I had a suspicion while reading that scene, that Takami/MBI had Shirou followed, bugged, or otherwise spied on when he left the meeting. There are too many elements in MBI with an intense interest in Shirou and access to extraordinary resources, for them not to try something.

Shirou had a very revealing and condemning conversation with two of his sekirei in public, immediately after leaving a meeting arranged by the MBI. It's also specifically noted that they had this conversation at street level, rather than the much more private rooftops. Any old human MBI agents could've used lip reading, parabolic microphones, or other surveillance techniques to listen in. [I don't think this actually happened, if only because GB seems to regularly forget the mundane methods of doing things - but it's still worth noting]

Shirou also met Yasaka and it would've been clear from body language alone that they were somewhat friendly. MBI can't use Shirou's family against him [because of Takami], his friends are all sekirei [and ostensibly protected by Miya], so that makes Yasaka the most convenient target of choice for anyone who wants leverage against him. If they saw it.

I don't think the Yasaka scene was just added in to waste space. We'll see, I suppose. It could've been some botched character development for Homura.

That other struggle is probably going to be the Clocktower. Cruentus and I were discussing this in April, two years ago [Has it really been that long!?]. Here's the relevant bit:

The threat list is something like this:

Shirou vs Contestants
Shirou vs MBI
Shirou vs Clocktower

The contestants are mostly dealt with or cowed. MBI's threat level has been planned for, and they're at least wary of Shirou. I think it's the Clocktower and the world of the magi that's been having a consistently minor presence in the plot which is going to blind-side him.

It's been hinted at fairly strongly that Shirou is Alaya's response. She won't send a CG unless it looks like he'll fail. But yeah, trapping Shirou between a rock and a hard place, where he has to simultaneously save the world from the jinki/MBI, and save Shin Tokyo from a Counter Guardian whose trying to do the same thing by killing them all, would be pretty damn awesome.

 

Reading the words 'Battle Mode' and 'Path of the Ashura' honestly makes me cringe. Those kind of simplistic character devices are just so amatuer-ish, and GB could do a lot better. Honestly, it's amazing that he wrote both Debt of a Sword and this. When he can write something as great as the other one, how can he not see the flaws in this?

That's not to say that In Flight is bad, but it's definitely flawed, that's for sure.

 

I'm pretty sure that was established 500,000 words ago.

But yeah, "Battle Mode" chips away at my sensibilities every time I see it. It's unfortunately prevalent in F/SN fanfiction.

 

Updated just now.

That was fast.

Lotsa' fluff, but that's to be expected. Hopefully things will start back up now that the two are here, but it'll probably be in one or two chapters at best.

 

Unusually fast, yes. Also very info-dumpy and fillerish. And disappointing, sadly.

The reunion with Saber and Rin was the last thing I was really looking forward to reading. And now it's happened, and it was completely underwhelming. I was expecting a little more emotion - a little more life - through the whole chapter, but it was pretty dull.

 

It wasn't just dull, it was also boring.

It figures really. This is his one chapter in In Flight to show his skills as a writer, but it is like everything else he does. Shame that this is his totality of skills.

 

GB is perfectly capable of excellent writing. The majority of the fics he's posted on FFN range from well above average to amazing, and he's one of the better horror authors I've ever seen.

He's just obsessed with writing infodumps for In Flight for some utterly bizarre reason. He shows quite a bit of skill with pacing and build up and all that kind of stuff elsewhere, but he seems to forget it all every time he sits down to write IF. It's kinda ridiculous, to be honest.

 

I didn't recognize the characters masquerading as Rin and Saber. Kind of a shame, since I liked both characters reading through the visual novel.

 

The only time he has had excellent writing was Debt of a Sword and all of his older stuff. I agree with you on that much at least, but I am talking about what he is now. In Flight is boring just about everything else he has written that I have read.

He can be excellent, but I haven't seen any time recently.

 

There's a part of me that just wants to think he has a problem with writing for the fate series in general. Sure Debt of a Sword was great but I think that was a combination of being the exception to his norm on the topic and the fact that he kept the story below 40k words. He made himself concise, making every word count in that story whereas in Hill of Swords and now In Flight he has allowed himself to meander along for several thousand words.

I look at a lot of GB's stories and really enjoy myself for both his writing quality and the premises he uses. In his fate based stories he drops the former quality like a rock and I'm only supported by the latter. When the stories stretch on as long as this and the quality isn't there I just want to leave.

 

General review time!

On Four Legs is the shit. I've never seen an episode of Kim Possible, but you don't need to to enjoy this.

Those Who Love Monsters was very well written. Again, I'd never seen either of the series being crossed over, but a bit of wiki magic fixed that right up.

Not quite as good: Honor Thy Masters, Don't Look, and Wabisabi, all seemed experimental and a bit cathartic in their own ways.

Honor Thy Masters was more a series of stories, and while there were some very memorable scenes and good fights, the story lacked overall cohesiveness and the characters lacked depth - more caricature than character at many points.

Don't Look was weird, but worth reading. It doesn't pull off the horror as well as On Four Legs did; partly because the monster was a little more ridiculous than terrifying. The characterisations never sat quite right with me either.

Wabisabi had no characterisation to speak of. It shows off GB's talent to make a cohesive and interesting story out of two completely different series. The protagonist is unlikeable, which kills a lot of the joy for me as a reader.

Gabriel's old stuff [10+ years] is completely different to In Flight and Hill of Swords. It's more like the rest of his work, though with more rough edges. They all require at least passing knowledge of Ranma and Sailormoon. Finishing What You Start is still a favourite of mine, though nostalgia probably plays a bit there. Wild Times was fantastic. I really enjoyed all of his old fics.

 

You proved my point exactly.

It is only when one looks at his older writings or judges his works as a whole that one can say he is an excellent writer. If he had a proper critical criticism not sucking up to him he could easily improve as a fair amount is in the editing, but with his current fan base, he will stay in this void forever.

 

Bah, I'm done with this. Hearing that this had updated got no reaction from me whatsoever and the comments make it clear that I'm not missing out.

 

Saber being scared of Miya? Hahahaha...

 

Honestly, while it wasn't the most exciting chapter, it wasn't bad either. If you've read the story up to this point, I don't know why you would stop now when GB is saying there are only a few chapters left

 

Not much point when I don't care what happens or how it ends. I'll probably run through the last few chapters when it's completed just for the sake of closure, but I've no interest in keeping up with it.

 

I honestly think that the big problem with this fic is at there's always a huge amount of build up, and then there's nothing, with the biggest example being Rin and Saber turning up. We've all been waiting for it ever since the story first started, seeing their reactions to the fact that not only does Shirou now have a harem full of strange alien women, but he's now in some kind of tournament similar to the holy grail war, and he apparently has a family. I was expecting a huge rant from Rin about how worried they've been about him, and how hurt they were by the fact that he chose to leave them behind to then find him living it up and having apparently forgotten about him. Instead the entire situation was resolved in a few paragraphs and bad jokes. Also, the fact that Rin and Saber have absolutely no problem with Shirou being involved with the Sekirei after abandoning them, it's kinda hard to believe.

This has just reached the point where I really don't care any more about the characters. The FSN ones have nothing in common with canon and well, the ones from Sekirei are basically talking tits, excluding kuu because she neither gets lines (apart from what is now her catch phrase) or has tits. The plot has only lasted this long because of the fact that it's been padded out so much thanks to pointless filler. Sure it's good of him to explain things about how confusing FSN canon is, but well, if you need thank kind of explanation in the fic, then maybe you should be a bit more familiar with the original material. The fact that it's explaining FSN mechanics and most people are reading it because it's a FSN fic does imply that it's kinda pointless.

GB is a good writer, but really needs to learn that sometimes you don't need to explain every single detail about how shit works, also, comedy is not his thing. Seriously, he just uses the same few jokes over and over and the brain dead retards on ff.net just love it.

tl;dr This fic makes me sad because it should be a great story, instead it's just boring and unfunny.

 

I'm not sure when I gave up on this fic, probably quite a few chapters ago. I read it at first and really liked it. Fight scenes were good, held promise of changing the Seikirei plotline, etc. I waited for one or two updates and felt they were lackluster.

The 'small' gripes I held slowly turned into glaring ones as the plot seemed to stall and stall. So I dropped it. Maybe I would come back when something more significant happened.

But, thanks to the continued reviews here, I never did. I was tempted once or twice recently to take it back-up, but I'm glad I resisted that temptation. Thanks for saving me the wasted time DLP!

 

You know.. most of his stories are based on shonen manga which are not exactly a source of great, deep characters or storylines. So why are you all so surprised when his characters lack depth and his female characters are a bit dumb?

I enjoy most of his stories. I like the explanations, his slightly apathetic main characters and have no problem with the length of his stories. It is something that reminds me at Sci-Fi stories were such things are also common. he also has an immense talent at making crossovers work without resorting to deus ex machinas or similar things.
For example I enjoyed Wabisabi and Honor Thy Masters immensely because they were well executed.

The problem with In Flight, other than its length, is how big his character cast is and how this leads to so much words spend on little story progress. I think that if he only took Akitsu and maybe one or two others (Karasuba?) he could have developed them a lot more. It would also mean that he wouldn´t have to repeat things so often and cut most of this terrible inter group acting out.

The last two chapters, the last one especially, are probably the worst I have read. The whole Rin/saber scene just doesn´t work.

Still it will end soon and I think/hope that his next story will improve on some fronts.

 

So the fact that the source materials come from shonen manga automatically means that the characters are allowed to be shallow and retarded?

Yes, I am surprised that all his female characters are about as interesting as dry paint. He had the opportunity and dubious skills to have fleshed them out far better than what canon could have ever done. But did he do that at all? No. They remain static, unchanging. What's the point of getting interested in them if they only do the exact same things every single chapter?

Anyways, I've been done with this story for a long time now. I'll probably read the very last chapter for the closure but as a whole, this story's been an absolute waste of potential.