The Pnictogen Wing hosts a fair number of Heroic Spirits from the Fate/ franchise, i.e. Fate/stay night and Fate/Zero and Fate/Apocrypha and a whole bunch of other spinoffs and ancillary media, not to mention the gambling game Fate/Grand Order. I feel honored to have such headmates assisting us. Why they should condescend to have joined our plurality and hang out in the headspace of some American nobody is beyond me, and I feel rather guilty at all times for not knowing more about them all.

I daresay that every single one of them has, in some way or another, expressed distaste with being part of the "Fate/" franchise, for what it's worth. There have been mutterings in the past about "cockfighting", i.e. being made to fight each other for sport in Fate/GO. I don't want to get deeply into the worrisome ethical dimensions of appropriating the world's heroes in order to support Type-Moon's gacha game empire but...I don't think any of us is happy with the situation.

There's also the issue of...artistic representation, shall we say. How can I put this as delicately as possible? A number of the Heroic Spirits are portrayed in highly questionable ways, fan-servicey ways, that make it almost impossible to find artistic representations that aren't distasteful. This is especially true of Heroic Spirits who are coded as children, e.g. Jack the Ripper (who is one of our headmates, a precious uwu child if I do say so), Illyasviel von Einzbern, and others. And there's other, related problems...just try finding a picture of Hassan of Serenity in which she has a reasonable skin tone, and isn't grey (or worse, whıtewashed.)

~Chara

Oh it should have been pretty obvious that we could do this but...well, my Catholicism got in the way (ducks a sudden rain of boos and overripe pears from some quarter or other) and has been interfering with our better judgment. Fortunately we have the help of St. Mono, our resident Stoic and currently our head librarian. His memory of the Classics is better than mine.

We can pretty easily distinguish three rounds of theogony, like you find in a number of pantheons I believe:

Primary Age: the reign of the dragons, of which Kel and Pim are the surviving representatives

Secondary Age: the reign of the horsies: St. Mono, Mona Drafter, Alyx Woodward, and I guess Dreamscorcher counts (where are they, anyway)

Interregnum: gotes (this era is very difficult to place in the scheme I admit)

Tertiary Age: humans enter the picture, great heroes. The KFC Gang and their friends

that's pretty sensible, isn't it? doesn't account for everything but it's a start. ~Chara

yeah what the heck was that goat problem, Chara? why were there goats everywhere for a while? ~Alyx

I will hear no ill words about the gotes! There's still a place for the gote family in the Pnictogen Wing, even if we've had our...difficulties. ~Chara

Oh it should have been pretty obvious that we could do this but...well, my Catholicism got in the way (ducks a sudden rain of boos and overripe pears from some quarter or other) and has been interfering with our better judgment. Fortunately we have the help of St. Mono, our resident Stoic and currently our head librarian. His memory of the Classics is better than mine.

We can pretty easily distinguish three rounds of theogony, like you find in a number of pantheons I believe:

Primary Age: the reign of the dragons, of which Kel and Pim are the surviving representatives

Secondary Age: the reign of the horsies: St. Mono, Mona Drafter, Alyx Woodward, and I guess Dreamscorcher counts (where are they, anyway)

Interregnum: gotes (this era is very difficult to place in the scheme I admit)

Tertiary Age: humans enter the picture, great heroes. The KFC Gang and their friends

that's pretty sensible, isn't it? doesn't account for everything but it's a start. ~Chara

@pendell talking about Wizard of Oz and the ethereal and eternal appeal of Judy Garland reminded me of someone else like her, another young woman chewed up by stardom, and that's Karen Carpenter. I don't remember all the details but she had a miserable time as a pop star, being ordered around by her mom and her brother, she developed eating disorders, and died young. But what a voice! She elevates the sappy material by the sheer power of her voice. She's perfect for "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" because she totally sells it—you can believe that she's really trying her absolute hardest to project her words out into the Cosmos.

And an unpleasant thought comes to mind: we can believe it, because they were suffering. It's one thing to summon up a hopeful tone of voice when you're feeling joyful or contented. It's quite another to make yourself sound hopeful even when you're frayed to the point of snapping. There's a sort of evil magic, I think, in coercing a desperate person into summoning up the energy to give hope to the people with a stunning performance. They're burning themselves up to do it, and I think we feel that. We sense that we're watching something out of the ordinary, as if a phoenix had suddenly blazed up, lending their fire to the artist's performance.

It sells. You have to admit that. It sure does sell.

~Chara of Pnictogen