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i spent months on this diagram can someone please tell me if this makes sense

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beloved reader

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the preordained salvation

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Sakamoto Days 3rd year art prediction aka there's 4 more kids in the family 😚✨

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Blue lock ask what would change if sae joined blue lock with rin

Hm, I feel like it'd honestly inhibit Rin's growth a lot, especially if they were together in the first selection. Rin would end up relying on Sae too much and probably also tunnel-vision on the whole rivalry business, leaving him completely blind to other teammates, such as Isagi (who's pretty integral to Rin's growth in the U20 arc). Basically, I feel like not a ton would change other than Rin being a much worse player and likely never entering flow in the U20 game. Thanks for the ask anon~~!

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What is your opinion on ryusae

Oopsie sorry for the late reply! But wonderful, a chance to ramble about ryusae! Yeah, they're my favorite blue lock ship and I'm decidedly obsessed with them haha. I'm a sucker for sun/moon, calm/energetic, etc. ships and I feel like they can bring the best out of each other since they're so different. Their canon dynamic is chef's kiss: I adore how explicit Shidou is with his attraction and Sae playing along/kinda playing hard to get even, but if you add speculation and delusions to it it just becomes such a top tier ship. My favorite skrunklies in the show! Thank you anon for the ask~~!

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Chapter 3 of DitJD is out!

10k+ words of ryusae shenanigans lol

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oopsie here's an unsolicited sae analysis post

Too lazy to add photos so you guys are going to have to survive with just text lmao (warning! long post!!!!)

I feel that sae's biggest issue is his relationship with failure. Like every gifted kid expected to perform, sae has no idea how to react when things don't go his way. Unsurprisingly, he's a control freak (rin says himself that the reason sae chose shidou is because he'd be able to control a "demon" nobody else could) so things always *have* to go his way, and when they don't, he kinda bluescreens almost.

The earliest form of sae failing to accept losses or just being wrong in general is when rin and sae are eating ice cream together. Rin wins and sae loses, but sae instead turns it into rin "losing" and sae "winning" by telling rin that he shouldn't waste his luck on something like that. Yet, it's clear in sae's initial reaction of disgust upon seeing the losing result that he doesn't truly believe that. He just hates losing *that* much and is a stubborn bitch so he then proceeds to never correct this belief over the course of literal years. Sae cannot in any way shape or form accept defeat and grow from it. He is almost like the opposite of isagi. He cannot consolidate and adapt.

Delusion time for a moment: there is kinda no basis for this interpretation, but i feel that the ice cream scene can be applied to sae and rin themselves. What i mean by that is, i believe rin is actually more talented than sae. Some circumstantial evidence for this includes: rin's very first play/moment on the field is him pulling off honestly a crazy move for a toddler who's never played. The smoke effect that represents ego is immediately present as well. Additionally, sae's egoist bible profile includes that he asked santa to show him his yet discovered talent, which then can be interpreted as sae believing he doesn't have talent (vs. rin who does). Or, it could just be sae joking lmao he's a pretty funny dude after all.

Basically, when looking at the itoshi flashback through this lense, a lot of moments are recontextualized. Sae immediately approaches rin after rin first plays and says he'll be the best *after* sae, almost as to reign in rin's talent so he never dreams something beyond what his brother can do. His cruelties could possibly stem from jealousy.

Sae is forced to contend with immense pressure from all around him while rin can mostly play carefree. Sae is japan's greatest treasure and therefore must perform for the sake of his entire country. Rin just obeys his instincts as a child and everything works out. He even mentions after sae leaves for spain that without sae, soccer is restricting essentially because sae paved a path for rin and took on that "restrictiveness" upon himself. So two things rin has that sae doesn't: talent and freedom. This obviously worsens after the spain trip.

(quick aside: cannot believe sae was sent to a foreign country alone that does not 100% love accommodating foreigners for FOUR YEARS. AS AN ADOLESCENT. LIKE THOSE ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT YEARS.)

Now we return to the point of sae being unable to accept failure and such. Unlike what we have seen from the blue lock boys, being faced with the world makes sae cower and fail himself before the world does. He deems being the best striker impossible and switches to midfielder without really trying his absolute hardest in order to become the best. Unable to learn and grow from failure and unable to accept a loss, sae basically self sabotages when he changes his dream. Once again though, sae's stubborn as shit, so when he changes his dream he goes all in on it.

Even still, when sae returns he isn't 100% on the idea. He goes to see rin, likely the first person he sought out after returning, basically just for some validation. After 4 years of being valued for nothing other than soccer, i feel that sae probably just wanted comfort from his brother that isn't really connected to soccer. Rin then proceeds to reject sae's new dream and boom every resentment bottled up between the two explodes.

When sae plays rin, his goal *is* to crush rin's dream like his own was. He desperately wants to prove to himself that his choice to change wasn't wrong by showing up rin, his "more talented" brother. He wins, but isn't happy about it at all.

I think we all know that sae doesn't literally mean what he says when he then tells rin to quit. A lot of it is projection and defense mechanisms. But once again, he cannot accept defeat or admit to wrong doing so he doesn't. And then, again, the stubbornness comes back to prevent him from changing later down the line. Sae still loves rin of course and watches over him in his own way (watch sae's reactions to rin during the u20 match for proof of this), but yeah. Older sibling moment!!! He is never wrong :)))))

lmao okay that's it thanks for reading!! remember sae did nothing wrong <333 (delusional)

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soooooo guess what I did lmao

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Given that Blue Lock is an in-universe reality show with (apparently) millions of worldwide fans, that implies the theoretical existence of a Blue Lock fandom and, by extension, Blue Lock fanfic.

What kind of mischaracterisations do you think in-universe fans have of the various members of Blue Lock? Which ships would be popular? This is an rpf situation so what sort of drama goes on surrounding the very existence of bllk fanfic? Does the fandom have pockets which behave like other rpf fandoms such as Kpop and streamers? How much does Reddit fucking hate the stans? I NEED ANSWERS!!!!!

Firstly, the fandoms tagged in fics would be a mix of: Football RPF — all media types, Blue Lock (Football RPF), Neo Egoist League (Football RPF) and BLTV (Football RPF).

Common fandom-specific tags include: ‘Referenced Professional Footballers’, ‘No Beta We Die Like Kunigami Rensuke’s Ratings’, ‘Not Safe For Ego Jinpachi’s eyes’ and ‘Author Uses Football Not Soccer’.

Platonic relationships are pretty common in the fandom, with the most popular ones being ‘Michael Kaiser & Alexis Ness’, ‘Meguru Bachira & Lavinho’, ‘Yoichi Isagi & Noel Noa’ and ‘Yoichi Isagi & Rensuke Kunigami’.

Personally I think the most popular ships (as of right now) would be Kaisagi, Kainess, Reonagi and Ryurin. Bachisagi would be practically nonexistent because fans wouldn’t have seen them interact much. Only old fans know they were basically unstoppable together during the U-20 match. Most fans joined during the NEL, after the show started streaming.

Noel Noa gets shipped with Lavinho but only because he’s always the dad in fics who needs emotional support. In these fics, Isagi and Bachira are always the gremlin step brothers who scheme their not-dads into getting together.

There’s a ship war going on between the kaisagi and the kainess shippers. There’s also a third party which is against real-person shipping but is fine with rpf in general so Bastard Munchen for them is a hodge-podge, falling apart at the seams found family trope. The same goes for all the other teams but the Bastard Family TM is the most popular one.

 THERE ARE SO MANY FOUND FAMILY AUs. Popular tags include: “Noel Noa Is A Tired Dad”, “Isagi And Kunigami Are Brothers”, “Kaiser Is The Rich Cousin” and “They’re A Family Of Bastards Your Honour”.

There’s definitely fandom drama around the ethics of reading and writing fanfic. General consensus seems to end up being that non-ship fics are technically fine. Shippers still do their thing though because they’re impossible to get rid of.

The fandom ‘cinnamon rolls’ are definitely Bachira and Ness. Ness especially get mischaracterised as an ‘innocent, fragile flower’ that Kaiser has to protect. Bachira is most;y just characterised as Lavinho’s protege who is a happy lil sunshine with no flaws. Nagi also nearly falls into the ‘cinnamon roll’ category because he’s quiet and gives off ‘uwu’ energy (according to his stans) but slightly less so.

Rin gets the most x readers written about him. He beats everyone else except maybe Kunigami, who is a close second. They’re always characterised as the ‘bad boys’ and are the kings of Wattpad.

Sae gets inserted into Rin fics all the time purely because they’re brothers. Because he doesn’t appear in the NEL, his fandom interpretation is COMPLETELY off. Fans have basically turned him into a completely new, fictional character, he’s that different. He’s always dating Shidou though — Ryusae is a rare ‘it’s probably okay to ship this’ ship because literally everyone is convinced they’re actually dating irl.

If Kaiser is in the fic, his tattoo is usually brought up either as some kind of trauma-related thing or, in fantasy AUs, as a cursed mark. Fans have written whole ass essays about the symbolic meaning of his tattoo and how it can relate to fics.

Some of the more popular fics in the fandom, by kudos, include:

the obligatory fantasy AU where all the teams are kingdoms — 240k words, major character death, hurt no comfort (one of the fandom’s ‘cinnamon rolls’ dies in the third act).

the obligatory university/college AU where for some reason the university uses the US system despite none of the characters being American, each team is a different frat house and the fic is 25/? chapters, 32k words.

A Fluff And Angst, completely unrealistic found family “they all live in one house” fic where Noa adopts Isagi and it’s tooth-rottingly sweet but it’s clear that the author has been through some shit and is drawing from personal experience when writing. All the kids from Blue Lock and Bastard Munchen are like 10 years old. Noa is shipped with Lavinho and people choose to either ignore it and enjoy the fluff or are active shippers — 56k words, 19/22 chapters, hurt/comfort, implied/referenced child abuse, Noel Noa Is A Tired Dad.

Several one-shots involving the ‘brothers/cousins’ Isagi, Kunigami, Kaiser and Ness all doing random shit together. Usually the fics are either from Isagi or Kaiser’s perspective and you can tell which authors prefer the Blue Lockers and which ones prefer the German players — usually 3-6k words each.

A long-distance relationship Kaisagi AU named after a Glass Animals song that gets so popular it crashes AO3 twice- (sry I’ll stop, that would be rancid).

A Manshine City found family AU where Reo and Nagi are characterised as brothers to the nth degree, Chigiri is the golden child and Chris Prince is the uncle who didn’t want to take them in but had to and slowly grows to love them as if they were his own kids. The grown-up mentors all have weekly brunch down at the local diner where they talk like gossiping aunts — 19k words, 5/? chapters, Manshine Triplets, Reo And Nagi Are Twins, Chigiri is also there tho!!! Give Chris Prince A Break.

The aforementioned AU where Bachira and Isagi trick their not-dads into getting together — 16k words, 4/10 chapters, Fluff And Angst, Slow Burn.

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Definitely in the Job Description Chapter 2

Boo the second chap of my ryusae centric isagi harem fic is here! ~6k

LMAO girl forgor the link, here it is! https://archiveofourown.org/works/45135364/chapters/117223372

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them drawing each other except shidou is really good and sae is super shit!!

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hehe...... women................. (designs inspired by cabbagelover213)

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(Late) Entry for Vashwood week day 1: Smoke

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Some future hair style concepts!

A couple of notes on the designs:

Isagi has the exact same hair style because honestly he'd probably not change at all

Rin's is slightly shorter and less in his face because he would probably get over being insanely emo eventually

I wasn't positive that Nagi would have long hair but I wanted at least one of them to have super long hair so Nagi it was

Reo's the one who puts up Nagi's hair every day

And Reo's hair style is inspired by Mikey's in Manila/Bonten

[a-wild-julibean]

Blue Lock Is Well Written, Actually (Part 1)

All Blue Lock fans know that this series is over the top, ridiculous, and completely unrealistic--we don't need to be told that. In fact, for me at least, the stupidly cringy dialogue, the extreme situations, the over exaggeration of it all is what makes this silly little series so enjoyable and fun. But I'm here to tell you that yeah, BLLK is good because it's cringe and dramatic, but it's also a well written series in multiple key aspects, the most important of which are its pacing/story structure, theming, and of course, character writing.

Warning: This is going to be long and is also text heavy. This is part one, covering pacing/story structure. Also, this is my opinion haha so you don't have to 100% agree. Spoilers ahead!

Let's begin with the pacing of the story! One thing I admire writers of all good stories for, from "trashy" isekai to million word philosophical novels, is the ability to identify the goal of the story and pace it accordingly.

Take Solo Leveling vs. Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, two action manhwa that both use an RPG-themed setting and have a very strong main character:

Solo Leveling's goal is the be an exciting and hype action power fantasy about an underdog who grows to become grossly overpowered.

Knowing this, the story is extremely fast paced, going from one major battle and victory to the next with little to no downtime. This helps to deliver the energy needed for a series that lives and dies on its hype. 

In contrast, ORV looks more to tell a thematically potent story through complex characters. To do so, it chooses a slow burn pace and gives plenty of time for less frantic moments to aid development. Switch these two paces around and both stories would be far worse off.

Let’s bring this point back to BLLK. Its goal is an exciting story full of hype, but also one that provides some thematic lessons and builds strong characters, a sort of middle ground between the two previously mentioned series. Thus, it’s face paced, yet also has much down time–a choice that is vital to its enjoyment.

Down time provides two key things to the series:

A break from the action. Too much action can lead to almost a feeling of burnout in the reader, where they feel overwhelmed by the constant high stakes and tension. I personally have had to drop multiple series for long periods of time due to this type of stress/exhaustion. The break helps to build excitement between high points, the rising action after the fall. A recent example in BLLK would be the couple of chapters in between the end of the Manshine City vs. Bastard Munchen match and the beginning of the one against Ubers.

Exploration of characters. Exploring how characters act in more mundane situations helps build who they are and adds to their humanity. Small choices like their choice of dress, what they like to do in their free time, and other such details are imperative to creating compelling characters. Down time is also the perfect time for flashbacks, as seen often in BLLK (ex. Rin and Sae’s backstory in the middle of the U20 game, Hiyori’s right before the Ubers game). 

All in all, though readers might think getting straight back into the action would be their preferred structure, down time is a kinda “you’ll thank me later” type addition that enhances the action by both preparing readers for more excitement and helping to make readers more invested through character development.

It’s a bit of an obvious addition, but one that BLLK actually uses very well. None of the down time ever feels wasted or out of nowhere. Every flashback is implied to be needed based on previous moments. Rin and Sae’s isn’t dropped right after Rin is introduced or even after Isagi gets closer to Rin. Instead, it’s inserted when it's most important to the story so its existence can be justified. Hiyori’s flashback has much less leading up to its reveal, but Hiyori’s commentary on Isagi reveals some of his character that gets followed up on in his flashback; the flashback also gives some excitement for what Hiyori might do in the future. 

Again, this feels like an obvious requirement for writing flashbacks but oh boy is it sometimes completely disregarded (and in two very popular series that I shall not name but both essentially contain a long flashback about a side character’s history that is not set up very clearly beforehand, leaving them feeling awkwardly placed and accidentally pointing out the author’s hand).

The other way BLLK uses down time is character exploration, the clearest example of which are the day out chapters following the U20 match. Did we absolutely need to see the cast’s shenanigans at karaoke and bowling? No. Did it add much to the story to love? Absolutely. 

This was actually a very vital time to place some silly team bonding, as a ton of new characters were introduced in the arc, but only through their playstyles. Giving them time out in the city as regular teenagers helps to cement their characters and add some quirky habits and traits that are more relatable or down to earth. Karasu, for example, is now characterized as the mature and responsible one in the group and not just “the assassin one I guess.”

On top of the fun stuff, we also do get some character introspection during the days out for Isagi and Rin. Isagi meets up with Tada and reflects on what’s happened so far plus goes into a bit of theming while Rin contemplates the U20 match, and narratively, his further growth in the story is set up. Clearly, the author knows that down time is not exclusively for sweet fluff. 

That’s basically all I got on down time writing. Finally, to wrap up this post on pacing and structure, let’s talk about stakes and promises for the future. 

Stakes in stories need to keep increasing or at least remain generally equivalent to the previous situation’s stakes in order to keep interest. In BLLK, the stakes in stages 1, 2, and 3 were essentially equivalent as they were all just normal tests; however, the U20 match is a large jump in stakes as a loss means the total dissolution of the facility, but a win would give them the U20 spots. 

If the series had returned to regular tests after the match, it would not have felt as interesting as before the match because now the readers have been encouraged to dream beyond the facility. However, the author knows this and chooses to go with the Neo Egoist league, bringing out world class strikers and foreign players. Sure, losing a match won’t cause the entire story to end now, but the difficulty and excitement of the current arc is about the same as the U20 arc.  

On top of the current arc, the author also makes sure to state what the future plans of the story are: the world U20 tournament. By showing the audience what the path to something vague is, the plot is tightened and you can feel comforted by the fact that the series knows where it's going. “Becoming the best striker in the world” seems unrealistic at first, but now the steps to reach that position have been revealed. Together, this retains audience investment.

To summarize, Blue Lock keeps a fast pace, strategically interspersed by points of down time that prevent tension burnout and add more character details. Additionally, the stakes and future plan of the series are consistently building and clear to help ground its vague goal. Though these aspects may seem obvious or simple, the difficulty of their execution is not so. It requires planning and effort to keep a series on a smooth ramp up and going at a quick but not blazing speed. Many, many, many series can only dream of the quality of Blue Lock’s steady pacing that almost never feels too slow or too fast, especially when read all at once rather than week to week. 

Pacing and structure are some of the aspects of writing that are at their best when you can barely notice their presence at all: only a series that struggles with them will remind readers of their existence and importance. Blue Lock succeeds at keeping both under the radar.

[a-wild-julibean]

dance with writer, protagonist, knight, & incarnation! (old twitter ver 1 2 3 4)