You ever think about Kage Tatsumi and what a good deconstruction he is of common YA love interest tropes?
Like, you’ve got this guy. He is dark, he is handsome, he has gorgeous implausibly-colored eyes, he’s gloomy and dangerous and ridiculously competent for his age and people are rightfully afraid of him, except for the heroine, who sees and brings out his softer side. He even has a dangerous secret and a grimdark tragic past; he literally ticks off all of the boxes.
And then Julie Kagawa comes in, takes this guy, and makes him…baby.
The cliché way to handle this character would be to make him aggressive, borderline abusive, at the very least needlessly harsh and cruel to Yumeko to try and keep her at bay, but it’s okay because his past is Just That Sad. And Tatsumi is just…the complete opposite of that. Almost all his aggression is exclusively Hakaimono’s. He constantly holds back around Yumeko and worries about overstepping boundaries with her even after they get together. His self-esteem and self-worth are basically nonexistent, he lives exclusively for others (first his clan, then Yumeko). He tries to repay people when he feels like he owes them a favor. Flashbacks only reveal about him what we already know: that he’s a loyal, earnest guy who is capable of kindness even as the demonslayer and will put aside his own safety and feelings for the sake of those he serves or cares about. In fact, there are several hints across the story that he’s extraordinarily pure of heart and remains so throughout the trilogy (but that’s a matter for a different post).
Tatsumi is a dangerous guy with a dark past, but the difference between him and the cliché is that his dangerousness is never played for attractiveness—it’s played for tragedy. The fact that this quiet, serious, loyal, selfless, pure-hearted and kind guy was forced to become a deadly, emotionless soldier is portrayed as heartbreaking, and it is. This guy is seventeen. He’s still half a child and he didn’t deserve any of the stuff that happened to him.
(Also, according to Hakaimono he’s short, and how many times do we get to say that about a male YA love interest?)
