I will return one day as anything you desire me to be. Until then, Jasmine, farewell.”

He bowed respectfully to the Sultan, and then turned and left.

“I am worried about what he may do,” said Queen Melian. “He is half-mad with love.”

“Father, I beg leave to go after him. I will find out his plans and inform you of them.”

Thingol glanced at his wife, who nodded. “Very well,” he said. “I give you ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Father,” said Jasmine, and dashed from the room.

“I am not worried,” Thingol replied, once Jasmine was safely out of earshot. “I am quite sure he will never return.”

Melian shook her head. “He is stronger than you know. His actions may have political repercussions far beyond his own fate.”

“We shall see,” Thingol murmured. “We shall see.”




“Aladdin! Wait!”

Aladdin turned slowly around. “Jasmine? Go back. It is not safe for you to come.”

“I do not ask to come,” Jasmine said, sounding slightly hurt. “I only wish to know what you will do.”

“I will become a prince of Elves, if that is what I must be to win you. I will find one of the legendary Silmarils, said to grant their bearer a wish.”

Jasmine gasped. “But the Silmarils are in the Iron Crown of Morgoth himself! You can’t possibly hope to enter Angband and come out alive!”

“If I do not, I can never hope to convince your father that I am worthy of you.”

“My father! What do you care about him? I do not need his approval for my actions. I am not a child. If he will not give his consent to our marriage, I will come with you and we shall find some place to live together, well away from Doriath.”

“No,” said Aladdin, “I will not take you if I have nothing to give you. I shall return, Jasmine, a prince as your father wishes, and the Silmaril will be your wedding gift.”

“Very well,” Jasmine replied after a pause, “go. But if you do not return – “

“I will,” insisted Aladdin. “Goodbye, Jasmine.”

“Goodbye,” she said softly, and then they turned away from each other.




Plans from here involve more plot-fusion with the sons of Feanor taking on the role of Jafar. And the idea of a Silmaril-genie is just too crazy to lose!

Have an Imperial Hellgun, for when a cheap laser isn't enough.

So... I may of got slightly carried away with one of my Halloween prompts (One of your characters meets a monster to be exact) and well... this happened.

There's a little disclaimer in the doc itself so all I'll say is it involves the characters of, and is based on a Skyrim fanfic I am thinking of writing at some point. Enjoy!

Novastorme

The clock told the time, again and again and again. Tick followed tock followed tick. Cass stood in front of it and stared.

"... I thought you'd like it."

Cass stood.

"It's just, your collection... gurl, you love it. Got more clocks on the walls than books, and that's saying a lot. Like, a lot a lot."

Cass stared.

"So when I saw-"

"You did."

Em looked at her partner, eyebrows rising up a little. "Uh, yeah, I said I-"

"You mistake my meaning." The words were flat and spat and dark. "You saw, and then you did. You didn't ask. You didn't check. You didn't discuss. You. Just. Did. Just like always."

Em stepped back, eyes wide, face slowly losing colour and leaving bone white. "Cass, I'm sorry, how, how do I make this-"

Cass turned to look at Em, and the girl took another step back. "You want to make it right? Here's what you do. You go shopping."

Em couldn't think of any words that made sense. Cass just continued, her voice short and sharp as thorns. "Oh, am
I not making myself clear? Let me spell it out for you, then. You go to New Caledonia and you go shopping. You take the money I make selling trinkets as fandom props on World One's Etsy, and you go shopping. You buy yourself some clothes or shoes or makeup. You buy an expensive coffee that's mostly whipped cream and sprinkles and pumpkin spice flavouring syrup. You buy whatever gimcracks and bits of tourist tat that catches your eye and satisfies your magpie instinct-"

Tears rolled down Em's face. "Cassie, please, you're shouting."

"-because that's what gets you through the day, isn't it, Emily Perilled? Having things. Preferably things that are sparkly and gaudy and ostentatiously expensive. You're a hoarder and you justify it with some vague garbage about retail therapy because you think that if you have no things then you're nothing. Well, guess what? You are nothing. And all the knock-off designer clothing in the world won't get rid of the emptiness in whatever shrivelled, battered little shred inside you's passing for a soul. So go. Enjoy yourself on someone else's dime, you leech. Have fun."

The clock ticked and tocked and landed on the floor when it slipped from Cass's flimsy grip. Em didn't see it thud into the thick blue Axminster carpet, kept safe from breakage by the Cushioning Charms where the driver's seat would once have been.

She was already gone.

---

The clock ticked on.

The RC door hissed open. Feet came through, wiped themselves off on the ugly tie-dyed blanket thing pressed into service as a doormat. They were loud, and only got louder.

Cass looked up into Em's frightened face.

"Cassie, have you moved?"

The witch said nothing.

"It, it's been two days. I'm worried about you."

In the smallest voice Em had ever heard, Cass said "Why?"

Em just wrapped Cass up in her arms and didn't let go.

The clock ticked on.

---

"It wasn't a clock, you know."

"Hm?"

The clock ticked on, as it had for some time. It was three in the morning and the both of them were tired. Their eyes were red and sore and their noses chapped from blowing. Crying's ugly when it means something.

"It wasn't a clock," Cass continued. "It was an old fob watch in a carriage clock mounting. The pattern was me, I did all the transfiguring myself. Took me ages to get the petals right. That's why there were all bits chipped off from the side. But the mechanism, the heart of it... the truth of the clock was a watch.

"You get one when you're seventeen. It's a wizard thing. The one in there was, well. See, that's the thing. I don't know whose it was. Found it in a junk shop in Muggle London and fell in love. It didn't work, never would again without a shedload of repairing charms, but that didn't matter. I didn't want it to work. It didn't feel right. It wasn't my watch, you see, I was just... I dunno, looking after it, I suppose. But I was going to be given one of my own, when I was seventeen, and I promised myself I'd fix it then.

"The guy in the shop told me it was old, and I could see it. There was an inscription I found in the case, and I couldn't make it out. It tore the name off, you see, but I could see a date. 1913. He wouldn't have been more than twenty-two when he died. Probably more like twenty. Off to war and home by Christmas and instead he died in a bombed-out ditch or hung up on barbed wire or stabbed in the gut. His watch stopped at eleven.

"And then came my war. My friends lying dead on the roads and stairs and grounds. People I'd grown up around killing and fighting. The, the death of it all. Lights in the sky and worlds on fire and then it all... stopped. Faded, like a bad dream. And I knew then, if I didn't get out, that I'd fade too. And it's the stupidest things you think of when you know you're going to die, because all I could think in my stupid fat head was 'Nobody's going to give me a watch'.

"So I tried to, to Apparate. Nobody taught me that either, I just knew you could do it if you tried. Everyone else was drifting away. I ran out of the grounds and into Hogsmeade as it turned greyer and greyer and I flung every bit of strength I had into this one spell to stay alive and... well, here I am. Left bits of myself behind on the trip too. Loads of hair and a couple of back teeth and my left kneecap and everyone I'd ever loved. But not this... this knackered old watch in a knackered old clock carriage covered in poppies.

"So I painted them, after I got out of the bacta tank. I painted them red at first, to honour the dead, but then I painted them white, to remember why they died. A callous and evil war prosecuted by a madman and his pet murderers. I kept the watch broken, too, even though it wouldn't even be hard to fix. It wasn't mine. It wasn't my right. I was just... looking after it, for now. You know, sometimes, when I looked at the watch face and those cheap, bent hands, I could hear the guns. They tear up the earth, you know. Pull down trees and hills and make a wasteland of everything around them. Wars, I mean. But the guns help with that."

Everything was quiet for a bit.

"They shall not grow old," Em said softly, "as we that are left grow old."

Cass looked up again. "What's that from?"

"It's from a poem. British, actually. I'm kinda surprised you don't know it."

"Hogwarts doesn't teach anything other than magic, and Muggle Studies is a bad joke anyway. Frankly, I'm amazed any of us learned how to bloody read."

"Huh."

The clock ticked on.

"They will not grow old, as we that are left grow old," Em said. "Age shall not wither them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them."

Cass said nothing for a while.

"Yes," she whispered, voice hoarse and crusted with salt. "We will."

The clock ticked on from its place face-up on the floor, hands turning little by little, moving forward.

"Tom," said Thoth. "Where are you going?"

The Astartes had just gotten back to the RC after a hard day of training. Thoth liked to say that he'd never been so inactive as he was at the PPC, but between keeping himself fit and psychically developed, keeping his psychic abilities developed, canon research, and Derik, he'd done a fine job keeping himself busy.

But while he'd seen a lot of strange things in his time at the PPC, and heard many an odd tale, he'd never seen his partner look so sad. Nor had he ever seen him wearing anything more formal than a clean T-shirt, much less something like a black button-up and a tie.

"I'm headed to the funeral, Thoth," Tom said solemnly. There was not an ounce of his usual humor in his voice. "A hero has died. No, a hero of heroes. And I am joining so many others in commemorating him."

Thoth was silent for a moment. If his partner was truly this serious... "I would be honored, then, if I could join you."

Tom looked up in shock. "Really?"

"Of course. It is important to remember the dead, Tom. Especially the heroes."

"...Thank you."

--

And so Tom and Thoth stood, Tom in his shirt and tie and Thoth in his robe, their heads bowed solemnly, only two points in a throng of agents, big and small, young and old, of every canon, continuum, age, race, and creed. Some stood bowed, some suppressed tears, some tried to stay strong. They were dressed in black, white, red, and orange. They wore robes, cloaks, jackets, suits, a thousand different ceremonial outfits, tuxedos, and cosplay outfits.

They stood united, hearing the words that echoed through the silent room.

"We are gathered here today in memory of Stan Lee..."

And I hope he knew that without him, the world wouldn't be what it is today.
For he was a legend, and the maker of many of our hero's.

Yeah, this isn't a review. Unlike my thing below... my thoughts here aren't quite as collected. I finished watching Fate/Zero about... 5 minutes ago, although it has been a long time coming.

So this is me providing my thoughts as well as helpful answers to questions like "what the heck is Fate/Zero", "Should I watch it?", "When should I watch it?", and "Why does Fate/Zero put Heaven's Feel so far to shame that it's kind of amazing that anyone, even the author of Fate/Zero, still views it as positively as they do?"

Okay, not that last one, it's just that Heaven's Feel is so bad and it could have been good and I can't let it go, but enough about my personal issues, let's talk anime.

Fate/Zero was originally a light novel or a light novel series or something (I... don't exactly know?) by Gen Urobuchi, sometimes known as "Uro the Butcher." I've already said all this, but I'm reiterating it just to remind you that Uro's MO is ripping your heart out and eating it in front of you while you cry tears of pain and sorrow. If you don't want to watch characters suffer, you've been warned.

Now, we're not actually talking about the light novel, because nobody reads that because light novels suck and the ones I want to read never get translated (Hurry up, fan translators, The El-Melloi II Case Files look amazing). No, we're talking about the anime adaptation by Ufotable that came out in 2011 and caused everyone to look up and go "whoa, that Studio DEEN adaptation of Fate Stay/Night was really rubbish, wasn't it?" But the plot's the same.

And seeing as this is the sixth paragraph and I still haven't gotten into it, I should explain what the plot actually is. Fate/Zero is the story of the Fourth Holy Grail War, directly preceding the events of Fate Stay/Night. Unlike the Fifth Holy Grail War, which is a massive clustershpx, the Fourth Holy Grail War is... probably one of the few that was relatively close to what was intended. Or maybe not. It's hard to say. The point is, there are seven masters, all mages, except this time around most of them aren't children or otherwise clueless, and while Kiritsugu Emiya is ostensibly our hero, we spend a bunch of time with every Master in the war and each one really gets a lot of development and fleshing out. We know why they're willing to risk their lives in a war this dangerous, and why we should care.

Also, while Kiritsugu Emiya is ostensibly our hero, are actual heroes are the Master Waver Velvet and his Servant Iskandar, of the rider class. Because they are just... the best, they have an amazing dynamic, and Iskandar in particular steals every moment he's onscreen and at least a few where he isn't.

Okay, that was a joke, but they actually ARE the best. I'm not even kidding, it's not up for debate. I mean, you're welcome to disagree, it's just that there's no way in a million years you're changing my mind on this, I wrote in Iskandar as my lust object on the official PPC census, that is how much you're not going to convince me otherwise.

But jokes and personal foibles aside, the war is very well balanced. Not to the point that you could root for anyone, but everyone has understandable reasons to do what they do. I never felt like I couldn't at least sort of understand a character, or at least the ideals that they represented. Because as always, Fate is all about ideals.

But since we've been on plot for awhile, I'd just like to take a moment and say one thing: This anime is beautiful. Ufotable is one of the few studios that's been able to consistently mix CG and traditional animation in a large-scale way and have it actually look not just passable, but actually good, and genuinely artful. Okay, it does fall down a little bit in a scene or two, but Cowboy Bebop at horrific cutaways to PS2-level CG animated space stations and that's still a classic. And most of the time, this show just looks so, so good.

So now that I've talked up how both amazing and gorgeous this show is, and I am just now mentioning that it's available on Netflix right now to watch and enjoy, here comes the Hard Question: When should I watch Fate/Zero?

Honestly, that's not as easy a question to answer as you might think. See, Fate/Zero is first on the timeline, but it somehow still manages to spoil bits of Fate Stay/Night, in particular major aspects of the Fate route that everyone's already had spoiled for them, and even more major elements of the Heaven's Feel route that you might not have had spoiled for you yet, as well as, of course, spoiling a lot of other minor things, and a pretty major aspect of Fate lore. Furthermore, while Ufotable did their best to make this show accessible to newcomers, the original light novel really didn't, and assumed you were already entrenched in Fate's world and lore. There's only so much someone adapting a work can do, especially when they already have to cut it down to fit into 24 episodes of video. So parts are somewhat confusing and may not make a whole lot of sense to people who haven't already had an introduction to the universe, even though they do their best to give you at least a good chunk of that introduction.

And of course, seeing as Unlimited Blade Works is based on a VN route that assumes you've already had a ton of exposition, it doesn't really give you that either, especially since the adaptation is set up as a sequel to Fate/Zero. Of course, you could watch Studio DEEN's 2006 Fate Stay/Night anime, but that was rubbish and everybody knows it.

So what I recommend, frankly, is one of two things. 1) Either invest the time in reading the visual novel, and then go watch this (and maybe Unlimited Blade Works, because man that adaptation is beautiful even if you already know what will happen), or 2) Just say "to hell with it", bite the bullet, and watch this adaptation. Maybe follow it up with Unlimited Blade Works or something else. Sure, you'll be confused, and this recommendation is tantamount to heresy in the Fate fandom, but you'll get the gist of everything, and honestly, I think Fate/Zero might just be the very best of everything Fate has to offer, so as much as I love Fate Stay/Night, flaws and all, if you are going to watch/read/play one and only one thing in the Fate universe, I think that Fate/Zero is what you should pick.