Same Energy

Same energy

From the River to the Sea

Whenever I see a Princess Tutu Beauty and the Beast AU, it's usually Fakiru.

Which of course isn't a bad thing, buuuuuut-

Why hasn't anyone done a Ruetho Beauty and the Beast AU? Like, the parallels are right there.

Now usually people would (at least, theoretically) make Rue the beauty and Mytho the beast... because well, he kinda turned into a raven beast at some point? I guess?

But the way I see it? Yeah, no.

Mytho is Belle all the way.

Rue's the fucking raven beast.

Like, really think about it. Rue has been gaslit all her life and led to believe that she's ugly and unworthy of love, making her cold-hearted and selfish.

Mytho is always putting others before himself. Taking someone else's place (*ahem* Fakirissomeoneelse—) as a captive in return for them to go free? I can easily see him doing that.

Look, you can't convince me that Mytho is somehow not a reskinned Disney princess, okay?

This might just be me when it comes to Kuroshitsuji/Black Butler as a whole

But it really, really confuses me whenever I see someone say that Black Butler is marketed towards women. (Some even go as far as to straight up call it "shoujo")

Like, I'm not saying women can't or should not be allowed to read this manga, (cause that's bullshit obviously, speaking as a female myself)

But like 80% of the time Black Butler is actually classified as a "Shounen" manga. (In case you aren't familiar with Japanese terms, "Shounen" basically means "manga targeted towards a male audience of about 12-18 years of age." Its female equivalent is "Shoujo")

Again, this is most likely just me, but I can honestly stand a bit more behind the shounen term than the shoujo term in regards to which category Kuroshitsuji belongs in. Sure, there's clearly a lot of (mostly squicky) fanservice with the protagonist, but there's also a lot of fanservicey shots regarding its female characters (examples being Beast, Ran-Mao, etc.) which is, y'know, typical shounen stuff.

But also more importantly the magazine the manga was originally serialized in (known as MonthlyGFantasy) is a Shounen manga magazine.

So if Black Butler is classified as a shounen manga, how would one explain its very obviously shoujo qualities?

My personal theory is that it's a way of branching out and getting more people to read this manga.

Here's an example; remember how big My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was back in the day? Long story short, it was a show that was originally targeted towards a very young female audience, but thanks to its storytelling and characters, it grew a fanbase that was very far beyond that target demographic (an entire fandom mostly consisting of young adult men who liked cute and colorful ponies). As the show continued airing, it even started pandering to that fanbase.

TV Tropes calls this "Periphery Demographic": "Fans of a work that are outside its primary target demographic. Perhaps much more than within."

To me, it looks like a very similar thing is happening (or rather, has been happening) with Black Butler here. Originally had a shounen audience in mind, gained a strong female fanbase for its... certain qualities.

Of course, this is all coming from someone who is not Japanese and knows very little about manga demographics and stuff. So if I'm wrong about anything I've said (which I most likely am), please do correct me.

"Anyone can write their own ending of their story. But one cannot erase ink from a page once it is dried. They can only keep writing forward, whether they like what they've already written or not."

-:- -:- -:- -:- -:-

So yeah it's really hard to find some good Mytho-centric angst in this fandom. Seriously it's like finding a needle in a haystack.

So I said "fuck it, I'll do it myself" and created this monstrosity.

I always wondered how (post-canon) Mytho would deal with the fact that he was essentially corrupted and did some pretty bad things throughout the second half of the series. After all, he was supposed to be a hero, wasn't he?

But while the other three characters of the main cast had a written story role that they went against for the greater good, Mytho had gone against his role as a heroic fairytale prince in one of the worse ways possible.

He knows it wasn't his fault that he tried to sacrifice the hearts of poor innocent girls. He was under the effects of raven's blood.

But it wasn't the Raven who did those things. It wasn't the main antagonist of the story who committed those crimes.

It was him.

And now he has to live with that fact, because that's how the finalized story of The Prince and the Raven was written.

TL;DR: someone please give this poor boy a hug.

Actually? That makes a whole lot more sense considering Angel's struggle with his personal feelings alongside the abuse he deals with.

"He's a worthless sack of useless shit. I know because I am too."

Great now I'm picturing Angel and Pentious singing Loser Baby. I fucking love it.

Hot Hazbin take:

I still think it was a wasted opportunity in the second episode that it was Charlie—and only Charlie—who continued to vouch for Sir Pentious and not Angel Dust.

Hear me out.

"It Starts With Sorry" starts right after we see Vox chewing out Pentious and calling him a failure, even going as far as telling him to off himself.

When I first watched the episode, I was 90% expecting a moment where Angel Dust (who had just outed Pentious as a mole) has a moment (even if it's just a blink-and-you-miss it change of expression) where he's like "Oh shit..." and clearly starts to see a bit of himself in Pentious, and thinks "maybe he and I aren't so different." And so he eventually (maybe a bit begrudgingly) sides with Charlie when she chooses to give him a second chance.

I mean, just minutes ago (in the same episode) we had the scene where Angel is listening to his voicemails from Valentino. They were clearly setting up parallels and yet... they didn't do anything with them for some reason?

I can't be the only one thinking this, right?