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stupids

inspo

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God I love Apothecary Diaries. Maomao is like a dog with a mouth full of Lego bricks to me. Babygirl don’t eat that

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optimal positions for men to be in:

on their knees begging you for forgiveness for slights (real or perceived)

kneeling like you're the last good thing in the world and they're going to devote themselves to you forever

beneath/under you

yearner3000 watching you from across the room because they can't bring themselves to come any closer nor can they stay far away

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more wakamari

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maomao's side of the dynamic vs jinshi's side

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We really went from maomao freezing up and getting annoyed from jinshi even being around and touching her to her casually accepting him sleeping on her lap as he held onto her

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the madam watching jinshi and maomao yesterday was literally the entire jinmao fandom.

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how it started...

how it ends.

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maomao is my favorite "not like other girls" style protagonist bc for one shes a girls girl through and through. to the bone. and two she's just a weird little freak. absolute lunatic. they have the whole "omg she's actually beautiful and everyone falls for her when she's all made up" trope but the punchline is that she does not fucking want to look like that. she actively puts dirt on her face every day bc she does not want to be perceived as attractive (mostly out of fear of being used for sex work though at the same time she has the utmost respect for women who do sex work like she grew up in a brothel those are her sisters). she's Sherlock level smart and solves every mystery so fast but goes "well thats none of my business. anyway back to testing poisons on myself" she has the 2nd most powerful guy in the nation head over heels in love with her and is like "man this guy is weird around me what's his deal. I guess he's fine though because he gives me rare medicines and has no dick" fucking ICON i love her. also she once slapped someone so hard they fell on the floor. 10/10

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maomao and jinshi are so barbie and ken coded bcs maomao has a great day every day but jinshi only has a great day if maomao looks at him send tweet

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the love language of hairpins 💔

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love is so wonderfully portrayed in the apothecary diaries. it's one of my favourite features of the story alongside it's ability to portray humanity incredibly well. maomao growing up in an environment where she was loved by many but at the same time left alone for a long time, left her with a sense of hyper independence and compartmentalisation. coupled with courtesan work and her perception of love from men is unconsciously biased as transactional - it's why she has trouble connecting with jinshi, despite them bonding on their shared internal struggles.

shisui/loulan is an even more interesting case. even from when before she was conceived, love was something to take, to barter and to fight for. it was never unconditional, never presented with a warm hug but instead harsh screams and the burn of scalding water. what results is a highly perceptive and incredibly intelligent person, but ultimately crippled by the not-so-gilded cage they were born in. both her and maomao are devastatingly similar in how they treat their parents. both have neglectful parents, powerful in their positions but cowards and incompetent in actually parenting. both detach themselves from their parents, and yet, do things for them anyway because of their deep understanding. maomao danced, wore makeup and a dress just for her parent's marriage, shisui scratched jinshi and apologised to her mother despite having the full right to say fuck you and walk away. the only difference is that while maomao was neglected and forced to grow up quickly, shisui was repressed and beaten into a doll. we see this sweet girl bound to the cruelest of monsters and it created a vast dissonance in both her cognitive ability and her identity. the longer you wear a mask the harder it is to take off.

don't even get me STARTED on shisou. his love was pure and true, which in most stories, is a good thing, and yet it only resulted in the enabling of shenmei's horrible acts and the ignorance of his own daughters, one who was being treated worse than an animal and another a living doll. as shisui said, tanukis are cunning only because they are timid. they have no other choice than to outsmart their opponents. but in the end, no amount of planning will trump cowardice.

tldr, the story does a brilliant fucking job at showing the ugly and twisted facets of love that act both as shackles and wings.

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Maomao: If I had a nickel for every beautiful noble with purple hair, surprisingly attractive bodies, eccentric personalities and deep parental issues, who are pretending to be someone way below their class, who gave me hair ties and are deeply in love with me I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it is weird that it happened twice.

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The way shisui wanted the last her sister saw of her to be her smiling.. I’m not ok

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The Roof Dance: Maomao vs. Shisui

(Spoilers) While I don’t feel like the light novel presented Shisui’s exit as a prolonged “dance” like the anime did, I thought it was interesting how parallels could be drawn between her final dance and Maomao’s of the season one finale. Whether this is intentional or not, who knows, but I couldn’t help but think about it watching Shisui’s exit.

Both danced on a roof of sorts, under the stars, it was a send off (Maomao for her mother, Shisui for herself) and Jinshi was present for both. To me it’s the details in how they differ that are fascinating.

Maomao’s dance marks the beginning of her mother’s life as a wife and no longer a courtesan. Shisui’s marks the end of her life as the doll of the Shi Clan. Jinshi arrives at the end of Maomao’s dance and is able to catch her when she falls. He is present for all of Shisui’s dance but does not attempt to catch her, as he realizes her dance is the finale to her family’s performative end.

Their roles are also reversed. Where Maomao looks like a normal woman on a daily basis, she takes this opportunity to wear makeup and doll herself up. Shisui on the other hand is used to being presented as a consort so is covered in makeup, unmarred and beautiful but as she’s dancing she’s got blood on her and is dirty from the explosions.

To me all of this can point to the differences in the two women, where Maomao’s life is marked by beginnings and Shisui’s is marked by endings. Shisui is freed by her “death” and Maomao is freed by embracing the changes life brings moving forward. Just my thoughts, could be totally off but I kept thinking about it when seeing the final dance.

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my clematis

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yachi's significance in haikyuu (and the importance of writing great characters no matter how minor they are)

ok so this is my first ACTUAL tumblr post so im kinda nervous lmao pls be nice. im aware that this topic isnt necessarily groundbreaking and yachi isnt like the MOST FORGOTTEN CHARACTER EVER but there is a pretty noticeable lack of appreciation for her especially considering how CRUCIAL she was to karasuno's growth so im gonna talk abt it here bcs my girl deserves more love

(edit: i've now added screenshots to show some of my points better! and also to break up all the blocks of text lol)

disclaimer: i decided to write about this after my rewatch of haikyuu at the start of 2025, which means im basing this all off of memory. so if not everything is 100% accurate thats why, but i promise it still counts to the message im tryna send. also this will contain minor spoilers for the timeskip and is also kinda long so buckle up

for starters, let's talk about her direct contributions. the first thing yachi does after being recruited is design a poster for the club after overhearing that they're struggling to gain transport funds. while it may seem simple, this alone helps them receive enough donations to afford a bus for their away games and also leads to people having hope in karasuno's resurgence due to her strategically referencing the little giant, which was a morale booster they definitely benefitted from since this was when they were still trying to regain their former glory as a team. this shows her directly utilizing her strengths the moment she joins the club because she knows that even though volleyball isn't her strong suit, graphic design is

(the glowup is insane but i also lowkey love that kiyoko canonically cannot draw for shit bless her heart LMFAOAO)

after that we see her working hard to learn from kiyoko during matches. she's taking notes, setting up practice games, refilling water bottles and also learning about volleyball terminology in her own time which of course are all things that are expected from a manager. but focusing on the last one, considering she was someone with absolutely no interest or prior experience in sports, the fact that she was pouring so much dedication into learning the technicalities of it shows that her mother's words ("joining passionate people when you aren't going to give it your all is the rudest thing you could do.") definitely influenced her

now to be fair, her mom is far from the worst anime mom out there, but it can't be denied that she does contribute to alot of the self esteem issues yachi has from her remarks, even if it comes from a good place

so the fact that yachi was able to see past the surface level of her mom's words after hinata's encouragement and actually put it into practice shows her desire to grow and become better. which also probably put kiyoko (and by extent the rest of karasuno) at ease due to them having a promising successor for a manager since there seems to be a recurring struggle in recruiting club managers for some reason lol

on the topic of kiyoko, i also think that yachi's existence directly links to us knowing more about her. both times when kiyoko opens up about her past or expresses personal feelings yachi is there, and (as a few other haikyuu fans have brought up) it's when they are in states of undress

we already see kiyoko act as a mentor figure and express a wider range of emotions when yachi is around (concern, amusement, protectiveness etc) but it's a fact that both times she chooses to open up, yachi is present (whether you ship kiyoyachi or not) which alludes to her feeling more comfortable in divulging about her hardships to another girl. since she's normally only around guys, kiyoko really appreciated having another girl in the volleyball club that she could connect with on a more personal level

to add to that, everytime these moments happen it's always when the two of them are ALONE. NO BOYS. these scenes are also never used as fanservice or conveniently angled for the viewers to ogle at the girls' bodies. its just a private moment between two girls sharing and learning about each other. furthermore, the lack of clothing could LITERALLY symbolize kiyoko revealing more about herself, and yachi being open to receiving that information since they're BOTH in vulnerable states

(sidetracking for a bit: i also do think that it's a very intentional narrative choice that we only learn more about kiyoko quite late into the series. we see furudate do this with tsukki and later kageyama too, because considering her more closed off personality, furudate made it so we have to LITERALLY SPEND ENOUGH TIME WITH HER to get to know more about her, and i think that it's neat)

and obviously, it would be remiss of me if i didnt mention her contributions to kagehina during the training camp arc. she already went out of her way to tutor them after school hours AND for their retake as seen in the ova

(this is me promoting the failing marks ova bcs it's just 23 mins of pure slice of life shenanigans. if ur like me and love seeing them interact outside vb this is gonna be a treat for you too)

but even more importantly, she also relentlessly helped them practice the new freak quick night after night even after their fight, showing just how much she cared about them and wanted them to succeed. which is why it makes me so happy that right after hinata and kageyama perfect the new freak quick the moment she notices it she's ECSTATIC, since she saw firsthand all the ups and downs it took to get there. and in turn the FIRST person THEY acknowledge is HER, showing that this victory is just as much hers as it is theirs, directly telling the audience that this would not have been possible without her.

i think this moment really solidified yachi as an integral part of the team, which is further proven in the timeskip

(OKAAYY GIRLBOSS look at her training 2 managers im so proud)

anyway, her contributions aside, i'm also very pleased that furudate didn't take the easy way out by slowly making her fade out of existence after 2 eps or making her a potential love interest for one of the boys, which is an unfortunate fate many female characters in male dominated media are subjected to. i think initially most people expected her be hinata's love interest since they have some moments together in the first few eps she's in. but as the series progresses most of their interactions consist of her occasionally cheering for him at games or him thanking her for helping out, which (shipping preferences aside) honestly leans more platonic than romantic. i'm glad that furudate subverted the expectations of a female character NEEDING to fall in love since she's constantly surrounded by male characters because that's simply not how it is irl lmao. healthy platonic male and female friendships exist and should definitely be represented more in media, and yachi being allowed to exist as her own independent character instead of an accessory for one of the guys is SUCH a breath of fresh air

NOW THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN WHERE MY ANALYSIS ENDED, however right as i was debating whether or not to post this on tumblr, i stumbled across this video by artist Airi Pan who talked about bringing back great (not just good) design. the entire video has great points and i highly recommend watching it, but the one that really struck a chord with me was the last one where she says: "great art always gives back." which essentially means that the difference between "good" and "great" art is that great art will inspire others and in turn lead to the birth of even more art in the world

which then got me thinking, isn't that kinda what i'm doing now?

obviously in the video she's talking about character design, but i think this can be applied to just about any form of media out there. furudate didn't HAVE to make yachi such a great and well thought out character, but they DID, and in turn even though she's a minor character, someone out there got inspired by her character and growth and decided to write a tumblr post (which is another form of media) and share it to the internet

am i saying that my singular post is gonna reach millions and change our nation into one that is ruled by hitoka yachi? OF COURSE NOT LMFAO. but my hope is that at least the few people who DO see it find something new to appreciate about her and/or haikyuu and create something else to feed into the endless haikyuu fandom hole, proving the point being made in the video. the most successful character designs are ones that garner the most fanart, cosplays, merch etc etc and the same can be said with the writing for the characters in haikyuu because EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM SERVE A PURPOSE. it makes the world feel so lived in and complete, which attributes to why SO MANY people have fallen in love with it and have been inspired by furudate's work regardless if they even like/play volleyball because the lessons and messages being presented can be applied to just about anything in life

and the best part is that it DOESN'T EVEN NEED TO BE COMPLEX. as much as i am a sucker for deeply layered characters filled with intricate lore and complicated pasts that shape their morally gray actions, you also can't beat something that is simple and done well, which in this case arguably benefits to haikyuu more since it's a story that's grounded in reality. while yachi isn't a standout ace on the girl's volleyball team that shoots lasers out of her eyes to avenge her dead parents, NEITHER DOES THE AVERAGE READER OF HAIKYUU.

but i'm sure everyone out there has experienced moments of self doubt, awkwardness, hesitation, excitement, (illogical) fear and more which are all traits that can be found in yachi

yachi refers to herself as "townsperson b" which is a role that is so insignificant it doesn't even have an actual name. showing how feels like she's just someone in the background compared to the "main characters" - something i'm sure lots of people have felt before. which is what makes her more relatable to the viewer and shows that even if you have these traits or feel these feelings, it doesn't mean you can't make a difference or that you should let them stop you from stepping out of your comfort zone. once again showing that (even though it isn't easy) there is merit in putting so much care and love into what you create that even the smallest of characters can be inspiring to others (like how yachi was to me)

SO TLDR: yachi's seemingly small contributions ended up playing a major role in the over arching plot of karasuno's growth which ultimately proves furudate's philosophy of "you don't win alone" because if yachi wasn't here karasuno would still be struggling to gain funds for their away games, without her karsuno wouldn't have another manager, without her we would have never learnt anything about kiyoko, without her kagehina would have failed their midterms and never reached their full potential. without her, karsauno would not be what it is today.

WOW ANYWAY! that was long as hell. im aware this isn't the most well written analysis nor is it anything super life changing (I kinda feel like I'm stating the obvious for some of these lol) but as a yachi kinnie i got emotional after rewatching s2 and thus this word vomit was born. again this is my first time posting anything like this so if you think i've missed anything or would like to add more to this discussion please feel free to reblog and lmk!!!! i am sure that it will make me and the 20 other yachi fans out there very happy <3