Darth Wiki / Project Alter

"Project Alter" is the Working Title of a possible loose connection of Fate/Grand Order (as well as some other Fate media) fanfics by shonengirl, so named in reference to one of her other projects, Alt-talia, and the "Alters" of Fate lore.

In essence, it is much like Fragments of Chaldea, but with usually less or even at times negative continuity; and as the name suggests, while nowhere near the amount of alteration done to the Hetalia: Axis Powers setting and characters in Alt-talia, and not changing the basic premise, things aren't the same in this Chaldea as what Fate fans have come to expect, and that especially goes for the Servants inhabiting it.

...Oh, and its other purpose is to have an excuse to write loads of fanfiction on history and especially old literature (especially Jekyll and Hyde) and legends (especially Arthurian) and to tie them all together somehow. And maybe promoting Jekyll to part of the main cast.

While starting life as scattered ideas for a or a possible series of Gudako x Jekyll Porn with Plot hentai fic, it eventually morphed into an excuse for the author to play around with historical and cultural references in ways she otherwise can't in Alt-talia, and developing many servants further; if not giving them the Alt-talia treatment entirely.

Though this by no means doesn't mean that many fics can't be straight-up NSFW, and it is by far the most sexually explicit set of fanworks by this author; as such, tread with caution.

(Additional note: No, seriously, no joke, this, particularly a lot of stuff regarding Jekyll and Hyde, can get pretty smutty, even if there is a proper character reason for it. So proceed with caution, seriously. There's probably horny cringe ahead. Or really, cringe in general. I'm throwing ideas at a wall and some of it is going to be cringe.)

(Also I'm not quite sure what to spoiler, so they are pretty inconsistent here. I ramble a lot and go on tangents that seemingly aren't too relevant to the trope itself, but I mostly use these as brainstorming tools more than anything.)

The collection also includes many spinoff/prequel fics which can be more accurately described as fics if not straight-up retellings of their source material or even Real-Person Fic than Fate fanfiction, elaborating more on the Servants' (or Spirits or Vassals, as some prefer to be called) backstories and past relationships, something which even in "current day" stories usually has a lot of impact on their character. For fictional characters especially, the author tries to make the events of the story and FGO logical extensions of their character arcs in the source material, making Project Alter also a fan sequel of sorts to such media.

(More info to be added later)

Just like the author's other works, there are also many, many UTAU covers to go with her work, though the vast majority of songs are about the backstories more than the "main" events of Project Alter, and many also cover stories, legends, or interpretations that aren't covered in fics or even comics, or elaborate on ones which weren't described that much in writing or comic form (e.g., most UTAU covers using his and Hyde's voices explicitly follow the flawed and rather pathetic but ultimately good-hearted novella/Fate composite Jekyll usually seen in Project Alter, but others more explicitly use the Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Jekyll from the original novella, and some UTAU covers involving the Arthurian characters are based on other interpretations of Arthurian legend). Many of the UTAU covers using the Historical Domain Character cast can even be seen as the individual counterparts of the Alt-talia historical covers.

Spinoff concepts of Project Alter, or otherwise based on Fate, with their own page:

Divine Comedy: A (Theoretical) Fate RPG

There Once Was a Spot Known as Camelot

• La Queste Stellaire

Tropes in Project Alter include:

• 20 Bear Asses: The time when King Saul had David farm 100 Philistine foreskins as one of many elaborate ploys to kill him off has is a bit of a favorite of the author’s due to how silly it sounds in a Black Comedy way; with it being brought up as a Noodle Incident, comically recounted in both backstory fic and comic form, and referenced again in “I Can’t Kill David”, the last one with a giant "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer flashing at the bottom of the screen to tell the Japanese (and otherwise uninitiated) audience that yes, seriously, this was actually written in the Bible itself. And yes, the inevitable video game comparisons are made (as also happened with the comic of the famous Goliath battle, where it’s presented as an Attack Its Weak Point boss battle).
  David: ...What use do you have for 100 foreskins?
  Saul: Erm, well... It’s none of your business! I’m the king, you idiot!
  David: Sounds reasonable enough!
• Adaptational Badass: Boudicca not only looks somewhat different (mostly her more period-appropriate clothing, which has given her the joking nickname of “Disco Ball Boudicca”, but she looks a bit beefier and much taller as well, along with much longer hair), but she’s seemingly been buffed immensely and is almost a Berserker in all but name; her Unstoppable Rage at anything Ancient Roman (especially Nero) is enough to activate “the Berserker Protocol”, which is normally the emergency protocol the Chaldea has for when a Berserker (or Avenger) goes, well, berserk and starts rampaging everywhere, and it impresses even Hyde; once, she puts a significant dent in Nero’s door, which is solid metal mind you, with one kick, before Gudako and the Berserker Restraining Unit is able to restrain her.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Nero; not only does she get a much more Roman-inspired tunic and Badass Cape outfit in lieu of the red dress she has in canon, but her hair is more a light to medium brown (not to mention it’s somewhat curlier) instead of the blonde it is in canon, making her look significantly different from Artoria instead of the Identical Stranger thing they had going on before (even if they still look kind of similar).
  • Fionn’s hair goes from blond to ghost white, to reflect legend. The author considers his lack of white hair weird since it’s a very anime-ish trait.
  • Okida Souji (AKA Sakura Saber) is also given white hair in a Samurai Ponytail style along with a less blatantly Arturia-ish face.
  • Alexander/Ishkander has mismatched eyes, something he was said to have real life and the author considers another missed opportunity considering how “anime” that sounds.
  • There is fanart by the author of Nightingale with dark blue hair and a bun instead of the pink bob haircut she has in canon (as well as mixing her Redcoat inspired outfit with a period accurate nurse uniform), with the author stating that the reader could imagine either of them being used.
  • In life, Galahad wore white armor matching his hair, symbolizing his purity and fittingly giving him an almost angelic appearance; it’s explained that his armor turned black after his wish on the grail. The author has also drawn Mash’s Final Ascension outfit in white to parallel this, along with her shield gaining Galahad’s signature gules cross on argent shield at the center.
  • Some Servants with the brightest unnatural hair colors seem to have had somewhat more muted hair colors in life, though not always. But they’re always the same general color, as they’re one of the ways of recognizing them when they’re otherwise identical to their real life counterparts.
• Adaptational Heroism: In main plot related fics, it’s made clear that in the Project Alter universe, King Solomon has gone down in history as a good king, one whom all kings should aspire to be, and almost every character of Abrahamic faith or from a remotely Abrahamic background is genuinely shocked and confused with how he seems to be the one behind the destruction of everything, including and especially King David, who unlike in Fate canon says he was a model son whom he regrets not spending more time with. The poor guy and Jeanne apparently had a borderline Heroic BSoD upon learning the “truth” about Solomon too, and most Muslim Servants seem to in fact be in denial about it until it is staring them in the face. Aside from one pocket canon in which Dr. Roman and Arturia have a heart-to-heart and Dr. Roman/Solomon alludes to his canon backstory, among a few others, this is affirmed several times. Also, no Servant really gets a bad feeling from Dr. Roman initially, unlike in canon. In fact he’s said to be almost magnetic. ...However, Amakusa, who actually studied the bible, points out that Solomon's sins towards the end of his life were indeed pretty grave, though even then he's perplexed over how Solomon seems to have become straight-up pure evil, though he suspects the Throne of Heroes may be involved somehow. And indeed Solomon’s sins are confirmed to have happened, though in contrast to Fate canon Solomon (or, rather, Dr. Roman, not the "Solomon" who is actually Goethia) didn't basically live his life as an emotionless puppet of God without free will, but goes with something closer to the Bible version of events, arguably making it a case of Adaptational Villainy due to him having control of his actions, despite it being made clear that he was just a good person who made the wrong choices and felt empty his whole life.
• Adaptational Jerkass:

• Nero. She’s still not as bad a Jerkass as pop culture usually makes Nero out to be, and she still indeed already went through Character Development in Fate/Extra, but her arrogance still can cross the line at times and show ugly glimpses of her infamy. Most notably how she doesn’t regret the whole Human Jew Candles thing... And she says this to King David’s face. (pending) And also how incredibly (and stupidly) insensitive she is to Boudicca, even if she does have a point in that what she did was beyond overkill.
• On that note, Project Alter’s Boudicca is still a nice Cool Big Sis, especially in regards to those she cares about, but as noted many times here, her signature personality trait may as well be her Hair-Trigger Temper that would make an Avenger scared. It’s made clear that she not only shows no mercy to enemies, but no mercy to those merely tangentially connected to the enemy.
• Brynhildr acts noticeably more sour and angry than she does in canon in certain fics, though in her case she has a reason to be upset.
• PA's Karna is a lot more flawed than in canon, but presents more of his flaws from the original mythology, being rather quick to anger and sensitive to criticism and having more of an ego. The episode where he berates Draupadi as she gets stripped is also left in. He's especially snappy around Arjuna; he resents and envies him for being loved and adored, not knowing that this weighs on Arjuna's consciousness.

• Moriarty gets rerailed to be a cold, calculating Manipulative Bastard whose friendly demeanor is heavily implied to be rarely genuine, alternating between the two personalities to unsettling effect. His affection for Ms. Frankenstein is toned down a lot to the point it barely exists too, and the times it does happen he’s messing with her knowing very well she has unresolved daddy issues. The fact that he remotely comes to care about the Gudas at all is treated as that much of a miracle because of it.
• More than a few other Servants don’t even bond much with the Gudas at all, with the furthest they can get with them being apathy.
• A recurring series of comics for "The Many Faces of Authuriania" is "(Character) the Asshole". It is exactly what it sounds like, featuring interpretations of characters in which they acted a lot meaner, if not straight-up villainous, than in their other portrayals over the centuries (or at least compared to their Fate incarnations, as with characters like Mordred - and in fact she in particular has gotten a comic about those rare times he/she's depicted as good - who are almost always villains or at least terrible Jerkasses). As the author puts it, "It seems that every so often, the asshole points left over from the standard set of assholes will always gravitate towards at least one of the big characters, and unless they're Galahad, literally no one is safe. Especially if some of the standard assholes aren’t this time around." And it almost always veers into Black Comedy (e.g. Percival butchering literal thousands while being disturbingly cheerful about it all and no one else batting an eye, Gawain being a rapist and every other time he’s been an Adaptational Jerkass, Lancelot adding “...And he didn’t even tell me my destiny yet!” as he freaks out after Mordred kills a priest in rage for telling her of her destiny and birth).

• Adaptational Modesty: Many characters get this if the art and comics the author draws are any indication, though she tries to compensate it with Rule of Cool or loads of prettiness if she does do so. Especially the female characters. And especially the younger characters like Jack the Ripper and Abigail's post-ascension designs. Also the Historical Domain Character bracket tends to get the most modesty upgrades, though not always per se. Seemingly most of the actually fanservicy sexual content has concentrated towards Jekyll and Hyde (One guess as to why), though they're still some of the most modestly dressed characters in the cast (by our standards anyway), as are other characters (e.g. Proto Arthur) who get sexualized at various points. Also there are actually much fewer characters who show romantic interest in the Gudas as there are in canon, most showing platonic interest at most. However, there is still some cheesecake, especially if it's actually historically or character accurate, with some characters like Ishtar somehow managing to have even more revealing clothes.
  • Some noticeable changes, if what the author draws are any indication:
    • Mash’s armor, while still rather form-fitting, notably covers her chest completely and up to her neck, ending in a metallic popped collar, and a longer skirt that almost reaches to her knees, with a sleeved undershirt and hose under it for good measure. The stated reason for this is that the author thinks that her original more revealing outfit doesn’t fit her wholesome kouhai character.
    • Jack the Ripper wears a workman’s shirt used as an improvised dress that, while tattered, is long enough to go past her knees.
    • Marie really goes in on the whole Ojou shtick with a puffy pink Pimped-Out Dress decked out in ribbons and frills, and a big, floofy Parasol of Pain as a backup weapon. A theoretical base design was also drawn, based on the Chemise La Reine style she pioneered in life, a style which was probably considered revealing in her time.
    • A proposed alternative Second Ascension outfit for Abigail (link) has her dress becoming more Elegant Gothic Lolita-mixed-with-stereotypical-Mayflower-pilgrim than seemingly vanishing. With each ascension, it only becomes fancier, so by the end she looks like some kind of haunted doll.
    • The civilian clothing Kairi bought Mordred being an oversized biker jacket instead of a tube top, and her clothes under her armor being chainmail and gambeson like how she depicts the other knights, otherwise wearing a rather normal tunic. Also given a theoretical Final Ascension design in a fancy princely tunic, and another in which she stays in her armor and is given a fur-trimmed Badass Cape much like her brother Gawain. Said armor also has less feminine curves.
    • Bradamante getting a sleek suit of shiny armor that, while still feminine and form-fitting, is a bit more expected of a knight.
    • A male example; Astolfo wearing hose and a longer tunic that makes it look more like he’s wearing a dress instead of a miniskirt.
    • All of her Nightingale redesign ideas (link) feature a longer skirt.
• Adaptational Name Change: Well less a name change and more given a full name; Frankenstein’s Creature reveals that her name is actually Eve Frankenstein, paralleling how the original novel’s creature was named Adam according to Mary Shelley herself, and fitting her backstory of being created with being Eve in mind. As such, she’s often called Eve in the narrative in fics written after this reveal.
  • “Animusphere” is spelled as “Animsphere” due to the former looking... somewhat unfortunate in English, especially considering the franchise he’s in. Also it looks a lot less clunky.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Nightingale in Project Alter is toned down quite a bit; she may have a bit of a temper, but she’s also intensely patient with people who truly need help, and she’s very strict with herself about following her own rules, with her forcefulness and temper coming across as more passionate Anger Born of Worry for her Lord than borderline Yandere. It’s only in battle she becomes the crazy Berserker from canon. And due to how battle scenes aren’t that common in Project Alter relatively speaking, this is never shown and merely mentioned, and the one battle scenes that she’s in that’s shown is exploring the concept of her as a Ruler (the author says that despite her extreme tendencies she would have still have preferred to see her as a defensive Ruler, if anything just for the gimmick of a hotheaded Ruler). She doesn’t exactly like this side of herself either, and she has sympathy even for enemies if they’re sentient.
  • Arjuna, while a bit of a hotshot, acts much nicer, social, and less like a Chuunibyou, with his problems being less obvious at a light glance.
• Adaptational Wimp: Merlin, in a way; in Project Alter, Merlin’s Seer abilities have been nerfed noticeably, being much more limited and nowhere near as omniscient or god-tier as they are in canon, even if he keeps his overpoweredness in other aspects. Not that this is a bad thing, because logically his abilities would destroy any narrative tension. Even he states the things foretold in his visions can be theoretically avoided, even if they try their hardest to come true. His visions also completely leave out things like context or time and vary in detail, even being rather vague (for example, he merely foretold that Uther’s child with Igraine would be a great king... with nothing on the gender of said child) so he can only ever get part of the story. He also needs to consciously use his abilities, so it’s possible for him to be blindsided if he didn’t see it necessary to evaluate their chances. This in fact makes it a cause of drama in the Arthurian casts’ backstory quite often, and this flawed foresight leads to him being partly to blame for Camelot falling, what with him basically being responsible for Mordred becoming Camelot's pariah, nor did how he proceeded to treat her help at all, with him urging Arturia to exile Mordred (in PA canon, Mordred really, really doesn’t like Merlin for this reason, even by standards of her usual issues with most of the people she knew in life). He also legitimately didn’t see coming that him giving Arturia an, erm, means to reproduce with Guinevere basically as a joke would lead to Camelot’s fall, with his terrible treatment of Mordred being partially an attempt to backpedal on that lapse in foresight.
  • Also the Round Table knights not said to be on the table in Fate canon are made “Outer Round Table” members, basically where less powerful knights and those who can only basically afford to serve Artoria part-time (or ones who otherwise don’t also fulfill an important position; I.e. Kay) go; if said Outer Table knights were on par with, or even stronger than some key members of the canonical Fate Round Table they’re inevitably nerfed a lot. The only exception is really early joiners who died before being demoted because the table was getting full (e.g. Balin), or the abovementioned knights with way too much other priorities (e.g. Duke Galehaut). Poor Lamorak especially gets demoted a lot by implication. Though even with the nerfs, they can still be some of the strongest of the Outer Table and are hardly useless even when with an Inner Table member, with few of them being actually weak (the abovementioned Lamorak is said to have been at the top of the Outer Table, with those like Yvain, one of the unofficial leaders of sorts, Lionel, and Galehaut being close behind).

• Affectionate Nickname: “Gudako” and “Gudao” for Ritsuka and Ritsu, obviously. They’re not really sure how they got their nicknames either, but apparently one day it just stuck. Though many do still call them by their normal first or last name.
  • “Harry” for Jekyll; though Holmes and Watson don’t call him this anymore, Utterson used it like he did in the novella, as did Lanyon sometimes before their friendship went up in smoke. In the Victorian era, men all usually used last name basis, with first names only being used between people who are very intimate and/or those who he has known since childhood calling, much less a nickname derived from that first name, and as such Jekyll letting someone call him that shows extreme levels of trust, and Gudako calling him it makes him blush a lot. Though eventually she starts calling him so much more often.
    • Tatsumi used to call him “Gramps”, “Uncle”, and “Pops” to poke fun at his initially 53-year-old man behavior (though there’s also that Jekyll, having been summoned via an heirloom), kind of reminded him of his grandfather).
• Aggressive Submissive: Hyde. Sort of. The only scenario in which he ever happily relinquishes control or puts himself in a weaker position to anyone is during sex or in an otherwise sexual context, and in fact he prefers it that way - much to the shock of others - and even dislikes having to be too proactive. He also tends to be described in ways that evoke feminine imagery in these contexts, apparently moaning like a girl and even deriving pleasure from more lovey-dovey displays of affection. However, this is still Edward Hyde we're talking about here; this doesn't mean he's shy at all, and anything of the sort is him blatantly being coy to egg his partner on, being more "feminine" in the way that The Vamp is feminine. He might moan and squeal like a girl in bed, but he also makes no effort to hold said moans back and is extremely loud about it, is prone to The Immodest Orgasm, compared to a prostitute deliberately playing herself up, and also is willing to come onto you stronger if he gets impatient. He gets closer to playing this straight the more extreme the pleasure is, but he never becomes any less enthusiastic or greedy about receiving it. This is mainly for Author Appeal as this did start life as a Hentai fic, but it also has a story and character reason as well; it alludes to Jekyll preferring more vulnerable positions too, it's just that Hyde has absolutely no shame or even the ability to feel hesitation in his pursuit of pleasure, laying all of Jekyll's preferences bare and without any of the restraint.
  Hyde: What? Disappointed? *cackles* Not what ya expected, eh? I hear that often. Pardon for that!
  Hyde: *cackles* Are ya deaf, Miss Fujimaru? When I'm offering myself to be your bitch, I mean make me your bitch! I know ya want to, can see it all over yer face. This naughty lad is finally letting you take care of him, what's the matter milady?
  Hyde, coyly and with a husky voice: Heh heh... Be gentle... will ya, lassie?
• All-Loving Hero:
  • Gudao and Gudako. It’s even explicitly part of why they were chosen.
  • In this version, Artoria actually is shown to have been a more standard version of this early in her reign, albeit downplayed for pragmatism and actually kind of immature and acting her age, even showing a strong streak of Hot-Blooded passion, and readily espousing her grand ideals; Bediviere was even apparently drawn to her bright smile at the time, a compliment that would be unthinkable for how she turns out later. She technically never stopped being this, it’s just that she thought that not showing her emotions to show impartiality was the way to go about it, as well as to show that she’s a strong ruler, after people kept expressing doubt over an apparent teenage boy taking the throne. The life and spark she had at this early stage is best exemplified by the UTAU cover of “That King Was Made of Mud”, with its grand, triumphant instrumentals, though the lyrics still hint to what is to come.
    With comrades in arms, with hopes and dreams in heart
    Charge onward, King of Knights!
    The reason for this fight, it is not for love
    Nay, it is out of love!

    Even if all across these great lands
    Are consumed and tormented by despair
    Even if it shall be the form ‘tis king takes
    Is not suited to be “king” at all

    Aye, she goes forth
    For justice she must
  • Proto Arthur, on the other hand, diverted from Arturia in that he doubled down on the kind, fettered, all-loving chivalrous fairytale king thing, with that being the defining difference in their character, making him more of a standard version of this. From his flashbacks, it seems that instead of sealing off his emotions, his fatal flaw was loving and trusting everyone around him too much, despite his dedication to rule of law; he did even have suspicions of Lancelot and Guinevere’s affair, but gave them too much of the benefit of the doubt, and also trusted his Mordred as regent and crown prince, even nurturing him as a son when the truth came out, despite the fact that Male Mordred turned out to indeed be a psychotic ticking time bomb much like what the Artoriaverse characters thought Female Mordred would be, with both a creepy, stalkerish, pseudo-oedipal sexual obsession with Guinevere and an equally creepy but (allegedly) non-sexual obsession with seeing Arthur in despair because he finds it “beautiful”, as well as with possessing the throne itself (and everyone had already kind of suspected that there was something... off about him).
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: Due to the strongly anti Maligned Mixed Marriage moral of Solomon’s story in the Bible not only being too heavy a case of Values Dissonance to brush off, but also flying right in the face of Project Alter’s ambient themes of cross-cultural co-existence, the author tries to interpret it differently basing it on the same information available. Here, God was displeased not so much by the fact that Solomon had many interfaith marriages nor that he didn’t convert his wives, but more that he broke his loyalty to God at all (God had also imparted the truth of His fellow gods’, including those traditionally painted as evil in the Bible like Baal’s, existence onto Solomon, so it indeed really is a question of loyalty instead of truth). God then basically tells him “How do you expect you, who cannot be loyal to me, God itself, to be loyal to his people?!” and proceeded to lay a massive heavenly "Reason You Suck" Speech on him, forcing him to realize how much he had fallen, how his court had become a mess of infighting, how much his kingdom had deteriorated, and how miserable his people were, with some Fisher King phenomena was going on as well. And his wives and concubines weren’t destructive because of them being pagan so much that they squabbled for political power and/or Solomon’s favor like harems tend to do, with God calling him out for not thinking that through despite all his wisdom. Thus, using the exact same events, it turns out God Is Good after all, and appealing to secular morals as well.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Not as blatant as Alt-talia, but the characters are written with their actual history or source material a bit more in mind, which may result in certain characters changing noticeably, and she has also stated that this and tweaking character backstories with the above in mind is a good part of the fun for her (e.g. Paracelsus, Enkidu, Tesla, Scathach, Boudicca...). Many even have altered designs, or occasionally, even different Noble Phantasms, like Phantom of the Opera getting a Falling Chandelier of Doom for his. In addition, the author also likes to use Project Alter as a vehicle for her own interpretations of legends or adding her own twists to a story or historical figure’s life. The ones listed here are just the most notable ones who can’t be filed under other categories.
  • Jekyll's backstory is changed so that it's almost exactly the same as the novella; however, in at least the most commonly used version of it, the author goes out of her way to explain why he was such a terrible hypocrite and give him very understandable motivations for why he did what he did, so by the end he's ultimately more a Tragic Hero than a Jerkass Woobie, a genuinely good, but somewhat pathetic and deeply flawed man brought down by many complex factors, some his own fault, and others not, all the while it tries to keep as much of the message and intent of the original novella as possible, even if in different ways at times. He genuinely did the good things he did out of kindness, not just for his reputation, even if that was a factor (as they often weren’t mutually exclusive), for one, with his motivation for creating Hyde being a sort of mix between a less fantastical version of his canonical Fate motivation and the least worst interpretation of his novella self (he knew nothing about Heroic Spirits at this point, and as such had no desire to become more like one, but he still wanted to purge himself, and hopefully humanity at large, of evil and hypocrisy), said motivations only becoming selfish after he had gotten the first night out taking a backseat to Hyde because it was just that damn good and liberating (and even then Hyde's actions on this fateful first night out, aside from the whole intentionally provoking a street fight for no reason thing, were mostly Poke the Poodle level stuff, and to modern audiences most of it barely registers as sinful at all and serves more as a commentary on just how restrictive the Victorian social and self-imposed expectations on him were. In particular, a lot of attention is paid to the sexual aspect of it; while there is the obvious reason as to why, it can be kind of heartbreaking seeing Jekyll react to some very vanilla, even if extremely drunken, encounters he/Hyde has as if they were the most kinky, dirty, erotic thing ever). Part of his reasoning for keeping up his usage of HJ-7 was also that he felt like he was going to do something genuinely terrible at the worst moment if he kept living his life as he had until that point, and didn't want to subject others to seeing that ("Don't look at me!" is a common mantra in fics and UTAU covers; especially directed at Utterson, whose kindness and sheer determination to get to the bottom of the case ironically drives him deeper in his attempts to hide this disgraceful side of him). He even resisted Hyde at first, was genuinely a bit disgusted with himself when Hyde beat up little Penny Pones so that Hyde had to convince him that he should still keep taking the potion, and is explicitly shown to have been deeply saddened to the point of Heroic BSoD by Lanyon's death, despite rubbing the fruits of his labor in his face and taking pleasure in his shock initially. In fact, he comes across as less hypocritical than most people of his time in some respects, as he at least tried to uphold the highest moral standards for decades before giving up while most gentlemen of his era would have been doing shady things in secret long before (in fact the realization that others are like this, seeing men he recognizes (and in one case a woman, though she's noticeably more horrified than the men when she sees that Jekyll recognizes her) in Soho, paying for prostitutes despite being married, fighting drunkenly on the street and passed out on the steps, and getting high off opium, actually really shocks and disturbs him, as does a lot of other stuff he sees in that Wretched Hive), so when he finally has the slightest excuse to let himself go he really lets himself go. I.e., he comes across as more a Wide-Eyed Idealist victim of hypocritical Victorian society than a prime example of said society. However, that doesn't excuse anything he did, and as a Servant he becomes obsessed with redemption and has a difficult time letting himself enjoy anything, explaining why he's such a self-hating, timid sweetie in FGO and coming across as a bit aloof when Tatsumi summoned him, with his characterization being slightly tweaked in certain minor places to fit this tie-in to the novella's plot.

• Astolfo doesn’t always crossdress here, and in male clothes he’s shown to look like a Bishounen but still recognizable as a male (and his “real” voice is said to be two octaves lower, something shown in a few UTAU covers). The reason he does it isn’t that he likes cuteness, but beauty (as is more accurate to western culture), with his design being slightly tweaked to look more adult as a result; and that after using it to cheer up Roland he found that he liked jumping around in women’s clothing and decided it was “A next step up for a beautiful creature such as I!”, also claiming that it’s him dressing as a woman that makes him able to understand, and therefore charm women better (and this isn’t just him bragging; in one of the legends he actually managed to have sex with ten women. In one night). And there’s also just the fact that he’s a massive Cloudcuckoo Lander. Plus, he shows a fiery, even Hot-Blooded side as well, even almost acting like a Stock Shōnen Hero at points. He is also mainly shown to be attracted to women and never men (though it’s never outright stated he’s straight), though when other male characters get an Unsettling Gender-Reveal for thinking he’s cute, he does flirt with them to mess with them.
• A deliberately inconsistent example in Robin Hood; in some of his appearances, he’s as he is portrayed in canon, a tragic, cynical lone wolf and merely an average guy who took up the name of Robin Hood. But more often, he is the real Robin Hood of folklore, and has a noticeably more idealistic, optimistic, wisecracking, trickster-like yet also leader-like personality, in life Heterosexual Life-Partners with Little John, a Battle Couple with tomboy noblewoman Maid Marion, leader of the Merry Men, and nemesis of the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham; they are so different the author has dubbed the former “Composite Robin” and the latter “Actual Robin” to differentiate them. And most fanart by the author pertaining to Robin depicts Actual Robin. This version is one of the characters who gets more than one fic on his backstory, depicting his life as a fun, merry one with his True Companions, and as a Servant he nostalgically reflects on it, wishing John and Marion would become Servants too, with his biggest personal lament being that he overestimated his ability and got himself killed, never being able to spend the rest of his life growing old with the love of his life and his best friend; while there is an element of tragedy with the latter, it’s nowhere near the downright depressing backstory of Composite Robin. The author has lampshaded how despite often making characters Darker and Edgier she actually slightly prefers this Lighter and Softer version, though she likes Composite Robin enough to write him on occasion and explore his concept as a lonely, nameless hero who was never appreciated in life, giving him interactions or friendships with such characters as Karna, Arturia, Emiya, and Mordred.
• Elizabeth Bathory is a character who is basically rewritten from scratch and is given a major redesign; while she’s still a Royal Brat, she actually at least appears to be a cheerful, friendly, polite countess who is supportive of other women, kind of like Marie, and unlike Marie she’s clearly pretty well educated, plus despite being kind of spoiled she’s apparently pretty good with money. Though of course this is merely (or mostly) a facade, and inside she’s still an absolute psychopath. Her design is changed to reflect this, with much longer hair and a modified version of a dress from her era that becomes more blood-splattered as she ascends (link). But despite the changes, the legend of her bathing in blood is adapted to fit the Nasuverse’s lore more than it arguably originally did, as in this universe, having had medical knowledge beforehand due to that being part of her responsibility, Bathory had learned about the existence of mana circuits and found she had magic sensing abilities, and believed that the mana in young magus blood was the key to eternal youth, selecting maguses or those with latent magic abilities specifically for these baths; though due to the rarity of maguses, the blood was merely diluted in the baths and mainly taken via elixirs. This is also used to explain why hands were chopped off so often, and the investigation was apparently being nudged along by the early Mage’s Association from the shadows both to protect their own kind and because Bathory knew too much. Her connection to Camilla is also different, Bathory having died in her 50’s in prison, but Camilla is heavily "based on" her soul, explaining their similar appearances. (Pending)
• While Vlad Tepes’s kindness is retained, it’s also made apparent that he’s as sadistic as the abovementioned Bathory and as his reputation says he is, and that he’s Well-Intentioned Extremist and Glad He's On Our Side incarnate. He’s extremely loyal to whatever he puts his mind to protecting, but never hesitates to be excessively brutal to anyone opposing him both because he’s a total sadist and it’s great for intimidation, making him basically “the ideal personality type for a Servant”. Though he can’t understand Bathory because at least what he did was against his enemies and was useful as psychological warfare, but what she did was strictly selfish, killed even people she was supposed to be protecting for little reason, and was even destructive to her own interests.
• Artoria and Arthur are a play on this trope itself and how prevalent this is in actual Arthurian legend. As Arturia’s backstory is already elaborated on heavily in canon, her version of the story seems to use more material from later cycles and depictions, though this isn’t always the case. Arthur meanwhile seems to take after more earlier interpretations (fittingly for being the prototype design), and Arthur is also portrayed a bit more like King Arthur usually is all the way through. In one fic in which they actually discuss this, he brings up some characters Arturia doesn’t know about and vice-versa, and details like who ended up with who also seem to differ. Though their backstories can also tend to mix inspirations, so it’s difficult to say that their routes are based on specific interpretations. (This is all Pending, but I’m starting to disregard it)
  • Also, their “lack of humanity” in their attempts to come off as good leaders are in fact slightly downplayed from canon; it’s shown that Artoria did indeed have flashes of human emotion and even a few breakdowns in really private company, as she was human after all and unlike Galahad wasn’t Blessed with Suck with being inherently perfect. Arthur, meanwhile, is portrayed to have taken the opposite direction as Arturia unlike in canon where it’s heavily implied he took a similar route; he doubled down on the All-Loving Hero thing, somewhat resembling his The Once and Future King interpretation, to the point of unreasonableness and the equivalent cracks in this persona are shown in things incorporated from legends like occasional episodes of borderline villainous spite against the Romans; and more significantly, him going against Gawain’s final wish from beyond the grave, and his final chance to save his kingdom, by breaking the ceasefire with Mordred, which here is shown to be the moment he just finally snapped instead of as demonstrations of a Fatal Flaw.
  • They are also interpreted to not have started that way, in fact having acted way more like one would expect from teenagers at the start of their careers, if not even somewhat childishly. Artoria at least drew the sword from the stone purely by Achievements in Ignorance, much like in legend, to her own biggest shock, for one. She also was kind of a Stock Shōnen Hero; impulsive, prone to Honor Before Reason, and surprisingly cocky as well as Hot-Blooded, and is shown to have at least attempted to trade snarky banter with Kay, with an episode taken from Culwich and Olwen having her write a teasing poem about him, promoting him to run off in immature anger as Bedivere looks on in bafflement and Merlin just shrugs and says “Hah, teenagers.”. Though the above mentioned shonen hero-ness is also shown to directly contribute to her charisma and to draw people to her ideals. Arthur seemed to be slightly calmer, but also rather impulsive and kind of snarky much like her very early on, and also he was apparently quite a bit of a Hormone-Addled Teenager, though by the time he meets Guinevere he has calmed down a lot. These are all based on real flaws Arthur has displayed in legend. They settled down much more after the securing of the kingdom, but were still pretty human for the first five years or so after. Unfortunately they took that development too far, resulting in them as we know them, though for Arthur more of his earlier personality seems to remain as shown when he cracks above and his snippiness towards Merlin and his enemies. And while they really don’t like their younger, more immature selves, they don’t seem to realize that it’s this very teenage-acting but passionate attitude their initial allies were drawn to.
• The author has also done a similar thing with Mordred, saying that she sees the two versions of the character as representing the two different ways he tends to be written; female Mordred is “Tragic Mordred”, an interpretation more common in modern works in which Mordred is presented sympathetically, and Proto Mordred is “Classic Mordred”, the standard Card-Carrying Villain Mordred. Female Mordred is also written taking from the most sympathetic Alternate Character Interpretations in legend and mashing them together, unless they really don’t gel well (I.e. Welsh accounts describing him as being so nice that no one would refuse him).
  • Female Mordred in general is written and interpreted somewhat differently, with her haivng suffered not just rejection from Artoria, but many of the other knights as well, and her being somewhat less cheerful and more grumpy and self-loathing (though according to the author, she's still somewhat cheerful because she worked out a lot of her issues with Shishigou in the in-universe events of Apocrypha). As it’s been interpreted on This Very Wiki that Mordred in legend may be disgusted with the whole incest thing and that he may be a Death Seeker, those things are also added into her; unlike in Fate canon, she indeed does become disgusted with herself being the product of incest to the point of vomiting, especially after the only silver lining to it, becoming Artoria’s child and heir, is rejected, and as her attempts to subvert fate prove time and time again to be pointless her self-loathing increases to the point that she starts seeming suicidal, by the time of Camlann saying that she didn’t care if she was going to die if she was going to drag Artoria down with her. Her self-loathing was there from the start to an extent due to how Morgan raised her, but by her last meeting with Gwrddelw she becomes convinced that everyone who had cared about her before and who she ever loved now despised her and that there was no turning back, calling herself disgusting and expressing genuine shock that Gwr actually loves her. She’s also Smarter Than They Look, and is hardly the Dumb Muscle she is in canon. As a Servant she also appears to smile a lot less outside of cocky grins until her shell is broken through.
• “The Many Faces of X” comics and fics also feature a lot of this, featuring the various portrayals of characters and historical people in media over the years; character personalities can vary so wildly, that a lot of the humor of the comics coming from the sheer shock of seeing the Fate versions of the character act comically different from how they're portrayed in both normal Fate canon and Project Alter. Especially Arthurian interpretations, which are most numerous due to its lack of any canon and Adaptation Overdosed on top of that.
• Gawain basically gets canon Percival’s characterization as the Cool Big Bro; he is much less of an airhead, even sometimes coming across as an Only Sane Man, being the one other knights went to for advice, contrasting him with Lancelot, Percival, and most of his siblings. His way with women is also emphasized a lot more, to the point that it's been proposed as a theoretical alternate Skill ("Golden Tongue", which would have the effect of captivating female Servants), helped by the fact that he's probably the most socially adept and tactful with words out of the Inner Table, especially compared to most of his brothers.
• Meanwhile, Percival has undergone a bit of Adaptational Dumbass, now a borderline Keet, written like the Inner Table’s collective lBigLittleBrother instead of the Cool Big Bro he is in canon (despite not even being the youngest out of them) and the resident airhead, a good-natured guy with underdeveloped social skills. The “younger brother”/“kouhai” characterization is especially emphasized, and becomes very apparent with the changes to his relationships with Gawain and Bors from canon, and him being overjoyed when new knights arrive after him because he gets to be the senior now, with his canonical dialogue being more of an act that ironically emphasizes his dorky childlike innocence. However, despite this change in characterization, he keeps his impressive, 195 cm stature and most of his Heroic Build (though he looks a bit more androgynous in the author’s art, it’s not as much as many other characters), said to be as a result of both massive growth spurts after becoming a knight and his looks reflecting how history has remembered him, resulting in the comical imagery of a handsome giant of a knight who acts like a puppy and is easily impressed by lollipops (despite knowing what they are via the Grail). His Supreme Chef trait has also been heavily downplayed, instead being passed around to Kay, and it’s merely one of his many more “feminine” hobbies like weaving and flowerpicking, though it’s still commented that he’s a very good cook and that he’s a Big Eater. Also the nature of his relationship with Kundry is changed into something different from romance, with him expressing compassion towards her as a person instead of rejecting her like in the original Parsifal.
• As alluded, Percival’s looks in Project Alter’s universe were heavily influenced by perception. This affected not only his body type, but is why his armor is white, when in Project Alter canon his armor in life was red (because he is known for his red armor in a lot of legends and Project Alter Galahad also had white armor in life, giving him almost an identical color scheme as Servant Percival)
• While in Fate canon Berserker Lancelot is Lancelot's mental state after Artoria forgave him and he broke from his own self-loathing, in Project Alter much like in legend he already had the tendency to go berserk in battle, though here it's said that it's more likely to happen if he's under stress and isn't actively trying to supress it; here the two are basically the product of a successful Jekyll-Hyde split. In life he also had obsessive tendencies, particularly regarding Guineviere, that bordered on Yandere. But even in Saber form Lancelot has episodes of extreme sensitivity and emotional instability (Mash's initial Calling the Old Man Out causes him to actually start crying, with the scene being turned into a semi-comedic What the Hell, Hero? moment from the Gudas and Bedivere instead of the purely comedic one it was in canon, and she’s subsequently nowhere near as harsh to him), occasionally has moments up in Cloudcuckooland, and he also retains some of his obsessive tendencies and singlemindedness (though the Sixth Singularity adaptations show him snapping himself out of it upon realizing that he's been here before). The author says that he definitely has some kind of disorder. It's also shown that he's actually the One Note Chef, not Gawain (pending), has a tendency to break things (that the author says she based off of Chrom), and can be awful in social situations, even if not to Percival levels, giving off the impression that his strength is made up for with a lack of common sense. He also shows none of his FGO canon self’s ladykilling (at least not intentionally), as that explicitly becomes Gawain’s territory and is heavily associated with Gawain, and in fact he has a huge case of Single-Target Sexuality regarding Guinevere, showing very clear lack of interest in his many other female admirers and even treating persistent ones as Abhorrent Admirers (And considering that one of the most prominent ones is Morgan and the other two, Elaine and her maid, actually raped him, he really isn’t given any reason to think otherwise). Not only that, similarly to Arthur, he actually still seems a bit uncomfortable at the idea of way too much female attention or another romantic relationship because of that and that his only true love obviously ended terribly.
• Agravain is possibly one of the Round Table knights with the most noticeable changes alongside Percival, and is this regarding the character from legend; while still quite a bit of a Jerkass, as “The Many Faces of Arthuriania” make pretty clear, compared to a lot of his depictions in legend, he’s definitely an Adaptational Nice Guy. Notably he was the only knight who wasn’t afraid of being near Mordred after her destiny and parentage were revealed; albeit he’s probably responsible for nudging Mordred completely past the point of no return. But whereas in Fate canon he’s The Stoic, basically Arturia’s prime minister, and is even a bit of an Only Sane Man, in Project Alter he’s a jealous, haughty, Inferiority Superiority Complex-laden snarky Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, and in fact is more of a troublemaker, much less an Only Sane Man (according to the author, she used Pokémon Trainer Silver as inspiration), and his position including his place in the Sixth Singularity is given to the also rather dickish and hotheaded but ultimately more responsible Kay as an extension of his Seneschal duties. In one fic, Gaheris, passing by and having been thrown in a dungeon with him even turns to him, sighing as if he’s not even surprised, asking “Agravain... What did you do this time?”. He retains his borderline murderous hatred for Gaheris, here being explained as a result of Morgan deliberately pitting the two against each other when raising them, and is most irrational with holding grudges out of the siblings. While he is shown to have slightly calmed down later, even then they’re pretty clearly different. And while he’s nowhere near as extreme in his loyalty to Arturia, this portrayal also borrows a lot from Vulgate characterizations and that loyalty gets transferred mostly to Gawain; if he and Gaheris are able to put aside their differences for anything, it’s their admiration of Gawain, to the point that when Bors tells them that Lancelot is a better fighter than Gawain, they are on the verge of 2 v 1-ing him in a fist fight before Gawain and Lancelot make them stop, and he rages at a group of Lancelot supporters for doing the same at a joust. And quite a bit of emphasis is put on this as it’s probably his most sympathetic trait in almost all the legends. The difference from, say, Mallory is probably best shown by Gawain’s reaction to his death, where while he doesn’t fly into a rage like he does with Gareth and Gaheris’ deaths, he’s still clearly saddened and angered by it, and he cites all three of his brothers’ deaths as to why he won’t forgive Lancelot. He’s also drawn much differently to fit this, with flatter hair and a more attractive, younger, and less pale but sneering and somewhat punchable face, fitting in better with descriptions in legend where he’s said to have a handsome face. Also he gets his own badass moments in fics covering the Sixth Singularity, where he, being switched out with Kay, bluntly states that the whole affair is absurd and pulls a dramatic Screw This, I'm Outta Here, taking the other dissenting knights, even for once throwing aside his love of his big brother and king and being willing to cooperate closely with Gaheris and Pellinore to stand by his choice, and leads the defecting group along with Pellinore. There is some focus on the weight of responsibility now that Gawain is against them now and he now has to take up the responsible older knight role as well, and he ultimately ends up as the Only Sane Man in a different way from Fate canon.
• Kay is indeed arrogant much like his legendary counterpart from the French romances onwards, instead of like the canon Fate interpretation who is pretty well aware of how he’s at the bottom of the deck as far as Round Table knights go. Though the author also throws him a bone in showing that he still isn’t exactly weak and is good at disarming people, what with his important role as the gatekeeper of the Round Table as addressed in Parzival, even having some quests to his name early in his career, and that he’s genuinely an effective bureaucrat who is good at keeping things in order and running smoothly, even if he himself is kind of a hypocrite about it and is hardly nice about it either. Also, whereas in Fate canon it’s said that he admires Arturia the least due to seeing her as a human first, in Project Alter he’s critical but still undyingly loyal to her and didn’t even think about running away before Camlann, to the point he takes Agravain’s place in the Sixth Singularity purely out of sibling loyalty.
• Karna acts somewhat more Hot-Blooded than he does in canon here; mainly seen in how he's not shy with the Badass Boasts, and how heated he can get if he has any reason to get worked up over something. He's also quite the Deadpan Snarker who has a talent for action one-liners and eloquent takedowns, and lacks a filter when it comes to anyone who isn't the specific person he has sworn loyalty to as his Lord. Also while he’s confident in his abilities he also tends to react very badly to criticism and insults due to having been mercilessly bullied and harassed throughout his childhood and early adulthood for his (assumed) low birth, despite him also being kind of critical of others (e.g. when Emiya basically calls him stupid for his unquestioning My Master, Right or Wrong loyalty to people regardless of them being obviously evil, he becomes extremely offended, shaking, threatening him, and Emiya even questions if Karna is going to start crying and legitimately attack him. Granted, he and Emiya already didn’t like each other that much to begin with due to the events of Apocrypha, but still).

• All Myths Are True: Naturally, this being Fate. This causes a lot of Fantastic Religious Weirdness for many. Also it’s revealed that every god knows each other and is in on everything. So yes, God knows the Greek Pantheon, Outer Gods and the Hindu pantheon, among others, personally, and the “worship no other god than me” thing is purely a test of loyalty. Though this isn’t elaborated on as much as the more human elements. (pending)
• Alternate Universe Fic: Aside from this loose collection being kind of an AU for Fate by itself, even while the premise is kept the same, the “The Many Faces Of Arthuriania” comics and occasional fics are basically just depicting episodes from the many, many, many renditions of King Arthur’s legend over the years with the Fate versions; with sometimes even more dark and tragic (e.g. half of the The Once and Future King content), but mostly hilarious or even just plain weird, results, written more like Hetalia: Axis Powers strips or Saturday morning cartoons. The rest of the “The Many Forms of _” series is basically the same for the others.
  • Not to mention the occasional one-shot human AU.
• Amazon Chaser:
  • Jekyll and Hyde are shown to be intensely attracted to sexually dominant behavior, as explained under Author Appeal. While Jekyll isn’t necessarily attracted to masculine women more than others, after all Gudako isn’t exactly among the most mannish looking of girls, it’s enough that he was deeply ashamed of it. Then again, he falls for Mordred in certain fics, and masculine behavior like Gudako making an epic Declaration of Protection or Mordred basically treating him as a maiden to her knight are shown to make him blush at least.
  • Actually Robin’s type is said to be stronger women who he can fight alongside, having the same mental fortitude he has, and who preferably can match him in strength and intelligence. This is due to the fact that these types of women remind him of Marion; though unfortunately they can’t replace the real deal.
• And A Child Shall Lead Them:
  • Aside from canonical examples, there’s Abigail Williams, princess of Halloween Town, in “Alice In Halloween Town”, where the trope is actually enforced due to the position being that of embodying Halloween and all. It’s also taken further with Jack being her second-in-command/retainer, which the author says was indeed because of the “children rule” motif, and over all everyone seems to see it as a given that a child (at least in appearance and personality) have authority over them, and children even seemingly have something of an almost sacred status; apparently the gravest, most serious felony someone can commit is legitimately traumatizing or worse, hurting a child.
• Anger Born of Worry: Basically Nightingale's whole shtick. Outside of battle at least, she might have a short temper, but this is always because she's genuinely worried for someone; and it doesn't matter who they are or what their alignment is, she will haul even the most vile of Servants who even the Gudas are a bit reluctant to befriend to the sick bay if she sees them in pain.
• Animation Bump: Most of the UTAU and other PV’s are slideshows of the author’s own art, or move, but are explicitly traced animations or are very Limited Animation to sprite video quality. This is also why Japanese Vocaloid songs which can be sung in UTAU tend to be preferred. As such, it’s basically night and day when once in a very, very blue moon a video is done by Isabella, one of the author’s friends, and an actual professional animator.

• Ascended Extra: Jekyll and Hyde, of course, the former now being promoted to Gudako’s basically one true love interest (though in some he’s paired with Mordred instead). Jekyll’s life before becoming a Servant and his relationship with Tatsumi are in fact elaborated a lot to the point that the former is basically its own spin-off, and to and extent the latter as well (not to mention it actually gets many more UTAU covers).
  • King David gets much, much more relevance, especially in the overarching plot; not only is he one of the Gudas’ starting Servants, but he hangs around the canonical main characters, especially Dr. Roman, a lot more often and shows up more often, basically becoming one of the main characters like Da Vinci, Merlin or Holmes, what with the whole Dr. Roman being a reincarnated King Solomon and Mash being a Demiservant of Galahad thing. Apparently King David just let himself in, and he also likes treating Lancelot and later Mash like grandchildren, encouraging them to call him grandpa, much to their embarrassment. And due to his connection to Solomon and his love of his children even when it goes beyond reason, he’s one of the most personally invested in the plot. Plus there’s the fact that he’s, well, literally the Servant form of King David, so literally every Jew, Christian, or Muslim in the Chaldea respects him to some extent despite what his casual personality may indicate.
• Attention Whore: Abigail Williams, or at least she used to be one quite badly. This was her primary motivation in life as to why she started accusing people of being witches, because being a girl in Colonial America, she wasn't really paid attention to. Well... it's a bit more complicated than that, as she was suffering from Demonic Possession and at first genuinely thought that the women she was accusing cursed her, but found that doing so gave her attention, which said demon exploited with impunity, and the adults around her only worsened it by using her and her friends' newly given power to justify enacting petty revenge on people they didn't like; and being a child she didn't really understand how wrong this was, while the one who spearheaded the whole thing was 17 and should have known better, Abigail being ultimately a mere accomplice to her. By the time she’s a Servant, she’s been humbled by her “punishment” to her more canonical personality, though she still comes off as a bit of one.
• The Atoner: Jekyll. Or more, he sees being a Servant as his way to salvation, his first My Greatest Failure being his creation of Hyde and falling to temptation and being complacent in it, which led to the murder of Danvers Carew and the death of his estranged friend Dr. Hastie Lanyon, and ultimately his suicide (which, note, was seen as a massive sin at the time; though technically he wasn't the one who committed suicide, as it was Hyde that did so like in the original novella, with Jekyll letting Hyde take one final hit so Utterson could have his estate on that technicality. Because yes, in Victorian England, if you committed suicide the government could take all your property). He acts much more like this in the fics based on the events of Fragments of Silver than the cheerful, plucky man he was in canon, already being very self-denying and pessimistic, and showing his age initially (for which Tatsumi jokingly calls him “Gramps” a few times), not saying that he wants to be a hero but that he just wants redemption, and balks at the idea of him “becoming a hero”. Though he eventually becomes more like he was in canon and starts acting more like his physical age as he spends more time with Tatsumi, with Tatsumi having a sort of therapeutic effect on him, and he even comes around to the whole “becoming a hero” thing, seeing assisting Tatsumi in his quest for the grail (ironically drawing parallels to Arthurian legend while at it) as the ultimate redemption. Unfortunately, he not only was summoned by a terrible Jerkass before Tatsumi whom he was forced to kill for in Jekyll form and who Hyde promptly murders (pending), but Tatsumi was killed in front of his eyes and adds yet another My Greatest Failure weighing on his psyche, with him hitting a Despair Event Horizon and letting Hyde loose being another right after. By the time of FGO he has a massive Guilt Complex and once again is basically is obsessed with being good, seeing Tatsumi’s death as a sort of divine retribution against straying from God’s path and blaming himself for being too weak to protect the boy and honor his mission, and to protect others from Hyde.
  • Lancelot also feels pretty terrible about the fact that a lot of the responsibility for the fall of Camelot rests on him, just like in canon, and kind of like Jekyll he suffers from a terrible Guilt Complex.
• Author Appeal: The Weakness Turns Her On and Amazon Chaser tropes, and Bishounen being in submissive positions and being sexually submissive. Most commonly Jekyll and Hyde, but occasionally other cases are shown or mentioned. By extension it’s made pretty obvious she has a soft spot for Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy pairings, or at least ones where the woman is rather masculine (e.g. Jekyll and Mordred and to a lesser extent Gudako, Mordred and Gwrddelw, Arturia and Shirou, Robin and Marion).
  • Also the pure fact that Jekyll is basically the Gudako’s right hand man and love interest, with the author openly admitting he’s her favorite character and that he’s what drew her into Fate. Also, as mentioned above, showing Jekyll and Hyde in submissive positions, sexual or in the former’s case otherwise (like both Gudako and Mordred being portrayed bridal carrying him, or really most of his scenes with Mordred in fics where they’re shipped), smut featuring this type of thing; basically a role reversal of your average romance Hentai. After all, the idea for the fic basically started as a Gudako x Jekyll Porn with Plot. Even outside the smut, there’s many scenes in which Jekyll becomes flustered due to his prudishness making him perceive rather innocent things as suggestive, and scenes where Hyde makes some kind of sexual remark.
  • Though a good fraction of the content in Project Alter is actually background legends/myths/history/literature, Jekyll and Hyde obviously get some of the most based on their story. it doesn’t just extend to the novella events either. Jekyll’s pre-Servant life and three-way friendship with Utterson and Lanyon (and its terrible, terrible end) and their school days also get depicted a lot, and she particularly likes Jekyll’s dynamic with Utterson, who gets mentioned and is shown a lot. In fact, in the loose adaptation of Chapter 4 of FGO the two are somewhat major characters in the story (taking place when Jekyll and co. were in their late 20s), forming a four-man team with Jekyll and Mordred. (The last one is pending)
  • She also clearly likes writing about the King Arthur legends a lot, and in terms of written content they’re actually the most elaborated on and have the most content by far. Though it helps that the King Arthur legends generally are way more content dense, have tons of characters, can basically fit any tone, are an infinitely spawning well of adaptations, and is basically Fate itself’s flagship universe, unlike Jekyll who is a footnote by comparison and is from a short novella with only four real major characters including him and Hyde, plus the legends being a series of multiple intricate, fascinating tragedies. Like Jekyll, there’s even quite a bit of slice of life original content for it. Her Arthurian works are basically a spin-off in of themselves with how detailed, elaborate, and meticulous they are, making the numerous Arthurian characters probably some of the most fleshed out in the cast alongside Jekyll, and due to outnumbering him they may even seemingly eclipse him. Despite how major they are in Fate they can still somehow start feeling like a Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
  • As well as historical and foreign cultural references everywhere, a lot of it being major character elements (e.g. Jekyll’s Victorian morality), fittingly for the writer of Alt-talia; there are many other similarities with Alt-talia, including Funitik Aksent.
  • Most changes are to get the characters closer to their original counterparts. Their past lives get brought up a lot, many depictions of events are almost exactly how they are described in any source material or how they happened in history, and many get dedicated fics (especially Jekyll and the Arthurian characters), and in fact this material is basically half of all PA content. The author has admitted that alongside Jekyll this is basically almost the other entire half of why she wanted to write for Fate at all, including somewhat altering the characters.
  • She has also admitted she finds Percival adorable due to his naivete and simpleness. She also likes writing Kay for being a lovable jerk Butt-Monkey who just happens to have Bedeviere as his best friend, his Snark-to-Snark Combat with Merlin, and the way Percival comically resents him.
    • There are knights who don’t show up in Fate canon who the author has taken a liking to. The Outer Table members are capable of being as quirky as the Inner Table members, if not more so (e.g. Dagonet and Galehaut). But the most major is probably Dinadan, with his friendliness with almost everyone, especially his very close friendship and dynamic with Tristan, and his unique wisecracking personality, becoming a somewhat major character, probably helping that he’s good at sensing how good people are at heart. He’s even given a somewhat major place in Mordred’s arc, forming a tragic friendship with her (And he even shows up in Tristan’s and Mordred’s dreams in a pair of fics in the Sixth Singularity, representing the rational parts of their conscious (alongside Gwrddelw in Mordred’s dream) calling them out.
• Author Avatar: Gudako/Ritsuka is a weird case. The author has admitted that a major reason why the main ship is Gudako x Jekyll is that she’s the player character supposed to represent the player, and it’s made pretty obvious that the author is very attracted to Jekyll. However, she also says that Gudako acts basically nothing like the author herself and that she can’t see her as a self-insert.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • Attempted with the much-maligned Seventh Kandha of the Ramayana, a later addition to the story which no one wanted and which many since even the Middle Ages have either tried to omit or at least call bullshit on, with Fate canon even pretending it doesn’t exist by saying that Vani’s wife cursed him and Sita to never meet, a completely original scenario. The latter is scrapped in PA, but still Rama didn’t exile Sita at all, and was more concerned and paranoid about the rumors flying around to the point it starts messing with him, even though he vocally defends her, ultimately lashing out at her in a moment of weakness and making her venture into the forest in the middle of the night to die. Thus giving Rama an actual flaw while still keeping him a good guy, making the whole thing a tragedy instead of a contrived, Character Derailing Twist Ending, giving them a more human and less myth-like conflict much like a lot of her depictions of Sigurd and Brynhildr, and salvages the basic idea so that it at least hopefully makes sense with the rest of the story. Though it’s still a Downer Ending and is lampshaded as such with Rama saying he could have gotten his happy ending if he actually trusted his wife more and their circumstances weren’t so “contrived”. But there’s also certain fics/canons in which they’re seemingly an ideal couple and have no issues at all.
• Bar Brawl: Hyde really likes starting these, being just the perfect combination of violence and drunkenness that he loves, and in fact has apparently started many of them deliberately in life by riling people up just so he has a reason to beat people up (and the common use of the trope is lampshaded by the fact that Jekyll was curious about them); they're one of the only reasons he would go to a cheap pub despite the Moose Urine that tends to be served in such places.
  • In a gag comic Hyde, Francis, Billy the Kid, and a bunch of background characters get into one. Ironically Billy is pretty annoyed by it all despite him playing up the whole outlaw cowboy persona, and it takes a Your Mom insult from Hyde to fully get it rolling.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Jekyll’s original wish when creating HJ-7/Dangerous Game was to separate good and evil, and this had Gone Horribly Right. However, he in a way gets something much closer to his actual wish when he initially became a Servant, with him and Hyde becoming more separate and as such him more pure good (thus explaining his Adaptational Heroism), and Hyde was at that point easier to control to boot... but now that the events of the original novella had run their course, it makes all of the weight of his irresponsibility and hypocrisy finally come crashing down on him at full force, making his Guilt Complex and personal agony even worse, and making him as obsessed with redemption as he is and cementing his repression. Something he wanted to be rid of. With Hyde being even more of a personality of his own, Jekyll is unable to use any of the mental justifications or defenses he used to use, and was left with nothing but an overwhelming sense of My God, What Have I Done?.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Often Averted or at least downplayed. The author tends to dislike this in backstories, tending to express heavy disappointment whenever it’s applied a bit too heavily (though it doesn’t annoy her as much as “This actually isn’t the real historical figure!” or “This historical figure never actually existed!”, the former of which tends to make her go on over-the-top comedic rants). As such, it often tends to be toned down, and the author usually prefers exploring more plausible, human-centric options over more fantastical, out-there pure Fate interpretations. Though in cases like Abigail, there’s attempts to have the fantastic elements worked into history somehow. Many Servants express shock upon learning about the whole Servant arrangement when they first are split off from their souls to become one, in fact, as many of them were relatively normal humans in life. Even fictional characters, if they come from more mundane settings like Jekyll or Holmes, had as much knowledge of magic or Grail Wars as the Gudas did before joining the Chaldea; that is, absolutely none, expressing as much confusion with the absurdity of the situation.
• Beta Couple: Gudao and Mash to Gudako and Jekyll; they don’t get as much attention, but their budding relationship is shown to be an incredibly sweet and less angsty contrast to the main couple.
• Betty and Veronica: In Project Alter, Jekyll can end up with Gudako (Betty) or Mordred (Veronica), though the former is the main ship... except that in Gudako x Jekyll fics Mordred never shows any romantic interest in him, and vice-versa for Mordred x Jekyll fics, avoiding this conflict in favor of actual interactions between the couple. In fact, both the girls become a bit of a Shipper on Deck for the other and otherwise show a lot of support.
• Berserk Button:
  • As covered in Adaptational Badass, unlike canon but based off of her history, Boudicca despises Ancient Romans, to the point people have to call Dr. Roman Dr. Romani around her, as while that isn’t enough to make her angry she still recoils noticeably from it... and especially Nero, whose mere presence makes her seethe on a good day. Her views and feelings regarding Romans has been compared to Eren Jaeger and Titans in early seasons of Attack on Titan.
  • Calling Mordred “lady” or treating her as too much of a woman, just like in canon, both due to being quite a bit of a Female Misogynist and just being a genuine tomboy born in the early medieval era. Also, while she has tried to come to terms with it, it's shown that she still hasn't gotten over how Arturia treated her and refused to acknowledge her as an heir in life, nor how most of the Round Table basically tried to quietly ignore her half the time after that, undoing all the Character Development she had had until then (pending).
  • Do not cook or serve beef in the presence of any of the Hindu Servants, or at least any pre-modern ones. No matter how much it’s explained to them, they still will be horrified at best or be royally pissed at worst. To them it’s basically as bad as if not worse than cannibalism, just don’t do it.
  • Mozart is a walking Berserk Button for Salieri, as it’s basically his very nature.
  • Enkidu really, really does not take well to others rubbing it in that he has no biological parents, nor does he take well to anyone telling him that Ninsun isn’t his real mother and/or that Gilgamesh isn’t his real brother. Humbaba learned this the hard way. Him growing up with no parents, especially with no mother, is a massive complex for him, though Gilgamesh will always remind him not to listen to it because the only family he needs is his, his real family; oh yeah, because of how much he loves Enkidu, doing this is also a good way to piss off Gilgamesh. And for the sake of everyone and everything, for the love of every God that has ever, and will exist, never, ever piss off Gilgamesh.
• Bifauxnen: Many of the genderflips of male historical figures are drawn a bit more like this in the author's fanart and PVs to make it plausible that they could plausibly be mistaken for men if they bound their chest and wore masculine clothing, and characters such as Arturia and Mordred also get their heights ratcheted up by a lot (in canon they're 154 cm; in Project Alter their height is given as 165 cm, making Arturia almost as tall as Shirou).
  • This (link) piece of art features Bradamante with shorter hair, where she looks like a straight-up Bishounen. She’s intentionally drawn with a more androgynous face due to how she’s mistaken for a man and is said to pass as her brothers with shorter hair several times in Orlando Furioso. It also compliments Astolfo.
• Big Brother Instinct: In addition to the Vassal-Lord/Servant-Master bond, the Guda twins are shown to be fairly protective of each other as well, especially as they got basically kidnapped to the Chaldea and knew no one else there initially.
  • Utterson towards Jekyll in life; as children especially, but even in his 50s Utterson pretty much started the whole investigation into Hyde out of a want to protect his best friend. They went to the same elementary school, boarding school, and university, and Utterson was always there when Jekyll overworked himself and there when he got into fights with Lanyon. Due to Jekyll’s strict parents even by Victorian standards he also became the person he could be most honest with his feelings around. After Jekyll’s apparent death, compounded with Lanyon’s death a mere few weeks before, he apparently collapsed and burst into tears, regretting that he didn’t act sooner as soon as he realized Jekyll was acting strangely, even despite strict Victorian ideals about privacy. However, due to how much of a seeming ideal he was, it’s shown that while Utterson did envy Jekyll a bit for being a Child Prodigy, Jekyll actually envied him for having himself under control so well and always seeming so strong as opposed to him.
  • Jekyll himself becomes something between this and Papa Wolf during this canon’s events of Fragments of Silver regarding Tatsumi (though Tatsumi at first calls him "pops" or even "gramps", they become more sibling-ish eventually and it's revealed that they outright declared themselves blood brothers), eventually developing into his Team Mom-ish character in the events of FGO. He notes that he’s taking after Utterson, surprised at how much of a natural he is. Unfortunately, it makes Tatsumi’s death even more painful.
  • Gilgamesh towards Enkidu, though the feeling is very much mutual, and in fact maybe even more so from Enkidu’s side.
  • Gawain. It’s made clear that if anything he’s a guy that values his siblings a lot (though they needn’t even be his actual siblings). Especially Gareth, though before Mordred was outed he was pretty protective of her too, and even after the fact he was constantly conflicted over it. Though he’s not super over protective regarding them getting into danger at least as it’s part of their profession. But this trope becomes apparent to utterly terrifying levels when Lancelot killed Gaheris and Gareth (not long after killing Agravain as well). And he hesitated on striking Mordred as well, leading to his demise.
    • For at the very least Gaheris and even Agravain, the feeling is mutual, to rather ridiculous levels, to the point that reminding them that Lancelot indeed took Gawain’s title as the strongest of the Round Table is a Berserk Button.
  • Some of Kay’s most badass moments come from his loyalty to his stepsister. While he might be a massive braggart, he’s willing to do anything to defend her, and even sees basically absorbing negativity coming her way as part of his job as Seneschal. Though this becomes apparent to heartwrenching levels in fics taking place in the Sixth Singularity, where despite knowing how wrong it is and having the clearest head on his shoulders, he continues to follow The Dragon King to the bitter end purely out of sibling love. He has an UTAU cover of Servant of Evil based on this version of events for a reason.
• Bishie Sparkle: Used sometimes in art, but among them and even among the already sparkle-prone Round Table Knights, Galahad is especially noticeable for how often he is drawn with these, and if he is otherwise visually depicted in a comic or PV for example he will almost always sport these somewhere in the work, if not more than once, fitting for being the perfect Knight in Shining Armor. Or in the Once and Future King based mini-comics, literally constantly. Occasionally accompanied by god rays in more comedic Arthurian works. Hell, even in pure text form he’s described as almost shining or sparkling a few times. One pretty amusing description goes as far as to say “he seemed to draw all the sparkles from the other knights’ already sparkling armor into himself.”
  • Mash is also depicted with sparkles (though they would be Bishoujo Sparkles in her case) somewhere in quite a few of her visual depictions, and in text is sometimes described to be almost sparkling when in high spirits; though usually not brought attention to too much, it sometimes is indeed really noticeable, increasing the more later in the plot the depiction is supposed to be in. It seems like a minor detail or joke, but you can probably guess from the above it’s a tell regarding her connection to Galahad.
  • The author apparently found the fact that the The Glass Scientists counterpart of Jekyll sports these, despite it being a western work, quite amusing considering how Fate’s Jekyll is obviously a major bishie. So amusing that in a post comparing Fate!Jekyll and Hyde with other depictions of them over the years (link), one of the drawings is the two filling up the screen with sparkles in a “British Gentleman Sparkle Party” as a few other incarnations look on in the background, confused.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Jekyll, Lanyon, and Utterson were rare male examples in their youth. Well not exactly, but close. See also Color-Coded Characters.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: One Arthurian fic briefly shows Dagonet and Dinadan doing what is basically one of these in front of the rest of the Round Table at a feast, though it isn’t directly called one.
• Book Dumb:
  • Yes, Jeanne still can barely read, and it’s a bit of a Running Gag.
  • Mordred is seemingly a Dumb Muscle, and it’s also shown that she was barely literate when she first became a knight; yet unlike canon, she is shown to be actually surprisingly capable of manipulation when she needs to use it to achieve her ends or as self-defense, something Morgan instilled in her both intentionally and via the abusive way she raised her. She also did indeed have some idea of what she wanted to do as king unlike in canon, and surprisingly isn’t too bad as a battle strategist.
  • Enkidu can read, just not anything too difficult, but it’s made clear he isn’t exactly well-educated. Still, he isn’t actually stupid per se.
  • Marie isn’t very educated, especially for a royal, and can come across as airheaded and insensitive, as shown with how she has apparently repeatedly broken a coffee machine by using it for her morning cup of chocolate or not getting what’s so appealing about democracy. However, she’s still the one who planned her family’s attempted escape from France, a very elaborate plan by every means, and can be manipulative if it’s for the benefit of those she loves. Even Holmes praises her intellect at one point, albeit in a Smarter Than You Look way.
  • Percival is generally shown to be not the brightest, or at least kind of clueless despite his big heart, and while he has fixed some of his lack of social skills (e.g. greeting Arturia with “Oi, you’re King Arthur, right?”) since first arriving, he still goofs up quite a bit. But his lack of social graces and simpleness is shown to make him especially endearing to commoners, he’s a surprisingly good cook as long as you’re not expecting anything too elaborate, and is better able to read what is right (if not the most socially conventional) to do in a situation than many of his otherwise smarter peers due to his strong moral compass. He’s in the second seat for a reason, with his exceptional natural talent in battle, despite having had no knight training previously. Also, his natural talent didn’t just extend to fighting, as much like how he’s mentioned in FGO proper to be good at chess, Gawain mentions to Cù that he hasn’t known such a good gwyddbwyll/fidchell player since Percival (and in a slice of life Arthurian one-shot this is actually shown; he actually did suck at it first, to a pretty comical extent even, but became freakishly good at it after being taught how to actually play the thing).
• Bowdlerize: Cases of this in real life are brought up from time to time:
  • Jekyll is unpleasantly surprised by how stuffed to the gills Shakespeare’s work is with Get Thee to a Nunnery or even hardly disguised dirty puns and Double Entendre (with Shakespeare even making a bit of a game out of how many dirty puns he could cram into a sentence and still make it coherent just to test his own skill - and simply because he has an immature sense of humor, even if not to Mozart levels), as Jekyll grew up with the Victorian censored versions of his work. Shakespeare is pretty disappointed yet amused by this fact.
    Shakespeare: It actually takes quite a bit of effort to compose such sentences, mind thee! It was not as if I wrote the Lord’s name in vain!
  • For a more plot-relevant example, many of the characters who are of Abrahamic faith only know of the good, flawless versions of David and Solomon in legend instead of the Torah or Bible itself, not knowing that both their stories ended in tragedy due to some type of sin. Obviously, this not only makes things incredibly awkward for David, but also incredibly awkward for all of them when the Big Bad reveals himself to be “Solomon”.
  • It’s implied that there was no intention for Drapaudi to be raped in PA’s version of the Mahābhārata... only to “merely” strip her, which while still heinous, at least it isn’t rape. This was a practical choice, to keep Duryodhana from slipping from “gray” to “black” on the morality spectrum.
  • A sort of in-story example; in a few depictions of Arthurian stories, Mook knights are merely beaten up really bad instead of straight-up killed, because medieval romances tend to treat death with disturbing levity (e.g. Percival merely made the Red Knight beg for his life and offer his armor), mostly for pragmatic purposes since otherwise they seem to be terrible people.
• Break the Cutie: Jekyll... hoo boy. Basically nothing has gone right for him ever since creating Hyde (not that his life was easy before that point either), and by the events of FGO he’s much genuinely nicer than his novella self but is on the verge of losing hope in himself.
• Broad Strokes: The author tends to pick and choose what she wants to use from canonical Fate backstories, usually with much heavier influence from history or source material, if not throwing out the Fate backstory outright (e.g. Frankenstein’s Creature/Eve Frankenstein/Ms. Frankenstein, Sasaki Kojiro, Attila the Hun), though the latter only occurs when the author feels that the They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character is so extreme, and that just using their actual historical life events or original stories and legends makes them that much more interesting as characters, that she feels she has to (on extremely rare occasions the reverse is true, e.g. Jack the Ripper). Though usually the events that actually occurred in Fate itself have happened, even if some may have had different reasons for happening or have taken different routes to get there.
  • Characters who had basically no one canon in real life due to legendary status, however, like the Arthurian characters, or have many wildly different variations like the Mahābhārata characters, can be a hodgepodge of those many canons as well on top of Fate canon, being stitched together with it as the author sees fit to make them the most interesting. And usually the author tries to keep/add the most consistent traits they tend to have (e.g. Gawain’s way with and high opinion of women), or even go a bit meta on general trends with the character. Or even all at once, due to Project Alter’s Loose Canon. This is of course discounting the “Many Forms of _” series, which is explicitly separate from anything else in Project Alter.
• Broken Ace: Jekyll in life. A Child Prodigy with two doctorates by the time he graduated university, chemist, doctor, trusted associate of Sherlock Holmes, Fellow of the Royal Society at the young age of 25, a gentleman and respected member of his community, and overall good guy. But yet he was tormented by perfectly normal, human desires and emotions, holding himself to even higher standard than the already high standards of Victorian society, and by the time he’s 53 he’s unbelievably sexually, psychologically, and emotionally repressed. Despite his glowing resume and seeming confidence at the time he actually had massive inferiority complexes regarding his desires. This was something brought about by a terrible combination of a lot of things... mainly, the above mentioned social norms, the terrible state of mental health knowledge at the time, Abusive Parents who were strict even by the standards of the era leaving him with a compulsive, almost pathological need to be perfect, a need to be loved and admired by everyone, and a rather childish mentality despite his genius, being a Child Prodigy heaping expectations on him from an early age which only grew along with his good reputation until it became constant, oppressive white noise (his abovementioned parents also constantly demanding more from him the better his grades got), having Utterson and later Holmes to compare himself to with how in control of things they seemed to be (especially Utterson, who slightly envies Jekyll’s achievements but didn’t realize how strong the reverse was), a tendency to shoulder all of his problems despite Utterson’s constant reminders that he isn’t alone, and him accompanying investigations with Holmes and inspecting his case files basically dumping him into the evil Wretched Hive that was Victorian Soho and the world of crime headfirst, giving him both an even more intense hatred of and a morbid fascination with the nature of evil; while Moriarty still is involved a bit like in Fate canon, here he was just the final nudge that Jekyll needed to come up with and dedicate the next 15 years or so to making HJ-7 (later Dangerous Game as a Servant), and for him to easily give into and try to justify giving into literal decades worth of temptations and repressed desires despite initial reluctance.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • In Arthurian prequel fics and comics Kay basically is the resident Butt-Monkey, mostly due to him being a jerk but also the resident Noob Bridge used as the threshold for what is considered elite enough for the inner Round Table meaning he has to get beat up a lot. Though at least he’s also the resident Drill Sergeant Nasty. ...And in fics depicting the Sixth Singularity, he and Agravaine switch roles, and he’s shown as a tragic figure who will do anything, no matter how terrible or even if he thinks it unreasonable, for his sister.
  • Among Jekyll, Utterson, and Lanyon, Lanyon tends to get the brunt of most jokes due to his outgoing and jolly but stubborn personality. He was even usually given the title of “Porthos”, who has traditionally been the comic relief among the three musketeers, when the friend trio role played as the three musketeers as kids (Utterson was always Athos, while Jekyll was usually Aramis).
• Cane Fu: In these fics, Jekyll and Hyde can also use these, and Hyde actually says he prefers his cane as his weapon over his knife. Holmes gets a big hunting crop instead.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: Project Alter fics’ tones can run the gamut from philosophical and contemplating on the nature of God himself, to extremely dark and messed-up borderline if not actual psychological horror, to serious drama, to lighthearted Slice of Life to sitcom to off-the-wall cartoony hijinks to Black Comedy, dependent on the fic or comic. Even more so than Alt-talia. One fic could be about Jekyll’s deep-seated repression, the Round Table’s multitude of unresolved issues, or Salieri getting faint memories of his real self’s life and lamenting the sorry state he’s in in his rare moments of clarity... and the next released could be about Emiya getting all giddy like he used to as a teenager as he and Beni-Enma cook for the Chaldea, or Gilgamesh giving Enkidu a chew toy for their friendship anniversary, or Paracelsus, Nightingale, and Jekyll fanboying/fangirling over Asclepius (or the many characters who fanboy/fangirl over Arthur and Arturia), or Astolfo turning back into a tree. And some of the things played for drama in some fics are Played for Laughs in others (e.g. Hyde can be portrayed as Comedic Sociopathy incarnate, just plain terrifying, or heartbreaking (via his connection with Jekyll), or somehow all at once, and similar for the Berserker-level Unstoppable Rages Nero’s mere presence can trigger in Boudicca).
  • Applies to stories not taking place in FGO as well; the prequel fics, even for the same character, are basically the same in terms of tone variation, and Black Comedy in fact is pretty common in the "The Many Forms of Arthuriania". On occasion, the stories taking place in Jekyll, Utterson, and Lanyon’s childhoods are almost cute, which can be pretty jarring in contrast to how dark the J&H prequel fics can get. The Arthurian fics even outside of TMFOA can be based on nothing in particular and just be character-based Slice of Life or straight-up lighthearted comedy. Pre-Servant backstories are also the most common subject of Fate UTAU covers, and even among the author’s archive her Fate songs tend to be overwhelmingly depressing, disturbing, or both (enough to give her Alt-talia covers a run for their money, and Alt-talia is a universe where basically everyone is terrible in some way and deals with the worst parts of history and shady politics on a regular basis), but on occasion there is a really silly song or genuinely wholesome one thrown in the mix, which stand out a lot amongst the rest; though this always is due to a certain story arc being followed or something otherwise relevant to the many facets of the character.
• Chef of Iron: Emiya, much like a lot of fan depictions, is basically the resident chef for all intents and purposes; since Vassals don’t necessarily need to eat, it’s not too busy a job, but he apparently even has a hotline and Fax for when a random Vassal wants a bite of something. But the fact that he’s still an unflinching badass just like in his Fate/stay night days is also made very clear.
• Classy Cane: Jekyll and Hyde have a cane now, like they did in the novella. Jekyll plays it straight, Hyde averts it hard. In fact, the contrast with Hyde is stated to be a major reason why he’s a Cane Fu user here.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Astolfo. How much varies with this fic, but out of the Paladins, who are already various shades of this, he might be the biggest example.
  • While they may seem to be lucid most of the time, the Celtic mythologic characters have a tendency to be accepting of some of the most weirdest, most nonsensical things ever, even by Fate standards, as if they were completely normal. Basically, they sit on the opposite spectrum of logic as, say, Holmes does, where logic seems to not be always necessary for it to make sense. Though this seems moreso for those from the Ulster Cycle. This reflects how generally nonsensical Irish myth can get at times, where things often happen with no explanation, or plots can develop in the weirdest ways imaginable, reflecting their partly folkloric nature (e.g. people randomly turning into salmon, Cu somehow having had a 7-year-old son at the age of 17 at most, Medb literally starting a bloody war over a cow and dying via cheese to the head, etc).
• Color-Coded Characters:
  • If a Historical Domain Character as they were in life is drawn for, say, an UTAU PV, they’re almost always depicted wearing clothing with the same color scheme as their Servant selves to convey some sense of them being the same character. Especially because You Don't Look Like You tends to be common among them (e.g. Mozart wears a purple coat, while Salieri wears a red and grey one).
  • The character designs given for the The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde cast, plus Holmes and Watson, seem to have some of this going on, judging by concept art by the author. While they don’t exactly have one set color, they clearly fall back on a few that convey their personality in some way, and also all have differently colored ribbons for their hats, with the hair colors of the main trio also following a rare male Blonde, Brunette, Redhead (well more blond, brunet, and light brunet, but still) pattern when they were younger:
    • Jekyll: Most used designs for him in life basically are a realistic Victorian version of his Fate outfit or something similar; gray, maybe gold accents, but often also associated with various shades of usually somewhat desaturated greens much like his eye color, which is also the color of his hat ribbon, also the only blond out of the characters not Hyde.
    • Hyde: Red, dark red, and black, after he gets his own outfits. Of course also blond.
    • Utterson: Dark brown, dark blue (occasionally lighter shades of blue), and black. Dark brown (black?) hair and bright blue (dark brown?) eyes.
    • Lanyon: Usually oranges and yellows, light browns. Also wears often wears an outer coat noticeably lighter than the rest of the trio’s. White-gray hair, or light brown, slightly gold-tinged hair when younger, light brown eyes.
    • Poole: Black, white, and light blue (?), light blue eyes (?), grey hair.
    • Einfeld: Purple/mauveine. Light to medium brown hair with similarly colored eyes (grey or light blue might work though).
    • Holmes: Basically the same as his Servant self but more realistic, so a lot of black, dark desaturated browns, and dark grays. Grey-green eyes and black, slightly blue-tinged hair.
    • Watson: Generally has a mousy brown and olive green color palette. Most notably the only actual redhead.
  • The Arthurian cast gets their canonical color schemes, with the ones who don’t have a design yet having their color selected so as not to have the same as someone else (or for Arthur and the inner Round Table at least). These can be used as visual shorthand in things like UTAU PVs without straight-up showing a character. Though on occasion accents or secondary colors are added to be safe. ^{The list, obviously will be revised with new info} Arturia/Arthur: Royal Blue, sometimes with gold accents, Kay: Dark Orange, Bedeviere: desaturated Forest Green, Gawain: White and Turquoise, sometimes green accents, Lancelot: Purple, Tristan: Burgundy, Percival: vermillion/red-orange, with sky blue and gold accents, Galahad: lavender (though he doesn’t actually wear lavender, he’s often depicted with almost white armor as opposed to the canonical black, not to mention his connection to Mash), Bors: brown, Gareth and Gaheris: Emerald Green, the former having beige and the latter greyish brown as secondary colors, Agravain: Black, Palamedes: Goldenrod, Mordred: Red But since white is used so often for ladies and damsels despite being Merlin’s color, there are several characters who have white as their signature color and are told apart by accents. ^e.g.  Merlin, if not pure white, has pastel blue and pink accents, Guinevere gets pastel green and gold, Iseult gets light red, and Blanchefleur gets a mint green color.
• Composite Character: Aside from those who were already these in canon:
  • Alexander the Great has two incarnations in Fate/Grand Order; "Ishkander", his older incarnation, and "Alexander", his younger incarnation. Project Alter conflates them into one character, "Alexandros", who is basically Ishkander in every way from class to stats to personality, but with Alexander's voice and the appearance of someone in his early 20’s.
  • Jekyll, or at least him with the most used version of his original motivation, is arguably one of his novella self and his Fate incarnation; while his backstory and a good part of his character are lifted from or brainstormed as an extension of the novella, he’s still a much better person than what the novella alone implied, and Holmes and Moriarty still factor into his backstory.
  • Just like in Fate lore itself, Morgan le Fay and Morgause are conflated; in Arturia’s universe. In Arthur’s (pending) and in other places where it’s relevant, they’re split apart again into almost Identical Strangers instead.
  • Percival’s sister is named “Dindrane” like she is in Perlesvaus, despite her being unnamed in Le Morte D’Artur itself, with her strong-willed personality also being taken from other sources.
• Cool Big Sis:
  • Marie Antoinette seems to be a mix between this and a sort of bubbly Team Mom to the younger/physically and emotionally young characters (Nursery Rhyme, Jack the Ripper, Abigail Williams, etc), fittingly for someone who loved her children in life, though she isn’t as quick to go Knight Templar Mama Bear as Boudicca is, she’s also incredibly caring to anyone who appears younger than her. They don’t even have to appear younger; after they rekindle their friendship, she kind of starts acting like Mozart’s mom too, was willing to let fellow disgraced princess Anastasia call her “mother” to help alleviate her missing her own mother, which becomes the start of a close friendship, comforted Jekyll, telling him that she can be her mother for the moment to help relieve his mommy issues, tries to show Eve and Mordred at least a semblance of what parental love is like, and grows close to Enkidu by showing him motherly love in Ninsun’s absence; and that’s just some examples. Jack even starts calling her “mother” as well in addition to Jekyll, and they’re incredibly close because of it. Indeed, the real Marie Antoinette loved adopting and caring for random children despite her royal status, even commoners, and was especially loving towards her own children, and in-story she explains that she misses them greatly and mothering over others helps fill that void. She isn’t outright a Team Mom archetype due to her young physical age and usually also childish behavior, but she still comes incredibly close to it.
  • Gawain, particularly to his siblings, younger knights (I.e. most of them), some of the younger Servants, and even the Gudas and Mash, is a pretty good male example. He’s described as having had a reputation of being the Round Table’s “Onii-san Archetype” just as much as the resident Casanova for a reason.
• Covert Pervert: A major part of Jekyll’s character, as well as his internal conflict. On the surface, he’s pure and modest, a religious and highly intelligent Anglican man with almost angelic looks that make him look like a male Ingeune. On top of his pre-existing inclination to do so, he has a lot of resentment towards sin and evil; including lust. Apparently before Hyde was created, the last time he had sex was when he was 24, not even visiting a prostitute since (he was 52 when Hyde was born), and as he saw masturbation as evil as everyone else in his country in that era he likely wasn’t doing much of that either. However, as mentioned under The Atoner, it’s made clear that this is extreme repression, and that at heart he’s as sexually inclined as anyone else if not actually rather perverted. By the events of FGO he doubles down again on repressing it, associating the mere idea of getting horny with Hyde. Oh, and he likes to bottom sexually, and kinkily at that, something he sees as shameful and weak, and which he feels deeply ashamed of to the point of tears when he starts fantasizing about Gudako merely pushing him down and deep-kissing him. Hyde, being basically a manifestation of his Id, on the other hand, is shown to be fittingly shameless, not reluctant to sexualize others or himself to others whatsoever, and is pretty happy to see the new things modernity has come up with in the realm of kink.

• Gudako. Sort of. She's not too shy to compliment male characters for their appearances, and even makes a few mild suggestive comments directed at Jekyll. It's just that Jekyll really would like to believe that she's completely pure, despite that also contributing to his feeling of being unworthy. However, it soon becomes pretty obvious that she has a pretty dirty mind, something which is shown in action in the sex scenes. Especially as their relationship progresses. Though Jekyll is unwilling to recognize that she even has a libido until she tells him directly to his face point-blank.
• Dr. Roman, despite what his innocent looks, serious workaholic personality, and somewhat airheaded behavior may suggest, also apparently has a bit of a dirty mind. Mash learned this the hard way when she snooped around on his hard drive once, where he had apparently been storing literal, honest-to-god erotica he was in the middle of writing that was also much more gorgeously written than it had any right to be (which she of course chewed him out for). Though his fantasies are a lot more wholesome than those of more standard Lovable Sex Maniacs in the Chaldea. It’s explained that this is in reference to the Song of Songs, traditionally attributed to Solomon; while it’s highly unlikely he actually wrote it, in the author's words “Meh, this is Project Alter, not Alt-talia!”. In-story, it was also one of the manifestations of his inability to be truly, permanently happy in life, including in his love life with all his ever-increasing harem of butt-kissers, with him having written it as his personal fantasy of a loving, equal relationship.
• Gareth seems to be pure of heart, the most dedicated to chivalrous honor second only to Galahad, and she indeed is. But there’s a reason why she wasn’t part of the grail knights; she's a hopeless romantic and tends to get crushes on other knights easily, especially Lancelot.

• Comic Trio: In the one semi-crack modern AU fic, the band Noisy Obsession. Edward (Hyde) is the navigator who gleefully goes to and inflames Football Hooligan fights and starts pub brawls just for his own amusement, Astolfo is the idiot driver who jumps in right after him and accompanies him as they sleep around with their fans, and Arash of all people is unfortunately the Only Sane Man by default who has to deal with all of the extreme chaos that combining those two brings about, even if Ed is a lot less evil, which is enough to test even his laid-back personality.
  Jekyll, who has come to bail Hyde and Astolfo out: How in heaven’s name do you deal with two of them?
  Arash: Whelp! I just do, y’know. Just the same ol’ shit as always! How do you deal with even one of the buggers every day is what I’ve gotta ask!
  Utterson: ...I pity both of you.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Played for Laughs in one of the fics taking place during the events of Fragments of Silver, where Jekyll basically says this word-for-word when he attempts to give Tatsumi a lift and ends up with a strained back; a gag on the fact that he died in his 50s and that his body hasn’t gotten used to its new youth (or something). It never happens again, and he easily jumps around with Tatsumi in tow elsewhere with his Berserker Super-Strength.
  • Lanyon is a victim of this in one of the The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde prequel fics.
• Crossover: Characters from Hetalia/Alt-talia may show up in Project Alter related content, as well as vice-versa, quite fittingly. In UTAU covers, a Servant may even be cast as their historical self and make a cameo if not share a song with a nation in an Alt-talia related song on rare occasions. On occasion, they straight-up quote each other (e.g. Marie Antoinette's spotlight fic, taking place as she's awaiting execution and reflecting on her life, is basically her point of view of the same scene from the French Revolution arc of Alt-talia; the warden is someone she apparently knows well, and his physical description matches up with France exactly (wavy blond hair, bright blue eyes, appearing early to mid 20s but older than he looks), it's just that the lines with her saying his name outright are omitted so it's only implied to be France, but he and Marie have the same exact conversation France and Marie had in Alt-talia otherwise).
  • The mini comic series crossover with the NHK drama Dōsuru Ieyasu; basically rewriting the Fate versions of the Sengoku main actors so their backstories line up with the drama. It’s elaborated in its own section below.
• Curse of The Ancients: The author clearly has a lot of fun using period-appropriate and/or directly translated swears with resident Sir Swears-a-Lot characters. The most prominent examples are:
  • Hyde, of course, isn’t exactly clean-mouthed, and he makes use of the standard four-letter words like “fuck” “shit” “piss” “cunt” and “twat” quite often (though not as bad as some might expect). However, he also uses a lot of swear or at least rude words from the Victorian era which have since fallen out of use, the results of which can serve to make him sound hilariously quaint or like a grandpa. Especially hilarious is the offended reactions Jekyll often has to these. Nor is he the only one to use them often, because Jack, despite her youthful appearance and personality, may in fact have a fouler mouth than Hyde as she grew up abandoned in the worst corners of Whitechapel and learned to speak from hearing others talk.
  • The Arthurian characters, when they do swear, as well as others from medieval England/Wales like Robin Hood, tend to resort to naming one of God’s or Jesus’s body parts. The most notable user of these is Mordred, who on top of being a general Sir Swears-a-Lot with modern swears can go off on Cluster F-Bombs of these, much to the offense of Arturia and to a lesser extent Arthur, to hilarious effect, as these swears sound like extremely innocuous and quaint Gosh Dang It to Heck! in modern English at most (e.g. “Jesus’s bones!”). Though modern swear words can be inserted into them, especially in more serious scenes (e.g. “God’s fucking blood!”).
• Cuteness Proximity: The Gudas have this reaction upon first meeting Fou. Fou is not amused.
  • Fou gets it again from Abigail and Jack later. Fou isn’t amused here either.
  • Gudako has a bit of a Running Gag in which she Squees and hugs Jekyll when he’s being especially adorable, though this usually frightens him due to his apprehensiveness around being touched intimately in such ways, especially by a woman; cue the awkward apologies.
  • Jekyll is so cute he makes even Mordred suddenly give him a bear hug and react like this in one of their shipping fics:
    Jekyll: ...S-Saber, by Jove! I-I am sorry for calling you cute, but you are hugging me quite tightly... it is rather painfu-
    Mordred: Stop, stop, stop! God’s blood, you’re killing me! You! That describes you, damn it! Augh, I swear, you’re so much fucking cuter than most actual basic-ass maidens I’ve seen stop being so adorable damn it you fucking Beansprout I can’t punch you properly if you do that dammit!
    Jekyll, blushing: E-excuse me?!
    Mordred: ...Shit. Did I just say that? I didn’t mean that that was a joke. ...Oh, fuck, look at the time, I gotta... iron my sword or something, and I think Lord Fujimaru was calling a few minutes ago gottarunbye!
• Creator's Culture Carryover: Like in Alt-talia, averted whenever possible, except when Played for Laughs or within the realm of plausibility. The author has said that a lot of the appeal in writing for FGO for her is simply sticking a bunch of characters from all over the world and history in one massive building and seeing what happens, with cultural difference being a common plot point. Due to many Servants/Vassals having been summoned to various places over their tenure and having been given magical knowledge of modern times, however, some may be more familiar with and even used to more modern customs.
  • As an example, many of the Japanese holiday events are left in, but many western ones are as well, and follow more western rite. A bit of a recurring plot is Servants celebrating holidays from their home culture or having to celebrate them alone but their new friends joining in, and many Servants turn down participating in things that would go against any beliefs they have, and/or run a parallel celebration. E.g. in a Christmas Special, Nero throws a Saturnalia party with her fellow pagan Romans alongside the Christmas event and she goes running around the Chaldea greeting “Io, Saturnalia!” at the top of her lungs, and in another special Abigale is hesitant to participate as Christmas goes against Puritan doctrine; even many of the Christian characters who do celebrate it are shown to celebrate it by going to mass and partaking in whatever traditions they had, and the author also takes a deliberate stab at this trope in Japanese media with a scene of some Christian Servants rolling their eyes at in exasperation (the more experienced Servants), acting offended or laughing (newly-minted Servants) at the Gudas’ preconceived notion that Christmas is about dating (a Japanese trope that the author generally loves mocking relentlessly, having mocked it in Alt-talia as well). On the other hand, Jekyll narrowly escapes an Under the Mistletoe moment due to Gudako’s ignorance of the significance of it (even if he secretly wishes that she did know about it). Another example is how for Halloween Cù has the Gudas, Mash, and some other Servants experience how Samhain is really supposed to be done with him, with some of the other Celtic Servants expressing their confusion at what the holiday has evolved into.
  • Aversion is established from the very beginning; when the Gudas are being guided around the Chaldea, among the rooms they pass by are a simplified church, mosque, and synagogue, as well as prayer rooms and altars for anything from Roman to Shinto to Hindu rituals and thensome. Religion is another aspect that a lot of research is put into, and a lot of efforts are made to dismantle the Anime Catholicism.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Chaldea has quite a few, only enhanced by how the place can be the epitome of Dysfunction Junction central on some days; both of the Guda twins (Ritsu/Gudao more often, but Ritsuka/Gudako has her moments too), Hyde (usually in a very crass manner, generally just to troll people), Emiya, Holmes, Mordred, Paracelsus, Andersen, Nightingale, Robin Hood (both of them), Karna, Mozart (also generally to troll people), Billy the Kid, Dr. Roman, and even Mash if all else fails, just to name a few. Even Jekyll has had a few moments of Gentleman Snarker, though mostly in life and to a lesser extent the 1991 Grail War.
  • In Jekyll’s prequel fics, Lanyon is shown to be one, befitting of him being the most jolly but most stuck in his ways out of the main trio, though Utterson is also shown to have a wit befitting of his deadpan personality (and basically being drawn with near constant resting deadpan face) at times, and even Jekyll gets a jab in on one of Utterson’s terrible puns at one point and occasionally makes jabs at Lanyon’s expense, particularly after their friendship goes belly-up.
  • Kay, Drill Sergeant Nasty and especially well-versed in the art of Armor-Piercing Response, and Agravain, in this canon Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy extraordinaire.
• Deathbringer the Adorable: As like in Fate canon Servants were indeed supposed to keep their names secret and go by class names in Grail Wars, Jekyll still went by Berserker in the 1991 Grail War. Jekyll also is, despite being significantly taller than most of his peers in his era (as demonstrated by Utterson coming up to about his eyes and how he makes Lanyon look outright diminutive), the average being about 167 cm (5’5”) to Jekyll’s 175 cm (5’9”), is still basically dwarfed by all the other male Servants in that Grail War as well as many of his Servant peers in the Chaldea, and has a very thin frame, somehow looking more strongly-built as a human in life at age 53, and is of course absolutely adorable, with his fluffy blond hair and unassuming look. This is Lampshaded by Tatsumi, who has a really hard time calling him “Berserker” with a straight face, and thus settles on mostly using nicknames like “Gramps” or “Pops” (pending). Though this is of course only a seeming example as Hyde is still basically a werewolf.
• Denser and Wackier: Among the Day in the Limelight backstory fics/retellings, Astolfo’s solo story, definitely. To quote the author, the original story generally reads like a wacky cartoon or shonen adventure series. Though there’s more than a few spotlight fics which go into hilarious literal god-mode territory as if it were normal on a regular basis, Astolfo’s stands out due to him also being a massive Cloudcuckoo Lander. Or really, a lot of stuff involving Astolfo is this (when he got his first UTAU cover, it was Gigantic O.T.N of all things; which, note, is basically a massive elaborate dick joke. And he got to sing it twice).
  • Due to adaptations of their stories (or rather stories using their stories as inspiration) becoming popular right during the middle of the 20th century, the heyday of B Movies and therefore the heyday of all things cheese, Jekyll and Hyde's and Eve's entries in "The Many Forms of _" series can often turn into massive, absolutely bizarre displays of cheese, to the point that on occasion the characters themselves Break the Fourth Wall question what is going on or what the hell they got into this time off-panel. This especially stands out due to the decidedly non-cheesy way they're usually written in Project Alter, Jekyll being one of the least cartoonish characters in the cast. Though due to many of these weird adaptations being horror in the end, if it's following the actual plot of the adaptation instead of just sharing the weirdest moments from them, there may be a point where the cheese stops being emphasized and it becomes really dark (e.g. the Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde entry, the film literally having the premise of "Hyde's a girl!", begins with scenes such as Jekyll sticking his head off-panel and questioning the premise of female hormones being the key to immortality, Hyde feeling him/herself up and making vulgar comments, and Jekyll being disturbed by Hyde making very sexualized comments about Utterson (in the role of Howard from the movie, noticeably not asexual this time around) as if she were describing having sex with his dad, but the rest of the plot is treated dead seriously).
  • The parts of David’s earlier adventures that are recounted tend to be the more sillier episodes (see: the Philistine foreskin quest, that time David had to pretend to be absolutely out of his mind and scared his crew in the process), or even if not they tend to be somewhat Played for Laughs (e.g. Saul’s schemes to kill David off in which Saul is depicted as a bit of a loser), mostly via virtue of being written in a snarky style, David’s Mighty Men being basically a bunch of rogues which rubs off on David himself, these being Jews, and even Leaning on the Fourth Wall (plus visual gags like video game interfaces that seemingly go unnoticed). (Pending)

• Dirty Coward: Hyde in life, surprisingly, just as in the novella, where he was both simultaneously super confident and super scared. He’s so confident and bombastic as a Servant because he can’t die or get caught for what he’s doing (much to his great joy).
• Dirty Old Man: One of Hyde’s favorite insulting names to call Jekyll, especially whenever Jekyll scolds him about acting overly sexual. Especially as it’s one of the most hurtful names Hyde can call him. It doesn’t make much sense at first glance due to Jekyll the Servant looking so young, but this is because he was in his 50s when Hyde was created just like in the novella. Though Jekyll wasn’t exactly old at the time either, his age being given as at the younger end (52)... Well, it’s Hyde.
  • David was about the same age as Jekyll above when the whole Yandere Uriah Gambit thing happened. While he’s described as a bit of a Silver Fox, it’s still portrayed to be extremely, extremely creepy.
• The Ditz:
  • Astolfo. At least, he seems to be, until it’s made clear that one really has to be crafty and clever to effectively use his “medieval fantasy equivalent of a Go-go Gadget arsenal” as the author describes it (plus how he defeated a flock of harpies that were immune to all weapons by tricking them). He’s just really, really airheaded.
  • Percival, or “the resident dumb one” of the Round Table as the author puts it; while a lot of it can be explained by his naïveté, other things make it pretty clear he’s just kind of stupid, if not possibly a bit of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander. But his skill is without question.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Project Alter is nowhere near as heavy with this as Alt-talia, which always has the nation characters (at least) having period and/or culture-accurate morality and everything that comes with it, no matter how disgusting it would seem to the modern reader. If something is a bit too egregiously bad by modern sensibilities, it will often be avoided, rewritten, plausibly reinterpreted to be appropriate both for the era and for modern times using the same information, and/or even papered over with small amounts of Politically Correct History. However, old habits die hard, and this is a common fixture in Servants, much like Alt-talia, and are often used as additional characterization if not major parts of their psyche (e.g. A lot of Jekyll’s issues stem from hanging onto values that are now extremely outdated, the abundance of Female Misogynists), and are also commonly utilized to generate conflict or Hilarity Ensues. But as Servants/Spirits are automatically informed about the modern world upon being summoned and they are ultimately copies of the soul instead of the real soul of who they are, it’s said that becoming a Servant probably filters away Values Dissonance that would make them unable to function in modern society and/or as a Servant; as well as, as the author has admitted, stuff that would interfere with the stories she wants to tell, as such Jekyll doesn’t fret much over the idea of falling for Gudako itself when in his era miscegenation was seen as a terrible act as well, nor is he too adamant about Stay in the Kitchen (though even then, he was said to be “kind of progressive for his time”, what with stuff like his realizations about how pretty terrible colonialism is when you think about it, and in London people still stare at the Gudas and call them stuff like “A pair of Orientals”). And at times, even some of the more egregious stuff is left in as part of a minor Running Gag of Servants basically saying “...Huh, on a second thought, that’s pretty messed up.” at either Gudao or Gudako reacting in horror at something that was considered normal during their lifetimes.
  • While usually racism or other discrimination is said to be one of the things filtered out (if the Servant wasn’t exactly notable for it in their time period), it can still be brought up as something that used to be normal to them. Jekyll actually specifically brings this up to Arjuna talking about the state of his home subcontinent in his era, as well as the marginalization of Catholics in Victorian Britain by telling Amakusa that that was the reason why he was reluctant to ask him for spiritual help, even if Amakusa is basically the Chaldea’s resident multi denomination priest due to lack of candidates from other sects, and Jekyll himself holds no ill will against Catholics (Jekyll is either a devout Anglican or Presbyterian, I.e. Protestant, while Amakusa is Catholic. Though when Amakusa was alive Protestantism hadn’t become a thing yet, and Catholicism was and still kind of is just the default Christianity in Japan).
• Drill Sergeant Nasty:
  • Scathach. Even Cù was a bit intimidated and overwhelmed by her, and a lot of Servants learn this the hard way when training with her, despite that they already had a bit of an idea of what they were getting themselves into.
  • Kay being a perennial victim of The Worf Effect is at least partially explained by him being the gate keeper of the Round Table who tests beginner knights. With this and his sharp tongue, he’s also basically the entry-level boot camp trainer, and pretty much the medieval equivalent of this trope.
• Dysfunction Junction: Many of the Servants/Spirits are quirky or eccentric at least, and outright mentally ill or insane if not plain evil at worst, mixed in with some Deliberate Values Dissonance and loads of less than conventional upbringings and tragic backstories; Gudao and Gudako are said to be good for the job because of their stable personalities, though because they are a pair of young adults at the end of the day the Only Sane Man ball may be passed around as is needed; not even Dr. Roman (the lack of sleep doesn’t help), Mash, or the staff are immune. Though there are still Servants who are mostly just regular people in extraordinary circumstances.
  • The Round Table, much like in legend, is full of quirky people to say the least, sometimes even more so than even Fate canon. However, while this did lead to some members squabbling and getting into drama escalating into something horrible, they were still pretty functional as a group, being a strong and accommodating enough community of True Companions that being around them was enough to start Mordred on a path of recovery from her attachment issues. Or at least, it was like this for a while, until it gradually slid into more of this to depressing levels. As Servants, they all have unresolved issues with each other and have an extremely awkward time becoming friends again due to all that transpired in their past, even more so than in Fate canon.
  • Charlemagne’s paladins, however, were absolutely this, played up to a cartoony extent, what with how over-the-top their original legends tended to get, making the Arthurian legends look subdued in comparison. Whereas the Round Table knights are mostly just really quirky, the paladins are on a whole different level. Astolfo is the most obvious with the Hot-Blooded Cloudcuckoo Lander he is, but Bradamante, while usually not too unreasonable, actually went Yandere for days over Ruggiero and at times can be as nuts as Astolfo is airheaded. And from what’s seen of him in prequel fics and flashbacks, it becomes apparent that their leader Roland was even more of a character than what’s seen of him in Fate canon; an over-the-top, Hot-Blooded Large Ham who was impulsive enough to ditch everything to chase after a girl because he’s painfully Wrong Genre Savvy, to the point when he’s faced with the fact that isn’t how the world works he literally goes on a naked madness-induced rampage for months (and unlike when this happened to Lancelot and Tristan he doesn’t have the excuse of a disorder or Love Potion-induced obsession), and while genuinely heroic was kind of a Smug Super about it, though due to his genuine strength and good heart it crossed into Crazy Is Cool. The Only Sane Man, Oliver, even snarks if Astolfo is sure there weren’t any more wits up at the moon which may not have actually been the moon. And that’s just the ones who we get to know. The paladins and their allies also got into scuffles constantly. Though at the end of the day, according to Astolfo and Bradamante, they were very much True Companions, with them being more of an organized chaos than pure chaos, never going up in flames like the Round Table did and staying True Companions until the very end. The author has even compared them to the Straw Hat pirates. (Pending)
    Astolfo: So, Rolly, what did we learn?
    Roland: ...I shalt have never abandoned you all, my dear companions, for a maiden of whom I have no confirmation of love?
    Astolfo: Exactly! Group hug! *hugs him with Bradamante and Oliver* Welcome back, Rolly, we missed ya!
    Bradamante: Now, that’s our Roland!
    Oliver: Never do that to us again, you idiot! *realizes something* ...Uh, guys, we sort of are in the middle of something now!
    Roland: Yes, thank you, my companions! Now, paladins... *raises his sword* let us kick some Saracen ass!!
    Astolfo, Bradamante, Oliver: YESSIR!
    Roland: ...As soon as I put my clothes on!

(Pending)

• The Fashionista: Marie Antoinette, just as she was in life. One of the first things she takes note of in singularities is her opinion on what everyone is wearing, and she becomes incredibly jealous upon finding out fashion modeling is a job in the modern era. In the author’s art, she’s drawn to reflect this too, wearing things closer to the fashion styles she actually pioneered in life (with her design playing up the whole the Ojou aspect a bit more), or stuff almost plucked right out of a modern European high fashion magazine.
• Empathy Pet: Jack the Ripper got a mouse who lives among the folds of her cape and on her head, named “Perry”, along with the rest of her outfit redesign. This has no basis in Fate canon, but was added purely because the author thought the idea fit her character and the tone of FGO.
  • Yvain’s lion, here named as Androcles, is portrayed as a big version of one, though other times it seems to be a Silent Snarker.
• Extreme Doormat: In more exaggerated comedic fics, Karna is written as one of these. He is unable to break a vow. No matter how completely, absolutely stupid it might be, and even if he was tricked into it and makes sarcastic remarks about how stupid it is. He will also never refuse to give stuff away to others, even if the possibility that it will be returned is next to none.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Played for Laughs in a one-shot in which Amakausa discusses with Dr. Roman what the Song of Songs could mean, coming up with increasingly out-there rationalizations (which are based on actual, real theories theologians have come up with over the years) as he puzzles over it. All the while Dr. Roman becomes increasingly flustered as he keeps trying to suggest to him that maybe it isn’t that deep, more puzzled by it being in the Bible in the first place. This becomes understandable, considering he’s the Heroic Spirit of Solomon reincarnated as a mortal. And it also becomes less funny as it’s implied and later revealed that he wrote the thing trying to escape his perpetual loneliness by putting his fantasy of a woman who truly loved him for reasons other than his riches or god-given position into words; of course he would be baffled and feel awkward about the fact that what is essentially a wish-fulfillment vent poem was published to be read by an infinite number of followers past, present, and future. It also shows just how people never really saw Solomon the man, with all of his writings having to be interpreted as significant in some way instead of the writings of a lonely, flawed man, who was still very much human, or at least wanted to be truly human.
  Amakusa: What could it possibly mean...
  Dr. Roman: Erm... have you considered that maybe it isn’t that deep?
  Amakusa, looking up to stare at him directly in shock: Impossible! How could you say such a thing?! Why would it be in the holy scripture, then?!
  Dr. Roman: I’m sorry, what?!
• Even the Girls Want Her: Arturia and Mordred (pre-Tomato in the Mirror, of course) had quite a few female admirers in life, albeit none of them knew they were actually women.

• Fallen Angel: In the Arthurian UTAU covers, "Devil's Manner" is a melancholic, even somewhat philosophical song sung by Mordred and displaying the less Dumb Muscle side of her character. Against the backdrop of her raising her rebellion against Arturia, she compares herself to Satan; as much like how Satan was a fallen angel, she's a fallen knight, or at least she will forever seal her destiny as such and the Satan to Arturia's God with her rebellion. In her backstory itself, this is also brought up by her.
• Far-Out Foreigner's Favorite Food: Apparently the reason why Dr. Roman likes traditional Japanese sweets so much is that Anko (bean curd) has a texture that reminds him of Date Honey, the suspected eponymous honey in the Biblical quote “Land of Milk and Honey”; when he was still Solomon, Marisbury bought him bean curd buns because he couldn’t eat pork buns, and he’s had a liking to them in particular ever sense. Wagashi also are often kosher friendly. He also apparently usually orders grilled salmon for dinner when he isn’t too busy to remember eating, presumably because fish is always Kosher by default and thus the safest option. David also apparently has a preference for bean curd sweets for the same reason.
• Fatal Flaw: The backstories of Servants are often tragic, and sometimes a particular flaw can be pointed to as the primary reason.
  • Jekyll: His need to be morally perfect and pursuit of an ideal beyond even Victorian ideals, hero complex that turned him hypocritical in his attempts to correct society’s hypocrisy.
  • David: His love for his children and his love for beautiful women. The latter caused the death of Uriah, a man who trusted him, and God is of course disgusted as are several others around David. The former made him refuse to punish Amnon as harshly as he should have been, costing him his daughter Tamar's love and trust forever, as she would never completely see him as the loving father she once knew ever again, as well as Absalom's, incentivizing him to kill Amnon and rebel against him, a rebellion which lead to Absalom's death at the hands of his best general, who promptly chews him out for this because of all of the people Absalom's war has killed (for those keeping total, because he refused to punishish one child appropiately he basically lost three). As a result when he starts hearing that Solomon is the Big Bad it's basically like personalized torture for him.
  • [[spoler:Solomon: Perpetual loneliness at the top despite all his wisdom and power]].
  • Arjuna: It is, or at least was, hubris and pride. Also in PA his problems are presented as a lack of acknowledgement of his own trauma and regrets.
• Female Misogynist: A bit of a recurring issue it seems, due to the nods to historical and cultural accuracy.
  • Arturia was an interesting case. She is and never was a misogynist per se, but she was a product of her era; as destiny said she was to be king, she refused to be queen. PA elaborates that it wasn’t just a semantic issue either, because for most of European history queens only happened when there was literally no other option, and it’s actually shown that she already wasn’t immediately accepted as a 15-year-old boy-king, so God knows how well she would have went over as a teenage queen. As such, she lives as a man and Kay, Ector, Guinevere, Merlin, Nimue, and Morgan are the only people in the entire kingdom who know she is a woman (though some material suggests Bediviere was in on it as well). But even so, what role God had in mind for her was apparently a common question Arturia had (and this is shown to be another reason she tried to kill off her emotions), like if begetting an heir with Guinevere is God’s plan and therefore moral, or is a major sin in God’s eyes and unworthy of her status. However, over the course of the Holy Grail Wars, especially fighting alongside Shirou, her first actual One True Love, it appears she has come to terms with it.
  • Mordred, like in canon, hates the fact that she’s a woman being pointed out, at one point even pointing out the above “queens are only for the desperate” thing; refusing to reveal her appearance is the one piece of advice from Morgan she always followed. It was such a given in the culture she lived in that women are weak, with those who weren’t weak either only being so because of some magical ability (e.g. Morgan and Lynette) or because they fought a really, really uphill battle in trying to be taken seriously (e.g. her sister Gareth), that she never really questioned it. Here it’s emphasized that who she truly wants to be seen as is a Knight in Shining Armor and Prince Charming, not someone’s woman to be put on a pedestal, legitimately preferring to be called “cool” or “dashing” as opposed to “cute” or “pretty”. It’s pretty much all but stated that she and Gwrddelw were so perfect for each other because he saw her as a woman, but still as his knight regardless, and was perfectly happy to be her lady ^{Warning, smut and spoilers!} and he bottoms to her in the Must Not Die a Virgin scene after their confession to demonstrate that she can still take the “masculine” position while still being a woman, continuing to call her things like “my knight” and “my prince” to encourage her. Becoming a Servant and being in environments where her gender matters less have made this waver more, but due to her trust issues and that having been common sense in her era she still has a visceral reaction to it until she finally starts coming to terms with it.
  • Florence Nightingale is also a seeming example. Just like in life, she generally dislikes women and enjoys the company of men; however, she hated traditional women and feminists both, the former because she saw them as whiny, lazy, boring, and with no ambition, and hating the latter for complaining about employment when nurses were always in low supply. She did have female friends if she appreciated their company, however, but she’s generally of the opinion that Real Women Don't Wear Dresses and that most women are idiots. But after coming to the Chaldea, she finds appreciation in the many proactive women she meets and starts reconsidering it.

• First Girl Wins: Gudao x Mash is probably one of the more consistent ships that aren’t backstory related, as canon heavily implies it as well and the author liked the ship fine enough too.
  • However, it’s averted with Gudako; the first Servant she summons is Emiya, but as should be obvious by now Jekyll is usually her love interest, not him. And Emiya isn’t even in consideration except in one pocket canon fic, part of a series which was to explore What If scenarios, due to not showing any interest in her outside of as a friend otherwise, and the author always intended to ship her with Jekyll. They do have interactions which portray them as Platonic Life-Partners in a way, but it seems that he was chosen to be Gudako’s initial partner out of the starter pool simply due to his contrasting cynical personality and in honor of his major role in Fate/Stay Night, as well as his major connection to the protagonists of said entry whose designs Gudako and Gudao are based on (plus the author thinks he looks really cool).
• Flower Motifs: Floriography example in a Valentines' fic; Gudako gives Jekyll a white Carmella. Due to being a middle class English gentleman from the Victorian Era, his first instinct is to think that it's something significant, but then remembers that Gudako is Japanese and probably wouldn't be the type to be well-versed in Victorian English floriography; until she winks knowingly at him and he realizes that he indeed knew what the flower means. Cue Luminescent Blush. The meaning? "You're adorable".
  • In a short comic Hyde throws an orange lily at Gudao. At first he's pleasantly surprised, if a bit weirded out by how out of character it seems for Hyde... until he finds out that orange lilies mean "I hate you".
  • Floriography is used in a darker context in Jekyll’s prequel fics however, with his mother’s begonia plants he inherited; begonias symbolize “hidden dark thoughts”.
• Foreign Cuss Word: See Curse of The Ancients. Just like in Alt-talia, characters may swear some nasty stuff in their native tongue and/or with words that were swears in their era that no one notices except for those that speak their language; but also like Alt-talia there are also many directly translated swears, with usually hilarious results, due to sounding so utterly and creatively vulgar, comically mundane, or simply bizarre to modern English speakers. Though despite the above Translation Convention mentioned, characters who would normally say it also say these and Curse of The Ancients when they’re presumably speaking in Japanese, yet the Gudas aren’t too familiar with the idea of swearing because that doesn’t exist in Japanese, one has to wonder how that pans out.

• Foreign Queasine:
  • Invoked. The Hindu Servants tend to find the idea of beef being eaten to be morally reprehensible and cannot conceive of how anyone would be okay with it. It’s why the cafeteria apparently only serves beef as hidden menu items.
  • While they tend not to invoke as violent a reaction, Muslim Servants still tend to be disgusted by the idea of eating pork. David, being of course Jewish, also wrinkles his nose and recoils at the idea.
    David: Shouldn’t have asked. Whelp, there goes my appetite.
    Gudao: What? But it’s just pork!
    David: Do you know where it’s been? Those things are gross.
• Freudian Trio:
  • Jekyll, Utterson, and Lanyon actually resemble the trope more in the real Freudian sense, or at least Jekyll and Utterson do. Jekyll is not only the smartest in terms of pure intelligence but is obsessed with social conventions (Superego), while Utterson, despite seeming to be a bit emotionally stunted on the surface, is by far the most balanced and levelheaded of the trio, being methodical, strongly moral, and surprisingly emotionally available when it comes to his friends’ problems (Ego). This makes Lanyon the Id by default, but while he is indeed the most outgoing, openly emotional, cheerful, and short-tempered of the group, the Id is expressed weaker in him out of story necessity as he can’t come across as obnoxious by Victorian standards, and the fact that Hyde is supposed to be a pure manifestation of Id.
  • The Grail Knights: Percival is a cheerful, somewhat airheaded, impatient if lovable Manchild who still sometimes blunders around court conventions but is the heart of the trio, being the most open with his emotions (Id), Bors is determined, extremely strict on himself, pious, and the oldest of the trio, highly valuing the concept of honor and being somewhat stoic, always being the one to Face Palm or Dope Slap Percival when he’s being foolish while on the quest (Superego), and Galahad is the perfect knight, basically possessing the best of the above two (though it’s emphasized more with Percival), without requiring as much effort as Bors with the exception of Percival’s heart, emotional capacity, and ability to have meaningful bonds (Ego). (Pending)

• Funetik Aksent: Probably a carryover from Alt-talia. The author likes making characters speak in accent. Quite a lot. Even if it isn’t historically accurate. (E.g. Cù having an Irish accent) Usually not as thick as Alt-talia accents, but it may be played up for comedic effect.
  • A funnier case is Billy the Kid, who as the resident cowboy outlaw speaks with a stereotypical Texan drawl... despite, as he himself lampshades, never living in Texas and in fact being born in the east coast. ...Though he plays it up because he’s become THE Cowboy Outlaw in the popular mind, and while he wasn’t forced into the role upon becoming a Servant like some, outside of his combat capabilities, he just accepted his reputation because it wasn’t like he could escape crime despite regretting his life choices several times but being unable to turn back, devising to just embrace it and have a bit of fun with it. When he’s being “Edward McCarty” and more serious and real instead of “Billy the Kid”, he is shown to talk more like the Massachusetts boy he really is.
• Gender Flip:

• Arguably the girl who Hyde kicked in the events of the original novella, whose name is now given as Penny... Penny Pones, a clear reference to the infamous NES game's resident slingshot-toting nuisance, Billy Pones. She even hits Jekyll with a slingshot in a previous scene, playing with her brother's and thinking it would be funny if she could shoot someone's top hat off, though she's clearly remorseful when Jekyll tells her to not do it again, while Billy was by all indications just a brat (and it's possible that the abovementioned brother is actually Billy, not her).
• Also one of Jekyll and Hyde's many "The Many Faces of _" entries is based on Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde (or as the author refers to it jokingly, "AKA, Dr. Jekyll and Nyota Hyde"), where Hyde is indeed represented as himself but with a genderflipped design.

• Gentleman and a Scholar: Jekyll acts like one, especially in life. And he is indeed one; it's just that he's so committed to this persona that it causes him to deeply repress anything that might tarnish it.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: Deconstructed with Galahad in life. He was a perfect knight; but because of that, he was unable to even comprehend what would lead one to sin or why someone would make the wrong decision. While he never judges others harshly, he can offer no other advice to people than to not do bad things, unable to understand the context for said actions; therefore, he’s not able to help people who struggle. With the grail, he wishes to sacrifice this perfection to experience struggle.
• Half-Identical Twins: Due to their designs in canon but being twins in this canon, Ritsuka/Gudako and Ritsu/Gudao subvert this and look nothing alike despite their similar names. Many even question how they’re siblings, much less twins.
• Halloween Episode: Every so often, usually costume gags, but there’s also an actual one-shot based on the holiday; or more specifically, Samhain, with the Celtic characters introducing the Gudas to how “real” Halloween is done (an another excuse for the author to show off Shown Their Work).
  • A notable one is “Alice in Halloween Town”, an Alternate Universe Fic based roughly off of her UTAU covers of “Darker Yum Yummy Gillia”. Nursery Rhyme (named as “Alice”) and Setanta find themselves in a place that is basically Halloween Town, befriending the Princess (Abigail Williams); hijinks and adventures ensue. Notably some of the usually more vile Servants like Bathory, due to the gravity of their crimes being way more acknowledged in PA canon, are universally (well, save for Mephistopheles) portrayed way more positively as mischievous residents of the town in this fic; even Hyde shows a genuine desire to show Alice a good time and gets toned down to a mere Frat Bro-ish character. Due to the more lighthearted, Denser And Wacker tone, even some of the more serious, tragic character elements are also presented in a way less dark light (notably Jekyll, Hyde seemingly causing him more annoyance than anything, not helping that Jekyll seems to basically be the town’s Only Sane Man too, but overall he seems to be in a much better place psychologically). It’s even stated that the residents of the town do what they do so actual malicious spirits won’t hurt the children of the world. Though it’s also mentioned offhand that many may be in the town to redeem themselves for crimes in life.
• Handsome Lech: Hyde. The man is such a superb horndog that he makes even Ishtar and Astolfo raise an eyebrow, and makes no attempt at hiding it, him being the manifestation of all of Jekyll’s sinful urges. He sneaks extremely dirty magazines and hardcore femdom and futanari hentai into his and Jekyll’s room (though it is possible that the porn isn’t that risqué and it just looks that way to Jekyll. Blackbeard calls it “amateur”, though Hyde retorts that he just has a bad taste in women), has apparently attempted to sleep with half the Chaldea’s adult female population at at least one point (he’s caught with Ishtar and Medb especially often though, for obvious reasons), and let’s not forget that one time he gropes Gudako’s chest, all of these to the extreme embarrassment of poor Jekyll. There’s a reason the author describes him as "Basically Angel Dust from Hazbin Hotel but straight". Though as covered in Covert Pervert, this does serve dramatic purpose.
  • In this canon, much like in legend, Merlin is depicted as having a massive weakness for young women (and it's also implied that this is especially so if she's a magus like Gudako or a fellow Caster... and both because of legend and for reasons that should be apparent by now, even more so if she's a Femme Fatale), being described as "Basically a borderline Master Roshi in a pretty body". One must also not forget that his solution for Arturia's worries over her being unable to produce a legitimate heir was to basically make her a futanari (and when Artoria asks him if he really had to go that route, his response is merely a smile, nosebleed, and "Maybe?"). His younger physical age and his type of girl being older teen to early 20s instead of the straight-up pedophilia it probably was in original legend judging by Values Dissonance fortunately makes it more tolerable than his original Dirty Old Man incarnations though. In Arthurian fics he's sometimes portrayed as Nimue's comically hopeless Stalker with a Crush, in "The Many Faces Of Arturiania" being shown getting a barrage of Pervert Revenge Mode from her and even Morgan several times.
• The Hedonist: Hyde’s core character trait. He does nearly anything he does because he wants to do it and for no other reason, but fortunately for the Chaldea, one of the things that gives him pleasure is combat with no threat of death.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Hyde in most of the entries, even more dramatic ones.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Jekyll’s teenage years... were not easy for him. Unfortunately, his most trusted friend didn’t have the foggiest idea of what he was talking about even though he tried to help best he can.

• Apparently Arthur of all people used to be this at the very start of his career. While he’s less crass about it than Arthur was in his teen years in Le Morte d'Arthur, in some one-shots he’s shown to have made faux pas remarks at women in his teenage awkwardness, some of them straight-up cringeworthy.
• The Gudas themselves, ages at the start as given as 17, and while nowhere near the above two, can’t help but be weak to attractive members of the opposite sex; after getting the Exposition Dump and realizing that they can summon a giant harem of of cute girls and boys, they become a bit more okay with their whole predicament (though Gudao ends up with Mash, who was there from the start, anyway, with a lot of romantic subtext from others outside of the main Guda ships in fact being toned down and made more platonic).

• Humans Are Flawed: While apparently unintended initially, this becomes a bit of a recurring theme with many characters; even the best people, legends, holy champions, seemingly omniscient prophets, and actual gods ultimately have a human heart and very human flaws and emotions, and can be driven to do terrible things from a lapse of judgement. Everyone has flaws, but that is not necessarily bad, though we should still try to overcome them while reconciling them. And as seen from Galahad, the only person who could be said to be perfect, which made it so he couldn’t truly empathize with human struggles no matter how much he tried, and Solomon, the king who was nearly perfect but was flawed enough that he died with an empty heart, having lost everything, yearning for his own humanity, that imperfection may in fact also be what makes kindness and love truly genuine and what makes it resonate. While the author is agnostic, it’s implied that this is what God, and other powers that be, want humanity to be.
• I Just Want to Be Loved:
  • A good part of Jekyll’s problems and reasons for repression ultimately come from this, though here love is a want to be respected by society and to be seen as a good person, even if that is superficial, and to live by those things in every waking moment.
  • At the end of the day, Mordred, as the Arthurian fics make pretty clear, in addition to being a "Well Done, Son" Guy; even if she mainly wanted the love of her father, her social isolation is shown to have been almost as damaging. According to the author, she was written as someone who might have an attachment disorder due to the severely abusive, neglectful conditions she was raised in (as was Tristan to an extent, but with him it seems more mild, because he at least seems capable of building friendships without too much difficulty). Becoming a Round Table member, immediately gaining the support of a massive community of comrades, including her long-lost siblings (with Gawain and Gareth being particularly supportive) and its most respected member as a teacher, legions of adoring fans, and the opportunity to serve someone she found admirable and to do good in the world was the best thing to happen to her, even making some friends of her own on her own quests (most notably Gwrddelw, also earning the respect of his family, despite the fact that the Caw family generally does not like Arturia). So obviously, that all being ripped away from her in the blink of an eye, combined with her disgust and self-loathing at her being a product of incest and an unnatural creation at that in this canon and Arturia’s refusal to acknowledge her as her child, demolishing almost any ability to trust and make connections that she had been able to slowly, steadily build up over the years. Especially not helping that being a Vassal/Servant has meant she had good reason to trust no one but her Lord/Master, if they’re a trustworthy person in the first place. But while it might be hard to earn her trust, and she’s much slower to fully embrace it without being a Tsundere than even canon, it’s made pretty clear that she’s still actually pretty starved for positive attention and that more than anything she still wants to be a Knight in Shining Armor and a good prince who could rule a kingdom justly and earn the love of her subjects - and father - some day, because Good Feels Good. Repeated assurances of trust and being a Knight Of Shining Armor or Prince Charming are even shown to be a turn-on for her with regard to Gwrddelw and, if they’re shipped, Jekyll.
• I Just Want to Be Normal:
  • Galahad. This becomes his wish on the grail. Though this isn’t entirely for selfish reasons, as Mordred lashing out on him made him realize that his perfection made him unable to truly understand how people feel. But by the time he finds the grail with Percival and Bors, there was also a part of him that just wanted to know what it’s like to be truly human, especially as he had a perfect example of someone flawed but still very much pure of heart by his side in Percival.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Jekyll really, really did not take Tatsumi’s death well.
  • Arjuna also has a lot of guilt over not being able to protect his children or standing by and doing nothing as his wife was humiliated.
• Imaginary Friend: Floated as a possible backstory for Hyde. "Eddie" is shown to be have been mischievous and somewhat aggressive, but also a bit more willing to sacrifice for Henry than the Hyde we know, even if he complains about it, acts obviously much less perverted than his adult incarnation, speaks in a much less crude manner as at this point "upper middle class posh" was basically the only speaking pattern Henry knew, and he also looked nigh-identical to what a 4-year-old version of Hyde would look like. It's ambiguous/inconsistent as to how much Hyde "remembers" his time as "Eddie", or whether the Hyde we know just happens to resemble (and act like, just in a much less child-friendly manner) "Eddie" a lot. Either way, in this interpretation of his Multiple-Choice Past Jekyll realizes that it suits this new alter ego a lot and names him thusly.
  Hyde: An actual bloody 4-year-old named me, of course it'd something obvious like "Hyde". Not that I mind.

• Improbable Age:

• While most of the initial Round Table, including Artoria/Arthur, were pretty young for such exalted positions at the start, with Kay and Bedivere being the oldest of the main four at merely 17, Gawain was apparently 12 when he was first knighted and quickly distinguished himself, making him a good 3 years younger than Artoria, and also the knight who was the youngest at time of knighting excepting Mordred, who he was still physically younger than (she was chronologically about 9, but physically and mentally 14), as even Percival and Galahad were 15. (Pending)

• Incorruptible Pure Pureness:
  • Galahad was one of these in life. He’s also The Ace, confident but humble, strong, positive, sweet, open-minded but strongly moral, and chivalrous to an inhuman degree, toppling his own father as the ace of the Round Table. He’s not only asexual, but aromantic, so he is incapable of making mistakes on that front unlike his father, judges everyone equally, is always logical but considerate of the human cost, and basically combines the best of the chivalric code, Christian morals, and even modern values. But his purity is actually Deconstructed a bit, in that due to how being good and rational comes so naturally to him, he has trouble truly relating to many human struggles, most notably Mordred’s anguish over the barrage of Tomato in the Mirror she had just suffered and her bitterness against and jealousy towards him when he attempts to befriend her. People making terrible mistakes or hurting others because of hang-ups, insecurities, misunderstandings, or perfectly human flaws confused him, and tragedies were incomprehensible to him because of this, even if he was forgiving to their protagonists because that’s the “right” thing to think. And vice-versa, many find it a bit hard to relate to him or truly know him, even Percival and Bors, who he’s closest to. This prevents him from being able to build true platonic bonds, as that would be showing partiality to someone. At times he even comes across as a bit emotionally stunted; he seems incapable of comprehending cynicism and is basically never shown having extreme emotions (it especially stands out when he’s drawn alongside the other Grail Knights, with Percival’s expressiveness and giant smiles and Bors’ stern and anxious faces contrasting greatly with how Galahad’s face seems stuck on “mildly pleased”), even saying that he literally doesn’t know what anger feels like. And while people still like him, unlike the The Once and Future King version, he still makes others feel a bit inadequate about themselves by his mere presence, something which he legitimately felt a bit of guilt for. Everyone also knew he was this and capitalized on it from when he was very young, so he basically was forced to grow up quickly and had no childhood. This contrasts a lot with the air-headed goofball that is Percival, who basically was only allowed to have the emotional maturity of an 8-year-old until the age of 15. It’s also revealed that even he wasn’t completely selfless, as when the grail offered to grant a wish before it would ascend him to heaven, he outwardly said he wished for nothing, but in his heart wished that he could experience what it was like to be a more flawed human being who could understand people and share their burdens better, and that his soul could be reborn as one. While still not too selfish, he still defied expectations that he would save the kingdom from its fated doom, albeit unwittingly, not thinking to use his wish for the stability of Camelot or even for Mordred to be absolved of her fate. This is also why Mash didn’t become a Ruler despite Galahad being qualified in every way for the class. (pending)
    • Speaking of the Grail Knights, they also play with this trope a bit. Percival, as mentioned, was a flawed knight, what with him still messing up chivalrous code and being a bit of an idiot, bungling his way through many a trial, and is clearly attracted to women. Still, the fact that he was the original Grail Knight in legend is alluded to by Galahad’s belief that Percival could have possibly achieved the grail even without him, and he’s very much pure of heart and compassionate, being the first person in centuries to show Kundry any compassion even despite knowing who she is. He’s also one of the few characters alongside Bedivere who were completely innocent in the fall of Camelot or of being hypocrites about their values in order to avoid an inevitable shitstorm, something which even Gareth can’t attest to. (Pending for the others) While he feels guilt for not being there when Camelot fell, even then his moral compass was such that he chose not to follow The Dragon King in the Sixth Singularity; the author has compared him to Luke Skywalker. Bors on the other hand apparently was extremely close to not seeing the grail, needing the most effort to be good enough for it; and while he seemed to be on track to this with his show of self-restraint during the quest, he pretty much threw it all away, including adherence to the rules he valued so much, because he’s such a hopeless enabler for Lancelot that he chose his loyalty to him above all else, even while even Lancelot himself knew he had screwed up, becoming another character contributing to Camelot’s downfall.
• Insistent Terminology: Some Servants in this canon hate the titles of “Master” and “Servant” and will get immensely pissed if it is used, instead preferring words like “Lord”/"Milord" or “Boss” to make it sound more honorable or casual, or “Contractor” to remove the connotation of a massive power gap at all, referring to themselves as “Vassals” (especially if they call their Master “Lord”) or even just “Heroic/Anti-Heroic Spirits”. The ones who do use “Master” and “Servant” in fact often seem to be the ones with very low confidence levels (e.g. Jekyll, though even he starts calling the Gudas “Mr. and Ms. Fujimaru” after a while), had a pretty servile personality in the first place, are laid-back enough that they simply don’t care (e.g. Merlin), are too jaded to care (e.g. Emiya), or are more single-minded (e.g. Salieri). But even some of those who are the epitome of Undying Loyalty like Gawain or Karna often prefer "Milord" and "Vassal" over "Master" and "Servant"; that, or they tend to flip-flop depending on the fic or even within the same fic. The author has admitted this is purely because she finds "Lord" cooler.
• Irony: Mozart’s realization that “Salieri” is not the one he knew, but a personification of the false rumor he killed him, and is thus consumed by jealousy and hatred for him... despite the fact that if anything, Mozart was jealous of Salieri, understandably hits him quite hard and makes him feel a bit guilty about thinking such things about his mentor.
  Mozart, outside the summoning room as Salieri is restrained: ...People actually think that Salieri killed me?! Who the hell came up with that?
  Dr. Roman: *sighs* Unfortunately, that is the case. And the Throne of Heroes recorded those instead of the real soul known as Salieri. People were so desperate to know what could have taken such a gift to the world of music as you were that they jumped onto him as their scapegoat.
  • In this canon, Andersen doesn't regret writing any of his stories at all; however, he is understandably bitter over the fact that his creations, one of the few things that consistently gave him joy in life, giving him an outlet to express himself and be respected despite his absolute lack of social skills, have almost literally consumed him and doomed him to be cursed by them for eternity.
    Andersen: Don't know what I did to deserve this, but now I'm cursed by one of the few things that gave me joy in that lonely life of mine. How poetic. What a fitting end for a miserable person like me, right? Oh wait, I’m not even the real deal. *bitterly laughs*
  • The Arthurian prequel fics are filled with these. But the most important in terms of plot and overarching themes of the whole collection, though, is most likely Galahad’s wish, and in a way Solomon’s as well, though especially Galahad’s. A recurring idea is that various characters wanted/want to be perfect, most notably and prominently Jekyll, his search for it prompting him to take drastic measures, and these measures to purify himself and eventually humanity only succeeding in manifesting the less desirable parts, as well as Arturia, Arthur, and Solomon himself, and/or befell some great tragedy because they were imperfect and made some terrible mistake because of it, something which they greatly regret. And while many of said flaws are indeed shown to be bad things, even then Galahad, the one person who ever existed who was perfect in god’s image, more than even Jesus himself, and Solomon, who was almost perfect and could have wished to become truly so, gave it all away to be truly human.

• A more lighthearted (or depressing, descending on how one looks at it) in-universe example also regarding the Arthurian prequels; many of the exact things that pulled Arthur/Arturia’s kingdom apart, or factored into it (bastard children, incestuous children, adultery, violating civic/religious law or commonly-held morality because you can and because central authority is a mere suggestion at best, reliance on war...) would become extremely normal in many if not basically all of the courts of Europe not even that long after Camelot falls. This is pointed out by Marie (who is a Hapsburg, I.e. from the family probably most infamous for inbreeding in Europe even by royalty standards), who is a bit confused with Mordred’s angst over it, leading to an Overly Long Gag of her explaining how normalized it became both to Mordred’s increasing horror and questioning of her own suffering. Arturia/Arthur were also not only the Trope Makers of chivalry in-universe, but quite apparently unintentionally invented the idea of Enlightened Despotism almost a millennia before anyone else tried it again; because, as the medieval and early modern entries of Alt-talia make clear repeatedly, and as alluded to by Jeanne’s line “I fought for France, yes, but also everyone who lived in it”, the idea of a monarch having to serve the people, or even solid borders and nationality, was more a wishful suggestion than an expectation, if it was considered at all, in lieu of countries just being big blobs of land you own which people just happened to live on.

• Jewish and Nerdy: In one fic it’s revealed that Dr. Roman is actually Jewish, though he’s pretty secular from the looks of it, and doesn’t try to be too blatant about it due to wanting to remain a neutral party for his job and the possibility of a Servant being anti-Semitic. The extent shown is Gudao catching him exiting the Synagogue once, him avoiding pork, and turning down a cheeseburger. This hints to him being a reborn King Solomon.
• Kuudere: Utterson is summed up as a “non-anime Kuudere” by the author. He’s a Perpetual Frowner who is constantly stoic and sort of unemotional, not very socially inclined and generally calm, almost always drawn with a half-lidded expression, yet he is a bit of a Pungeon Master and has a Big Brother Instinct regarding Jekyll (and to a lesser extent Lanyon), always trying to be there for his best friend when he’s going through something bad, with a quiet, but extremely solid determination when it comes to the cases he's tasked with and trying to help his friends. When Poole tells him that he suspects that Hyde has killed Jekyll, both he and Poole are basically ready to murder Hyde, who for all they know is a dangerous killer, for it.
• A Lady on Each Arm: The PV for the “My Baby’s Got A Crush On Frankenstein” joke/parody cover features a rare gender inverted example. Towards the end, Jekyll and Hyde do the switching from one side to the other trick as before, and Gudako considers her options before somehow pulling both of them into this position (with Hyde rubbing up against her and Jekyll coyly hugging her arm for good measure), also turning it into a pseudo Twin Threesome Fantasy.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Emiya has quite a few moments like these. He’s kind of a stand in for someone who knows the series better; at least a few first-time Servants from real life or down-to-earth settings comment on their situation being bizarre, with Emiya usually being the one to tell them to not question it.
  • Also Gudao asks “...Are we dreaming? Are we in a some weird new RPG?” upon first arriving at the Chaldea and having everything explained to him and Gudako.
• Loose Canon: There can be multiple different interpretations of backstories, different routes characters develop, different interpretations of character dynamics, and “pocket canons” which are basically like DC Comic Elseworlds that have no consequence outside of that individual fic or series of them. There isn’t so much a canon as canon runs the gamut from “definitely canon” to “most often canon” to “interesting concepts which are possible” to straight-up Negative Continuity. Plus things aren’t released in chronological order at all, with elaborations on earlier fics or events between them being possibly released over a year after their publication. “Project Alter” is just a collective name for what is effectively mostly just a collection of one-shots. Every fic tells readers which plot or interpretation it fits into for the reader’s convenience though. This lack of defined canon has been explained due to the fact that the author is more interested in character exploration and possibilities than plot, and with many Servants having multiple interpretations of them throughout history, it’s not like Alt-talia where the motivations and events were basically laid out beforehand.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair: Played with in a way by the Trope Namer (sort of) himself... in that he also adds “But even if your physical legacy itself is gone, if the people and historians still remember your works, that is what matters”, onto the original message of “nothing lasts forever and thinking otherwise shows humanity’s hubris”. Ozymandias/Ramses, with his massive, massive ego that is so big it would probably have a gravitational pull if it were a physical object on the surface, and the fact that he still acts like he has the power he had in life, may not seem like the type to come to terms with this easily. However, he actually has one of the healthiest views of both what it means to rule as well as the idea of historical legacy out of the royals; even if the physical remains of his rule are mostly gone and covered in sand, the fact remains that people still remember him, whether it be as the tyrannical pharaoh of the Bible, one of the greatest rulers of Egypt, or even, ironically, as the subject of the poem itself, with him being a Servant by itself being proof of his legacy. He has every right to still have such a massive ego, because the truth remains unchanging that he did do many great things in life. And seeing the transience of the physical remnants of his rule made him in fact come to the conclusion that he may as well live in the now, continuing to live large and do the best he can do with what he’s been given, instead of angsting over something that will never come back, with his knowledge and confidence in the fact that he has enough to be proud of and has done enough to be remembered already being enough for him. His spotlight cover, “Kingdom of Sand”, a cover of “Sand Planet”, is in fact about this as he comes to this revelation, searching for his kingdom and finding the same broken statue of him from the poem among the vast sands of the Sahara, while going over some events of his life.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Hyde, as covered in Handsome Lech, though it can highly vary how “lovable” this is portrayed as.
  • Also Merlin, Medb, Fergus, Blackbeard, Ishtar, and to an extent Astolfo.
• Love Hurts: Andersen apparently gets extra depressed around Valentines Day due to being a perennial victim of this trope in life and as a Servant.
  Gudako: Well, you might be able to find that special someone, sometime! There’s so many fish in the sea, and you have all the time in the world now since you’re a Servant!
  Andersen: *looks up from his pillow* Look at me. Closer. *points at himself* ...I look 10 years old, stupid.
  Gudako: ...Oh.
  Andersen: Also, do you need to have how Servants work explained to you again? Why bother if nothing’s permanent anyway?
  Gudako: ...
  Andersen: Now leave me to cry in peace, will you? *buries face in pillow again*
  • Said Valentines fic is itself a bit depressing as pretty much everyone who had a previous love interest there (pending), with few exceptions, has to basically live the rest of eternity without them (plus Brynhildr, who has to live with the fact that she will always end up killing her husband somehow), though many do hope that their loved one is in the Servant pool somewhere, just waiting to be summoned, though others would rather not let their beloved go through future Holy Grail Wars (Robin at least gets his wish granted in a one-off with the summoning of Marion).
  • It’s made apparent that both Lancelot and Tristan still love Guinevere and Iseult respectively, and they, Lancelot especially, will likely never fully get over them due to how deeply engraved it is in their Saint Graph.
  • Apparently Arthur has issues with opening up to romantic connections due to Guinevere, who was indeed his true love in life whom he had thought he was Happily Married with, cheating on him with his best knight. Though he does understand that Guinevere and Lancelot had free will in their situation, the poor guy also feels quite a bit of guilt believing that he wasn’t a good enough husband to her, due to his All-Loving Hero nature not giving her as much attention as she needed; also, other times people have fallen for him since (I.e. Manaka and Brynhildr), things always turned out really, really badly, not helping matters at all. It’s confirmed that in the Project Alter version of the events of Fate/Prototype he was indeed starting to have feelings for Ayaka, but he ended up never being able to confess because of those hang-ups. Not to mention the other multiple ways his good nature was betrayed, and as he showered his Mordred in love, his betrayal and sadistic cruelty is shown to have been especially painful.
  • Gareth as she is written in PA is a hopeless romantic who, due to her profession, couldn't find anyone willing to marry her in life. Obviously this troubles her. Her biggest crush, however, was Lancelot, which due to Lancelot being in love with Guineviere was a lost cause from the start.
  • The interpretation that Karna had a crush on Drapaudi is basically canon in PA; and while he wasn’t intending to marry her because he was already married and wanted to stay faithful to her, only to bring her home as Duryodhana’s second wife, her screaming and slapping him in front of everyone of importance in the region understandably hurt him quite a bit. His resentment for the Pandava brothers and Drapaudi reaches such a point, that when Duryodhana and his brother attempt to sexually assault her in front of their court he’s among the loudest to berate her as a “whore” (albeit part of it was also out of loyalty and peer pressure, but that proved to be a catalyst for him to spill out his rage at her and her husbands). He deeply regrets this later.
• Lower-Deck Episode:
  • There is a fic which gives limelight to the rank-and-file Chaldea staff trying to help Dr. Roman run the place. Though eventually some Servants themselves start helping.
  • There is also a mini-series of comics happening parallel to the events of the Jekyll and Hyde prequel fics, based off of a novel starring one of Jekyll’s maids with a crush on him as she catches on to something being up with her employer, which essentially serves as this for Jekyll’s household.
• Lyrical Dissonance: "Rotten Witchcraft and Molasses" (link), Abigail Williams' spotlight UTAU cover. It being a cover of Rotten Heresy and Chocolate, a song which already had a bit of this going on, a calmer sounding remix no less, and this being about Abigail... While the original song was just about a really terrible Gossipy Hen, this cover is an elaboration on her backstory where she accuses people of witchcraft, starting mass hysteria and condemning innocent people to torture and terrible deaths for attention and because she thinks she really has powers to sense evil.
  A chained-up secret, who knows where it came from
  Come to the village square, watch it hanging!
• Malicious Misnaming: In a poke at how Jekyll’s name is basically universally mispronounced in English, Hyde likes calling Jekyll “Jeh-kull” if he wants to merely mildly annoy him, instead of “Jee-kyll”/“Jee-kill”, how it’s actually pronounced, and saying it as many times as he can squeeze it into a sentence. While he’s evidently so used to “Jeh-kull” by now (though it was a pet peeve of his when he was younger) that he’s shocked when the Gudas and Chaldea staff keep pronouncing it right (in Japanese the mistake is basically impossible), Hyde obviously knows how to say it right. Some of his friends use it when poking fun at him, though there it’s more just good fun.
  • Lanyon started using this pronunciation after he and Jekyll’s friendship exploded.
    Lanyon: I do not want to hear another word about that Jekyll again.
    Utterson: Lanyon, you know very well it is pronounced-
    Lanyon, huffing in annoyance: Do you believe I do not know that?!
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Several:
  • Most prominently, especially in fics in which they are shipped, Mordred and Jekyll. The author (or Mordred herself) isn't very subtle with the genderflipped knight-and-maiden parallels, and Mordred is more than happy able being able to feel like an actual, chivalrous, honest-to-god knight again, even almost like the Knight in Shining Armor she could never quite be. She even, albeit half-jokingly, straight-up calls him a "maiden" or "damsel" a few times, and in a later one calls him "my future queen". He's pretty embarrassed by this at first, but develops to accept his more feminine qualities. And Hyde, half surprisingly and half not, is more than happy to play it up.
  • She also had this dynamic with Gwrddelw, if not even more so; in fact, it’s pretty much a, if not the, central part of their dynamic.
  • Even Gudako and Jekyll have some imagery like this, as Gudako is portrayed as a bit of a spirited tomboy.
  • Shirou and Artoria's relationship is also treated much like one of a Lady and Knight, albeit infused with Battle Couple. The author has also jokingly called Shirou "Arturia's waifu", and in audio parodies, e.g. "Mordred's Bad Day" (drawn over the John Mulaney "I Did My Best" skit), if Shirou and Arturia show up, Artoria is almost invariably the man and Shirou the woman of the couple.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: As many Servants come from eras where this was normal, this isn’t too uncommon. Though even by their era’s standards many can have quite the impressive amount of siblings:
  • Marie had 15 siblings, though many of them unfortunately died when she was relatively young. Her backstory fics delve a bit more into her relationships with them.
  • Karna basically had 102 step-siblings after becoming a Kaudava. In one prequel fic taking place during his younger years when he first met them, he of course has a bit of a double take upon hearing that all of them are siblings, though he apparently got used to it rather quickly.
• Married to the Job: Apparently a major reason Jekyll went unmarried for his whole life was this.
• Missing Episode: In-Universe example, sort of. Apparently Solomon wrote a vent poem other than Song of Songs that nobody knows about due to scholars never finding and publishing it, becoming lost to time. An untitled work that was basically the platonic counterpart of said poem, in which he has epic adventures similar to the demon-slaying quests he had gone on before with a Heterosexual Life Partner fellow magus rivaling him in prowess; whereas the Song of Songs was created out of his desire for romantic fulfillment, this poem was made out of a desire for equal, true companionship much like his father almost had with Jonathan. While [[spoiler:Dr. Roman unfortunately isn’t shipped with anyone in Project Alter (the author has considered a canon in which Gudako ends up with Dr. Roman instead of Jekyll, she says that she ultimately couldn’t see them as a couple) this poem ended up foretelling his future relationship with Marisbury; his theoretical Bash Brother apparently even acted quite a bit like Marisbury and had some very similar abilities. (Pending)
• Multiple-Choice Past: Pretty common, to the point it can be easy to lose track of them all, though there’s usually a “most canonical” (often most Truer to the Text) version of events. That is without taking “pocket canons” into consideration, one-shots where different possibilities with characters are explored.
  • The novella-Fate composite backstory for Jekyll is considered most canon in this universe; emphasis on most. There’s also been an adaptation of the novella as-is, in which Jekyll was indeed a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing in life, and only realizes the sheer gravity of how hypocritical he was after becoming a Servant. His backstory only becomes certain from when he meets Tatsumi onwards. That, or in the case of one pocket canon, he was never a real person in the first place. The exact nature of Hyde's origin is left even more open-ended; while it's possible that Hyde was a completely new creation as is often assumed, with a completely new name, after Jekyll drank the HJ-7 potion for the first time, the idea that "Mr. Edward Hyde" actually originated as Jekyll's mischievous Imaginary Friend is floated, where "Eddie" was basically forgotten after Jekyll met and became friends with Lanyon and especially Utterson only to remembered decades later and for Jekyll to name his new alter ego after him; even of these possibilities, Hyde can simply be a scapegoat Jekyll came up with to get away with childish mischief, in a sign of things to come... or in an extremely dark interpretation inspired by the novel Hyde, be both a scapegoat he uses (which obviously never works) to escape severe, severe abuse (which he is shown to have experienced regardless, it's just that in the former interpretation they're extremely restrictive but the physical abuse isn't as harsh), and an actual split personality who he used as a coping mechanism to mentally protect himself from said abuse ("Substitution Switch", the first cover of "Bloodstained Switch", sums it up very plainly and disturbingly).
  • Robin Hood, as mentioned before.
• Mythology Gag: Aside from all the uncountable Truer to the Text regarding fictional characters, there are still some references to less conventional incarnations or works treated as non-canon. These may or may not be hints to a future mention in “The Many Faces of X” or a future PV by the animator.
  • Servants have been depicted wearing costumes of other incarnations, Expies, or Captain Ersatz versions of themselves (Jekyll and Hyde as Bruce Banner and Hulk or Merlin as Gandalf for example), or if author Servants, adaptations of their creations, for Halloween, mostly just so the author can splurge in references like “The Many Faces of X” series. Also she almost always references a separate piece of media for each individual of the same origin (e.g. the Round Table) unless it’s explicitly a themed picture or everyone themed themselves that way, which makes them especially a massive trove of Reference Overdosed, some of them very obscure. ...And they also often serve as an excuse to stick characters in silly costumes as sillier or out-there costumes, or ones that are the furthest removed from what the character would probably usually wear in life, if not even as a Servant, tend to be preferred (e.g. sticking fox ears and a tail on Robin Hood, Holmes in a Batsuit, Mordred in gaudy, tacky golden armor complete with fake nipples and belly button that no one except for her thinks looks cool, Hyde’s obvious Hulk suit on his slender body or strutting in a red dress as Jekyll screams from inside to take it off, Artoria, Lancelot, Gawain, Percival, and Mash in Sonic, Shadow, Knuckles, Blaze, and Silver cosplay...).

• Jekyll and Hyde related:
  • The idea of Hyde being Jekyll’s Imaginary Friend or protective shield against abuse came from a novel called “Hyde”.
  • Hyde at one point taunts Jekyll with how he’s an inherent part of Jekyll due to their nature as Heroic Spirits. As he corners Jekyll, he declares “See? You’re smart, ya know very well why we’re in this situation together, don’t ya? You’ll never be able to escape from me! I’m the nightmare that goes on! This? This is proof of that! It’s proof that for now and forever, nothing will be able to separate Jekyll from Hyde, no matter what you may pretend!”, which consists almost entirely of near direct quotes from the musical adaptation’s signature number “Confrontation”. He also quoted the “For now and forever” line, which also shows up in “Alive”, basically Hyde’s signature song, in life while talking him into the inheritance scheme:
    Oh, poor, poor old Dr. Henry Jekyll, he was better than us all, they’ll say! For now and forever you’ll always be the virtuous, good Dr. Jekyll!
  • Confrontation, specifically the line “Am I a good man? Am I a madman?” or variants of it, are also quoted by Jekyll both out loud and in his thoughts several times, e.g. a scene in which he has a nervous breakdown in Gudako’s room (“Please, t-tell me, Miss Fujimaru... Am I still a good man? Am I a madman? Please, p-please let it be the former... It is the latter, is it not?”), with “No, I am still a good man, I am not a madman, I am not a madman...” even being used as a Survival Mantra or Madness Mantra a few times, such as after Carew’s murder in life.
  • “Alive” itself was also apparently the inspiration behind why Hyde likes describing how it feels taking control as “feeling alive”, as the author thought it fit very well. Other quotes from the song are also sometimes used by Hyde, especially in dramatic, tense scenes, due to the sheer awesome haminess of said song; for example he describes himself as “berserk and perverse”, and when transforming for the first time as a Servant, Hyde gives this even more hammy version of his already Incoming Ham entry (pending; I’m not sure whether he would have had experience as a Servant before Tatsumi, and this would have to be before Tatsumi as Hyde can’t talk as a werewolf):
    “Fuck... What is this.. What is this feeling... This feeling of power and drive?! I thought we were dead, but this... this... HYAHAHAHAHAHA! Yes... yes yes YES YES YES! I feel alive! I feel so ALIVE!”
  • Yet another musical quote, “No one must ever know”, one of the Arc Words of sorts, is also used as such in prequel fics, and is also quoted in both the “Bocca Della Verita” UTAU covers.
  • Jekyll recalls his experience visiting Soho being like as if “The world had gone insane”. This is a reference to a cut song from the musical (again).
  • One of the most important references to the musical, however, was the elixir Jekyll made originally being called “HJ-7” before he became a Heroic Spirit and it became known as “Dangerous Game” (itself a musical reference). “HJ-7” was the name of the elixir in the musical; apparently the author just decided to go with it because other fan interpretations of the character were using it (though the name “DG-7” was also considered). The two elixirs aren’t technically the same, since the one he uses now is basically half Servant Magic so he can create an infinite amount of it, even without really rare ingredients like the tainted salts that were necessary in the original HJ-7, though that doesn’t stop him from often still referring to it as such both because of habit and because he can’t help but feel “Dangerous Game” sounds a bit cheesy and on-the-nose (though he’s also aware of how the first half of the name is basically his and Hyde’s last initials stuck together).
• Arthurian references:
  • In Non Sequitur, *Thud* (or otherwise non-sequitur) lines said when some of the Arthurian characters are hit in the head, (which tends to happen on a somewhat uncommon basis because the author finds it funny); aside from saying something about giant mutant snails, a gag characters like Astolfo also have (itself a reference to the weird tendency of a lot of medieval literature to have depictions of knights fighting snails in the margins of their pages for unknown reasons), Arturia once decries a “Dastardly rabbit” instead, and in a prequel fic slurs out “Izzat an African... or European swallow?” after she gets whacked on the helmet and Kay asks if she’s okay, and Bediviere once mumbles something about the world being shaped like a banana.
  • Albeit, much like canon, it’s eventually confirmed that the knights did indeed fight a Killer Rabbit once, calling it the strangest fight they’d ever had. They managed to take that one down via Attack! Attack! Attack!, unlike their less fortunate Monty Python counterparts. Though it did still seem to hurt the ones who the rabbit killed in the movie the worst, with Gawain commenting that it almost bit his cheek off and he was stuck healing for a month, and it also being mentioned that poor Bors got his face kicked in, was stuck healing for two, and was afraid of rabbits for a while. (Pending)
• Other references:
  • The proposed designs for Maid Marion and Little John clearly took inspiration from their Disney versions, particularly with their color schemes; this has been confirmed to be the case, and was apparently because Robin himself looks a bit like a bit like a human version of said Disney version.

• Never Bareheaded: An easy way to tell if a younger Jekyll being drawn with no context is supposed to be his Servant self with slightly different clothing or him in his University days is if he's wearing his tophat (or at least some type of hat) or not. In one Hetalia: Axis Powers styled comic, Jekyll loses it, causing him to seemingly comically overreact as if he's suddenly wearing the most Impossibly Tacky Clothes ever when Lanyon points it out, and sending the the main trio in a wild search around the (massive) University courtyard to find the thing as Henry tries not to be caught not wearing a hat. In fact in his first few weeks as a Servant Tatsumi had to buy him a hat because he just felt so weird walking around without one. And yes, this is in fact Truth in Television for the Victorian Era (in fact the same thing has been featured in Alt-talia at one point). Hats were seen as pretty much a given outdoors in the west, to the point that going out without one was seen as extremely weird at best.
• No Sense of Direction: A bit of a Running Gag with Lancelot, and even in FGO-era fics he’s mentioned to have gotten lost in Singularities. It was common that he got lost on quests and Bors, Gawain, or whoever else had to go retrieve him. To be fair, maps weren’t that good back then, but it’s said that knights tend to have a natural intuition regarding this. (Pending)
  Lancelot: ...
  Gareth: Erm... Sir Lancelot?
  Lancelot, grinning nervously: Uh... Well... ...You do remember where we were going, right?
  Mordred And Gareth Face Fault off their horses
  Mordred: Isn’t that supposed to be your job to know?!
• Not So Stoic: To contrast her with Galahad, Arturia’s past seeming lack of human emotions and desires in canon is not only said to have become the norm only some years after the start of her rule, but she is also shown to have had moments when keeping up the mask became too much, though these these flashes of humanity were so rare that it caused those who witnessed them to doubt if they really saw it, and only Kay, Merlin, and Bedivere ever saw her outright panic or break down. But when those do happen it’s invariably really heartwrenching. But by the end the stoic mask cracked; in Project Alter, the last face Mordred saw of Arturia was fear and anguish before she struck her in the head, and she’s crying as she begs Bedivere to throw Excalibur back into the lake.
• Odd Friendship: Both Jekyll (and Hyde, though not if Jekyll can help it) and Hans have a friendship with/have some kind of weird bond with Jack the Ripper. The former has complicated feelings on her but feels a sort of protective instinct towards her due to her being a little girl and his genuine concern (and guilt, being a middle-class gentleman) for the plight of orphans in his home city, especially as when he, in life, accompanied Holmes to Soho for an investigation for the first time, he witnessed the reality of the existence of child prostitution for the first time and was heartbroken; she even starts calling him “mother” after Gudako floated the idea to her, Gudako also having insisted that she’s the father (though in one pocket-AU fic, the connection goes deeper; in it, Jekyll and Hyde are explicitly fictional characters with pre-programmed memories conglomerated from over a century of Adaptation Overdosed, and it’s addressed how Jack the Ripper, even if not this Jack the Ripper, is directly why Hyde is the way he is, having been corrupted by Jack’s legend to become even more violent and a serial killer and therefore being a major factor in Jekyll’s torment, instead of the Hand Wave that he has nothing to fear anymore and that the separation became more complete in the rest of Project Alter). The latter relates to her terribly abused, impoverished background, as well the impoverished children he used to write about (the Day in the Limelight fic which explores this starts with a dream sequence in which he dreams about the Match-selling Girl, but when he gets to see her face, she looks exactly like Jack).
  • Jekyll also has his friendship with Holmes from canon, who is rerailed to be a bit closer to be the somewhat douchy, even if friendly, original version of the character, along with Holmes not exactly being the picture of Victorian ideals all the time (though he's so damn good at his job no one really cares). Then of course there's his friendship with Mordred, even if it is shown having more of a rocky start and building up slower. To a lesser extent there's the friendship he strikes up with Nightingale.
    • Jekyll and Tatsumi were like this for some time, with Jekyll being way more serious, businesslike, and melancholy during the 1991 Grail War, at least initially, than in canon, not having any grand goal other than redemption, while Tatsumi retains his classically heroic personality from canon.
  • Andersen, despite being a snarky, ill-tempered grouch, is also pretty close to Nursery Rhyme; though due to the former being the Servant form of, well, Hans Christian Anderson, and the latter being a literal manifestation of children’s stories, it’s probably less this and more an incredibly obvious one which just happens to have two almost opposing personalities. At times Beni-Enma rounds out the trio, which has gotten the nickname of “The Fairytale Trio” from the author.
  • Eve has interesting relationships with Jekyll and Mordred, who she was already friends with in canon, but here are more expanded upon (the whole Playing God thing for Jekyll with his parallels with Victor, and the whole daddy issues thing with Mordred). But the same thing which makes her dynamic with Jekyll so interesting is also what gives her her odd relationship with Hyde. While it’s not shown much out of a few spotlight fics, when it is it’s made apparent that she’s quite possibly one of the very few people he acts anything like a functional human being around, especially with a Servant who isn’t also terrible as a person and/or doesn’t know better, with Dr. Roman and the Gudas puzzling over the “weird effect” she has on him and the weird mutual understanding they seem to have on some level. This is rooted in the fact that they’re kindred spirits of a sort; even if Hyde is incapable of kindness and empathy unlike Eve who just wanted to be loved in life and started out perfectly nice, and now is again because she’s actually appreciated by those around her now, therefore Hyde probably isn’t straight-up friends with her, their stories have a lot of parallels, starting from them being unwanted creations of science abandoned by their creators when they couldn’t deal with what they had done anymore (along with the possible parent-child subtext with Jekyll and Hyde which is overt in some pocket canons). It’s possible that Hyde sensed some of this (as did Eve, who says it outright), explaining why they’re oddly drawn to each other, and why Hyde is calmer and is even slightly nicer around her. E.g., the first one-shot they’re seen together, where Dr. Roman catches them at night sitting in the halls next to each other, just staring into space, Hyde uncharacteristically silent and peaceful, only snapping out of their shared moment when Hyde notices Dr. Roman staring, snapping at him to bugger off because “Can’t you see we were having a moment, Doc?”. (Pending; I’ve also considered making their relationship antagonistic)
  • Bedivere’s closest friend other than Arturia herself, and especially after Arturia tried to seal her emotions off, was not Tristan like in Fate canon (in this canon, Tristan is clearly closer to Lancelot), but Kay of all people, a detail borrowed from the earliest Arthurian legends. They are the only ones in the Inner Table whose closest or most important associations aren’t Lancelot, Gawain, both of them, or Tristan (albeit, the two are also pretty close with Gawain either way due to how long they’ve been around, even if Kay is reluctant to admit it), being most associated with each other and often treated as Those Two Guys if out of focus, and they often went on quests together in the early days of the kingdom, with Bedivere’s lack of arm even explained as having been due to losing it taking an almost fatal hit for Kay in one such early quest. Kay’s “By the hand of my friend” Catchphrase even makes a return. This of course is milked for all the drama it’s worth in fics taking place in the Sixth Singularity.
  • Cù and Gawain, due to their possible connections as legendary figures but kind of unexpected in-universe, apparently hit it off really well offscreen in a Noodle Incident and have been pretty close ever since. It’s not uncommon for them appear in the background together in art. Though Gawain does act a lot more like Cù when drunk (when in a good mood at least).
• One Note Chef: Like in Fate canon, Gawain’s culinary skills are... limited, to say the least, and seemingly the only things he knew how to make were mashed parsnips, mashed rutabaga, and mashed parsnips and rutabaga (and like in canon, later potatoes come to dominate it now that they’re available). In one prequel one-shot, the other Orkney siblings insist on cooking because they had apparently been having mashed parsnips for an entire week straight. Though albeit it’s also added that he’s able to cook things over a fire because that’s such a basic skill. (Pending)
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad:

• The “dad with a shotgun” gag is used again in this (link) piece of joke art where Utterson is cocking a rifle warning Gudako that she better make Jekyll happy or else, and Poole next to Utterson also smiling menacingly with the same fire axe he broke down Jekyll’s door with. Also Gudako is bridal carrying an embarrassed Jekyll wearing what is basically a simplified bridal dress, so the implication is pretty obvious (though in an image after they’re celebrating Jekyll “finally getting a wife” like proud parents).

• Our Nudity Is Different: Jekyll apparently still has issues getting used to the idea that shorts on adults aren’t indecent and can’t look at a woman with a skirt above the calves straight. He also calls pants “Unmentionables” and hurriedly buttons up his pantlegs and waistcoat every time he transforms back from Hyde (he also keeps his coat from the start here). And yes, this is Truth in Television for the Victorian era. And yes, this makes perfectly G-rated scenes seem like fanservice ones (like an Accidental Pervert scene, with Luminescent Blush and screaming and all... where Gudako catches him with his waistcoat off, much to her confusion). And yes, he’s subject to Fully-Clothed Nudity gags quite often. Also even Hyde is a bit surprised that his outfit (open waistcoat, loose scarf, top shirt button unbuttoned, and unbuttoned cuffs, barely much skin showing) is considered modest by modern standards.
  Gudako: Y-you‘re the one making this situation seem dirtier than it really is, you know?!
  Jekyll: *face extremely red, covering himself up with a blanket* P-please, just g-get out! Don’t look at me!
• Paralyzing Fear of Sexuality: Jekyll. Really bad.
• Patchwork Fic: For characters from legends with many different incarnation over the centuries, usually the most agreed upon, “definitive” version of the story if there is one (and a popular version is picked if not) is used as a base. But elements from unrelated stories by completely different writers are also stitched in, replace other elements of the overall plot, or are treated as canon often if the author finds them interesting. Some of the more major ones include:

• Platonic Life-Partners: Arturia was basically this to every one of her knights at the time before she put on the unemotional mask she would keep for the rest of her life; she specially brings up how nepotism is one of many things which can destroy a kingdom and as such this trope in regards to leaders can be dangerous.
  • In a new detail that isn’t from any legend, Gareth and Percival were shown to be pretty close due to being two naive and extremely optimistic knights who are also very, very good at their job. Though she isn’t his most significant friendship, it is noticeable.
  • Spartacus and Boudicca become fairly close in their mutual hatred of Rome. Do not, for the love of all that is holy, put them in the same room as Nero. It will get ugly. Really ugly.
• Porn Stash: Hyde apparently has one, though he keeps it scattered and hidden away since he knows that Jekyll will attempt to destroy it on sight. Though Jekyll never goes actively looking for it because he doesn’t want to look at it (they’re not too hard to find if you look as “The doc isn’t nice enough to give me enough time to toss off, much less find one if the damn things.”), and on at least one occasion Hyde has left some hardcore femdom just sitting on their bed, probably intentionally to just troll and embarrass him; he has no problems about others knowing about it, of course.
  • Blackbeard has one, of course; also a few... contraband ones that somehow got into the Chaldea for reasons that aren't explained.
    Hyde: Not sure what’s so great about under-16s. They barely have any damn chest and the ones that do don’t look like it belongs on them. Why the hell people paid good money for them I have no bloody idea.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Hyde basically has the emotional maturity of an 8-year-old, what with being the epitome of a hedonist and being utterly shameless and all. His emotions can change on a dime, especially anger, he has basically no patience, and is incredibly demanding when he wants something. At one point he actually throws a temper tantrum. Unfortunately he has Super-Strength and a scream that can literally paralyze people, so it’s an extremely destructive tantrum.
• Pungeon Master:
  • Shakespeare. Though not seen in dialogue too often, he finds challenging himself to cram as much of these (usually dirty jokes) as conceivably possible into a paragraph to be really fun. Though it indeed shows just how good a wordsmith he is that he can write something perfectly coherent even if you don’t know they are giant masses of puns.

• Race Lift: Captain Nemo is clearly Indian, much like he was in his novels of origin, whereas in Fate he was white.

• Recycled Script: The adaptation of the Cote Male Taile tale is full of Lampshade Hanging as to how similar it is to Gareth's story, with everyone from Gareth hereslf to Gawain to Mordred (who heard about her sister's experiences proving herself secondhand) to Lancelot to everyone else present at the time of Gareth's arrival to Camelot (seemingly except for Kay) basically going "Wait, haven't we been here before?". The comic version even has a gag with "Deja Vu, I've been in this place before!" written in small text in the background.
  Mordred: Am I hearing that right? 'Cause I swear I've heard of this before.
• Rescue Romance: Somewhat common in medieval fantasy characters for... obvious reasons. Though not as common as one might think.

• Mordred x Gwrddelw is this. Kind of. Gwrddelw saved Mordred first in a way by taking her in on a cold, stormy night and taking care of her. But then the more typical form of this trope takes hold, just with the genders reversed, as she returns the favor by saving him and his sisters from pillaging bandits by curb-stomping them. The pseudo-Courtly Love dynamic they develop after this could be considered a central part of their relationship, with the above scene even ending with Mordred realizing she’s holding Gwrddelw in her arms.

• Royal Brat: Caster Gilgamesh admits that he used to be the epitome of this. He still is quite a bit of one though, even if he’s matured.
  • Arjuna used to be one; he was generally heroic and kind to people, even to those in a lower caste than him, but it’s made clear just how mean he could be to those who surpassed him in ability, especially if they were in a lower caste; in a prequel fic he gets jealous over a teenager (Arjuna wasn't much older than him at the time, albeit) who also happened to be as good with a bow as him. His teacher, Drona, proceeds to tell the poor kid to cut his fingers. Though Arjuna is left oblivious to this, it's unclear if he would have been perfectly fine with it if he had known. Then there was how he used to treat Karna because of his (apparent) caste yet also being equal in archery ability to him, which showed how truly classist he actually was under that friendly demeanor; in his youth, it's shown that he and his brothers (with the arguable exception of Yuddhisthira, the oldest brother, who was still willingly oblivious to it), were terrible bullies to Karna, him coming across as a petty male Alpha Bitch at worst (with Bhima, the one above him in age, being the resident Jerk Jock; though Bhima was the leader and worst out of the five, with the author saying she wrote him "envisioning him shoving Karna and Duryodhana into their lockers", Arjuna was terrible to Karna specifically and was probably the second worst to him and definitely the worst to him out of Bhima’s bully posse), and constantly called Karna "Charioteer Boy", even in one fic driving poor young Karna to tears and laughing. And being the teacher’s pet of Drona’s class, he also loved rubbing that in Karna’s face. He and his brothers are basically the reason why Karna became a bit of a loner and why he, even as a Servant, reacts so badly to insults. He didn't get over this in adulthood either, as he gleefully, mercilessly berated and humiliated Karna alongside his brothers in front of a crowd not once, but twice, and didn't care when one of Karna's young sons almost died because of a brawl that started just because he wanted to make a dramatic entry to the competition to win Drapaudi’s hand (though it's better than how in several versions of the original legend, he straight-up dies. And while Karna was quick to blast the disguised Arjuna, pretending to be a Brahmin, as defying the caste system, but from the situation it’s pretty clear that he’s bitter over how Drapaudi, his crush, humiliated him in front of a crowd, and Arjuna and company revealing who they were all along only rubs salt in the wound. Especially because after the reveal he shoves Karna's words back in his face and calls him "Charioteer Boy" again). He comes to regret this a lot, however, acknowledging that he probably had something to do in how things turned out in "A Talk Between Brothers".
• Rule of Cool: This being Fate, the author tends to go more ham on this than in any other franchise she writes for; on occasion, character changes may be done for the sake of this, though always with history or source material in mind (e.g. Tesla casts his magic via a Tesla coil he literally wields like a giant magic wand). The most commonly seen one is how many Servants, even those who aren’t and never were knights, prefer to call Master their “Lord”; Word of God has admitted that “I kinda think it sounds way more badass and am a bit disappointed that they didn’t go with that, it would have fit perfectly thematically.”

• Sailor Earth: A bit of a recurring premise is "How would X be if they were a Servant?" (or even Craft Essences, if they aren't exactly Servant material), though these are all one-offs and/or mere concept art and are never mentioned again, many not even having much of their appearance described; namely historical figures and characters the author wished were in the game due to them being very plausible as Servants/Rule of Cool and/or having potential for interesting interactions with existing Servants due to their relationships with them or just their character (e.g. Maid Marion (Archer or Assassin) and Little John (Saber), Guinevere (?), Beethoven (Caster), Joseph II of Austria (Ruler), Jim Hawkins (Saber) and Long John Silver (Saber), Hank Morgan (Archer), Charles Dickens (Caster), Hercule Poirot (?), Catherine the Great (?), Tadeusz Kościuszko (Rider), Giuseppe Garibaldi (Rider), Saladin (?), Mulan (Saber), Karl X of Sweden (?), Marquis de Sade (Berserker), Bonnie and Clyde (Archer), Henry VIII (two concepts, a Berserker and a Rider, both in a younger body but his Berserker form keeping his mindset from later in life), Mary Queen of Scots (Foreigner), Frederick the Great (?), Peter the Great (?), Cyrus the Great (Ruler), Yamamoto Isoroku (Rider)... and for Craft Essences, there have been one-shots for Utterson, Dr. Frankenstein, and Dr. Watson, their appearances notably both getting fics and actual designs).
  • Other proposed Servants have been “True” variants. “Actually Robin” could be seen as such a character, in a way; these are variants of corrupted (or otherwise different) Servants who are much closer to who they were in life or legend (e.g. A Ruler Antonio Salieri who is proud of Mozart, an Assassin Edmond Dantès based on himself post Character Development). (Pending; I had the idea for a fic in which Servant Salieri meets his real self; as in the soul, not Servant form or anything, of the real Salieri. The former idea would kind of make it redundant)
    • Then there are arguable cases of these, like the proposed (but rarely shown in-story due to being so different) alternate Attila the Hun (or Attila the Huns, since there is a male and female design), who has a completely different personality, backstory, class (is a Berserker instead of a Saber), weapon (the Isten Kardja, the sword legendarily attributed to be Attila’s that suspiciously looks like Charlemagne's sword, with no Photon Ray in sight that becomes a giant whip as a Noble Phantasm), alignment (Chaotic Neutral instead of Chaotic Good), and appearance (which places much more emphasis on looking intimidating, though some design elements from the original are visible) from Altera, the canonical Fate version, to the point they can very well be considered completely separate characters. He’s/she’s also the type of character Type Moon would usually come up with, being more a composite of legends than a concrete figure, though he/she apparently takes it in stride. Altera herself is "mysteriously" absent from any depictions.
• Satan Is Good: Well, sort of, in the "Devil's Manner" cover. The song itself, from Mordred's perspective as she is raising support for her rebellion, seems to express the idea that maybe being Satan isn't that bad after all, cynically comparing Arturia to God and her knights to his angels, and presenting herself as the misunderstood and righteous Satan.
• Second Love: In MordJek fics, Jekyll is this to Mordred, who in this canon previously was in love with Gwrddelw/“Cwyllog”, a sweet, extremely understanding young man who she had befriended and helped on her first solo Knight Errant outing, was the one person who knew what she truly looked like, had developed a pseudo-Courtly Love dynamic with, and believed that she had good in her even after she herself had long stopped believing in it, but whose relationship was cut short before it could even properly begin due to her being too far gone and being dead-set on fighting her father. His kindness reminded her a bit of him, explaining why she's so drawn to him.

• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Heavily implied for Arjuna that this is what his inner darkness from canon is replaced by. In "Further Words" Krishna once again speaks to Arjuna to basically tell him that despite being told the Bhavarad Gita he still needs to realize some things about himself and basically chastises him for not processing his regrets and trauma.
• Shown Their Work: The author has admitted that this and Alt-talia are “basically glorified research notes”. On top of the extensive historical and cultural research as seen in Alt-talia, there’s also a lot of, if not even more emphasis on due to Project Alter’s favoring of legendary accounts over pure historical accuracy as opposed to Alt-talia, incorporation of mythological studies, folk literary analysis, and even Theology (though myths and theology are incorporated into Alt-talia, the truth of myth and deities is left ambiguous at best aside from ambiguously canon side-stories).
• Shout-Out: Aside from the innumerable amounts of Mythology Gag to Servants’ sources of origin:
  • The Running Gag in early fics with both the Gudas assuming that they’re basically supposed to be Pokémon trainers, as well as this Running Gag exchange in the Fuyuki singularity:
    Gudako: Emiya, Mash, I choose you!
    Emiya: I’M NOT A POKÉMON!
  • As young children, Jekyll, Utterson, and Lanyon often went around basically LARPing as The Three Musketeers. This is by itself a reference to a play adaptation of their novella.
• Silver Fox: Downplayed by Jekyll in life (or Old Jekyll, as the author calls him sometimes), who while not as hot as he was in his younger years/as a Heroic Spirit, is drawn to not look too bad for a 52-year-old, especially for one who had been under unholy amounts of stress for almost his entire life, something that was true in the novella as well, and still makes use of Beauty Equals Goodness to an extent. Or at least, he’s still kind of cute. Even without the author’s character art in mind, the way he’s sometimes described makes that pretty apparent. Though as Hyde really starts taking over his life he starts looking progressively more sickly. Utterson is a year older, but it’s also shown that he was of slightly above average looks for his age, even if he wasn’t drop-dead attractive (Lanyon on the other hand is pretty clearly drawn with the “cute old man” look in mind).
  • Characters of note when drawn older, unless they are of the Historical Domain Character bracket, but even that’s only some of them, tend to be pretty easy on the eyes in general. And that’s not including canonical examples like Moriarty.
• Single-Issue Psychology: Sort of subverted with Jekyll and his deep-seated issues; his problems with the “evil” side of him, need to be heads and shoulders above the rest morally, and the resulting need to bottle up so much for literal decades are the result of many, many factors that piled up until it drove him to take drastic measures like he did and caused a nice guy like him to turn a blind eye to Hyde’s acts, from his upbringing and parents, to the society he lived in as well as it’s rapidly changing nature, to being put on a pedestal from a young age, to his own overly introspective personality, sense of responsibility and need for validation, to suddenly being exposed to some of the worst of humanity, to the subtle manipulations of Moriarty, and to possible other underlying mental health problems. Also despite the positive effect Tatsumi had on him, that was basically all undone and he’s regressed by the time he’s summed by the Gudas to the point that he’s somehow at an even worse psychological state than he was in life, due to his massive guilt over the events of the novella, the death of Tatsumi, and his subsequent Despair Event Horizon. And despite his dual nature, he himself has conflicting self-images of himself not related to Hyde, thinking of himself as good and just enough that he has been recorded as a Lawful Good Servant, hanging desperately onto his belief that he’s a good man, but at the same time losing hope in himself and his chance at redemption, that his sins are too great. It’s also shown that he can regress and get hung up on the same problems so that Gudako or Dr. Roman has to snap him out of it again, and that even after seemingly accepting that it’s alright for him to feel lust or anger, or that he doesn’t have to punish himself so much, he can often feel guilt for it afterwards anyway and his friends have to snap him out of it again. And in the set of stories that follow his canon ascension path, he actually gets worse mentally despite all the love, care, and understanding he now gets from those around him. Dr. Roman lampshades the subversion by saying that he wishes he was a psychiatrist because they desperately need a real one.
  Jekyll: No! Redemption is still possible. If... I just try harder... I must make a greater effort... Damn you Hyde, be quiet!
  Hyde: Oy. This time it isn’t me. I was sleeping quite nicely, thank you very much. I don’t fucking sound like that. You always have to put the blame on me, don’t you, old chap? You’re smarter than that. I’m not the only little guiding voice in your head, that was all you. cackling Though that second voice? I quite like him, even if he’s still moralizing as shit. Would it not be easier if you gave up, yeah? You’ve never learned anything, have you?
  • Subverted with how Mordred's anguish not only has to do with her getting rejected by Artoria in this version, but also by a lot of the rest of the Round Table due to a prophecy borrowed from the Vulgate. The author figured that she would have needed something more to push her past the deep end, and as a result heaped more tragedy on her.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Though the characters are said to actually be speaking in Japanese and we just see English due to Translation Convention, she doesn’t do what she does for, say, Japan’s dialogue and leave out swears, and makes them speak like they would in English for the sake of the narrative (and comedy).
  • Hyde, predictably. Though he actually isn’t as bad as some other examples, he knows an ungodly amount of not only modern but Victorian swears from his time roaming in Soho.
  • Also Mordred, both as a Servant and in lore. While when she was a respected knight she didn’t swear much despite her semi-bad boy persona that came about from her more rough speech patterns (well not those that mattered back then anyway, so “fuck” and the like did slip through), by the time she’s a Servant she’s become one of these quite literally. This is in great contrast to Arturia and Arthur, who never swear, medieval or modern, ever, excepting the uncommon Gosh Dang It to Heck! which may slip through. Jekyll, Artoria, and Arthur of course correct her often, to her annoyance.
  • Jack the Ripper knows an impressive amount of swears, thanks to her upbringing or lack thereof, and much to Jekyll’s mortification and Hyde’s admiration. And yes, just like Hyde she uses a mix of London chav and Victorian swears, though more so the latter, leading to the same silly effect yet it’s coming out of the mouth of a little girl. Though doesn’t use them all the time incessantly per se, and she also seemingly doesn’t have much of an idea of what most of them mean either, she’s just a sad reflection of the Wretched Hive that was late-Victorian Whitechapel, also being a reflection of both her innocence and her lack of it, in great contrast to other child characters who rarely swear. In fics ostensibly taking place later she does it less, probably due to being around those like Jekyll, Marie, and Abigail.
  • Not as much as the above, but Mozart has a bit of a potty mouth, fittingly with his immature sense of humor. It more so stands out a lot compared to the more sophisticated characters he’s usually associated with like Marie, with even Salieri, a being whose primary emotion is rage, being rather sophisticated in speech. Though he keeps it a bit more under wraps around Marie.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: In less serious portrayals, Boudicca and on occasion Salieri in the rare times their relationship is depicted comedically, basically see Nero and Mozart as these.
• Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic: In contrast with Alt-talia, which, despite the nations themselves being basically magical in character and occasional evidence to folklore being true, heavily relies on historical accuracy and even dispels many myths, Project Alter is further towards the fantasy end than almost all of her other work, with legendary accounts being chosen over real history regularly, treatment of all myths as if they happened, liberal use of magical and holy explanations that even in her Smash Bros storyline and Pokémon works would be quietly ignored everywhere... and the simple fact of this being Fate, where anything but being on the very fantastic end of the scale is pretty much impossible. However, even then it’s a bit more towards the realism scale than the canon Fate series in some respects, in that it tends to have a higher number of down-to-earth character motivations and backstories beside all the god slayers, actual manifestations of gods, and Chosen Ones chosen by God.
• Smarter Than You Look:
  • Hyde may be impulsive, reckless, crass, and have the emotional maturity of a child, but him being basically an extension of Jekyll’s psyche, he is capable of being smart, and if Jekyll entertains an idea that is less than savory, it manifests in him; Jekyll signing over his will to Hyde was actually a scheme Hyde came up and tempted Jekyll with, or at least it manifested through Hyde. He has the same basic knowledge base Jekyll has, and is shown to be even capable of being surprisingly poetic, knowing the dark recesses of the mind very well due to being the personification of it.
  • The interpretation of Mordred used here, unlike the Dumb Muscle she is in Fate canon, but fittingly for a character associated with treachery, is shown to actually be surprisingly manipulative if she needs to be, even if she usually only uses it to achieve a greater goal or as self-defense if she can’t use violence for whatever reason. It’s even shown that she can put up the act of being surprisingly charming, joyous, and even courteous, even when she’s boiling with rage on the inside, particularly when she was recruiting for her battle against Artoria; to somewhat unsettling effect from an out-of-universe perspective from coming off as a politer, artificial version of her Boisterous Bruiser self she shows around genuine friendly company and played up as the semi-bad boy/somewhat edgy gentleman knight back when she was popular, even though maintaining the mask is extremely difficult. She’s also implied to be a good battle strategist, having planned out most of the battle movements of her troops at Camlann herself. According to UTAU covers like Devil’s Manner and hints she drops in certain fics, she even has a thoughtful, somewhat philosophical side, and legitimately has some of the workings of a good future king. It’s even outright shown that’s before going to Artoria to take her claim as crown prince, she spent an entire night thinking of what she wants to do as king. Though she’s still kind of Book Dumb, and she looks stupid next to the more clearly intellectual rest of the London party, she’s clearly nowhere near actually stupid. The honor of “the dumbest member of the (Inner) Round Table” has instead been passed to Percival, who Mordred herself refers to as the “resident idiot” at one point, though Lancelot and Gareth also have moments of extreme airheadedness (and overall it’s Dagonet, who is like young Percival on steroids and without most of the fighting capabilities).
    Jekyll: By Jove, Saber... How... How did you...
    Mordred: What? Why are you treating it like it’s so surprising? Fucking hell, do you think I’m that stupid?
  • As mentioned above, Astolfo can be surprisingly clever. Though even he himself doesn’t seem to realize it.
  • Eve Frankenstein still isn’t very verbose, most of her early “lines” being grunts. However, unlike most of the creature’s depictions but much like her novel self, it’s revealed that she speaks and writes not only in fluent Swiss German and Japanese (the latter only due to Servant magic, as the common language of the Chaldea has been set at Japanese because the Gudas are), but French and English as well, is very well-versed in literature and gets excited when she meets Shakespeare because of this (and is very well-versed in even some of his more obscure works), is eloquent when she actually does talk, not to mention in writing, has the uncanny ability to master things that, even with the instant knowledge that Servants are usually given, she probably has no reason to be so good at (e.g. she easily clears a level in a Nintendo Hard video game which Gudao and Gudako in their combined efforts were on the verge of ragequitting), and is able to keep up with all of Jekyll’s intellectual pursuits. When Mordred says that the entire London Singularity crew except her is “A bunch of eggheads”, she really means all of them.
• Sophisticated as Hell: While he speaks in a more lower-class way relatively than Jekyll, Hyde still uses flowery, wordy language by modern standards... but this being Hyde, he also swears. A lot. Or at least, he uses extremely crude and direct words a lot. And a lot of these swears are hilariously outdated, or manage to sound both hilariously quaint and extremely blunt.
• Superpower Russian Roulette: How the Throne of Heroes often works in PA. Well, almost all not originally from a myth or legend basically gain magical superpowers upon becoming a Heroic Spirit (and even some legendary characters like much of the Arthurian cast explicitly get magical exaggerations of their abilities); but in PA the Throne of Heroes is explicitly said to basically be an unpredictable Russian Roulette that chooses which Servants can keep how much of their soul intact pretty much at random. On one hand you can come out not looking or acting much different with cool powers to boot (e.g. Holmes), or at least remain completely yourself personality-wise, even if it contradicts common perception of you, with the most influence perception has over you being appearance or even some positive influences on your personality (e.g. Marie, as well as most Servants). Occasionally, even if you went crazy or did some terrible things later in life, it may even restore you in a younger form with the mental clarity of your younger self to basically give you a second chance (e.g. Nero). There are those who were pretty certain they were going to be of the Evil alignment, even, and were subsequently shocked to get Neutral or even Good (most notably Mordred). ...On the other, perception or conflicts with it can screw up or exaggerate your psyche (e.g. Jekyll and Hyde, though their case is actually milder than some others) or painfully alter you physically (e.g. Andersen) due to its influence, basically imposing what people think you are on top of the real you; and at worst, you can get corrupted and consumed by it completely (e.g. poor Salieri). And again, you have absolutely no control over it; it matters little how good you actually were, what you did, or your wishes, the Throne of Heroes does not care. It’s made slightly better by the fact that the real souls are still out there, but some fics do dive into the inherent horror and Nightmare Fuel of it all; in fact, Salieri terrifies Marie, Chacha, and Nero, because what happened to him could have been them too. But occasionally, it’s possibly implied that some factors can influence its decisions (e.g. Gwrddelw’s anguished prayer for God to have mercy on Mordred’s soul may have been what made her Neutral instead of Evil), and character classes can actually be influenced by the person themselves in some rare cases (e.g. Galahad’s wish preventing him or Mash from becoming a Ruler, The inherent wish in Solomon’s heart and desire against becoming a Ruler making him a Caster instead). Though it’s generally pointed out that being a Heroic Spirit can really suck for most Servants, as they have to constantly fight in battle royales which almost always result in many humans, especially the Magus they may have actually bonded with, dying horrifically.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Generally, the Gudas' Magnetic Hero qualities are downplayed. It's shown that many Servants can never actually bond with either of the Gudas, and the Gudas themselves express a lot more realistic reluctance or even disgust at how terrible the more villainous ones can be as people. Many of these see themselves merely as glorified mercenaries going through a revolving door of contractors, and not all of them can be broken out of this mentality, as though all are able to achieve high bond levels in the original game, in Project Alter many Spirits just go from disdain to apathy or apathy to slightly less apathetic, and when they do seem to be genuinely invested it’s revealed to just be them being a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk. Even among those who do genuinely become friendly with the Gudas (the majority), as mentioned above, the most preferred title is "Contractor" or "Lord" instead of "Master" and many are not even the slightest bit subservient, many even seeing them as just some young kids who got lucky and treating them as such. And even those who are the picture of Undying Loyalty like Karna make it clear that while they may be loyal to their Lord/Master/Contractor, their true loyalty will always in their hearts be to the one they swore it to in the first place to get them that reputation.
  • Also, characters like half of all of the historical characters, Jekyll and Holmes had a hard time coming to grips with their new lives as Servants, despite the Grail giving them automatic knowledge, because they had absolutely no knowledge on magic, maguses, or Heroic Spirits beforehand, or at least they had a harder time accepting it than, say, the Arthurian or Matter of France cast. Holmes in particular, being the logical person he is, didn't believe the very information being funneled into him via Grail Magic, and one fic in particular is entirely about him bantering with a disembodied voice in limbo about how contrived everything about the whole arrangement is and then being in stunned shock about how everything he had thought was true was a lie. The first time he sees magic in action he's still in a bit of disbelief despite knowing that it's a real thing and he can use it now.
    • Also, characters from eras and places where magic was viewed as evil like Abigail still have trouble coming to terms with the fact that everything they knew about magic and magic users was a lie. Or the more zealous monotheists realizing that all gods are real and that no religion, even paganism, is "false".
  • While Mash's Calling the Old Man Out and criticalness of Lancelot is treated mostly comedically in canon, here it's put a stop to early, with the scene in the Sixth Singularity leading to her being called out for almost pushing Lancelot into a Heroic BSoD after an already emotionally grueling choice, and Bedivere, in shock, pointing out that Lancelot had no way of knowing Galahad even existed, and, oh yeah, that he was a Child by Rape. Though this also shows that Galahad is starting to show irrational human emotion, just as he wished. Their interactions after the fact mainly consist of them trying to awkwardly connect.
• Sweet Tooth:
  • The child characters, generally, are fond of sweets. Jack especially, as she was barely able to have any before. Though for the most part it’s just them being children and all.
  • Both Jekyll and Hyde are fond of sweetening their tea a lot - five (and six for Hyde) sugar cubes in a teacup, to be exact - and prefer sweet wines like port. He explains it as it helping to fuel his mind, though it may also be symbolic of other aspects of his character as well.
  • Marie Antoinette, even if she never said “Let them eat cake”, is indeed pretty fond of it; also, where many would have coffee in the morning, she prefers to have literal teacups full of melted chocolate, albeit dark chocolate, laced with orange blossom aroma, and apparently has used one of the coffee machines for said purpose several times (and breaking it). And yes, this was also true of the real Marie Antoinette.
    Emiya: *sighing in exasperation* For the last time Marie, the coffee machines are not your personal chocolate machines!
  • Salieri, surprisingly, tops the above two/three; yes, Salieri, not the eccentric Manchild among the composer duo that is Mozart. Just like the actual Salieri was in life, in fact. How much? As in even Marie is a bit surprised by it, he puts 10 sugar cubes in his coffee, and Emiya says he immediately knows an order is from Salieri if he feels like he caught diabetes just by looking at it (to which Mozart remarks that it’s reassuring how some things haven’t changed). Also at one point Mozart suggests to Gudako to distract Salieri out of his rage episodes with pastries. And he was only half joking. While it’s often Played for Laughs, it’s also one of the most visible glimpses of the person that he shares his name from in him, as well as being one of the very few lighthearted things about him in general. It’s fitting that his spotlight UTAU cover is based off of Donut Hole, with the comparison being changed to strudel instead of donuts.
    Mozart: Uh... Salieri? Buddy? *nervous laugh* I’ve never seen that kind of look on your face before! I’m guessing someone took away your pastries for the entire week or something? Or even a month, by the looks of it?
    Salieri: Amadeus... Amadeus... ...Ama... deus... must... die!
    Salieri swings at Mozart
    Mozart: Holy shit! ...I didn’t eat your sugar rolls this time, I swear! I didn’t even touch your tortes or your strudel either!
• Sworn Brothers: It's revealed that Tatsumi and Jekyll actually became blood brothers during the events of the 1991 Grail War. The duo gets out of a rough battle, and Jekyll is bleeding and exhausted but trying to not make it obvious that he’s in pain. After he explains that mana transfer can be facilitated via body fluids, Tatsumi, without a second thought, bites his wrist and puts it over his wound before Jekyll can tell him no, healing him; Jekyll mentions how he’s heard about the concept of blood brothers and how this reminds him of it, and Tatsumi proceeds to declare that that means they’re officially blood brothers, cementing their nigh-familial relationship.
• The Teetotaler: Jekyll, as a Servant at least, does not drink. As alcohol is something that lowers inhibitions, he has good reason to suspect it would make it easier for Hyde to take over. Though in life he did indeed have some alcohol at parties (never enough to get drunk), and would grab a few bottles of port or sherry out of his cellar if he really couldn’t take it and if all else failed, though he always regretted it.
• Terrified of Germs: It's shown that Jekyll is a clean freak, especially under stress and after Hyde was created (with these tendencies only becoming even worse after Hyde starts taking over); the symbolism is pretty obvious. In a one-shot taking place during the events of the novella, the skin on his hands starts to peel from him constantly washing them, and the first thing Poole, Jekyll's head butler, takes note of as fishy is that that his baths have become even longer and more frequent than usual, sometimes lasting up to three hours. As a Servant, the amount of time he spends taking showers of angst and his periodic obsessive episodes of germaphobia start to seriously worry Dr. Roman, Gudako, and even Nightingale, who while extremely anal about germs is much more reasonable about it. It also generally ties into the germaphobia of the late 1800s, even if he was more knowledgeable on the subject than most of the general public.
• Testosterone Poisoning: Especially in more comedic fics, Gilgamesh is depicted in such a way, his already substantial amounts of ham being dialed up to an absurd degree along with his massive, massive ego. This is due to how the original Epic of Gilgamesh itself was this as well, even spilling over into the (outwardly) androgynous Enkidu and the goddess Ishtar, and Uruk in general is treated as a world of manly. The abovementioned three are even drawn with a sharper, bulkier, more seinen-ish style that even somewhat resembles Jojos Bizarre Adventure than usual to reflect this.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Mordred being made into a pariah by almost everyone she knows basically led to this. Though she doesn’t immediately resign to her fate, in fact she still tries to prove her loyalty, but when no one budges (well some like Gareth and Dinadan almost do, but they’re kept away by others discouraging them), but by the time the grail quest begins she barely tries because she’s convinced she’s tainted, and also unlike Fate canon she becomes disgusted with herself upon learning that she’s the product of incest, so her loneliness and self-loathing became self-perpetuating until she decided that staging a rebellion and doing as destiny said was the only route left for her.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Due to Fragments of Silver, Jekyll is partial to rice balls.
  • David apparently likes figs.
  • Melted hot chocolate laced with orange blossom aroma for Marie Antoinette. Or really, chocolate in general, though she thinks milk chocolate tastes weird and prefers it be made the old-fashioned way. Also brioche, fortunately seemingly the only effect the stereotypical “Let them eat cake” reputation has had on her that wasn’t already there. Though her absolute favorite seems to be Gugelhopf, and she is absolutely overjoyed when Emiya makes one for her.
  • While not his favorite food per se, grass is apparently nostalgic comfort food for Enkidu. Yes, literal grass. He even can tell how grass tastes just by looking at it.
  • Heracles: Apparently really fond of boiled beans. And lots of it.
  • Mozart: Sauerkraut and liver dumplings.
  • Edison: Said to be fond of milk, just like his real life counterpart. Ashwatthama is also said to be fond of milk.
  • Napoleon: Marengo Chicken.
  • Abigail: Changed from pancakes to anything with molasses in it, as molasses was the only widely available sweetener for her in life.
• Truer to the Text: As mentioned under Alternate Character Interpretation, with characters of fictional origin, attempted as much as possible, or fused with their Fate backstories. Even if the Servant forms don’t reflect them too much (e.g. Jekyll’s age), there are enough references to their original stories to remind you that these incarnations are very similar to real life’s versions of them. According to the author, she often finds that the original source materials and history can be more interesting to her and more human than what Fate often does with them, and she also thinks that the idea of the legendary figures actually coming to her aid is just much cooler. She also says that hewing close to the original texts or histories makes it that much more interesting when she does twist the story or add additional interpretation to it, instead of more liberal interpretations from the get-go as Fate tends to do. Sometimes it even works in favor of the canon story, creating connections or fitting results that weren’t there before. ^note Most notably Solomon/Dr. Roman and Galahad’s connection; not only is the fact they are related addressed, but the twist to Galahad’s story was that he couldn’t understand humanity and its flaws because of his perfection, and wished to be reborn in a form which could understand it, something which just happens to parallel [[spoiler:Solomon’s grail wish in canon and Project Alter to become truly human (based on his story in the Book Of Kings, in combination with the implications of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and to a lesser extent other works like the Song of Songs to his character). There’s also the fact that they were both very much aware of their perfect circumstances, yet still felt empty somehow.

• Villain Song: Many characters get UTAU covers, and of course several villains or those who were bad people in life get what are basically these taking place in their original stories/backstories.
  • Hyde, of course, has many, including:
    • "Annoyance", his answer song and continuation to Jekyll's "Bitter Chocolate Decoration".
    • "Brain Revolution Gentleman", taking place much later, where he basically berates Jekyll for trying to be overly good and his hypocrisy, much like Annoyance. Generally, it's a common theme in Hyde songs.
  • Due to the nature of their character, it can be argued that all Jekyll and Hyde songs, and even Jekyll songs taking place during the events of the novella are this, particularly the songs portraying their descent into madness. Especially the ones where Jekyll is portrayed as a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing as was probably closer to the original intent of the novella.
  • "Devil's Manner" for Mordred; sort of. While yes, this song shows more of her manipulative side and she is comparing herself with Satan, but it's also (fittingly) much more melancholy than a standard villain song, not to mention considering what had happened in Camelot, she really has a point.
    • Then there's "The Blade of Mordred" (and it's non-canonical twin "The Muzzle of Mordred"), a cover of The Muzzle of Nemesis, in which she is facing against Arturia directly at Camalann. Though due to the gray morality of the situation, much like "Devil's Manner" she isn't really a "villain" here, and in fact Arturia really looks like the villain here due to Unreliable Narrator.
    • Mordred’s Song, translated into Japanese, and Mind Brand also cover Mordred’s disillusionment and fall from grace.
  • "Rotten Witchcraft and Molasses" for Abigail, though here she isn't too aware that she's a villain.
• Virgin Power: Of course, was a virtue needed to be a Grail Knight. Though here it’s stated that Galahad was basically Asexual as God literally made this an Enforced Trope.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Jekyll and Lanyon, at times. Though it’s more downplayed usually, they’ve had quite their share of really bad arguments, and it’s an early sign of Jekyll’s repressed issues. The argument that broke their friendship was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.
• Violent Glaswegian: Jekyll’s father was Scottish... and it can be anywhere from heavily implied to outright stated that he as well as his (English) mother were harsh with the whole corporeal punishment thing even by Victorian standards. Though otherwise Jekyll Senior was a respected gentleman of his community, and his accent only became remotely thick when angered.
  • A more lighthearted example in Scathach, who now speaks in a Scottish accent and is immensely Hot-Blooded, crossed with a bit of Crazy Is Cool and a dash of Drill Sergeant Nasty.
• Uncanny Valley:
  • Hyde in life didn’t look much different from how he would look as a Servant; but he’s drawn to look a bit creepier with a shaded face, long fingers, large ears, and hunched posture, generally making him look more animalistic (though even then he isn’t as ugly looking as the novella describes), and much like in the novella people are inexplicably repelled and put off by him. In Project Alter canon, in one of the changes on the theoretical gameplay front, this actually becomes an original Passive Skill of Hyde’s, “Impression Of Displeasure”, where all enemy Neutral and Good aligned characters immediately get a debuff to all their stats except for speed after Jekyll transforms, though unlike in life he can now apparently turn it on and off at will (as his current self anyway; in his bestial form he can’t turn it off), which is why he can look attractive.
  • Eve Frankenstein has a bit of this going on, her discolored, somewhat bulging eyes peering through her bangs and uneven, yellow teeth changing her design from conventionally attractive to something just not being right, on top of her height basically being doubled (pending). Also her skin is a bit patchy and discolored, even more so in life, where her hair was also more stringy. Though often these traits can make her look more Ugly Cute than anything (and in the “My Baby’s Got A Crush On Frankenstein” PV Gudao falls for her and her appearance is described as “divine”, albeit that PV is pretty much a shitpost, and none of her distinctive PA traits are visible (pending)).
• Weakness Turns Her On: Possibly Gudako.
  • Also Mordred. It's rather obvious that Gwddelw's more feminine damsel qualities are attracctive to her, and she calls him her queen as she and him tie the knot.
• Wild Child: While Enkidu can come across as the more reasonable one between him and Gilgamesh, here, in actuality, he’s very much a “wild man” archetype, being the Trope Codifier for it and all in real life, just in a really pretty body, the contrast of which is often Played for Laughs; for example, Gilgamesh apparently often has to get him to stop chewing on his own clothing, furniture, and hair a lot (and he also gifts him an actual chew toy for their friendship anniversary, which he apparently liked quite a bit), and he is shown to have No Social Skills (as opposed to Gilgamesh who just doesn’t care), be an incredibly sloppy eater, gnaw on bones after meals, scratch his head in a way that sends his (quite long) hair flying like a dog, sometimes crawls on all fours and to be incredibly fast in doing so, be able to swing on vines like Tarzan, somehow get flea infestations, and fare terribly in small spaces, among many other things. Though there are traits which aren’t necessarily comedic, like growling and baring his teeth when angry. He can function of course thanks to being taught how to do so, and he still talks coherently and fluently, but Gilgamesh is actually the civilized one of the two.
• Wine Is Classy: In a seeming subversion, Hyde is shown to be very fond of wine, preferably sweet, and only good ones, describing cheap wine (or cheap alcohol in general) as basically A Tankard of Moose Urine. However, due to his nature, it is safe to assume that these are Jekyll’s tastes as well (as Jekyll avoids alcohol like the plague as it lowers inhibitions), who does fit this trope more. In the prequel fics taking place around the novella, it’s indeed shown when Jekyll temporarily snaps and desperately needs a drink, wine is the first thing he grabs. This is also indeed something from the novella, where Hyde at least is shown to be fond of expensive wine. However, the fact that he prefers sweet wines on top of a Sweet Tooth also probably implies childishness and/or indicates his desire for indulgence, as well as femininity.
• Yandere:
  • Kiyohime hasn’t changed. At all. Due to basically being the Ur-Example of the Yandere in Japanese work, the author didn’t feel the need to change her much.
  • Brynhildr was indeed this in life. Though her killing Sigurd wasn’t only for the standard Yandere reasons, but also her anger at the lies that had built up since she and Sigurd first confessed their love for each other. In most fics featuring the two, this has subsided a bit, but she’s still bitter about it and the two have conflicting feelings about each other.
  • The whole Uriah Gambit episode with King David and Bathsheba in the Bible indeed happened, and it isn’t sugarcoated at all.

• You Don't Look Like You: Here it’s stated outright, even outside of canonical cases like Hans or Phantom, that Servants often change appearances when they become Servants; they can range from barely noticeable except for different clothing (e.g. Holmes, or Jekyll who looked somewhat less thin in life), to noticeable but still recognizable at a glance (e.g. Gilgamesh had darker hair in life), to extreme (basically the entire Historical Domain Character cast), maybe keeping eye shape or happening to wear their familiar color scheme to identify them. This is sometimes the subject of gags.
  Mozart: So this is what being tall feels like! I love it!
  Paracelsus: ...By God, I look like a woman. Why do I look like a woman?

The Dosuru Ieyasu crossover comics

• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Ieyasu, just like in the drama, isn’t exactly confident in himself. The same goes for his doppelgänger and replacement. They are both well aware of their limitations. They tend to be rather pessimistic, even cowardly.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Unlike in the drama, Chacha is fully convinced by “Ieyasu’s” letter to her, pleading to consider stopping the war for Hideyori’s sake, that continuing to fight would just hurt her family more. She also comes to realize how much war corrupted her and her innocence. Unfortunately, when she asks Hideyori for his choice, Hideyori chooses to fight. As Hideyori hypes up the troops, Chacha can only stand there, realizing what she had done; that she could have stopped this at any time, but now is too late.
• We Used to Be Friends: Ieyasu and Mitsunari. Well, it’s complicated, due to Ieyasu not being the real Ieyasu; the real Ieyasu and Mitsunari were friends. In fact, Ieyasu was one of two real friends Mitsunari had, the other being Otani Yoshitsugu (Hideyoshi may count, but he was his boss). They speak as they gaze upon the stars about their wishes for world peace. However, circumstances drive a wedge between them. But little does Mitsunari know that the real Ieyasu died not long after befriending him. “Ieyasu”, before Mitsunari’s execution, brings him before him and asks him, in anger, why he did what he did. Mitsunari says that all men secretly crave war… Even Ieyasu. “Ieyasu” then reveals that he was a double all along, and that his wish for peace is as strong as the old Ieyasu. And that he would have liked to gaze upon the stars with him someday too, but that unfortunately would never come to pass.

Ideas I’ll probably never do due to time but here’s to throwing ideas at a wall lol

Fate/Isekai

A concept based loosely on the premise King Arthur & the Knights of Justice, with Fate elements being repurposed to what is basically an Isekai plot.

The evil Queen Morgan and her cruel Warlord army, commanded by Lord Viper, finally succeeds in neutralizing her archenemies, King Arthur (Arturia), her Round Table, and Guinevere, trapping them in the Cave of Glass. However, with her last breath and the help of Merlin, Arturia and the Round Table were able to concentrate their power into mana form, sealing them into a Grand Quartz each and their signature weapons, unleashing the former all over Britain, and tasking Merlin to find 13 other heroes to take their place.

Merlin searches through time and space to find suitable replacements for the knights and rescue the queen.However, as Merlin himself knows very well, heroes don’t always take a form you’d expect them to.

Saber Penderton King is a bright and ambitious but otherwise ordinary university student living in the outskirts of London (or maybe she’s a British immigrant to Japan IDK) with her brother Kai Penderton King, as well as captain of the Shining Knights, her university’s football (soccer) club. (Alternatively, the main cast is just her circle of friends).

On what seems like an average day of practice/an afterschool meet-up, Merlin suddenly shows up to them as an old man, and claiming Saber to be a “Saberface”, an Identical Stranger to the legendary king, and a “Magus”, he declares her, Kai and her other teammates and friends; ace striker Lance Kyrielight and his younger sister, goalkeeper, and prodigy Mash, childhood friend Benjamin, and cousins (?) Gavin, Morton, Adrian, Garett, and Garrick Hawk, as well as Trevor, Percy, Bartholomew AKA “Bart”, and Palmero the new worthy heroes of Camelot, bringing them as well as their manager Shirou Emiya (maybe Fujimaru Ritsuka?) back with him to Camelot to save the kingdom. No objections accepted!

With cool new glowing seals on their hands, magic shiny weapons, and their yet to be fully awakened but considerable powers, the replacement knights are partially successful as they rescue Guinevere and hold back Morgan and the Warlords. Keeping their true identities a secret to all the citizens of Britain (outside the court of course), the Knights must keep up the facade until they recover the 13 Grand Quartz, one for each knight that only they can initially touch. Once all are found, all the true knights can be freed.

Written like a cross between a Saturday morning cartoon, and a Isekai, shounen and Henshin Hero and sprinkles of a Magical Girl/Boy anime, it is noticeably more Lighter and Softer and kid-friendly than the rest of PA. It only exists in the form of twin “pilots”, scattered concept art, the occasional one-shot if she’s in the mood, and a few fake comic pages, with the author stating it more exists as Fanfic Fuel so others can do with it as they wish.

• The Ace: Lance is fittingly the ace striker of the team. Even in the non-FC pilot, he’s skilled in many sports and gets high grades regularly. Mash, due to her canon personality, hasn’t quite reached that yet, but she’s still said to be a prodigy.
• Action Girl: Quite obviously, Saber and Mash, plus Arturia, Mordred, and Gareth by default, even if they are out of focus. Though it’s kind of notable as the show the premise is based on tended to bungle up its gender equality morals pretty bad due to all the female characters not Morgana tending to be rather ineffectual, also often having to suddenly make a character a Straw Misogynist for an episode to make that point, yet here it’s basically there from the get-go due to the main character herself being female.
• Adaptational Wimp: Merlin, while powerful enough to travel through time, gets nerfed even more than he usually is in Project Alter in terms of foresight ability, so he can become a regular victim of slapstick as much as anyone else, if not more so.
• Aerith and Bob: Every member of the main cast from modern times has a normal, if suspiciously similar to their counterpart knight’s, name... and then we have “Saber” and “Mash”. It’s even lampshaded how unusual their names are. Also, all of them have a normal surname but the Kyrielights.
• Always Identical Twins: Gareth’s counterpart, Garett, is male, and as their age gap is closed in the “Football club” version of the pilot, him and Garrick (Gaheris) are made into twins who look very similar. Though they can still be told apart, downplaying the trope. They also act very differently.
• Awesome McCoolname: Yes, the modern counterpart of Arturia is indeed, literally, actually named “Saber”, full name “Saber P. King”, partially as a way to make up for most Servants themselves theoretically not being in focus, so it gives the illusion that Arturia is still the main character, and also because of the “Saberface” joke. She apparently gets asked if it’s a nickname a lot.
• Author Appeal: Why soccer? Because the author is a former Inazuma Eleven fan. Though it’s also because it seems more “British” and is still “Football”.
• The Bully: Adrian is said to get in trouble for getting rough with others often, though he doesn’t actively hunt people down too often.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Gavin, being Gawain’s counterpart, except he’s much more blatant about the fact that he really likes the female attention. Due to the really PG tone compared to the rest of Project Alter, it isn’t mentioned he’s sleeping with fans, but he gets swarmed by fangirls on Valentines to get paid in chocolate for flirting with them and is said to have “many girlfriends”.
• Contrived Coincidence: Kai brings up how contrived it is that The Chosen Many just all happen to be in the same circle of friends/Football Club, that everyone in said circle of friends just happens to be a Magus, an extremely, extremely rare member of the human population, and that they all parallel the Round Table to a T. Merlin just shrugs and says “Strange how things work, no?”. The author herself admits it’s extremely contrived, but that it’s cartoon logic and Saturday Morning Cartoons tend to have dumb, contrived plot elements like this.
• Deadpan Snarker: Kai, keeping in line with him being Kay’s counterpart. Same for Adrian and Morton, and all three can get kind of abrasive.
• Deuteragonist: It’s implied that Mash, Morton, and Shirou would be the other primary characters, even though those those like Lance, Kai, and Gavin are just as major in terms of frequency of appearance from the looks of it; Mash is said to have as much potential as Saber herself (plus being the only other female combatant and the Deuteragonist of FGO itself), Morton has his probable relation to Saber and his somewhat strained relationship with her, and Shirou by virtue of him being Shirou and being in the process of finding his role in the team, his The Blacksmith and even bordering on Bungling Inventor skills strongly hinting he will awaken the Unlimited Blade Works eventually. The author has also said that Lance, Gavin, Kai, Adrian, and/or Percy should probably develop a lot as well.
• The Ditz: Percy, just like Percival, can say some unbelievably airheaded things, usually getting Dope Slapped by Kai for it.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: The Shining Knights of course have to get used to the whole being in medieval times thing. Percy, being The Ditz he is, even asks if they have any video games (promptly getting a Dope Slap from Kai and a Face Fault from everyone else).
• Gender Is No Object: In the “football club” version of the “pilot”, the fact that the Shining Knights are a mix-gendered football club with two female members seems to be treated as perfectly normal.
• Girliness Upgrade: From an-universe perspective; to the confusion of even Merlin, Saber gets an even more pimped-out version of Arturia’s Final Ascension outfit when she enters Final Ascension/Noble Phantasm Phase, despite the fact that all her outfits until Final Ascension had been based off of Proto Arthur, as Arturia had been wearing in-universe. The primary difference being her iconic big, puffy, if simple Battle Ballgown. This may reflect that while Saber is tomboyish and not too girly, she isn’t ashamed of her femininity unlike how Arturia forced herself to be.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: There is a noticeable lack of swearing due to the cartoony tone... Though that doesn’t stop Kai and Morton from trying, leading to quite a bit of these or Curse Cut Short as a Running Gag instead.
• Handicapped Badass: Ben, paralleling Bedivere, has a prosthetic left leg (FC pilot)/left arm (second pilot), apparently having lost it in an accident when he was younger, but is barely hindered by it. Though as a knight, as his arm isn’t magical in nature, it does cause a bit more issues, he’s still able to keep up with everyone else by force of will.
• Harem Genre: While she has joked about the cast almost looking like a reverse harem, the author says that no romance is intended, preferring to think of the FC as a bunch of True Companions. Especially as five out of the main characters are related to Saber. However, she also kind of likes the idea of Saber (or Mash for that matter) having a romantic subplot with some of the especially primary or close characters like Ben, Lance, Shirou (Ritsuka?) or even Merlin; also that even the Orkney counterparts being related to her is optional, and that she isn’t completely against the idea of it developing into a reverse harem if it doesn’t bog down the plot.
• Henshin Hero: The original show may have been inspired by this, and this concept also uses it, especially with the more anime style. In this canon, their base Magus abilities are the ability to cloak themselves in their counterpart’s Servant armor and use their Servant abilities (though in-universe some like Trevor, Mash, and Saber herself are said to have armor that look quite a bit different from what Tristan, Galahad, and Arturia usually wear, what with the actual knights looking how the author draws them in life). The Knights even start talking about what color ranger they are until they realize that some have many variations of the same hue.
• Identical Stranger: Saber is, quite literally, a Saberface. The concept apparently even sprang partially from the idea that “The original protagonist of the cartoon was basically a Saberface”. Though the rest of the replacement knights also tend take this further than the original cartoon, especially with their color schemes and not so subtle names and personalities, which are often inspired by their knight counterparts’ public personas as modern day people, though how much they physically resemble them can vary.
  Merlin: Holy... I haven’t seen such a perfect example of a Saberface in my life!
  Saber: ...What? I mean, Saber is my name...
  Merlin: Even better!
  Kai: The heck is he on about?
  • While they aren’t unrelated, it’s said that Saber and Morton, fittingly for Arturia and Mordred’s counterparts, look oddly similar for just cousins, some thinking the latter is her brother. The author says outright that he most likely is though, but she has no idea why the mix-up would have happened.
• Isekai: As the title indicates, it’s a major inspiration; though it isn’t the only inspiration, and as the author isn’t a fan of many Isekai Tropes it could be said to be a less important one.
• Juvenile Delinquint: Morton is apparently infamous for getting into trouble; though he uses it to play up the whole bad boy thing, it’s pretty clear he’s acting out of some kind of inferiority complex and has at least some anger problems.
• Keet: Percy is even more energetic than Percival, basically making him this. Much like Percival, he doesn’t seem to mind being a bit more feminine, what’s with his hair clips and bright clothing, is an innocent little brother figure to the party (especially as while Garett acts pretty similar to Gareth, he’s also pretty tall), and is almost constantly optimistic.
• Limit Break: Noble Phantasms are incorporated into the magic system, usually the one their counterpart has in FGO but not necessarily; here, they can only be used in Third or Final Ascension form, temporary but extremely powerful forms which consume massive amounts of mana and can be unlocked when their weapon reacts to a massive strike in mana or intentionally by focusing said mana really hard, or at their most powerful, with a Grand Quartz.
• Out of Focus: Due to the massive cast, the pilot and scattered “episodes” tend to leave certain characters in the background; the worst victim of this is Palmero, as Palamedes is already the Inner Table knight the author writes about the least even in prequel fics, though Bart, to a lesser extent Garrick and Garett, and even Trevor also tend to be pushed back, and while Shirou is implied to have a major role he still comes across as an auxiliary character at best in the pilot. ^{The tiers of importance} I’d guess the hierarchy of importance/active story relevance overall for the new Round Table would be Main character tier: Saber, A tier: Mash, Lance, Morton, Kai, Ben, possibly Gavin, B tier: possibly Gavin, Percy, Adrian, C tier: Trevor, maybe Garett, possibly Bart, D tier: Everyone else, though I think the focus characters would cycle around to give each attention, with different parties going out doing different things instead of lugging around all 13 plus Shirou and Merlin around constantly.

• The Power of the Sun: Gavin gets Gawain’s ability to grow stronger when the sun is stronger, and his Noble Phantasm is the same, that concentrated solar energy shot out in beam form (or “Solar Beam” as he calls it in a piece of fake concept art as Merlin corrects him, in the “pilot” also comparing his abilities to the ability Chlorophyll, or at least it’s implied since he doesn’t say it outright due to “copyright”).
• Memory-Wiping Crew: While Merlin’s foresight may have been nerfed even more, he’s able to erase memories in this canon in emergencies. Though he doesn’t want to use it too often as it’s apparently really draining on mana. Especially helpful as Saber has no idea how to act natural as Arturia initially, Percy is Percy, Morton hates being told what to do, and most of the rest also have some issues getting into character. Though members of court who aren’t supposed to know still do realize that the king has been acting strangely cheerful lately.
• Original Generation: Excluding the extremely tenuous example of Saber herself, Merlin, Mash, Morgan, Shirou, and sort of Guinevere are the only main cast members who are inherited from Fate. This has been stated to be a major reason why the author doesn’t want to do much with it.
• She Is the King: The Knights are of course all shocked being hit with the information that King Arthur was a woman all along, a bombshell that Merlin just casually drops on them upon being asked how Saber could be a dead ringer for King Arthur when Saber is clearly a girl. Saber herself takes this title, becoming “King Arthur” for the time being as she rules as regent.
• Super Mode: Each Knights’ corresponding weapon, or at maximum charged mana for a more inferior version, can temporarily trigger their Third or Final (with Grand Quartz) Ascension so they are able to access their Noble Phantasm. Kai even compares the Final Ascension to going Super Saiyan after seeing Saber use it for the first time.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: As gags in the “pilot” and snippets of “later episodes” show, no, a modern university girl, no matter how gifted or charismatic or a good speaker she may be, no matter if she’s studying it or no, is not fit to suddenly run a country, especially in the Middle Ages, with all the seriousness and responsibility it entails. As a result, Merlin and other more politically inclined members of court and among the Outer circle knights have to shoulder a lot of the administration as well, also with the plot intention of leaving political intrigue and the like out of the story, though she may get better as the theoretical story goes on.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Saber, what with the whole team captain thing, is clearly more of a tomboy than a girly girl. Unlike the rest of the team who tend to act a lot like their counterparts save for Mash, she even comes across kind of like a downplayed Stock Shōnen Hero. She’s also happy that she’s a king rather than queen or princess, though she does bemoan the misogynistic reasons behind it. However, she also gushes over how she’s basically a Magical Girl now like she had dreamed of becoming as a Sailor Moon fan when she was little, and again fangirls over both how cool and pretty her Battle Ballgown-ermine coat hybrid Final Ascension Phase outfit was after triggering it for the first time, among other things.
• Transformation Trinket: The knights’ signature weapons basically become these as well as a weapon, reacting with the main casts’ Mana Circuits. On top of other abilities like beast summons or Mana Burst (pending), they are able to transform the user into said creature as the Knights become better mages, after which they also change their designs to that of their Second Ascension. Finally, the Grand Quartz basically unlocks their Super Mode.

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