Liked the chapter, but more than ever I realize that apart from the infodumps the other major problem is too many characters. So many scenes that would be awesome just get bogged down by having every character's reaction being shown. It's like when I look up videos of something like Dragon Age showing all the character reactions to something happening: Great when it's just a few, but having the whole cast just ruins the scene.

 

Holy shit things actually happened.

 

On the surface level it was good. Stuff happened and that stuff had logic to it.

It also had Rin/Saber get massively insulted by making the cardboard cutouts that the Sekirei are being the ones to 'heal' Shirou.

 

Stuff happening in a GB fic is generally a good thing. Still, at this point I'm just tired of all this, the setting isn't really doing anything for me, the vast majority of the characters are shamelessly shallow in their depth. The action is still the most consistently good thing about this fic and even that was starting to get bogged down.

Highlights of this chapter are the Karasuba/ Shirou fight and the banter between shirou and Minaka. The later was only because of the randomness of the situation and not as much because of the writing itself.

Honestly, I'm just done with this. GB can do some good work, really he can. The problems start when he lets himself draw things out into these epic stories. Hill of Swords and In Flight both suffer from the abundance of side characters, info dumps, and just general monotonous crap that he interjects into his longer stories. I look at things like his recent SAO crossover and the bakemonetagari/ kenichi crossover and see just how good his writing can be. Then it just makes me sad when I look at how much wasted potential is in In Flight and how much time I wasted reading it.

 

Yeah all those talks between Shirou and his flock are straining my nerves and destroying the atmosphere. I mean one minute he has to the death fight against Minaka then he spends the next 3 minutes explaining various stuff to his Harem only to get surprised/losing sight of the enemy.
And like the others here said.. his shorts are really much better.
But I have to respect his drive.. not many people manage to finish such long stories.
(Ah and he should stop making such ridiculous Harem stories... or at least make them a lot smaller.)

 

Yak already did the review on GB's stuff.

 

I actually cringed when I read the new aria, we all know that was coming, but, man, that's just... I have no words for it.

 

I would normally try to defend Gabe, but I fully agree with you here.

 

I was smart and just ignored the Aria. Then again, I just ignored the fight in general as well since it was obvious how it would end.

 

The Aria was cringeworthy. And the premise behind it is basically shitting all over his relationship with Rin and Saber.

Did love the winging of Karasuba and the dialogue with Minaka. It's kinda surprising that after so much wordiness in previous chapters, the 'final battle' was wrapped up so quickly.

Honestly, if this entire fic was rewritten with Shirou winging just one or two Sekirei, this would be orders of magnitude better.

 

So it has been said many a time. I'm surprised no-one here's just gone and written their own In Flight after all this time.

 

A lot of people have, there are hundreds of In Flight Omakes and so on.

Most suck, but there are some good ones like Steadfast

 

No-one here. AFAIK.

 

Actually the Aria was one of the things that I had the least problems with.

The connection between Ashikabi and Sekirei is not a one-way street. After winging, the Sekirei starts seeing their Ashikabi as their true love, the one reason they having for living, and they will give up everything for their happiness. The Ashikabi begins to care for the Sekirei. Her well-being becomes very important to him, and he wishes her to be protected and he sees her as something he wants to spend the rest of his life with.

On the surface this sounds like normal romantic love. But it is far more powerful and subtle than that. It is not love that is slowly built up over time, nor is it the sudden passion of love at first sight. It is formed from a deep psychic connection, which actually forces them to love each other. In the Sekirei it can be obvious--Tsukiumi's attitude about Ashikabi before and after being winged is one major example. But in the Ashikabi it is more subtle.

A properly winged connection slowly forces the Ashikabi to love their partners. This can be helped along by actual affection, but a subconscious force is there. This has been touched upon by a few fics--Postnuptual Disagreements and Ashikabi no Shinobi are two that I've read that have their protagonists as people who are not the type of people to have deep romantic feelings, but yet do due to this connection.

Now back to Shirou and his Aria. The reason that this works--the reason that his romantic involvement with the 'flock' matters more to that than the entirety of his relationship with Saber and Rin--is due to this psychic connection. With Saber and Rin, he was ever-so slowly working his way towards valuing something--an alien mindset to his twisted personality. It might have taken decades and having children to reach this point, but he could have eventually reached it.

The psychic connection to his flock however forces this into the here and now. It effectively drags his worldview kicking and screaming into caring for these creatures, changing the Aria that expresses himself into one that actually has something to lose.

Of course, gaining such a normal(-ish) mindset would put him in line with the rest of humanity, meaning that as the way he views the world is no longer so alien as to equal that of demons and vampires in how different it is to the world's common sense (the very core of how a Reality Marble comes into being), there should be consequences of losing it, but oh well.

 

TL;DR: Sekirei is about mind-rape.

 

Considering that most Sekirei were shown to be submissive in mindset, sweet in temperament, and freaking incredibly sexy in body.. add on the super powers and the open minds.. you can't really call it rape if it's willing.

Shirou is just a moralistic goody goody with emotional traumas.

 

It is done.

 

I had a sad.

 

It is finally over.

 

That was extremely disappointing. I don't care to think about why, but it was.