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rambling-abyss · 11 months ago

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So Regarding the Heroine in a Villainess Iskeai Story.

*note if a series has an official English title that's what I use for no other reason then it's easier for me to remember

enjoy!

A thought that has come into my head recently. And as the title of this suggests it’s something related to the heroine in a villainess iskeai story. Now bare in mind this isn’t super deep dive into the trope. More like a simple observation I’ve come to make after years of reading a certain niche. And that little corner I figured this out was female lead iskeai and iskeai adjacent stories. Usually the setting of a medieval kind about noble ladies living life in noble society sometimes doing things sometimes nothing at all.

I’ve read many those of stories in both manhwa and manga form over years. Can’t say I am expert on this niche topic. In fact a major backbone of the this niche being Otome games is something I very lacking with experience and information. Cultural osmosis from reading this stuff(as well as some interesting YT channels that cover the subject) do I even have a clue to what that’s all about. But that is unrelated to what I am going to talk about. as that’s for someone a bit more versed into those to deep dive into how they formed the backbone of this little genre.

So what exactly about the Heroine I am going to talk about. To put it bluntly how a story uses them is a big factor in deterring the quality of a Villainess story. If they total ignored or missed used then they is a high change that Villainess story is going to kinda of stinky. While the ones that bother to use them to any degree worth something will not come out as smelly. Wow the a story’s use of idea will determine the quality of it is mind blowing right! In this 15 hour video that just recaps episodes of Save by the Bell scene by scene I’ll blow even more of your brain until it’s just a stock.

Joking aside I am going to attempt to make a point about this. To the best of my rambling abyss ability. I will using the two series that made realize this to help make my point as well as use others that can help with. So the two series are

The 6th Loop: I'm Finally Free of Auto Mode in this Otome Game

And

The One Within the Villainess

Because both are a bit of a mouthful to type and to help with brevity. They will be shorten to 6th Loop and OWV respectively. Now this pair are total opposites of this spectrum. And they both end up hitting home of asking the question of just what is the point of having a Villainess story. A Question that only a writer trying to come up with one would ponder. This question only came to me because I’ve read large swathes of them ranging from the good, the bad, and the just plain mediocre. However with the two example I’ll be using I’ll mostly be focusing on a major linchpin for this kind of story. It which is oh so obviously reference in the title of this

Let’s start off with 6th Loop. The Villainess of this story is a poor girl focused to live though a total complete playthrough of a Otomo game. Five lives of misery only able to be observer watching your body reach it’s inevitable doom. Not a bad way to start off a series. It give the reader a good idea of why the lead know the contents of the game so well as well as give them a solid idea to why the lead wants to not walk down the path of the villainess. So what about the heroine then? A faceless specter of the future that were told is important. But once you’ve past the finish line and look back. She’s nothing more then a minor foot in the set up.

Now with OWV it’s a story that asks the question what exactly happens to the original villainess when a Iskeaier posses they body. Well the end up a observer watching the life the otherwolder is now making of their body do. And while watching his somewhat typical iskeai villainess story about a girl wanting the best outcome for everybody. The villainess gets as charmed as the various male leads the girl is helping. And it gets to a point where out villainess see her poser as a someone very important to her. the endless kindness and sincerity not lost on her. But were dose the Heroine matter in this. Well it’s simple thanks to her shameless selfishness the Villainess is forced to surface and the real story begins. And the craziest part is the heroine never 100% vanishes beyond the set up.

What these two examples make me realize is just how important a The Heroine is to a story about a Villainess. And that a total disregard of them misses the entire point of a story of this kind. Robin Hood can’t be Robin Hood without at someone like Prince John around. This doesn’t mean the Heroine has be the bad guy of the story. Not all the time. My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom is a foundational series for this niche. And the heroine is the best friend(and some might even part of the bisexual harem) of the lead. She still a very important character. And a lot of lesser series tent to forgot how important that element is.

6th loop is a one of those lesser series and one that’s been stuck in the back of my head as I pondered about this niche. Not because it’s a uniquely bad one. It’s a painfully mediocre and very unoffensive read. It’s something that you’d have to a back of the dumpster licking freak like me to really remember it. and even then I could forgive for you for forgetting about it or even mistaking for another and much better series by the name alone. But why its sticked was that might be a near perfect example of a generic store brand Iskeai Villain story.

A mostly uneventful story about well-meaning girl trying to stop the bad ends that await her. Maybe even find someone that loves them for who they are along. Maybe make some real friends and overcome whatever personal problems that keep her living her best life. Having all that to the maybe lead up to the happy end she wants. I don’t know it man it kind of just ends with a implied flashes of the future after a bizarre reveal that felt out place for what it going for. really felt like they should have been a bit more after that. But it didn’t get that more. Not a uncommon thing to happen to the shorter of the this niche.

But minor digression aside, 6th loop really falls into a lot of stereotypes and cliches trappings. That a lot of lesser ViS heavily relay on without really adding much else to it. I am not among those unreasonable assholes that think cliches are remnants of Satan’s left nut. As long as I don’t have a truly terrible time, I can be pretty forgiving. And as proud member of the Bragin Bin Divers Elite. It takes a lot to really offended. Btw Redo of Healer is probably the most famous work in Iskeai that managed to limbo under such a low bar I set.

By now you wondering how OWV counterpoints this? And if that’s the impression I give then I am sorry. Cause really what makes its work is because it’s use of cliches. It’s just that it’s use of it’s twist to the formula that helps it come together. And that twist use an element that is often overlooked in ViSes. It makes full use of it’s idea to help make the base for a compelling story. And hell that idea also leaves room for some interesting implications.

That’s the most frustrating part about 6th Loop it dose have a solid base for itself. A story about the fears of control and assumptions is in there. But the feeling a creeping disinterest in the own story it wants to tell just hurts it. Doesn’t matter nothing was done wrong on a technical level. It’s still a D+, see me after class.

So where dose the heroine really matter in this. Well it’s shorthand way to give you an idea if the author wants to really engage the story they telling or not in this hyper specific niche. Of course it not going to perfect. A writer worth their salt can make you forget about the heroine exists at all in a Villainess’ tales. I am just saying if you going to bother to have one present use it. Cause more times then not it’s only one in a conga line of mistakes made. It’s also the most obvious trope to spot when causally reading something. You’d be amazed how consistent it was that a not-so-great ViS just toss aside the heroine.

However I am really not going to fault creatives behind those duds. Yeah I’ll critic they work until I lose interest in it. But a lot of the stinkers are the results of the great and unstoppable CONENT MACHINE™!!!! A terrible beast made of unforgiving deadlines, sometimes little to no real help from editorial. And because the machine deems more and more a lot of inexperienced talent get a chance on the market as pro because they quickly throw together a comic like these. Can’t give them too much crap for that. Mostly because those ones tend to not last long.

Remember the Iskeai Boom from a sometime ago(maybe) was more then just male power fantasy about get many bitches. Some authors used it as excuse to write the pulp fantasy stories that always wanted to do. and I respect that. However, I’d say that machines have since calmed down a bit in recent. Now that the genre has made itself audience. Hopefully all those dud makers are doing fine these day and have learn the experience and have grown as artist.

Recently I’ve been watching this game reviewer/cook guide guy where every video he said to a nauseating level. Art isn’t content. While I don’t disagree with this remark at any level. Content and Art aren’t totally inseparable, however. Because of how our current society works sometimes art is made for the need of content. And artist the try hards they be sometimes do their best with whatever limitations are strapped on them.

I definitely wouldn’t have notice the trend if it wasn’t for the machine. I do think the trend wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn't for the machine else. Or at the very least amplify it. I guess this part me bitching about something notice because I’ve read too much of one kind of thing. And the other part is me bitching about the content machine™ again.

But really its me asking writers to not forgot an important elements that make your premise your premise. Writing is hard I know. But you’ll have better idea of what you really want to do if all your pieces are in front of ya

Got Ghosted for Errand Boy Position

Abyss

#A Ramble #writing #villainess isekai #The Heroine #write up #the 6th loop #the one within the villainess #opinion piece #nitpick

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rambling-abyss · 11 months ago

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Battler/Kinzo/Projection

Battler’s narrative assault & sexualization is pretty interesting to me as an inversion of sexed roles, so I’ve decided to refine and paste some of my thoughts on it, beginning with Yasu-trice. Battler repeatedly has Kinzo’s (amatory) role projected onto him, both by Piece-Beatrice directly and Yasu’s authorial insinuations. (I won’t incorporate Meta-Beatrice into this analysis for a few reasons, the main being that I don’t think she is Yasu in the same sense as the others; secondarily that she is so gratuitous in her assaults and references that it would be nonsensical to lend any nuance to it. Plus, her indiscriminate performance in the earlier episodes is what sets up such a divergence later on)

I. Episode 4

Gameboard events are a requisite to understanding the skeleton of the stories that we’re actually being shown. Given the nebulous nature of the Meta and what it represents, a tale created and decorated in-universe in an attempt to communicate is generally more useful in viewing its subjects. On that note, the end of Episode 4 is a scarce instance where we are given a physical interaction between Piece-Beatrice and Battler. As Battler stands before the balcony denying her riddles and threatening her, Beatrice doubles down on her stern insistence regarding ‘testing’ him as the Successor, yet engages in innuendo the second he attempts to physically approach her. This presents a noticeable incongruence between Beatrice’s projected mythos and Piece-Beatrice as played by Yasu. She is physically distant, reading as almost shy. She’s stepped down from being an active harasser, instead functioning passively and reactively, ungracefully shifting between goals for the conversation. She is clearly very alienated from an autonomous sense of eroticism, which is why she instead endeavors to lure it out of him (despite her performative disdain). Her drunken sexuality is framed in relation to what she thinks hides ‘within’ Battler; her musings are based on the assumptions regarding <The Head>. She arrogantly asserts that her superficial form is his type, making sure to paint it as a shallow preference she’s pinpointed. (However even this is something she already knows as a fact, erasing any chance of the ‘unpredictable roulette’ she seems to exalt. She has little real confidence in her desirability, and even less in her ability to make him remember his sin)

She continues her attempt at testing his resolve, presenting herself for her ‘new master’ to own her flesh and soul as furniture, victimize her into surrender, and, crucially, remind her of Kinzo. Because that’s what Battler is to her: a reincarnation of Kinzo, carrying his spirit and blood most strongly. And how could he be anything else? Yasu is ‘Beatrice’ incarnate, her predecessors being both swept away and brutally betrayed by Kinzo, and by virtue of Battler’s failed promise, he has done the same. Her conflict arises here: her love for Battler meshing with her repulsion towards Kinzo, and her inability to reconcile them as full people. The same assumptions about Kinzo’s relationship to preceding Beatrices that traumatize her into hatred are simultaneously twisted into a romanticized ideal, and she is continually unable to conceive of her relationships without paralleling these identities and dynamics she’s latched onto. She is an ancestral fatalist, resigning not only autonomy within her own life but puppeting her relatives’ souls as her own. They cannot sleep peacefully as themselves, and neither can an unadulterated Battler. Beatrice indirectly castigates Battler (or her idea of him blurred into Kinzo) through her earlier ramblings on the nature of love-as-lust and the cage of flesh, but later turns around and flirts with the ideas, even going as far as writing her piece to romance Kinzo directly, despite knowing she’s caricaturing her own mother’s harrowing circumstances.

II. Message-Bottle Furniture

Lovelessly—or, perhaps, in a twisted abundance of love—Yasu’s message bottles distort Battler’s entire character into something alien in his six-year absence. This is what it means for new truths to triumph over old truths. Battler, the boy who left his own family due to his indignation over infidelity and who sought the heart in every story, is suddenly a perverted beast. He is a vapid womanizer like his father and an exploiter of status and naïveté like his grandfather. Beyond his will, parodied projections of his profanity are exposed within the message bottles, existing to cement his sin as irredeemable. I believe this is both a semi-conscious self-justification on Yasu’s part (cutting out the moral ambiguity of him simply forgetting) and a way to cope with her own undesirability (by manufacturing a more ‘active’ sin, one that would require Battler to care in the first place).

(…Side Note: I like how the attempted grope of Shannon in EP1 encompasses both this hostile projection and a dance around the desire to be discovered… [Fake breasts]. It adds another layer of selfish assumption to her narrative: he was always a piece. He doesn’t solve the epitaph and he doesn’t remember her because he never had the chance.)

To reiterate, his character is degraded and he is manipulated as a plot device within the message bottles. The narrative hinges on his existence, yet he has little room to move—In fact, his actual presence is hardly necessary. He committed a sin that permanently scarred someone, and he cannot apologize. The victim no longer exists. Battler, as a concept, constitutes a motive for murder. In his absence, he is a myth.

Remind you of anyone else?

III. Kuwatrice-Kinzo / Chick Beatrice-BATTLER

This parallel creates an interesting issue. The line of descendant/reincarnation is blurred and there’s an explicitly incestuous tone, but it quickly becomes more of a foil than a mirror. Kinzo’s idea of reincarnation is pure delusion, Battler rejects it despite it being true; Kinzo is affectionately dominating, Battler is cold; Kinzo rejects his status as a father, Battler grows to accept it.

So, Kinzo’s role is subverted. This should be a good thing, right?

It isn’t. At least, not to the judge of sin.

Chick-Beatrice is not a new creation; this is a glimpse of the Beatrice that first adopted Shannon’s bud of love for Battler six years prior. At this point, ‘Beatrice’ was still individuated. She wasn’t yet mutated by the legend of the witch, the solving of the epitaph, or, arguably, her Battler-desirability complex. This, I assert, is the closest we see to a pure ‘Yasu’ in later years, as the remainder of her true self that resided in Shannon had already been compartmentalized by that point. This is why Dawn is so tragic. Battler has allegedly solved her heart, yet even in his ‘enlightenment’ he is dismissive of her. To the first-time viewer, this rejection is bittersweet: he is waiting for the ‘real’ her to return. Issue is, that is the real her. This is the ‘Shannon’ he knew, before she was twisted into a sadistic amalgam of escapist fantasies dressed up with his desires. By all rights, Chick should align much more with the ‘Shannon’ that loved Battler. The dutiful “blindness of a girl in love,” willing to wait a century to be noticed. But he doesn’t understand that, bemoaning being too late while literally being thrusted another chance to do it right. Of course this chance doesn’t apply to reality, but it never did. He was already facing a postmortem trial for his failure in life, and the end of Meta-Beatrice marks his failure in death.

Battler is fated to only ever have a paternalistic, sympathetic affection towards Chick. Even after learning the truth, it will always be Beatrice that he loves. As much is clear in his Twilight gameboard. He recognizes Yasu as a vessel, but she’s virtually indistinguishable from Piece-Beato, an actor serving as the means for the illusion and providing a sympathetic backstory. Ange was right—there’s no point in having someone love in your place.

Regardless, Battler is himself. If he’d only inherited enough of Kinzo’s blood, maybe he could have loved all ‘iterations’ passionately and indiscriminately. Kinzo fabricated connections out of nothing, he ‘understood’ the reincarnated soul, and he was willing to die before he let her escape. His overbearing, cloying affection had a certainty that I believe Yasu envied, in a way. To be kidnapped and caged forever would be morbidly romantic, to her at least. How tragically ironic that the fatalist who desired to be carried away ended up having to orchestrate the game of love&communication herself…

IV. The Head

Aside from what I’ve mentioned, Yasu has a final, strikingly obvious reason to project Kinzo onto Battler: deflection.

Yasu is a disastrous parallel to Kinzo. They share the disturbing quality of willpower exceeding their body, a flippancy regarding life and death, living in spite of frailty. They are born with and die with nothing. She too dances with the magic of the roulette, staking fate on a miracle. She too ‘met’ Beatrice as an attempt at severing her regrets in life; she too summoned the Golden Witch and received a fortune at the cost of her soul; she too felt blessed and mocked by the myth of Beatrice, after wandering half-dead in a life that was not her own. A life in which she had been suddenly given power as a prank of fate, with the included (mis)fortune of polydactyly. They were each forced to endure Endlessness, awaiting the revival of love that may never come, desperately discarding their dignity for the sake of resurrection. The epitaph chooses both Kinzo’s and Beatrice’s successor. To ‘see’ is to answer the riddle. Just as Kinzo did to ‘Beatrice,’ Yasu has sewn the Ushiromiyas’ souls onto the island with magic, allowing them neither power nor form. Both are vulnerable kings protected by their own castles, refusing to speak the truth. Their massive wealth will be distributed, but the secret tales die with them.

Yasu was afforded unbelievable power by solving the epitaph, but it ended up destroying her with knowledge she did not want. She was given the reasoning that kills love. Upon the horrific discovery that her romantic feelings not only couldn’t be consummated but were incestuous as well, it is almost certain that she would feel the same repulsion towards herself as Kinzo. From that moment, she too was lying about the true nature of her relationships with the ones she loved. She too could not curb her affection or fear in time to tell the truth. There is no path she can make for herself, as she cannot live independently of projected roles. Incapable of individuating herself from Kinzo with self-identity, the logical conclusion is to invert the roles and make herself Beatrice, and more importantly, Battler Kinzo. Then, she must pray for the miracle that someone would come and solve the epitaph, taking back the role she was so haunted by and carrying her to a better life…

#umineko spoilers #umineko #A interesting read

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