[Cherry_Lover]

Originally Posted by GDB

You said he didn't stick to his ideals in Fate, and then said in the next line that he never went against them. Those are your words, and you didn't say anything about his actions and whether they were because of his ideals or not.

Well, Ok, I was slightly confused in my wording there. Everyone can make mistakes sometimes.

I like the way that you've entirely ignored all the valid points I made that tear your argument to shreds, but you've picked up on the one small error in terminology I made. Ignore that particular bit of my argument then, because there are plenty more arguments I've given you for why Shirou was not remotely OOC in HF.

I think this is what it says is the case during one of her nighttime romps.

I believe it's actually what Zouken tells Shirou when he's trying to persuade him to kill Sakura. Of course, that means that it's correctness is rather dubious, since Zouken is quite capable of lying through his hind teeth to get what he wants (and what he wanted in that case was for Shirou to try and fail to kill Sakura, thus precipitating her breakdown).

When did UBW show that there were problems having two Shirous in the same time?

Not problems per se, but there is a sort of 'mixing' between their souls. Shirou pulls off information from Archer when they're in close proximity (hence why he learns how to fight so quickly in UBW) and they are stated to have a natural dislike for each other that stems from the contradiction of having two Shirous around at the same time. Those things (in particular the first one, which you can't deny) show that there must be some 'marking' that says "this soul is the soul of Emiya Shirou". When Gaia looks at them, it says "huh, there's two Emiya Shirou's here" and thus starts to get them mixed up, leading to Shirou pulling information off Archer.

All I recall Fate/UBW saying about Assassin up to that point is that he was a Fake Hero, as in he never existed. It never said anything about any other possible restrictions to the class.

No, because if it did then it would have spoilered HF. HF explains it, as does Fate/Zero, plus the various side-material books. An Assassin-class servant is always Hassan-al-Sabbah. But, the point that I was making is that even in Fate/UBW, he's shown to be an exception to the usual rules, so I don't see how you find it so odd that he should be shown to be an even bigger exception in HF.

So Archer-class servants don't have to be Archers, but Assassin-class servants have to be Assassins?

In simple terms, yes, because Nasu said so. But, the point I was making is that if you were thinking of a class name for Fake Assassin, without any consideration of the necessity of involving True Assassin in HF, you wouldn't come up with "Assassin".

If all you need to be an Archer is being good at long-range attacks, then why can't an Assassin just be someone who is exceptionally skilled in stealth and melee combat?

Because that's how Nasu defined it.

For that matter, what qualifies someone to be any class? Saber would, logically, be someone with a sword. But we saw with Hercules that weapons can easily change their form to another type of weapon. The only one with a really "clear" definition is Rider, but even that's kind of loose when you think of Medusa's lore.

Actually, Heracles' weapon did not change it's form. Nine lives is a technique, not a weapon, so he can use it with any weapon. It was originally invented for use with a bow, but it can equally as easily be used with any other weapon.

As for what qualifies someone to be in a class, it's "whatever Nasu says qualifies them", and Nasu has said that, to be an Assassin (unless someone breaks the rules), you have to be Hassan-al-Sabbah.

I would have a problem with the Archer class if there were a third Archer shown who was clearly a bowman. As it is, it's rather iffy, but at least it can be looked at as the "hodge podge" class.

But there clearly could be an Archer-class servant who was a normal bowman. Heracles, for example, is stated to be able to be any class but Caster, and he doesn't have any beam-spam ability or similar, he just has a bow....

I did earlier. He's exceptionally skilled at stealth and melee combat.

Melee combat, yes, but not stealth. His "presense concealment" is a class skill, that he gets because he got pushed into the "Assassin" container.

His kill-move is designed to not allow for escape, which would be a perfect assassination technique to use on masters.

As opposed to every other NP, which any master could trivially dodge...? He would be far better classed as a Saber, or as some melee class. If you were inventing a class name solely for him, you wouldn't describe him as 'Assassin'. The reason he's in that class is because Nasu wanted to use True Assassin in HF, and thus needed the Assassin class there, but there was no-one other than Zouken who could summon TA (and he didn't want Zouken involved before HF).