Den of Knights

"I am Saber. A Servant that will protect you." - Saber, Fate Prototype

[paragon-arthur]

[studiotrigger-deactivated201605]

[funny-friends]

TUTORIAL: how to deepen your WARRIOR'S BOND with your GIRL BEST FRIEND once you start pushing 30

[captain-price-returns]

The ass on the Lilith statue is INSANE

[cozyacademia07]

2025 was the year I realized just how much doom scrolling has cost me. My reading capacity, memory, consistency, creativity, ability to keep working hard, etc etc. I used to be the kid with shelves of books and now I haven't read the ones I bought years ago. I can barely keep track of time and the days just fly by, I don't even know what I did during most of them. I obviously can work hard but not persistently, I've lost the ability to put in effort day by day to reap the reward in the end, I'm either hard on myself or I give up and stop caring when I don't achieve something immediately. I barely have any hobbies anymore, its been replaced by scrolling. This has generally been normalized so much tbh, so many people I know don't have hobbies anymore. Even my english is getting worse, while I know my native language instinctively, I hadn't realized that I had to keep reading to not forget vocabulary and basic grammar lol. But this is not who I want to be anymore. I don't like this version of myself, I don't want to be this stupid, useless, and incompetent. I want to change, I want to be better and do better for myself. I've been privileged enough to receive the sort of education and opportunities so many around the world have been denied. Hell, I do genuinely believe I have the brains, I've just not been using it right. I have tried to get my life before so many times before, but I hadn't properly realized where I was going wrong and I've never had the drive I have now. It won't be easy, but I hope 2026 is going to be my year

[magical-game]

Gotta reblog this now 'cause it's very important.

Social media is not good for you, peeps.

Read books. Write stories, journal. Sit outside. Learn ocarina. Build models. Make mixtapes/playlists. Listen to classes/lectures on youtube or wherever you can find them. Make little snakes and lizards out of beads & plastic string. Draw maps of places that don't exist. They exist now! Proof: You have a map!

OP I am very very proud of you for beginning to break away from the unhealthy doomscrolling. I also hope 2026 is going to be great for you. And for all of us!

[7l7l7l7l7l7l7l7]

yall ever miss your own energy?? like damn wtf happened to me??

[scentedtheoristperfection]

Lady Avalon's True Name is Manaka Sayjou.

(Want to make clear that I'm only talking about the FGO Servant, not the version in Prototype) (Only FGO JP Spoilers are a Valentine, and Arcade- not the collab, but actual one that was already out by LB7)

Lady Avalon is a servant introduced in Grand Order during the summer 7 Arctic Summer World Event. She is part of the pretender class. A class known for having a "True Name" that is revealed at a later point in the story. Lady Avalon is an exception*

Elisa is also an exception but the reason she's a pretender is explained in the story- the fusion with Shi Jin and appears to be powerless. Lady Avalon's explanation is more complicated.

We are given two explanations for why she is one and both of them are deliberately uh maybe? Lady Avalon is very insistent on it being because she's not a human- but her bond profile makes it sound like it's about the question:

Why does she desperately flee the King Arthur who claims to be from another world?" It's a question that Arthur himself doesn't seem to understand the answer to. (Second image is FGO Arcade Fan Translation)

So let's zoom out for a minute. Lady Avalon has some unique and odd attributes that are solely her.

She is the first and only character in the entire game to exclusively exist as a Summer Servant.

She is a Pretender despite being a Caster in Arcade, and no explanation is given · Nov 6, 2024 Oberon cannot see Merlin. He has a passive skill that only effects Merlin and lowers his buff success rate. Lady Avalon is not affected by said passive skill. What's more, Lady Avalon directly comments on noticing Oberon in her valentine! · Nov 6, 2024 If she is just Proto Merlin, there is a lot of questions. Why does she flee from Arthur? Why does she refuse to admit she's Merlin? Why can she see Oberon? Why is it being treated like she's hiding some great secret.

Why does she call Arthur her beloved?

We have also met the actual Merlin Prototype and both their attitude and word choice do not seem to line up with Lady Avalon. In the Arthur Trial Quest they talk to Arthur and do not sound at all like Lady Avalon aside from the occasional giggle. And they are not shy.

Ibuki-douji believes they know some great secret about Lady Avalon. Our entire list of characters with dialogue for her is Gareth (Same banner), Arthur, Nero Draco, Ibuki and… David?

Ibuki also has a tendency to know things she shouldn't so…

Lady Avalon and Merlin describe the Grail very differently. Manaka in Prototype talks about how the original purpose of the grail is to collect wishes and summon a Beast. But how are they fulfilling their purpose in Chaldea then? Like unless Ritsuka is going to be a beast...

Romulus in Arthur's interlude refers to Beast VI- the one Arthur is hunting as the Beast who will come beyond the stars borders. Then Lady Avalon is addressed a Beast of the Stars by Nero Draco in the Official Translation of Lilim Harlot…

[roadhogsbigbelly]

i'm not saying people shouldn't be reading more books, but i do think it's funny how many people thinking "reading comprehension" is just about how good you are at reading books and not like. criticial thinking skills.

[fedoranon]

Before my niece was in school and her first few summers, I babysat her pretty often, natch. Occasionally I'd take her to a movie (mostly as an excuse to watch a "kids" movie, ha) but there was a lot of PBS and Netflix because then I could lay out the grapes and crackers.

And after the movie, or every few episodes, I'd ask her, you know, what her favorite part was, or what did she think would happen next? Total glass eyes. Okay, okay, favorite is a bit much. Was there a part she liked? A character? ..... Any character's name?

I told my sister I was concerned of course. I got blown off. And then she started school and started getting notes about her reading comprehension and my sister was like but she knows how to read, I know she knows what words mean! And I was like no no no this is what I was talking about and like. Obviously I read the four year old picture books too but the example that came to mind was being disappointed we couldn't finish Carmen Sandiego and either not knowing or not wanting to tell me the main character's name.

And she's like, well that isn't reading.

Okay! So! The skill isn't named correctly but that's what it is!! That's what it is for a 4 year old, they should at least be on that level!

It's not about knowing the most words or the most complicated grammar, it's about being able to give a basic summary of a post and add a semi-relevant anecdote (lol). on its most basic level, it's about not pissing on the poor

[parasite-core]

A handful of people have told me I should have put my tags in the actual post so here you go:

[handsaniti]

The good thing about critical thinking skills is that they can be developed and improved upon with patience and practice

[clockworkcanary]

A lot of the things you think “just come naturally” or are “common sense” are actually things that you learned at some point. You just don’t remember learning them!

The one that I know that I learned in college because I remember having problems with it, and then it finally clicking, was warm and cool colors. Golden hour, or how to indicate cool or warm in art. It’s one of my very favorite ways to play with color, NOW, but, it took me most of a semester in a color focused art class, in my early twenties to SEE it.

Ugh. So many assignments where the teacher was like, “nope, bot there yet.” So many!! (So long ago, too. We were doing slide photography and showing the slides in class, every class meeting)

It was useful, to me, to encounter something that took so much work for me to actually see it. Before that, I had mostly just done what was easiest, what people told me I had a “talent” for.

No. The skill of learning new mental skills? The frustration tolerance to get through and get it to click? THAT was the most valuable thing I encountered in college because it applies to everything all the time everywhere.

And it’s good to understand that it is ALL SKILLS! All of it. The easy and the hard stuff. You CAN learn it. Figuring out how to get yourself to actually grasp it is harder, though. Different people learn in different ways.

The frustration tolerance, though. That was really hard for me. I am still working on it.

[elumish]

Both as a writer and as a general member of society, reading comprehension is a super important skill to have.

I think one of the ways that a lot of people get frustrated by how reading is taught in school is that some teachers will focus heavily on very specific details in books, and so you will end up being tested on reading retention rather than reading comprehension. I had a teacher in high school whose reading quizzes were all about random details in whatever passage we had been assigned for homework (e.g., how many minutes did it take for the floodwaters to get from Town A to Town B) rather than on the actual comprehension of the passage. This can make you feel like you can't do reading comprehension or are bad at it, because it's what you've been tested on (especially if you never took a literature class post-high school).

Here are some skills that I think are important for reading comprehension, whether you're approaching fiction, non-fiction, persuasive writing, or anything else:

Understanding the meaning of a sentence in isolation, a paragraph, a section, and the entire piece. That is to say, having the ability to both parse the meaning of a sentence on its own but also understand how a set of thoughts fit together. A great way to practice this is to try to explain what something means to someone else (can be a real person, a pet, a stuffed animal, whatever). When I'm working with the people who report to me to edit their writing, one of the things I will often ask them is to explain what they're saying in a very simple non-business way. This also works with someone else's writing--can you take what was written in explain or describe it in plain terminology? Can you summarize a chapter or even a book in a few sentences?

Fitting the writing within the context in which it was written or published. If you see an essay talking about women's safety, for example, that phrasing will mean something different depending on who is writing it. It is often clear from the rest of the essay what they mean by it, but it is key to comprehending the writing as a whole to understand the context in which it was written or published (for example, to know whether it is being used as a transphobic dogwhistle). Can you identify biases in the writing, either through how it's written or what you know about the author or place where it was published? We know some of the biases that will be present in a piece put out by the Heritage Foundation versus Planned Parenthood, even without knowing the author.

Identifying themes or messages in the writing. Some authors and some writing focuses much more heavily on themes or messages than others (for example, a persuasive essay will have a much greater focus on a persuasive message than an encyclopedia entry), but no writing is truly neutral, and themes, messages, or goals (intentional or not) are present in virtually every piece of writing. You don't need to write a five paragraph essay about everything you read, but it can be good practice to spend a little bit of time thinking about how the piece of writing presents certain information or people. If someone is described as "stubborn" versus "obstinate" or "brave" versus "foolhardy", it gives a sense of the message being presented about this person. if all characters of a certain race, gender, religion, etc. are presented a certain way, you can start to identify the message that the story is sending about that group--whether or not the author intended it.

Maintaining a critical view of information. This isn't strictly reading comprehension as much as media literacy, but I think they are connected enough to include here. Not everything you read is accurate or true, including things that agree with your pre-existing worldview, and the follow up to the three things I listed before is to identify what something is saying, the context in which it is saying it, and the messages it is putting across, and engaging critically with them rather than assuming it's all correct. To be clear, I'm not saying don't believe science or anything like that, but, for example, a lot of science reporting in major media is kind of awful and misleading, especially in the headlines. If you see a headline that reads bacon always causes cancer, it's important to look at the actual reporting, potentially even look at the study it's citing, and understand what is actually being said, not what looked flashy in a headline. Similarly, if you only see a piece of major news in one place, particularly not from a pre-established reliable news source (by which I mean something like NBC and not A Partisan Podcaster on Twitter), you need to double check it. That's not to say it's necessarily fake or misleading, but there's usually a reason only one person is saying something happened.

[a-drama-addict]

not caring too much about a fandom’s favourite guy is the worst. you’ll think “oh i’ll look into the tag see if anything new and cool’s there” and it’s just that fucking guy again

[baskervilleshund]

[benedictsvestcollection]

Today’s the only day you can reblog this until next year guys.

[stallionmusume]

Watching Road to The Top just makes me appreciates Ayabe as a character.

It's sad that people dismiss her character as "forced" suffering, when her struggle of "being haunted by the ghost of her twin" isn’t just forced drama!

There is a phenomenon where, when a co-twin dies at birth, the surviving twin can still experience grief, loneliness, a sense of incompleteness, or even separation anxiety.

However, several scientific and media accounts describe unexpected lingering sorrow among twins who lost their co-twin at or shortly after birth, even among the twins that didn’t know they were born as twins - Song H, Fang F, Larsson H, Pedersen NL, Magnusson PK, Almqvist C, Valdimarsdóttir UA. Loss of a co-twin at birth and subsequent risk of psychiatric disorders. Elife. 2021 Jan 28 When a twin sibling dies, the surviving twin may experience particularly complicated feelings. Many twins feel their identity is so intimately bound with that of their twin sibling that their death can result in profound feelings of loneliness. The surviving sibling may feel they have to compensate in some way for the loss of their brother or sister, perhaps by behaving in a certain way, trying to be more like them, or by suppressing their own grief because they feel responsible in some way for their parents’ grief. - Child Bereavement UK

So Ayabe whole deal with her death twin imouto isn't just mere cheap forced drama, but it has also taken from actual phenomenon that do happen.

What I like is that we were shown Ayabe taking things harshly on herself and "making up" a scenario in her head where her deceased twin sister hates her. This was a result of Ayabe suppressing her grief for a long time, as she was unable to cope with her loss and loneliness, feelings she couldn’t even comprehend or explain. Most likely, her parents didn’t provide her with support, or Ayabe might have kept these feelings to herself out of guilt, believing she exists only because of her twin sister’s sacrifice.

This also says a lot about her as a person. She isn’t just an edgy and cold-hearted girl. She’s a grieving girl, haunted by her own sorrow and carrying it all on her own. Furthermore, she has such deep self-hatred that she believes her existence and achievements don’t mean anything and only happened because she was allowed to live at the cost of her sister’s life. Not only that, but she wants to believe she’s a terrible person, and that’s why she forcefully isolates herself and acts cold toward everyone. She truly believes people don’t need to care for her and that she doesn’t deserve any kindness from anyone.

She thinks of her twin sister as the "stars," the very thing guiding her clouded mind and heart, giving her a reason to run and win. But it’s not her sister who becomes her stars, it’s her own guilt. Because she feels responsible for "taking" her twin’s life, she believes she needs to win to make up for it. This is self-punishment she inflicts on herself under the guise of fulfilling her twin sister’s wishes.

I’m sure Ayabe knows this deep down, but she’s probably coping by telling herself that this is her only "stars." I mean, she wants to win for her dead twin sister, so there’s nothing wrong with that, right? But the anime subtly shows us that this isn’t her real goal. This is her punishing herself, trying to convince herself that everything is her fault. All of this stems from years of suppressing her grief and loneliness—feelings she carries alone. Ayabe most likely doesn’t know how to properly cope because no one truly understands what she has experienced or how she feels....

My headcanon is that her parents most likely have no idea what she’s going through. Considering Ayabe’s personality, she probably doesn’t tell them anything.

Another hc is that her parents do know, but they don’t know how to deal with it because they likely blame themselves. I don’t think Ayabe comes from a bad upbringing (at least the anime or canon material doesn’t hint at anything like that). So I like to think that the whole family is unconsciously grieving for their dead families at birth, because it would explain why Ayabe behave that way.

She becomes my favorite character after rewatching Road to the Top because she has so much layered personalities and characterization that people tend to overlook....

I really love her so much & I hope we get to see her again in the anime....

[call-me-noa]

Galar and Kalos confirmed to have bad history like France and England

Was there a Pokémon Hundred Years War. Was there a Pokémon Jeanne d'Arc

[goldensunset]

[ice-block]

Phenomenon I feel happens a lot

[toyota-supra]

what's that face for...

[toyota-supra]

wait why did she bring super creek with her to vaccination day

[princess-rosiebird]

Moral support

[chromatic-lamina]

1165 reflection: Dragon, Garp, Luffy, Usopp

I’ll probably be crucified for this, but I think that Dragon has more parallels with Usopp, or an Usopp-like character, than Luffy in this chapter, and that is in no way an insult to him or Usopp. I think he is, or was, more a lover than a fighter, and more likely to gauge a situation and act when it has absolutely pushed him to the brink.

In 1165, Dragon is rectifying a terrifying situation, but he doesn’t have Garp or Luffy’s instantaneous and almost continual brashness, confidence, and wish/tendency to fight (for fun and fury) at the drop of a hat. (Nor, at the moment, physical strength. Usopp would need to use a weapon too).

But he comes through when he needs to come through, and how. I feel—like Usopp, like Nami, or, more calculated, like Robin (much younger)—he first gauged the situation on God Valley Island after being thrust into it, and tried to make the reality he wished to happen (and believed in) fit into a reality that completely disrupted and disintegrated that belief.

It seems to me that Luffy never had that naivety, or the awareness to have that naivety burst, and Luffy is able to extract himself and others from bad situations fairly quickly (initially anyway), due to this ability to mostly act instinctively. Further to that, he has the strength to forcibly fix a situation (punching a Celestial Dragon), and to be so unaware and so confident that he generally has no fear of what the outcome of such actions might be. (Yes, he was not successful at Marineford or saving his friends at Sabaody, but he did not hesitate to try and change the trajectory in either situation, and did pretty amazingly at Marineford, despite the final and tragic outcome). Dragon knows all too well, from a thousand angles, what the outcome of his actions and inaction could and will be. So I’m pondering if: Luffy instinctively knows what is right and wrong? Garp only thinks he knows? And Dragon is cursed with understanding that actions have repercussions for all involved. I fully condone (to use his words) Dragon’s actions in mutinying in 1165 and, like Jaguar D. Saul after him, acting for the rights and lives of helpless, innocent and persecuted citizens and slaves. However, I feel that that he will still mourn his platoon if they do end up executed due to his actions. Garp is faced with this conundrum, obviously. Luffy chooses not to enter the navy so he’s never faced with this choice (of betraying one group for another; although Bon Kurei’s supposed sacrifice could kind of be analogous). Anyway, that’s a bit of an aside.

Luffy helps others out along his journey, and pledges to help others, like Vegapunk, but has, for example, no interest in understanding the Will of D. or the Void Century (the latter, going from the conversation with Rayleigh in Shakky's bar in Sabaody).

But it seems that Dragon is ultimately all over that (although, considering how earnestly the Revolutionaries were talking about stopping the rise of whoever finds the one piece (after Vegapunk’s transmission) I’m not sure how much he knows).

As seen above, he was at Ohara (after the Buster call) paying tribute to Professor Clover after the World Government executed him. Dragon was a good friend with Vegapunk. He grows into a man who is in the business of knowing what is going on (because once he knew so little).

I feel Garp has some knowledge of these things, given his generation and God Valley, but Luffy’s feet-first and head-strong approach, and competitiveness with rivals, and cavalier attitude toward established (or hidden) history / current affairs / fellow pirates’ names, seems more aligned to Garp (and Roger) than Dragon. True, though, Luffy and Dragon act on injustice when they see it, but we see—and this is what makes young Dragon (and Usopp) so appealing or understandable as characters—they do it scared.

We’re not privy to Dragon’s inner dialogue at present (chapter 1165), and extreme circumstances have driven him to extreme acts (which will save the remaining civilians/prisoners on the island, which is a good thing. And will send a message to the government, which is also a good thing), but he’s still young, and not yet super-powered like Luffy and Garp, so I hope he’s still a little or a lot scared in his braveness (or when he comes down from the adrenaline rush) so that he keeps his humanity.

Also, haven’t seen him pick his nose or have a sleep attack once 😄 Not to say it won’t happen. Luffy has "inherited" a lot of Roger's outlook too, and yeah, maybe Dragon represents those times when Luffy is reflective, and I’m not saying Luffy has to be an exact copy of Dragon, I’m just saying that he’s not that close of a copy for me yet. But, yeah, as said in another meta when Dragon lost Shamrock, I think (or maybe it was in tags), Dragon’s reckoning with the horrors of God Valley and his role as a soldier there (and all that implies), and his loss (of the babies, but also of his belief in himself and the world he had served and seemingly believed in to that point) was his Luffy-overcoming-the-loss-of-Ace / regaining-his-will-to-live-love-and-fight moment, despite the absolute horror he’s witnessed. From Clover, to Sabo, to Kuma, to Logue Town, it seems Dragon’s retained the ability to love. Thank fuck for that.

Might edit in some screen-caps tomorrow. Might not! (some added!).

[cerastes]

For the uninitiated, she's saying this to Arturia; I honestly think it would've been hilarious if she actually would've thrown hands at her. Imagine Arturia with utter and complete confidence that there's no way Hildegard could deck her -- very founded confidence, considering her Arts shield can easily tank Federico's shotguns and Lemuen's sniper rifle shots -- only to then receive the single most official pair of hands in the business Ed Edd and Eddy style and now her scrawny ass is flipping through the air and leaving an Arturia-shaped hole in some beautiful stained glass windows because she didn't account for Hildegard actually serving her a Michelin star knuckle sandwich straight from the Archetto Bakery.

[chiliger]

Didn’t know that holo-pic was still there.

Here is the very, very late anniversary comic! I’ve had this idea since almost the very beginning of the series. Just something to chew on.

Bonus: Meme redraw to hopefully lighten up reader’s spirits! :D