King

it's been awhile but here's some gsgw content because it's been my hyperfixation since late january (feat my fav sahsol moment!!)

the video game screenshot format is inspired by @cherrifire's third life fake screenshots! idk how to link them but they are incredible, check em out!

in the original, we have hyuna at the far right—but here it’s depicted by aventurine’s mother. this could signify the resemblance of the two being older figures of respect and authority for mizi and kakavasha. however, both suffered fleeting time in the narrative and what was considered a “useless” death, meaning one in vain (that could’ve been prevented to some extent). both were hopeful for humanity and their beloveds were their greatest weakness.

back to the original, sua is depicted at the far left—but here it’s aventurine’s sister. both sua and his sister were the center of their most important person’s universe; aventurine states that he would do anything to see his sister once more and her death was the turning point in his life that led to a morbid butterfly effect, quite similar to how sua’s death played out for mizi. however, deep down, aven and mizi both knew that their most treasured person would die and they’d have to survive without them.

He was a cook at the restaurant/bar I was a bartender at, and almost punched a costumer once because he overheard him talking about how women belong in the kitchen. Told me he thought women should stay out of kitchens, that cooking is a man's job and when I asked him what he thinks women should be doing, he went quiet for a moment, then proceeded to explain to me the following

"I trust a bitch to run a kitchen as much as she can run a country, they should do shit like plumbing. Or electricity. Something you can just learn to do and don't need to lead, you know?"

We had an openly gay coworker who looked like it (crop tops, dyed hair, make-up) and he was often harassed by the waiters from the football bar next door. The gay dude had the same name as the Guy, who insisted that we would specify the he isn't gay, so they just became "Name" and "Not Gay Name". He was fine with that.

Boss gave us one meal from the menu a day as a job bonus, and we had this very shy seventeen year old working with us who was already nervous around men, but Our Guy was a 6'3 dude who only stopped yelling and cursing when he was not speaking at all. If he was the one cooking that day, he'd peek out of the kitchen an hour before he'd start closing it up, and would shout at you if you haven't ordered your meal yet because he hated cooking once he already cleaned. The waitress was scared shitless of him, and so whenever he would yell at her to "fucking order already", she'd panic and just pick something.

She didn't eat much but the first time she tried to throw out almost the whole plate, he got so personally insulted that he berated her for not picking something she'd like, and demanded to know what he did wrong. He got really upset about apparently not being able to cook something that this kid would like and I'm pretty sure he started putting in extra effort to make sure she would eat it this time? It lead to him quite literally standing over her like a hawk when she ate to "see her reaction" and demand an immediate review to see what he can improve.

My friend thought he was really funny before I explained to them that I'm pretty sure he thought he was being mean (but hey he it wasn't misgendering so yay)

I like how his issue isn't with the "that shit ain't in nature" thing he mentioned, but the idea that being nonbinary is some form of self-deprivation and that they deserve a gender like everyone else.

The aftermath of the battle between Reinhard van Astrea and Sin Archbishop of Wrath. Much to Subaru’s horror he was not able to ‘Return By Death’ making him, or rather, his now ghost-like body unable to leave the Sword Saint’s side for reasons unknown.

Subaru knew full well that this would be his last go at life. No more resets, no more going back— all of his and everyone’s actions from here on out are permanent and so is his death.

...Hey folks bad news. Might have to delay my stories today on the account of something coming up. So expect new chapters for Monday and Tuesday. In the meantime here's what I've got cooking up and before you ask it's SUPER wholesome I swear! ;)

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Man, Subaru’s fun sure will be cut short. He better appreciate it while it lasts.

Inspired by @zeivira "No rest for the wicked." & "A Difference In Medical Opinion" by petalil on AO3. Thank you guys for this delicious idea♥️

After achieving knighthood, Subaru spends the day with his fellow knights. Will he be able to prove his worth despite his "condition"? More at eleven.

Well I see that, and I raise you this:

An anime boy whose appearance is, by absolutely anyone’s account, completely and utterly average. Mundane hair. Mundane eyes. Not even glasses to set him the tiniest bit apart. A simple, unmemorable, unrecognizable civilian among a backdrop of millions.

And he has a lot of passions, and a lot of ambitions, which he hones every chance he gets. He’s dabbled in sports and archery and cooking and just about anything you could wrap a competition around. And he’s competed in many of these. Every chance he gets. With all of his passion and all of his might.

He’s crushed by the competition every single time.

Until one day–one day something clicks for him. Something that should have seemed obvious from the start and yet never was–as though everyone, including himself, was unwittingly blind to it. It clicks, when he realizes every kid who’s beaten him in competition, every kid who’s gone on to fame and glory and acclaim, has been some candy-haired gel-spiked ridiculously-dressed fucker. 

There’s some trend there that this Main Character boy can’t explain and can’t understand but he decides, this one time, fuck it. He’ll play along too. He’s got a model train competition in four days, and he’s got nothing more to lose. He hits up the department store, buys the pinkest, noxious-est, fruitiest hair dye he can find, the spikiest hair gel available, and the gaudiest clothes on the thrift rack. He enters the model train competition looking like a bubble gum gijinka.

And he wins.

Suddenly, the other candy-haired contestants notice him. They talk to him. They pledge rivalries. Girls notice him. Judges applaud him. Acclaimed model train aficionados offer him internships across the world. He’s hit on something. 

The main cast expands to cover just about every candy-hair cliche in the book: from the mostly-normal-looking demure school girl with the blue hair to the Naruto-est, yelling-est boy with the red-and-green spiked hair. The cool megane senpais, the purple haired tsunderes, suddenly everyone is interested in him. They’re prodigies and upstarts and underdogs and they truly believe that this main character boy is one of them.

So the main character boy maintains his ruse. He touches up his roots at dawn every morning and carefully attends to his gelled spikes and tells absolutely no one about this great, uncanny, unfathomable secret he’s stumbled upon. He wins his competitions left and right. He racks up the acclaim. He’s hailed as a prodigy of all trades, just now bursting onto the scene, and boils to the top of all his candy-haired peers.

The night before the competition, some ungodly scream sounds from the Naruto-kid’s room. The rest of the cast rush in, flick on the lights, and find Naruto-kid sitting up in bed, his hair completely flat and utterly black, a pair of DIY salon gloves discarded next to his bed. He races to the mirror across the room, hands hovering in shock around his straightened hair, as though unable to recognize the boy staring back at him.

It’s… an unsettling act of personal vandalism, but Naruto-kid seems unhurt. After verifying he’s okay and reporting it to hotel security, most of the kids are content to go back to their own rooms and just double-check their own locks.

Most seem content…. Not all…

The next day, Naruto-kid is eliminated from the competition nigh-instantly. He’s given no chance to monologue about his ambitions, his friends, his hometown.  Not even a second spared for a flashback to the bullying that became the formative motivator of his childhood.  

No. He’s summarily eliminated by another candy-haired contestant. Naruto-kid, with his suddenly unassuming black hair, is dismissed from the arena. And Main Character-kun is distressed. 

There’s a murderer on the loose. Just in no traditional sense. Another kid is shaved bald in the middle of the night, and eliminated from the competition the next day. Colored contact lenses go missing, and suddenly the red-eyed yandere girl doesn’t have a leg to stand on. She’s sent home without the slightest bit of fanfare. Someone funnels bleach into the sprinkler line, and a triggering of the fire alarm leaves a whole arena of contestants doused in the ruinous fluid. Their candy colors melt into brittle, tacky, bleachy off-orange. Not a single one survives that night’s round of eliminations.

Main Character-kun is still pink. He’s still gelled. He’s still dressed in fiery robes and platform sandals with a bandana cinched around his forehead. He hoards hair dye in his room and sleeps with one eye open. He can only watch in silence as this gruesome assassination plot unravels, without a doubt in his mind that he is the real target.

One night, there’s a knock on his door. And the twisting of a key. And the squeak of hinges swinging open. Main Character-boy’s breathing halts.  His time has come.

He looks. It’s the blue-haired girl, the quiet one with self-confidence issues. Her hair is tied into twin pigtails. She’s carrying something in her right hand.  Main Character boy braces for impact.

She flicks on the lights. He looks. They’re wigs, in her hand. Three of them. Purple Green and Orange, each primmed and poofed and curled to extravagant degrees.

“Here,” she offers, hand extended. “Take whichever you like. They’re extra.”

“Wait. Why…? What’s this–what’s happening?”

She takes a step forward, and she shuts the door behind her. With her free hand, she grips the blue hairline at her scalp, and she pulls back gently, revealing netting. She drops the blue hair to the ground, and pulls the netting free from her forehead, and a loose, unassuming bob of perfectly black, perfectly normal hair falls around her shoulders.

She’s unassuming in every possible regard, mundane in every sense, a girl to blend into the backdrop of millions.

MC-chan explains that she had lived a very normal and unassuming life. She did Stage Crew in middle school for the drama club, always the unnoticed extra in the background, sweeping in silently, covertly, under darkness to handle the scene changes and wardrobe transformations.  She honed her skills making props and costumes for the drama kids, til she was a master of needle and thread, dyes and combs, and props built from paper and plastic.

She thinks it was that attention-to-detail she cultivated in prop-design that let her finally See what MC-kun had seen—the Candy Haired world around her that constantly overshadowed whatever she did.

One day, she put on the wig. And she never looked back.

But she doesn’t know who the hair assassin is either, any more than MC-kun. There’s still strength in numbers. And she figures if they work together, their odds of survival are greater.

MC-kun agrees.

…

The next day is a free day for the kids competing in this International Competition. The morning passes with most of the contestants montaging through a romp in the city, tasting local cuisine and window-shopping around the market area and getting into Kodak-moment worthy shenanigans.

MC-kun and MC-chan steal away to a quiet park, sitting at a picnic table, putting pink- and blue-heads together to talk through all the info they have, and what options are open to them. They don’t get very far. A glasses-wearing girl appears from behind the bushes and stops them cold.

Glasses Girl is small and wiry, mousy in her frame. She has orange hair that poofs around her head, cropped at chin level, in a way that reminds MC-kun vaguely of a roosting chicken. Her glasses are enormous on her freckled face, and they capture the light, obscuring her eyes behind their glare.

“You two… you’re fakes, aren’t you? Both of you.”

MC-kun stops cold. MC-chan spins around in her seat, wide-eyed. “I don’t… I don’t even know what that means! Go away before we—”

Glasses Girl pulls an immaculate, highly stylized laptop from her bag. She flips it open with one hand, propping it on the table and typing furiously, too fast to even see her fingers. Audio begins to play from the laptop speakers.

“We’re not going home yet. Not you, and not me.”

“I hacked into your phone last night,” GG-chan states simply, head tilted toward MC-kun. “I’ve heard the whole conversation.”

“How?!” MC-kun asks. He holds his phone at a distance, like it’s suddenly venomous.

GG-chan shifts. Suddenly the glare of her glasses is no longer obstructing her eyes. Behind the coke-bottle look is an expression of pure brow-knitted confusion. “I don’t…. I don’t actually know. I just could.”

GG-chan was an art student. A not-very-good-at-all art student. And a very-much-below-average competitor in sculpting competitions. She was plain, and unassuming, and inconspicuous, and jealous of the better-established art students around her with their own flashy styles. Her peers wore giant non-prescription glasses; they dyed their hair bright colors and cropped it short to perfect hipster chique.

GG-chan tried to imitate that. But as a truly-not-fantastic artist, she couldn’t even pull that off. She dyed her hair, picked out glasses, overshot “hipster”, and landed firmly in “geek”.

She landed so firmly in “geek” that internationally-acclaimed hacker abilities spawned with her makeover. Suddenly she could break into anything, override anything, hack or fix or erase anything over a permanent wifi connection that followed her as its hotspot.

Her laptop never loses charge. Her bash scripts never fail. Her glasses always glint in the slightest bit of light and slide down her nose so that she has to keep her middle finger pressed firmly to the bridge at all times.

She’s afraid of being sent home in ruin, sent back to her life as a mediocre art student.

GG-chan wants to join the effort to not be eliminated.

…

A day passes. GG-chan has hacked all the email accounts of the registered contestants and has found nothing suspicious. MC-chan has spent her time crafting shorter-cut wigs to give to MC-kun and GG-chan as backups. MC-kun has been trying his best to understand what he’s gotten into. He bought a few extra obnoxious bandanas to bolster his obnoxious outfit, as if that might help.

They’re sitting quietly at lunch, eating in silence, with no new information to share and no desire to attract unwanted attention from the contestants around them.

“Ohhhhh my what is this? Has this pathetic posse of plebeians formed a little club oh how quaint!”

MC-chan chokes on her noodles. GG-chan startles. MC-kun groans.

The voice belongs to a platinum-blond boy, dressed to the nines, who’s sidled up to the table unannounced. He reeks of ambition and money and arrogance and a very particular high-end cologne, and he laughs heartily at his own joke. He flicks a lock of blond hair from his face, which all but sparkles.

MC-kun recognizes this kid. He was one of the first Candy Haired kids to declare an eternal rivalry with him.

“What’s it to you?” MC-kun challenges, already ticked off.

And the Rich Blond Rival Boy deflates. Comically. Pale and hollow-cheeked and exhausted, suddenly leaning against their lunch table, speaking in a rasp. “Please let me join you. I’ve been wearing this Gucci suit for two weeks straight I don’t have any others.”

No one answers immediately. No one has anything resembling an answer.

“Then buy another suit!” MC-kun says.

“Do I look like I’m made of m o n e y to you?!”

“YES.”

“Ah ha! Yes that is the point, well you see–” and RBR-kun pulls out a soggy PB&J from his bag, slumps into an open seat at the table, his eyes dull and matte, solemnly chewing his lunch. “Can one of you spot me like $1.50 for the bus ride to the competition arena tomorrow? I spent the last of my money on this bread.”

MC-kun: “What?”

RBR-kun: “I don’t have money!”

MC-kun: “Why are you ACTING like a rich boy if you DONT HAVE MONEY”

RBR-kun: “LOOK IT JUST KIND OF HAPPENED OKAY.”

MC-kun: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT JUST KIND OF HAPPENED.”

And well, it just kind of happened. Rich Blond Rival Boy is as fake as they come. He grew up in a modest household, making money over the summer by doing yard work for neighbors. He was fairly frugal and quiet and unassuming, until his grandma bought him a nice tux for the school dance, and he dyed his hair platinum blond on a dare, and suddenly the world was in his pocket.

Suddenly he had connections in high places. Suddenly he could have wait staff doting on him at a moment’s notice. Suddenly he could summon helicopters at the snap of his fingers, and have any product imaginable, legal or not, air-lifted to him on a whim. Everyone was his pawn. Everything bent to his will. Ever since then he’s been unstoppable in his ambitions.

He just doesn’t have any of the actual money to maintain this. All his cards are overdrafted. His credit is in the toilet. Several different loan sharks technically own the rights to his immortal soul.

Rich Blond Rival Boy wants in on the League Of Background Characters, because he is utterly afraid of the ruin he faces if he is exposed. If the others get assassinated, they get sent home. If RBR-kun gets assassinated, the debtors will drag him out by his toes.

A scuffle erupts over by the lunch line before anyone can give RBR-kun an answer. It’s over in an instant. A shriek, a clatter, a tray and knife hitting the ground. The biker ruffian boy with the blue mohawk lies on the floor. His shorn-off mohawk spikes lie on the platter, as if being served to the cafeteria at large.

Worried murmurs break out in the crowd.

No one had seen the knife-yielder. 

No one had seen anything.

MORE KIDS MORE KIDS MORE KIDS

And the one thing worth noting: MC-chan is now MG-chan, as in Main Girl-chan, to avoid mixing up her name with MC-kun. 

Enjoy.

There’s a sustained hush, like a breath held too long. It’s a blooming, crawling, clawing wave of realization that takes the cafeteria captive. Heads turn. Voices falls silent. Clueless candy-hair after clueless candy-hair takes in the murder scene, mohawk spikes presented so curiously, so esoterically plattered, as if part of the lunch selection.

The dish itself is a warning; MG-chan understands that much. She feels the bloodlust in the air. And it’s closer now. She edges her chair away from the table. Her nerves are alight.

“Run,” MG-chan says.

“Sorry?” MC-kun replies.

MG-chan kicks her chair back, lighting to her feet.

“Run!”

And at that moment, a sound like a cannon ball fires, the silence breaking. People startle at the noise, but it’s the boy sitting one table over – directly across from MC-kun – who jolts entirely sideways in his seat. He’s the contestant whose hair has been quaffed perfectly into a cartoon whale, pallid blue and deep ocean undertones brimming through his hairline. He stares forward, as if stunned. The girl next to him asks if he’s okay.

He turns to her slowly, and reveals the entire right half of his face has been consumed in a wad of bubblegum. He raises one shaking hand to his whale-tail, now webbed in gum, and he collapses.

And all hell breaks loose.

MG-chan has MC-kun by the shoulder before he can process it. They’re running. Them and GG-chan and RBR-kun. Them and almost everyone else, a breathing screaming mass of panic as people shove and knee and elbow their way through the crowd.

“Where are we going?” MC-kun asks. He’s stumbling to keep pace with MG-chan, one hand pressed protectively to the bandana on his forehead in danger of slipping off.

“Away from here. Outside.”  MG-chan throws her weight against the cafeteria door. It slams open. “Wherever we’re not sitting targets.”

Their feet beat against the linoleum below, into the hotel foyer, but it’s no good. The bloodlust presence doesn’t fade. It does not grow weaker. Instead it gains on them, like heat, like a house fire that lashes out at their heels and trips them with each step. Another two kids go down with the sound of razor blades and a puff of shorn hair, like dandelion fluff blown in the wind.

MG-chan, MC-kun, GG-chan, and RBR-kun all burst out the hotel front doors – RBR-kun with a shriek and a graceful leap over a half-shaved unconscious student on the floor.

“How did he go down?! I didn’t even see him go down?!” RBR-kun shouts, pointing to the kid he vaulted. “Invisibility? Is the murderer invisible?!”

“Maybe super-speed. Really any superpower is possible among these people. We can’t rule anything out.” GG-chan has her laptop out, balanced precariously on the crook of her arm. She types one-handed while she runs. “If I can hack into the security cameras maybe I can activate the infra-red sensors and get a reading on—”

There’s a crack. A gasp. MG, MC, and RBR all look back to find GG-chan frozen in place. Her glasses are shattered, pinned to the wall beside her by a single needle-thin arrow.

“My glasses…” GG-chan blinks, and stares at her laptop like it’s something entirely foreign to her. “What is this? What was I–?”

MG-chan grabs her arm too. “Never mind. Run. Just run.”

Second most realistic part of re:zero is the bit where it’s really-not-subtly a scathing criticism of male entitlement and main character syndrome, and the perfect, idolized, entirely fictional versions of the women they like that men invent in their heads and then punish the real person for not living up to that imagined standard, all of which is *heightened* by the isekai setting and Subaru’s belief that he is literally and actually the main character of the universe he exists in, but is rooted in an extremely real and recognizable toxic patriarchal mindset.

I should know by now that so many people are very capable of SPECTACULARLY missing the point in a given piece of media (fight club is a good film but if a guy tells you his favorite film is fight club run away etc) but this scene, its context and follow through, the way the narrative grinds Subaru into the fucking dirt for his behavior here, makes me absolutely baffled that this anime has a My Waifu-type fanbase because I just. Did you watch the show??? With your eyes???????

basically:

EMILIA is basically a mish-mash of generic light novel fantasy main heroine tropes: she is a kind, naive and happy Half-Elf wizard "princess" whom is the first person the main hero meets in his adventure, being an elf wizard is INCREDIBLY important here because in every other fantasy work being a female elf wizard pretty much permanently boxes you into the role of "love interest for the male hero" unless the princess takes that role (and she ALSO has the princess role so she's EXTRA "generic love interest), and I wanna say what I consider to be her MAIN deviation from the role: she isn't Subaru's Love interest, Subaru is HER Love interest.

to put it simply she's not the princess whose love Subaru will earn after rescuing her from the Dark lord after overcoming a thousand hardships, She's not the mage that will support the heroic Subaru in his battle against Evil who develops feelings for him along the way: She's the Hero, she's the Noble, Wise Ruler who plans to end the discrimination rampant in the kingdom, she wants to uncover the secrets of ehr past, she wants to prove herself to be her own individual and not just Satella 2.0, she's Aragorn, she's Luke, She's the Hero

She's not here to fawn over Subaru and tell him how cool he is while she supports her, Subaru is here to do that for her, HE'S the support, she earned his love after with her kindness after saving him, she's the one that battles evil while Subaru supports her while openly (and loudly) being in love with her while she's on the side half ignoring his feelings half sorta-reciprocating them (she basically treats him the way male heroes tend to treat their love interests)

this is more apparent when you realize that Emilia only starts to actually like him back when he stops trying to impress her and starts trying to actually support her, support her emotionally, support her in her goals, support her as a strategist, not just trying to be cool but being on her side, believing in her, the real her with her flaws and her virtues

this subversion is so important to re: zero that when Emi starts to act like a typical love interest it's a red flag (ie: the route were she goes insane, greed if)

even when they finally do become Lady and Knight their relationships is on completely equal terms, they fawn over how cool the other is, the try their best to help each other and be on each other's side, they're in love and it's cute

TL,DR Emilia is a subversion of main Heroines in the sense that she's actually the Hero and Subaru is her Heroine

REM

now I'm gonna be a bit brief here Rem is the PHYSYCAL EMBODIMENT of a trope called "Makeine" (Makeru=losing,Heroine) she's a the Betty to Emilia's Veronica, the black, brown or blue haried "more accesible" love interest that is DESTINED to lose to the blonde, white, sometimes red haired heroine that is more "difficult to earn" (the hair color is VERY important here), she's the childhood friend in a harem anime that loves the MC from the start and is always super nice to him and the audience REALLY roots for her so she get's really popular and then she loses so the audiences proceed to make a riot and get mad because she deserved better so the autor makes a spin off where she wins

it speaks to how trope-y Rem is that she plays this SO STRAIGHT that I can't even tell if Tappei did it on purpose to mess with us or if she just turned out like that due to fate, but to be blunt it doesn't really matter since this isn't the trope she subverts:

Rem is the embodiment of every single anime "my waifu" trope that weebs love, until she isn't.

but then she IS those tropes again, except NOT.

she's a cute, kuudere maid that is friendly to the mc alongside her flirty sister, until she kills him

SEVERAL TIMES

but then after some development of their relationship, she starts to fall in love with him very quick, she starts to admire him, to like him (all of him, flaws and all) to sacrifice herself for him, she starts to become.....his waifu.

an actual waifu, not a "real girl" like Emilia, she embodies ALL the fantasies about romance that Subaru wants to have, she's the cute fantasy monster girl that loves and supports him unconditionally, who understands him and is willing to do anything for him even while knowing all his bad qualities (her being an oni is also not a coincidence, Lum Invader from Urusei yatsura basically codified all the waifu tropes Rem embodies) every boundary that he can't cross with Emilia is a boundary that Rem wants him to cross, she idealizes him just as much as he idealizes Emilia, that whole speech Emilia gave Subaru about how he doesn't love her but the version of her inside her head could have never come from Rem's mouth, instead she gives him a speech about how much she loves the version of him inside of her head and tries to motivate him to act like the hero she thinks he is (a speech that helped at the moment but did more damage in the long run) all the things Emilia can't give him are constantly being given to him by Rem

Rem is too good to be true, a dream come to life, she's so perfect it's unhealthy, this is why it's inevitable that she ends up removed from the story.

Subaru cannot mature into the person the Emilia camp needs as long as she's around, she makes things too easy for him, her love is a crutch that must be taken away from him before he grows to dependent on it, and with her coma Rem goes from one cliche to another, she become Subaru's "Lost Lenore" she goes from the "Lum" to Subaru's "Ataru" to the "Eurydice" to his "Orpheus"

(btw Rem getting fridged for Subaru's development is the most painfully heterosexual thing in Re: zero)

And even when she "might as well be dead" Subaru continues to depend on Rem, it actually might have made it worse because now that the real Rem is gone he only has the Rem inside his memories, the version of her inside his head becomes more separate from her actual self and slowly becomes more of an abstract ideal that serves to motivate him

(SPOILERS START HERE)

and then her amnesiac self shatters that ideal violently (i haven't read the vollachia arc so I can't elaborate about this that much yet) but it basically serves as the final nail in the coffin for the old Rem and the final confirmation that Rem was too perfect to be healthy

(SPOILERS END HERE)

btw Rem IF actually contributes to the deconstruction, in order for this universe to exist two things must happen, Subaru has to be a coward and Rem has to be Selfish, by doing this they both relinquish the idealized virtues that they had in the other's head, Subaru stops being "Rem's hero" and Rem stops being "'Subaru's perfect waifu", Subaru becomes a deserter and Rem becomes just a selfish girl in love, they can now permanently indulge in their joyous "sloth" and stop trying to grow as people, at the cost of living with regret for the rest of their lives

tldr Rem subverts every Waifu trope by playing them completely straight, it's more the story itself that deconstructs her by showing her as unhealthy

CRUSCH

I'll be brief, Crusch subverts the harem tropes by not being one of Subaru's love interests.......that's it

Ok I'll be less brief, in a more cliche story she would be the third member of his harem and be the one that officially upgrades it from "love triangle" to a proper harem (her personality even fits as she foils both Rem and Emilia and fits the "lady of war" cliche) but because this is Re: zero Crusch decides that even if she could have fallen for Subaru that ship simply won't sail because she's too busy and he likes someone else, so she just doesn't become one of his Love interests (even post amnesia)

Yes I'm including Priscilla, not because I think she's seriously part of his harem but because she deconstructs some Harem cliches

Prisicilla deconstructs the "Arrogant Tsundere Oujosama" by playing it so utterly straight it loops back around to being original

She's not putting on an act, she doesn't have a nicer, softer side that the protagonist will slowly uncover as she falls in love with him (well, she does have a kinder side but she doesn't fall in love with Subaru, also bluntly speaking even her nicer side is not that nice), she's not secretly lonely or secretly unhappy, she is a Rich Bitch through and through

there is no "tsundere" about her, when she says "I hate you, you're a loser who's beneath me" she means it

even as she starts to legitimately like Subaru she still makes it utterly clear she views him as beneath her

tldr she deconstructs the Oujosama cliche by not subverting your expectations and legitimately being the spoiled, elitist snob she initially seemed to be.

I am being completely serious Reinhard is part the conversation

Reinhard subvert harem tropes by......well tbh just by existing at all

In a another story Reinhard would simply be the body Subaru is reincarnated in, not a character but simply a vessel for Subaru to live out his fantasies, here him and Subaru get to coexist and that makes their dynamic more interesting

Willhelm wishing Subaru was his grandkid is not a coincidence, by all the rules of Light Novels Subaru should be Reinhard

Without each other they are incomplete, without having Subaru's huge personality to fill him Reinhard is almost robotic, with zero ambitions and no drive to do anything beyond his duty, barely even a person, and without Reinhard's perfect body to be his vessel Subaru can't be the hero he wants to be, they need each other, they yearn to be each other, they aren't even soul mates they're just the two halves of a person who never existed

Instead they're sorta "stuck" as different people, but it also allows them to fall in love with befriend each other, Reinhard can be the pillar of strength that the insecure, weak Subaru needs and Subaru can be the pillar of mental strength that the lonely Reinhard needs

The above statement about how Emilia is the hero and Subaru the heroine applies also to him and Reinhard (which makes sense as Rein and Emi have a lot of parallels) but he also fits a different more modern love interest cliche, Reinhard is a Calamity Princess

these girls basically

the calamity princess is basically the (comparatively) modern counterpart to the generic light novel heroine thar Emilia represents , basically they were born from Highschool DxD's Rias Gremory and they were a sort of attempt at revitalizing Light novel Heroines

they are very specific to the 2010s era of light novels (and because of this they feel super dated now), they tried to make the MC's a bit less Gary stu by giving them some conflict about how uncontrollable their powers were or making them initially weak and then becoming stronger (very quickly), academic settings were mandatory, and most importantly they tried to give their main heroines more "personality"

rather than being perpetual damsels in distress or whiny sidekicks, the Calamity princess is actually supposed to be the MC's superior (or at least start as their superior), they are some one the MC is meant to strive for, to impress, to eventually Surpass, and they are defined by 5 characteristics

1)Superiority: as previously mentioned the Princess is meant to start of as someone above the MC whom he must eventually surpass, usually she's his boss, a more experienced colleague or sometimes a sort of rival before joining his side. She can't just be superior to the mc however, she must be viewed as a Superior by the world as a whole (justifying her an an objective to surpass)

2)ambition: the calamity princess has something to prove, a duty to uphold, usually in spite of her superiority she is also ostracized in some form by society at large (her heritage, a condition of her birth, inability to control her power) because of this she then sets herself a goal to prove the world wrong about her and become an important person at "insert thing here" or to defend the honor of "insert noble house here"

3) being royalty, or at least rich: this is just connected to her superiority

4) as mentioned before she is ostracized: in spite of her superiority she tends to be disliked by her fellow nobles or by the world at large due to "x reason"

5) a connection to the protagonists call to adventure: usually the calamity princess is directly involved in empowering/enabling the protagonists, she is sometimes a mentor or a rival

pretty much the only characteristic Reinhard doesn't have is not being a woman and not being the main love interest, and now you might be thinking "Isn't Emilia also a calamity princess?" and you'd be right except for the fact that the calamity princess's agency ultimately depends entirely on the protagonist (basically she's not the hero of her own story but an asset to the MC's story) and her superiority exists to make the MC look cooler when he wins her over, which is simply not true of Emilia.....but it IS true of Reinhard.

Reihard is the unachievable, perfect, redheaded superior to Subaru who makes his journey possible when he saves him, he is ostracized by everyone so the fact that Subaru is still nice to him makes him grow fond of him, Subaru constantly tries to be an equal to Reinhard

hell ayamatsu if is all about how Subaru feels inferior to Reinhard and is essentially a massive attempt at beating him at something

this being side I don't think Reinhard was made with this trope in mind, mainly because there's another Character that fits the trope better:

Theresia Van Astrea (specifically in her relationship to Willhelm) is obviously a riff on the concept, she pretty much fits almost all of the characteristics of the Calamity princess and she's even an actual redhead, she is the Superior that Willhelm constantly strived to equal all his live, she's the girl she loves, the girl he's willing to change himself for and the unobtainable shining idol who casts a shadow over her familiy, the reason why Reinhard resembles the Calamity princess is because him and Theresia have heavy parallels to each other so her archetype ends up bleeding into him a bit

it's also with her that we see the actual deconstruction of the archetype: Willhelm never manages to "earn" her, or he never feels like he does

Wilhelm is defined by his parallelisms with Subaru, he is also a "protagonist" of his own story and to be specific he actually represents the specific brand of Light Novel MC that existed alongside the Calamity princess back in the 2010s, he's not instantly good at everything and must submit himself to intense training to improve himself, he is hated by others because of his weakness and must search any opportunity to prove himself. they were sort of a mix between the usual light novel mc and shonen manga mc, they had the underdog aspect of the latter with the more quiet, self-deprecating nature of the later

so similarily his relationship with Theresia is pretty much a very classic "underdog light novel hero x calamity princess" with the caveat being that he never overcame any of his insecurities at his weakness, Theresia remained an unachievable image of perfection even when she always treated him as an equal, he neved stopped idealizing Theresia so when he loses her the self-hatred that had defined him for so long blows up, he takes it out on Heinkel, on Reinhard on all the people that remined him of her, and thereby reminded him of his failures

Subaru is the exception as he is actually a chance for Willhelm to fix his mistakes, with Subaru's help Willhelm manages to avenge his wife, with Willhelm's help Subaru's relationship with Emilia is mended and he can now start to properly court the real her, not the idealized version in his head (Which is important since Willhelm never got over the idealzied image of Theresia he had) and just as importantly Subaru's relationship with Reinhard is never plagued by the insecurities Will and Theresia's relationship was

Subaru manages to understand what the invincible hero actually needs: for someone to treat him like a human, not as an image of perfection, not as an ideal to strive for but as an 19 year old guy who can't and should not be expected to solve all the problems in the world by himself, he recognizes that his boyfriend, other half, soulmate friend has weaknesses, that he needs help covering those weaknesses, and most importantly, that it is perfectly possible for Subaru to help him cover those weaknesses (yadah, yadah, Subaru humanizes Reinhard, while Reinhard herofies Subaru, yadah yadah they make the perfect team yadah yadah, two halves of the same hero, yadah yadah THEY SHOULD KISS)

tldr.....Subaru and Reinhard are really fucking gay

ok this came out a lot less coherent than I wanted but I'm moving on to the last member

THIS HANDSOME FUCKER

Julius doesn't really subvert any "harem tropes" per se (I'm not familiar with BL harem's unfortunatelty), he's a subversion of the rival trope in the sense that his rivalry with Subaru only exists in Subaru's head

Like Julius does not reciprocate Subaru's animosity at all, he actually is kinda fond of the little bastard even though they started off in the wrong foot, like post white whale he's very clearly just fucking with him when he teases him

he spends more time saving him than indulging in any "rivalry", and by act 4 he's openly enjoying Subaru's company ("from the bottom of muy heart, your recklessness truly shocks me sometimes" *proceeds to shoot a literal rainbow laser powered by fairies*)

(SPOILERS)

any remnants of his rival status is further obliterated by the pleiades watch tower arc, they aren't even ribbing each other anymore it's just "OH THANK GOD MY BEST FRIEND STILL REMEMBERS ME, MY LIFE HASN'T ENDED"

(END OF SPOILERS)

also a lot of readers have read the constant flowery descriptions of Julius's handsomeness by Subaru as him having a crush on him but being in denial (which, fair)

on the other end Julius's constantly expressed desire to befriend Subaru and his obvious soft spot for him could be read as him liking Subaru, also his constant teasing could be read as flirting

fact remains that if Tappei were to decide that Julius likes Subaru or that Subaru has a crush on Julius and proceeded to change absolutely nothing about their relationship......it would work

tldr: Julius defies harem tropes by being a man and he defies Rival tropes by not being Subaru's rival at all and actually kinda just being a guy that's bad at flirting (or arguably he's good at it but Subaru's just dense)