Fragment 109 Insight

Nero was a bit of a hit and miss fragment to write with some annoyances. One annoyance being that regardless of how I write it, there’s bound to be those will complain the fragment is just “shilling Nero like everything else is.” Even if I’ve only given the exact amount of fairness I give to every other servant given a fragment. It is what it is.

It was only right to have one of the fashion servants do the fashion show perspective, and Nero was the obvious choice. It made for a decent chance to use the artist angle Nero is rather known for but often not explored as much due to the angle of canon Fate. As usual, the descriptions were tinted in her point of view to help emphasize that.

While the show took up a lot of space, and I tried to make sure it wasn’t too repetitive, I did make enough room for a fair number of interactions. It mostly involved the Royal Fashionistas so everyone could get a better look at their group’s dynamics. Altera was an obvious choice too, as were the Romans. If you noticed Tamamo was missing despite the two sharing a husband (relegated to references), that’s because I’m saving more of their interactions for the caster’s fragment.

They get enough talking and interacting points in canon Extra anyway, so it shouldn’t be that much of a loss.

So I finally decided to double-check the lyrics on Nero’s famously sung lines only to learn it actually wasn’t the lyrics to Jingle bells. Just sung to the tune. And apparently botched and undecided among the community? To that end, I just left it as it was sung for… accuracy sake. And so you could have your padoru padoru meme canonized in FoC.

As one final note, it’s fragments like this that remind me why I’d definitely do it comic/manga style rather than as plain writing or a visual novel. As much as allowing the audience to imagine things is a good thing, some of these clothes got pretty damn specific to the point I was forcefully trying to ensure I didn’t overelaborate with all the tiny details. Unfortunately, it’s also those tiny details that make fashion what it is. There was no winning with balancing word count and visualization in this fragment.

So, as an extra for this, there’s a small gallery at the bottom of this insight that showcases some of the designs I tried to explain with a fair amount of brevity. At least the ones shown that had an image reference (CE or not).

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And here’s the three songs that played. The duet is spot on with what I imagined for Jeanne & Tristan’s cover.

Teaser: If one were petty enough, they’d say they were living a lie. But they… no, she never believed that. She was merely doing what she was born to do: Give inspiration and happiness to children everywhere. And so, in memory of her former master, that lonely little child, she’d live on in her image, bringing joy and happiness to as many as possible. That’s what she’d decided upon gleaming the nature of Chaldea’s benevolent 48^th Master.