Title: I'm Not a Regular Mom
Author: Blinktwice13
Rating: M (It's on SV, so unrated, but gore, violence, and historical harm)
Genre: Action, Adventure
Status: WiP
Library Category: Other Fandoms
Pairings: OC/Multiple (both male and female); others in background
Summary: "...she's a cool mom. In which Matthew Kyrielight gets made into a Demi-Servant for a very specific incarnation of Morgan Le Fay. The one who decided she could do a better job than Merlin at being a voice of reason to Saber Lily, her dear little sister. The poor boy has no idea what he's in for."
Link: Sufficient Velocity Reader Mode

As of 2020-09-12, 32 Chapters, 220K words, last three chapters on 2020-09-08 (10k), 08-22 (14k), and 08-11 (13k). Currently in Septem.

I will start this off by saying my exposure to the Fate franchise is limited to FGO, some random crossovers, and what little I could be bothered to look up on the wiki.

The main departure point here is that rather than Mash being the only demi-servant experiment that worked, there was one more. Taking his name based on hers, Matthew's skillset comes from an AU Morgana-le-Fay, Queen of Seelie and Unseelie courts; and he's just a little bit feral in comparison. This is all part of his backstory, as he had it rougher than Mash did; who mostly has her canon background.

That leads to my first negative - for some reason, Matthew and Mash were treated very differently by the magi of Chaldeas before the story starts. Matthew was the first one, and pretty heavily abused. Further, he remembers this. So he's spiteful, angry, and agressive. Then when Mash is successful, she's then adopted by Roman, and the rest of the clocktower magi treat Matthew like a mad beast (which is fair), whilst she skates by. It's not a major problem, but it's not really been addressed in story (that I picked up on, at least), why Animusphere allowed Roman to take such a part in raising Mash, when Matthew was pretty much left to his own devices. Just a comment thrown in on "Animusphere advised that I could try raising her, so the second one would be more human" would have been sufficient, really.


Second major problem is a theme I hate seeing - the clever plan is discussed in obfuscated details. Characters taking part in this refer to each other by descriptors, or wording their way around a problem. They also cut across each other, so the plan is left vague (along the lines of "But what i-" "Don't worry, we accounted for it"). This is probably less of a nuisance for anyone more invested in the nasuverse than I am, as there's all sorts of things I've gone and looked up on a re-read.


So far, the best thing I've found about this is how much it's not just a canon re-tread. It hits a lot of the same notes, to be certain, but whilst the Fuyuki runs similar to canon, Orleans goes completely different - the cast is twisted from canon, there's new additions, and the overall story has a completely different turn of events. Septem takes it even further, and BB has now turned up, but we're only just getting started. Some plot from the Lostbelts has been folded in, or averted entirely, so there's a nice cast going around.


That leads to another (minor) problem, although not limited to this work.

Whenever the castlist grows too much, a large portion of the cast will go unused. When there's a limit to the number of 'main' characters, such as Pokemon, or any given master only being able to support (up to) five servants in the field, then we have a much more limited group. But it means there's characters who have shown up in summoning, and then disappear.

For characters expected to remain in the background, this isn't really a problem. But it does mean that some major characters can feel like they're cluttering the place up and not adding much of anything.


Writing wise, this feels quite polished. No glaring mistakes, but nothing minor that I picked up on either.


All that said, Matthew is OP. There's some problems with his powerlevels, but Morgan is effectively using his as an Alt-Account Twink. He's also an obnoxious dick. There's good reason for his seething hate, and he is entirely justified, but it does mean he delights in rubbing some characters the wrong way. His actions do also come back to bite him - the distrust shown by most of the Chaldean staff for his behaviour during his upbringing, for example. But that doesn't detract from the fact that Matthew makes the job of closing the singularities significantly easier.

Thankfully, the author has ramped the difficulty up to match, and there's more going on behind the scenes that we haven't yet had a full view of.


I've really enjoyed this, both on the original reading, and then on a re-read over the last few days, prior for putting up for review. The antagonists are taken seriously, the protagonist has flaws that impact them, and the writing is good. It doesn't just degenerate into waifu-collecting either, or eternal angst, like most other FGO pieces I've picked up. I'm not sure I could rate this as anything other than a 5/5