Nephirin said:
The "friction" between Shirou and the arm is sort of a fanon thing that's sprung up.
Mmn... I disagree.
The thing is, Kotomine (and to a lesser extent Rin and Ilya) talk about the Heroic Spirit thing, and that's one thing.
But there was something else, that EMIYA warned Emiya about when they were alone, that no one else was ever told about.
Yeah there's the "using the Heroic Power will eventually kill you" thing, but that's consistently compared to a time bomb; once he lights the fuse, eventually it will kill him. There won't be any side effects or symptoms until then. If he gets strong enough, ie, as strong as a Heroic Spirit, then he can, like, snuff out the fuse.
But his continuous mental destruction was
something different. It wasn't the "using this power will kill you" thing that Kotomine warned him about.
When he pulls the shroud off to use Archer's arm against Darkserker, Shirou explicitly attributes the pain to contradicting himself, to "Emiya Shirou" having no future because he betrayed himself.
So I interpreted it as there were
two penalties getting applied.
There was the one that Kotomine warned him about, the "time bomb" of using a Heroic Spirit's power.
But there was also the one that EMIYA warned him about, when they were alone in the rain. "Neither option is wrong. But for Emiya Shirou, the choice is clear." But Shirou picked the other option, and by doing so he betrayed himself.
The "sword virus" is merely (...merely?) a side effect of over-using Tracing.
But the amnesia, where using Archer's Marble continuously scrapes away his memories and scours out his self, I interpreted that as being a result of Emiya destroying himself out of self-hate because he betrayed himself, separate from how he, like, pulled his sword ligaments and had to put a sword on it as a splint.
EDIT:
Amodelsino said:
I suppose I could switch Rider and Archer's roles from the original (Shirou was going to get Rider to side with him against Rin). But while that doesn't make much sense to me since why would Rider side with Rin after she kills Sakura, you have a fair point that Archer probably wouldn't ever let Rin have the Grail.
Didn't Sakura sneak out of her room before Rin got there, right before that "do it / don't do it" choice, and she was standing around in the rain thinking "what next" when Shirou found her in the park?
I always assumed "Mind of Steel" meant that Shirou would run her through if he found her; let me walk through why. (I'll put stuff that occured to me for Amod's idea specifically in parenthesis).
I mean, like, it would have been weirdly anticlimatic for Shirou to reach this conclusion that he'll sacrifice even the person he loves most for his ideal, and then the sacrifice is
passive, just standing there while Rin does the actual deed.
No, Shirou would insist on being the one doing it himself. (Plus for your thing that would take way
Rin's sense of closure for being the one to do it, which I think would be tough for her, emotionally).
And of course Rider would try to interrupt the execution, only to get shut down hard by Archer right there; she'd be stoked as hell on her Monster Transformation, and K+B are anti-Monster. I always thought that was foreshadowing that never got used. I never thought Rider would last more than five minutes longer than Sakura would.
And then while Kotomine is gloating, Archer would turn to Shirou and say, "alright, ready for Phase Two?"
And then Shirou calmly says "yeah" and Archer runs Kotomine through from behind and they both turn and walk away to go deal with Zouken.
...Of course, that means there's still time and space for the now-masterless True Assassin to reach out to Rin if they only Rule Break her contract with Archer instead of completely removing her rights as a Master (eg, chopping off her arm to take the Seals).
Well--
--that's just how I
assumed it would go down, it's not like I'm basing it on anything stronger than a fuzzy "narrative sense."
