Sympathy for the Diva
is a Blood+ Alternate Continuity fanfic written by Perentie Fan and published in 2008.
The fanfic follows a "what-if" alternate story development where Diva decides not to kill Riku during her raid on the Red Shield HQ but to keep him as her sex toy. Things don't go so simple however, for Riku begins to exert entirely new kind of influence over the blue-eyed vampire queen - that of compassion and friendship. The twisted and tortured mind of Diva gradually begins to understand what true love and self-devotion mean but until the very end it is uncertain if she will be able to find peace and be redeemed.
All other main characters from the anime take part in the story, although there are some important changes in their Character Development as well, most notably Saya, Haji and Kai.
The fanfic is rated M for containing scenes of violence as well as sexual content.
Sympathy for the Diva provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Saya. Also Irene and Lulu.
- Anti-Villain: Several - Solomon, Diva and Nathan. They all make Heel–Face Turn eventually. Sort of for the latter. Tragic for the first.
- Ax-Crazy: Diva. Understandable having in mind her past.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason why Diva falls in love with Riku.
- The Chessmaster: Amshel, of course. Surprisingly, Riku could also count as a heroic version due to his ability to pull the right strings in Diva's tormented psyche in order to show her what true love is and eventually make her turn against Amshel.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Diva becomes increasingly possesive of Riku, isolating him from her followers and becoming angry whenever she thinks he's not paying attention to her.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: The various experiments Joel Senior and Amshel subjected Diva to in the past. In a nutshel: Severing and reattaching limbs without anestesia, constant malnutrition, drainage of blood, complete isolation, constant physical and emotional abuse. It is even implied that she had been raped on several occasions. The list may continue even further. No wonder Riku asks himself how Diva still has some grain of sanity left.
- Cooldown Hug: Riku usually gives these to Diva during her emotional breakdowns.
- Dark Action Girl: Diva.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Mainly Diva and Riku, but it is valid for almost all heroes in the story.
- Easily Forgiven: Downplayed. It took an entire chapter and a half to persuade the main characters that Diva deserves a second chance but she receives such a chance eventually despite her numerous atrocities and uses it wisely. Bonus points that her main defenders are the people who, after Saya, have suffered most from her actions - Riku and the young Joel.
- Femme Fatale: Diva, so much.
- Flashback/Flashback Within a Flashback: The story sometimes includes these in order to explore some major events in the backstory of the characters.
- For Science!: The reason why Joel Senior and Amshel subject Diva to all those despicable experiments of theirs. Amshel goes even further with his plan to infest the Earth with Chiroptera in order to study them better. This is also the reason for him to drink Diva's blood and turn into her first Chevalier.
- Heel–Face Turn: The entire plot is about this after all.
- I Hate You Vampire Mom: Diva turns Kai into one of her Chevalier. He is not pleased, to say the least.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Amshel receives one, albeit offscreen.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: During the penultimate chapter, Amshel, on the verge of a Villainous Breakdown, blames Riku for turning Diva back against him and for poisoning her mind. This causes Riku to finally snap and to go all out against him, almost beating him until Amshel retaliates by crushing him into the ground.
- Love Redeems: A pervert love in the beginning, but still played straight in the end.
- Mad Scientist: Amshel and Joel Senior. Riku is utterly disgusted with the latter, when during a vision through the memories of Diva he sees Joel didn't show any emotion while torturing Diva - he performed it slowly, methodically and in cold blood.
- Morality Pet: Riku gradually turns into one for Diva.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Diva comes to believe that she can get Riku's constant love and attention by killing everyone who could "distract" him, including Saya.
- No-Sell: Downplayed. During the second half of the story, it is revealed that thanks to their constant sexual activities, Riku's body managed to gain some form of immunity towards Diva's blood, making him immune to crystallization. Keyword being some. While he's safe from being turned into crystal, her blood can turn off his Healing Factor temporarily, meaning if he suffers a major injury in one of his vital organs after drinking her blood, he will die from the injury. Later in the story, he's stabbed by Diva by her sword after shielding Saya, but thanks to her blood's toxicity being weakened after giving birth to her babies, he survives, but not before being dead for a few minutes.
- Questionable Consent: Riku actually enjoys having sex with Diva in spite of his terror of her, but seeing as he's a weak chevalier and she's a powerful vampire queen, he's really in no position to reject her advances.
- Redemption Earns Life: Diva, after her Heel–Face Turn in the very end.
- Sex Slave: Riku is this for Diva.
- Spared by the Adaptation: The Schiff (at least most of them). And of course Diva and Riku.
- "They Still Belong to Us" Lecture: Amshel delivers one to Diva when he realizes that he is losing her. It doesn't work.
- Upbringing Makes the Hero: As in the anime, it is implied that their Happily Adoption by George showed Saya, Kai and Riku the value of strong family bond. Later each one of them is able to overcome seemingly desperate situations mainly because of the mutual sibling love they share and not so much their raw Chiropteran power.
- Villainous Breakdown: Both Diva and Amshel have such. The outcome for each of them however is entirely different.
- Villainous BSoD: Diva suffers two of these. The first one is after Riku tries to persuade her that killing Saya will only deepen her pain. Diva beats him black and blue but cannot force herself to kill him because she already starts to feel some unknown feeling towards her captive (see below). Moreover, for the first time the vampire queen understands how lonely she really is. The second one is even more dramatic because it happens after she incidentally stabs Riku during her final duel with Saya. Diva is utterly emotionally devastated and lapses into an almost catatonic state by the thought that she may have just killed the only good person in her life. Luckily he gets better soon thereafter. In the end though her Villainous Breakdown not only helps Diva to understand that she genuinely loves the boy but also shows her enemies that she is not the monster everybody think she is.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: During the second part of the story Diva constantly contemplates on the strange sensation she feels towards Riku - one that causes her both suffering and relief.
