#the last one is gross

[hinamie]

9 / 266

[copepods]

this made me smile

[corantus]

lesbian beauty & the beast 👑💔

[horreurscopes]

i like my body when it is with your body.

[zeravmeta]

don quixote fgo is just so good, he is such a hopeful character and i absolutely think he's the standout from traum

what really strikes me about him is that traum is a story dedicated to broken ideals and unfulfilled dreams: the major players of each faction are all characters with failed ambitions and who wage war against panhuman history to achieve those dreams. kriemhild wants revenge on siegfried even after killing hagen, komstantinos wants to remake his old empire, johanna abhors that she is a living fictional character and wants to become a real person, all the nameless servants from each faction are dedicated to rebel not only because of zhang jue's influence but because they all, in some form, had unfinished business, dreams they never fulfilled. this even extends to moriarty himself, a younger version who's fixated on defeating holmes because his older version could not, and he follows through on it because he did not really understand the value of his own nemesis, a fact that ultimately left him defeated no matter how much he tried to control fate. All of these characters refused to face the reality of their failures, and honestly don quixote was the most guilty of this

he was originally a servant summoned in the atlantean lostbelt, and genuinely did try to rally heroes, but as he saw these legendary figures he adored be struck down he lost hope. it wasn't just that he was afraid, it was that the heroes around himself had given up even before him, a craven old man.

the thing is though that the reason don quixote and sancho ran is antithetical to the reasons that the other servants ran: they did it specifically to survive. sancho was able to convince don quixote to leave because she reminded him that it wasn't wrong or evil to want to live, and this was only possible because don quixote, despite being a servant, still thinks of himself as being human. even though he consciously understands himself as being a servant, his way of thinking and reasoning is undeniably that of a normal human

A big part of his too is that traum is also a singularity in which the names of heroic spirits have lost their meaning: the sheer volume of servants means that there is no singular standout hero, sure, but when kriemhild killed the lancer who was about to declare his name she called him merely a foot soldier because said name was worthless, in traum there is only the endless war of people slaughtering each other, and ironically a unifying peace in that.

names are the linchpins of heroic spirits: servants aren't the ghosts of dead people, they're the manifestations of what those legends meant to humanity, all codified by the names they carry. servants have to name themselves and have names for their noble phantasms which directly identify them because they are literal living legends. Yet in traum, those names and legends and meanings become all but worthless in the face of endless war as armies of these protectors of humanity are reduced to mere foot soldiers. there is a similar parallel to this when vlad goes to the righteous realm, and as he sees the army gathered he finds it entirely lacking because it's fully composed of singular standout heroes who are all used to essentially being the main character and thus cant function as a unit. Traum is a world where being a hero has no meaning.

but i think that's also why don quixote declares himself against konstantinos and challenged him: in this moment, he reclaimed the value of being a knight who fights for his ideals, that of a true hero

konstantinos throughout traum is presented as equally a legendary figure as charlemagne is, and yet his reason for fighting is incredibly simple: he's in love with johanna and wants to make her real to panhuman history, and to this end he'll continue the war in traum as needed for that end. kriemhild has an equal but opposite reason rooted in the same thing: love. she wants revenge against siegfried for having gone through with hagens plan, for not letting her in to his pain, he was too much of a hero for everyone that it led him to sacrificing himself even if it would hurt her. konstantinos wanted to be the perfect knight, and kriemhild wanted to get revenge against her own knight for being too perfect.

The thing is, despite their insistence on traum being the cruel reality of a war, both of them were holding onto rather idealized, almost romanticized versions of what a knight should be.

konstantinos knows and declares don quixote as being likely the most famous knight to have ever lived, but he dismisses him as a threat when actually fighting him. When he's about to finish him, he tells don quixote that he has to face reality as he's about to die. However, the story of don quixote was always that of an old man whom lost himself to his fantasies of chivalry and knightly idealism, and despite the troubles he caused still continued to fight for what he believed was honorable. Even if he had returned to reality in the end, there was still meaning to the outright silly journey of an old man knight long past the age of chivalry, of the old man who, despite his fear, still chose to rally an army and fight for the world he felt he had failed.

what traum needed was someone who did good not as a hero but as a human. almost every knightly character in fate carries grand ideals as to why they are knights, but the only requirement to BE a knight and a hero is the simple desire to do good for others, and don quixote is fittingly the most famous knight in the world because he's utterly obsessed with the great chivalric legends of old, yet still strived to do good in the way normal people do.

it's why charlie finds him so inspiring, as well

for all the non-extella link players, charlemagne as we see him in fgo is actually the fictionalized version of him from the tales of the paladins of charlemagne and not the actual karl der Große. He's even more fictionalized than johanna and don quixote himself, because while johanna might have been an erroneous account and don quixote a story book character, charlemagne is a full on sensationalized re-imagining of an already real person. but even if he may be a fictionalized person, what he represents is what matters the most, the same with any heroic spirit, which is why charlemagne considers johanna just as real and why the actual karl der Große saw fit to send him to traum

at the center of traum we ultimately find wakamori, who despite seeming cruel and mysterious throughout the entire plot, has shown multiple times that he's essentially trying to fill in bigger shoes than he can: He's obsessed with defeating sherlock and presenting himself as the ultimate evil, but he's still green at the end of the day, and I think this is in part what leads him to somewhat even respect don quixote

when he tries to taunt don quixote, he does so with the assumption that much like himself, don quixote is attempting to play the part he represents most: don quixote is surely trying to be the greatest most idealized version of a knight, the same way wakamori is trying to be the perfected version of himself, the true evil mastermind whom can finally defeat sherlock. But don quixote flat out tells him that conflict and even life itself has always had no inherent meaning nor any inherent roles to play, so much in the same way that he has no special value to his life tied to being a knight, wakamori's own value is not tied specifically to that of being sherlock holmes' greatest evil rival. There's a surprising empathy in this exchange I feel, because don quixote understands wakamori immediately where it took sherlock the entire story: there's nothing wrong with being a little delusional, but you have to treat them with respect.

wakamori ultimately fails because he believed that defeating sherlock would finally give value to james moriarty as the ultimate villain, unaware that sherlock holmes is the defining equal to james moriarty. there is no purpose to a story with an evil mastermind that doesn't have an equally great hero trying to stop him, and wakamori failing to understand that his own value as such is not diminished by not having ever defeated holmes is what ruins him: He didn't respect the story he was so enthralled by. shinjuku showcased a similar dynamic, but the difference between shinjuku and traum is that the older moriarty very much understood what it would take to succeed, and that would be to become the protagonist of the story, rather than the ultimate final boss.

the stories of knights and heroes and monsters and spurned loves and great detectives and evil masterminds are all in part defined by the meanings that people derive from them, from the ordinary good that they can inspire first and foremost. And even though don quixote may have been a craven old man who eventually gave up chivalry, he still tried to live a good life and do good the way any ordinary person would.

And that's such a genuinely hopeful and kind sentiment to tie to the concept of knightly ideals: you don't have to be grand to be a hero, and you don't even have to be a hero to inspire others.

[fairweathermyth]

GROSSE POINTE BLANK dir. George Armitage, 1997

[kindest-little-fella-in-town]

i want to put pierre in a meat grinder

[loonybun]

Surgical whump prompts!

(req by @i-eat-worlds)

warning some of these will not be medically accurate or possible without an immortal whumpee so ignore that 💖 also sort of more intense gore stuff/me going on several tangents about my favorite pieces of unethical medical history. specific warnings for lobotomies, manipulation, infection, and dismemberment.

- i’ve kind of loved the idea of implanting something silver underneath the skin of a creature that’s weak to it. Every movement causes it to shift and itch and burn even after the skin has healed over

- amputation :) one too many escape attempts? why not make that a little harder? nab a limb every time they try running off. Maybe just start with the fingers or toes and work your way up from there.

- you know what i see a surprising lack of in whump? lobotomies. seriously where are the lobotomies. the lobotomies with long term effects. the lobotomies which a magical regenerative or immortal whumpee could recover from but leaves them scarred for life. In case you’re unaware of what lobotomies actually do to the brain, they essentially shut off your ability to think for yourself. You may still be responsive and you can still follow instructions, but they have to be very specific and step-by-step. (specifically referencing transorbital. there are different kinds with different ranges of damage potential but the transorbital is the most well known. fun fact the guy who invented the transorbital lobotomy rode around in a car he called the lobotomobile. you can’t make this shit up.)

- my love for victorian medical practices is seeping in here but perform a surgery with dull and dirty tools! The crusted blood on the scalpel adds to the effect. Bonus points if it causes a nasty infection

- Circling back to lobotomy-adjacent stuff, have your whumper fuck around with removing non-essential parts of the brain. Get an H.M. situation where you remove their ability to move short-term memories to their long-term bank. Maybe remove the amygdala, too. Or parts of the cerebellum so that they’re all uncoordinated. Not sure just how effective that would be though since I’m pretty sure the cerebellum controls other stuff too.

- leather straps securing them to the table. must i say more.

- also seriously implant devices into them. explosives, a little thing that releases drugs, something that taps into their nerves, etc…

- organ harvesting. classic but hey. i’m a simple man.

- maybe the whumper is a respected surgeon. whumpee goes to whumper for help with a rare medical condition that could maybe be solved through surgery, and instead of immediately helping them whumper keeps them to document their condition, subjecting them to various treatments and vivisections in order to find some way to “help” them. whumpee case studies, folks!

- sorry this is absolutely me sneaking my personal favorite tropes into this post but please dismember your whumpees n put them back together ball jointed doll style. surprise you can’t move on your own anymore but you can still hold a pose! loser.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[tankgotstuckinthecircusgate]

tr: "prices are rising by the hour... let's see how this plays out."

started to replay 2005's pathologic yesterday so. vlad jr aka the only man Ever 👊👊👊👊

[the-meme-monarch]

i’m about to hit shrimpo with my aromantic beam i think

[chicohungers24-7]

Nine's deterioration while using the Paradox Prism

[fiona-fififi]

...

[myokk]

beach day!!!

[girllookingoutwindow]

"I think we should be together"

[wonderkeef]

To all of the artists who have been drawing Kelsey as fat-strong, I just want you to know you're doing the work of a long-forgotten god and it makes me very happy