#vinsuba

HE'S A DRAG QUEEN. YOU CAN DRESS IN WOMEN'S CLOTHING AND STILL BE CISHET, IT'S 2025

EVEN IF HE WERE GAY HE'D BE A TOP BECAUSE HE HAS ISSUES WITH HIS MASCULINITY AND WOULDN'T BE COMFORTABLE BEING TO SUBMISSIVE TO ANOTHER MAN /serious

…The guy went on a two-page rant about how “there’s another reason I’m on my knees right now before this stunningly beautiful man,” “those beautiful eyes would force anyone to prostrate before him,” and “in my soul, I know I must submit to him” the very first time he saw Vincent’s face, and then like a day later responded to a command by saying “and what if I say ‘I don’t want to’?” before fantasizing about the guy punishing him for it (and then Rem echoed that phrase back like thirty minutes later just to make fun of him for it because it was so outrageous). He has been going on about Julius’ “voice like an angel that exists solely to vex me, specifically,” “surprisingly supple hips,” “graceful eyelashes,” and more, as well as about “the strange sensation that he inspires within me” and how “we’re not friends, but something infinitely more annoying.” He has been described as “grabbing other men by the balls” and “being way too good with men” in reference to him being an enormous flirt with guys, often for FUN. He refers to Otto as his boytoy, and then insinuates that Otto likes men in a way that DIRECTLY parallels a scene where he explicitly projects his love of crossdressing onto Otto while saying that Subaru himself DEFINITELY doesn’t enjoy it. He has several scenes with Julius that directly parallel romantic moments he’s had with Emilia. In Mimigau Subaru refers to Aldeheid as having “a voice like a love song.” He has an identifiable type when it comes to both women (pure-hearted, demure, graceful, long-haired (preferably)) AND men (noble, graceful, androgynous-looking, powerful), as opposed to describing ALL men or ALL women in the same flowery manner. At this point I think it’s way more textually supported to say that Subaru is bisexual than it is to say that he’s straight, and also I feel like I know way too much about this guy’s “preferences.” (I seriously almost threw my phone at the wall when I got to that two-page “I MUST get on my knees before this perfectly attractive and astoundingly beautiful man” rant.)

As for Natsumi — there’s a difference between simply liking to dress in drag and doing shit like attempting to live out your school life by blending in as a woman, wishing that you still had your androgyny while lamenting that puberty “has not been kind to you,” and referring to your swapped-gender self as your “ideal self” — plus all the meta details about “Natsuki Subaru” being one of the only androgynous names in the cast, Subaru having an incredibly easy time slipping “into character” and referring to himself with feminine monikers when Ferris explicitly has to spend like thirty minutes every morning getting into character, or Subaru filling out the more feminine role in the gender binary of the narrative that he himself defines for the audience. It’s up to interpretation, but that goes both ways: there are a LOT of ways to interpret this shit.

Rem wakes up with her memories. Subaru freaks out upon seeing Louis, and accidentally lets Rem know she's a former Sin Archbishop. Rem proceeds to kill Louis, as well as every Mabeast they come across. Subaru finds Vincent's camp/trap and starts explaining things to Vincent, when Rem shows up to see the sword at Subaru's neck and tries to kill Vincent. If anything, things go smoother than in the original, because Todd would never stand a chance in this scenario. However there would be way less Natsumi.

Ram is the one to get brought along with Subaru. Basically the same as the original, just with a lot more casualties as Ram can't use healing magic.

Julius gets brought along. He is at all times on the brink of a breakdown because he is A: in Vollachia and 2: baring witness to Subaru interacting with Vincent. At one point he realises that Subaru treats Vincent in a similar way to how she treats him and with the benefit of an outside perspective realises that this is how Subaru acts with a crush. The Madeline situation would go very differently since Julius was the one to kill Balleroy.

Meili gets brought along. Utakata now has another new friend! Yay! And also is weirded out by Natsumi, because she kinda looks like Elsa. And acts a bit like Elsa. God it would be a clusterfuck. Meili: Why the fuck do you look like me my dead sister? Good news is that Vincent now has a small army of Mabeasts in his army. There would also be way more Natsumi in this situation.

Beatrice gets brought along. Yay! Another new friend for Utakata! I feel like she would be more outwardly judgy of Subaru's insane crush on Vincent, would probably make Subaru realise it was a crush tbh. Of course this would result in so many more casualties as the Emilia Camp wouldn't have Beatrice acting as a Subaru-compass for them. The De-aging Situation would probably be avoided in this timeline. For Subaru at least.

Anastasia+Eridna get brought along. Honestly I feel like this would be the timeline where Subaru realises she's trans. Anastasia would bare witness to Natsumi and talk to her about it, then very gently suggest that Subaru could be a girl if she wanted to. Immediately everything gets worse. No healer, no extra combat ability unless they want Anastasia to die, and Subaru is having all of her past trauma repeatedly punch her in the face now that someone broke her emotional dam. At the very least we would get a little Natsumi running around.

Shaula. I suppose that she would also get brought along with Meili, but this would be a situation where she got un-scorpioned, I suppose. She would use her strength to solve most problems before they happen, and be having the time of her life being out of the desert. Though I do feel like internal politics of the Rebellion would be a lot messier due to her fixation on Subaru. Arc would no longer be Horror, would probably end up being a Dark Comedy.

Emilia gets brought along- would not happen. Emilia finding out that Subaru is Natsumi is probably going to be a really big and important moment in the series, so most of Arc 7 would cease to exist. The rebellion would still win, as Tappei confirms it will regardless of anything else, but wow would things get depressing.

Subaru gets isekaied to the city Lugunica, in a magical fantasy-noir land. Because while she is of course a high fantasy main, a fantasy 1900s would be so much fun for her.

After the inevitable shenanigans, she ends up under the employ of Roswaal, an old money businessman backing young socialite Emilia as she attempts to make a break into the political world. The thing is, Roswaal is secretly the current head of the Greed Mafia, after his mentor, the old boss, passed away.

He decides, for some fucking reason, to make Subaru the new boss.

We also now have an unwillingly recruited Otto on logistics and PR, Rem and Ram as bodyguards, Frederica running the staff, Garfeil as head of security, and Emilia, who knows nothing. (Puck is totally in on it though). Beako is last line of defence, of course.

Emilia will eventually find out about the Mafia and freak out about how this means they must have wanted a puppet politician. Roswaal did want that, but Subaru would have beaten him by now and will be able to explain to Emilia that she just wanted to help her follow her dreams (Roswaal was still obeying his Tome, he still has that).

Together they make sure that everything is kept jusssst legal enough + keep as little of a paper trail that they can sweep it under the rug- when Detective Juukulius, who is totally not in the pocket of new money businesswoman Anastasia Hoshin, shows up.

Anastasia is of course from the city Kararagi. And is absolutely part of the yakuza. Which she pretends is just the Hoshin Company, but it's pretty obvious that she's the young head of the Iron Fang Family.

Subaru almost defects upon finding out there's a yakuza (homeland pride) but eventually decides to stick with the mafia because: A, Emilia: B, pinstripes are cool.

Reinhard is the son of police chief Heinkel, and the star of the force. One day, he finds Felt, the daughter of the late beloved mayor on the streets, and takes her home to properly introduce her to high society. But when the start of The Season hits, Rom crashes what was meant to be Felt's introduction. All of this ends up culminating in Felt having the tools to succeed in making her own criminal organisation. Not that Reinhard is complaining of course.

Al dresses exactly the same.

And- of course- Vollachia is another city- basically crime city- because Vincent is both mayor and mafia boss rolled into one. He would have a wonderful time. This is enrichment for him. (And also Subaru ends up in Vollachia City as Natsumi one day and gets to do tropey young girl gets wrapped up in the world of the sexy mafia boss bullshit).

Nonnie, that's funny as fuck.

Subaru after going through Arc1, meets a strange yet beautiful Cecilus who has apparently been sent from a far-off land to keep Subaru safe until she can be taken to somewhere safe that's being made for her.

Cecilus of course has the letter with not only a guide of social norms- but a guide on how to not die, implying that this mysterious person has knowledge of the trials she will face. ...The explanation of how Ceci knows a guy who can get her a sex change if she asks is something she is trying very hard not to think about.

The letter also probably holds a very wordy apology for any suffering she may endure and that she can tell Ceci anything (apart from RBD, Vincent warns her what will happen) and Ceci will help her with everything.

Subaru is now simultaneously in love with Emilia, who saved her, and Vincent, who is helping her long distance. It's so messy.

Ceci of course has the communication mirror, and is telling Vincent literally everything. Including about Subaru's weird crush on him.

After experiencing a trauma-flashback of “…What if I say, I don’t want to?” Vincent very quickly starts figuring out plans for a second wedding involving him and Subaru.

Eventually Subaru discovers that Vincent is A. a dude, and 2. not a goddess. But considering the fact that Summoned by a royal is another isekai trope, she'll be fine. After finally making herself admit she's into men.

However she does have to ask Cecilus what Vincent looks like because if he wasn't pretty her crush would have crumbled in an instant.

Unfortunately Vincent doesn't ever get the chance to give the go-ahead for transferring Subaru to the empire, because Subaru ends up in the tower and being shamaked to Vollachia first. At least he saves on shipping.

Luckily, he'd figured out that as long as a Vincent Vollachia dies, it doesn't matter which one it is. So he got Chisha to turn some poor schmuck into a copy of him, killed it, then tried very hard not to laugh at Ulbik trying to commit treason over his commandment being destroyed before he could fufil it.

The zombies still happen, but everyone is very well prepared this time.

Subaru keeps on getting crushes on people who could kill her with ease. (Emilia, Julius, etc). But she also, is surprisingly good in a fight, provided her opponent can't use offensive magic.

She very much wants to punch Julius, and loves fucking with Otto, and gets subsequently more insane with each new crush.

MEANING

Subaru needs a love interest who is an absolute bitch, but can't fight to back it up. This character does exist.

His name is Vincent.

I honestly don’t think Subaru is even slightly interested in Otto tbh (or not in the main route, anyway — the mayonnaise bath route from the LIM game was. something). I think he mainly just teases Otto for the fun of it. Otto having a thing for Subaru is another matter, because there’s only so many times you can show me someone moaning someone else’s name in their sleep in canon material before I start thinking they’re at least a little interested in that other person.

As for Julius and Vincent…

Honestly I’d say that Subaru’s PRIDE is actually way more thematically relevant to his life and his role in the story than envy, but that’s another topic. He also — really doesn’t tend to respond to the envy that he does feel by getting sour about it, that’s not his tendency. His tendency actually seems to be to place the source of his envy on this pedestal for him to attempt to live up to, like how his father became this larger-than-life figure in his eyes to the point where he started altering his personality and dress in order to resemble his image of his dad as much as he could — as opposed to, say, Subaru growing to hate his father. This persisted even after he felt that he had failed as his father’s son, and he moreso got angry at HIMSELF than he did at his dad. Plus, like, if this really WAS envy from his lack of self esteem — wouldn’t those thoughts have started to ebb a little as the story went on, to show his growth? Because I feel like it’s actually gotten WORSE as time has gone on lmao

As for the whole “envy vs attraction” thing — I might be more inclined to agree with that if it wasn’t for the fact that Subaru doesn’t JUST describe these men’s attractive features: he also describes how they make him feel. He describes Julius’ graceful appearance as invoking “a strange sensation” inside of him. He talks at length about how Vincent’s aura of power makes him feel that “in his very soul, Subaru knew that he must submit to him.” He talks about needing to take “steady, careful breaths” so that he does not lose himself while staring at Julius’ graceful eyelashes. Then, like — straight up, a lot of his thoughts come across almost like fantasies. Him responding to Vincent’s order by saying “and what if I don’t want to?” during an important meeting and then thinking at length about how Vincent could totally carry out a punishment if he set his mind to it was — I mean, there’s a reason Rem made fun of him for that one a few pages later.