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Not expecting Sylvie's grandfather to look this young 😭 Like, of course, he's not even human... // The Beginning After the End, Ch. 151.

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Return of the Blossoming Blade (Korean: 화산귀환; RR: Hwasangwihwan) is a South Korean web novel written by Biga. It was serialized in Webtoon's digital comic and fiction platform Naver beginning on April 25, 2019. (Source: Wikipedia)

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X 1999 . Rintarou . 1996

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New aoex sticker designs based off of Kato's art for Blue Exorcist's most recent character popularity poll! Gonna add them to my shop next month <3

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Blue Exorcist: All Night Arc Countdown Posters

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The progression of the “Villainess” trope

Y'know, thinking about it, it's very ironic how a trope made to subvert one's expectations & give more depth to 1 dimensional villains in cliche novels by "humanizing" them more & providing their side of the story, eventually became oversaturated with cartoony villains & flat MCs. Thus, completely failing in its goal to "subvert expectations" as it too turned into mind numbing cliche, becoming the exact opposite of what the troupe initially aimed to achieved.

I am talking about "Villainess" series.

I remember seeing a twitter post a while back saying how a lot of the villainess stuff the authors & studios are putting out nowadays lack any sort of nuance when it comes to its characters. And how a lot authors simply switch the roles of the cast (Like: OG MC -> villain | OG villain -> MC) & call it a day. And I 100% agree with that.

This troupe kinda ended up becoming the dictionary definition of the saying, "You either die as a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain” lmao

What could've been an opportunity to write nuanced villains & morally ambiguous main characters, turned EXACTLY into the cliche it was pocking fun at.

In an attempt to reveal how the MCs of your typical cliche novels can also be in the wrong at times, flaws that the story & its (in-canon) fandom may purposefully ignore, the villainess stories ended up doing EXACT SAME thing EXECPT this time it's the "villains" doing it rather than the OG FL or OG ML of the “OG novel”. In an attempt to stop cliche villains from remaining cliche, while we did ended up getting slightly more nuance for the “OG villain” characters, in the process, the OG MCs turned exactly into those flat cliche villains.

Alot of villainess series poke fun at the troupes they themself use, but not in a satirical way.

So many villainess series poke fun at the OG novels for being problematic or stupid & the fandom of said novels basically ignoring its flaws & problems, only gushing over the OG FL. Which yea, is nice & all, but y'know... that's exactly what those villainess series do too. SO MANYY of them borderline have the FLs participating in literal slavery. & More often than not have a borderline colonizer ML. Not to mention the numerous which carry weird undertones of colorism, and many such other things. All the while, the fandom of these villainess series continue to ignore their glaring problems & flaws & instead just gush over the FL and ML.

And I'm not even saying this in a hating sort of way (well, aside from the series with issues of colorism, orientalism, etc). Moreover, this is all not to say that one can not enjoy such stories, because admittedly, there is indeed fun in just reading a simple and familiar story line. But this is all more me being intrigued by this trope’s almost ironic progression as companies rush their staff to produce something which they think will be able to ride the waves of the current trends, only for the vast majority to simply drown in a sea of mediocrity (with many even being canceled due to this)

[Though I mean, something as simple as villainess tropes won’t be the only one to go through this. Like a lot of Shakespearean works, a subversion of the classics & typical troupes back then, got turned into ones of those classics and by many are now considered cliche. And that's just scrapping the bottom of the barrel!]

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ㅤ お  ៸ ៸  take one more chance on me.  

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Can't believe I went from, "Meh, he looks so-so" to "God, he looks majestic" in just one chapter.

Source: The Game that I came From (Tappytoon).

UPDATE: He's getting hotter, what on earth... (The Game that I came From, Ch. 06).

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Ao no Exorcist is a Shonen series written by a woman and it shows

Since the latest chapter, I've been thinking about how several usual Shonen tropes are written rather differently under Kato-sensei's pen. No judgement or anything, it's just cool to observe. Some examples :

1) Rin's mentor is a woman

2) Rin's secret, despite being the MC, was revealed in ch13 to the entire cast, meanwhile Shiemi, The Main Girl, who was introduced to be so helpless is only starting to be explained.

3) Also, the Mysterious plot-relevant Shonen Parent is actually the twins' mother. (Of course Shiro is super plot-relevant too, but Satan is still angsting over Yuri and she's a huge part of the reason why he's the big bad)

4) Rin also changed his view about his future throughout the story: from dropping out of school, passing by hoping to become the Order's Paladin (probably to cope with Shiro's death and also to antagonize Arthur), to finally showing way more interest and potential in the (less epic and heroic in appearance) field of talismanic cooking.

5) When it comes to arcs, mental illness is a valid reason to build a character arc around...

6) And so is making an arc about girls being "cursed" to basically "get married and have children before they hit 30, the age where their beauty fade thus they become useless" :

7) ANE is a story about women becoming traitors to protect their loved ones, like Mamushi

or becoming overwhelmed because men toyed with their feelings like Tamamo

8) Older women can be absolute badasses like Shiemi's grandma

or Lucy.

9) Complicated mother-daughter relationship and girl friendships are given as much focus as complicated father-son relationships and sweet bro friendships (like Bon and his dad during the Kyoto arc, as well as the complicated but deep bond between the Kyoto Trio)

10) And one of my favorites: full time single dad, asking for help to do the job as well as he can and finding his true purpose in life by doing so :D

Hmm and now that I think about it, the only other Shonen series written by a woman I've been as invested in is Kuroshitsuji, by Yana Toboso, and similar examples can be found in it too, namely:

1) If Ciel ever finally admits needing a mentor, his aunt Frances will probably play that role

2) Girls can be super strong & skilled (Elizabeth, Mey Rin) and clever (Sieglinde)

3) (one part of) the Big Bad is a woman (Queen Victoria)

4) maybe Ciel's entire revenge stems from a conflict between Queen Victoria and Ciel's maternal grandmother, Claudia.

5) the Undertaker has been a continuously freaking pain in the ass because he probably fell in love with that same maternal grandmother and couldn't mourn properly

TL;DR we love our boys and their spectacular growth and development under women's pens a.k.a shonen series written by ladies are hella fun to read. :D

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I've got some more chronic Akashi brainrot for y'all...

I had re-watched parts of Last Game not too long and I remember the scene after Team Vorpal Swords won when Riko's dad bought a bunch of snacks and drinks for everyone to celebrate. While eating, Midorima asked Akashi (referring to the haphazard way snacks were spread across the table), "Are you sure you're okay with something so sloppy, Akashi?" And Akashi looked at him and said, "What are you talking about? We used to sit around and celebrate like this in middle school all the time."

It really stuck in my head for a reason I kinda mentioned the other day, when I was talking about Akashi's dynamic with Hayama. I won't explain that entire post, but I was mainly discussing how Hayama is touchy with Akashi but Akashi never minds, and the last sentence of my post regarding that was, "Akashi seems to be very unfazed whenever he's manhandled by his Rakuzan teammates which shows that he was never really that uptight about people touching him to begin with and people just assumed he was". This brings me to the main topic of this post: Akashi Seijuro and the assumptions the KNB cast has about his personality.

As I love to point out on this godforsaken app, Akashi has been done dirty by every adult in his life with the exception of his mother. So much of what went wrong in his 3rd year at Teiko was due to high expectations and the idea that Akashi was not allowed to be anything less than perfect at whatever he did, but at the root of all of this are assumptions.

False assumptions that he was able to handle such a heavy workload. False assumptions that he was ready to be captain in his second year. False assumptions that he was coping with stress well. False assumptions that he wasn't already cracking before he even enrolled in Teiko. He was let down so many times by so many people because people assumed he was okay when he wasn't and hadn't been for YEARS.

And I think it's a big reason as to how and why the rest of the Teiko gang unintentionally isolated Akashi back in middle school. They put Akashi on a pedestal and assumed that there was some sort of invisible barrier between him and the rest of the team. In the same way when, during Last Game, Midorima assumed Akashi would stick his nose up at... eating chips and drinking juice with the homies... everyone has this idea that Akashi is more haughty than he actually is? Akashi isn't haughty at all. In fact, the Replace Plus Chapters highlight the fact that he's the complete opposite. This boy saved a baby in one chapter, and as the mother of the baby profusely thanks him, he says "Anyone could have done that." As if he didn't showcase superhuman reaction time and reflexes by pulling a baby out of a runaway stroller coming down a hill at high speed right before the stroller was obliterated by an oncoming truck. 💀

These assumptions make even less sense when Akashi has already shown people how much he doesn't want to be put on a pedestal. Again, back to the scene in Last Game, Midorima assumed Akashi wouldn't be down for the "sloppy" afterparty, but Akashi had to remind Midorima that they'd already done things like that in middle school. Momoi has cute nicknames for every member of the Teiko gang except Akashi, who she refers to simply as "Akashi-kun". Maybe that was her assuming Akashi would never accept being called by a cute nickname. Never mind the fact that he already was being addressed as "Akashicchi" and "Aka-chin" by Kise and Murasakibara, respectively, and then later was being addressed as "Sei-chan" by Mibuchi. And you can't even argue that she didn't want to make Akashi uncomfortable, because Midorima has outwardly expressed before that he didn't wanna be called "Midorin" but Momoi just kept calling him that.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're shitty friends for doing this. I just think that there was a lack of communication within the Teiko gang, and in an attempt to respect what they assumed were Akashi's boundaries, they unintentionally excluded Akashi from activities that he would absolutely participate in if he had just been given the chance.

This post is long asf so I'll just conclude here, but one of my delusional headcanons for the Teiko gang post-Extra Game is that Akashi becomes more open with them about how he feels and also about wanting to be included in more of their activities, and so he finally gets to experience having a regular hangout with friends like a regular teenager. I just think he deserves that so bad after feeling alone for so many years.

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Hands getting cold, losing feeling is getting old. Was I made from a broken mold? // Billie Eilish, in idontwannabeyouanymore, from her album, don't smile at me (2017).

Source: Kill the Villainess.

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When he is a red flag but I can see him turning into a green flag... or not. Can never be sure with this one.

Source: I Am the Villain, Ch. 58.m

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I want to take them and hide them away from all the ridiculous plot 😭

Source: I Am the Villain, Ch. 57.

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I’m not okay

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— Nipuna Mehta (via @nipsyyy)