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Acrylic on canvas

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⚠️Fate/ Stay Night Spoilers⚠️

Shirou is a character who pretty often has the issue of people reading a lot of his more irrational and self destructive actions exclusively as him being stupid rather than as a reaction to his deeply rooted issues. A lot of this comes from the Ufotable versions of F/SN in particular which I don’t think are necessarily bad adaptations but rather struggle with the fact that alot of Shirou’s characterization comes from his internal dialogue, which is difficult to adapt in a way that feels natural.

However, I feel like there is almost an over correction with people wanting to portray Shirou as being more messed up and worse than he is. I think a bit of this comes from extrapolating things from the fact that Shirou is the narrative foil of Kirei. Shirou is 100% a foil to Kirei and they are extremely similar but their situations aren’t perfect’s opposites.

Another factor for this shift relates to how Shirou describes himself. Shirou views himself as being a completely broken and empty shell of person. However there is a Shirou besides a broken husk.

We see Shirou enjoy things not related to being a hero of justice; it’s just that he feels like he doesn’t deserve to and views being a hero of justice as the only way he can find true happiness. His date with Rin in UBW is an especially good example of this. We also see that he enjoys cooking (which could partially relate a desire to be of service to others but I personally feel not entirely). I’m not denying that Shirou is a person with a lot of major mental health issues. However, he has emotions even if he majorly struggles with experiencing happiness and reacts to things in unexpected ways.

There’s two reasons for this small discrepancy between Shirou’s self perception and the actuality of Shirou. First of all is the societal context Shirou is in, early 2000s Japan. Being in a culture that is avoidant to discussing mental health issues whilst dealing with them would likely need to feelings of alienation. Shirou feeling as though he is inhuman feels realistic. Secondly is Shirou in a way having reasons to want to view himself as being mentally worse than he is. For Shirou, it’s easier to think of himself as not having felt happiness since the fire than to acknowledge the immense guilt that comes with his rare moments of joy. I’d also argue this ties to Shirou’s repression in a way as well; not allowing himself to acknowledge how much he cared about his birth family and other people from his past, convincing himself that the person he was before is completely dead and deeply repressing his memories of that time makes the loss hurt less. I don’t think it’s a conscious act but it’s still notable.

Anyways this is just my interpretation so feel free to disagree with me. Shirou is an incredibly written character that can be read in a lot of different ways.

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Acrylic on Canvas

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Traditional painting of Irisviel Von Einzbern

I feel like I could’ve done the colors better and made her more expressive but I like the lighting.

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⚠️Fate Stay Night Heaven’s Feel Spoilers⚠️

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Shirou and Sakura Mini-Essay

⚠️Heaven’s Feel spoilers, abuse mention (it’s really vague but just a heads up)⚠️

Cold Medicine Metaphor

There’s this small scene in HF where Shirou is caring for Sakura and they make small talk about being a child and blaming cold medicine that’s not having an effect for making you sick. I feel that this is a clever metaphor for both Shirou and Sakura, which I will now discuss how it relates to them individually.

Heaven’s Feel is when we see Shirou at his worst. This is partially because Shirou, who’s a little bit of an unreliable narrator when it regards his own mental state, has had his weak facade of normality that’s put up to the reader broken down over the course of the previous two routes.However it’s also because Shirou is at a major point of transition from using the ideals of a hero of justice his purpose for living to valuing the people close to him more that his late father’s ideals. Although the outcome of Heaven’s Feel’s true ending is very happy, the path to that beautiful spring is dark. But that path to living a fuller life and being truly happy is worthwhile even if it’s hard.

The cold medicine metaphor also relates to Sakura, but we have to go further into past to really see the start. The significance of the high jump scene is Sakura, who has resigned herself to her horrific treatment by the hands of the Matou’s seeing Shirou repeatedly attempting the high jump even though it was futile. That’s what I feel was what made her fall in love with him. Shirou’s kindness towards her after she began going over to his house led to unimaginable levels of self loathing as she felt unworthy of it. Additionally, Sakura’s greater (although still very shaky) sense of self is what led to her being able to despise the world that she felt turned her back on her, which is later personified due to the influence of the corrupted grail. Zouken tells Shirou that he’s the cause of Sakura’s suffering because he showed her a brighter world. This is very reflective of Shirou being Sakura’s metaphorical cold medicine; The root cause of Sakura’s misery is her abuse but a change in perspective which was sparked by Shirou changed her feelings about it from hopeless despair to extreme loathing of the world that let it happen to her. However, in True End, Sakura is able to have happiness that in the past she couldn’t even allow herself to imagine, showing her growth that just like HF True End Shirou, allows her to finally have genuine happiness.

In Defense of Normal End

This isn’t saying that I like Heaven’s Feel’s Normal Ending. HF Normal Ending is devastating and also shares the only problem I have with HF’s True Ending, that being Illya being ignored. However I feel HF Normal Ending works.

As previously stated, Shirou and Sakura are both in a very vulnerable point in their lives during Heaven’s Feel. Due to this, they have the problem of being codependent. A lot of people see this and argue that their a bad couple because of this and it is something that if they were real people they should work on but remember that they are both in an extremely difficult transitional period and are each other’s main or only support system. Although Sakura does have Rin who genuinely loves Sakura(even though she tries to kill her) and especially post HF is doing the best she can for her sister, Sakura suddenly losing the person who she was emotionally reliant on would stunt her emotional growth and leave her stuck waiting for him. It’s extremely sad and intentionally an unsatisfying conclusion to Sakura’s arc. I completely understand people’s complaints about the ending as although it being unsatisfying is the intent, it does make the reader feel like they’ve been cheated out of a happy ending and also understates the positive impact Rin has on Sakura.

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🌻🖌

Van gogh from FGO,i drawn them before:)

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Epilogue Sakura for her birthday!

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⚠️FGO Shinjuku Spoilers⚠️

Headcanon that Mash wrote self insert Sherlock Holmes fanfic that she hastily deleted when he got summoned to Chaldea.

It’s not romantic or anything, just a self indulgent “I solve mysteries with Sherlock Holmes” type thing.

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Happy Birthday Rin!