#No but fr don't try to make a dissociating person respond to you

[didtipsandhelp]

When you're dissociating and someone asks you if you're okay

[ladyloveandjustice]

Otherside Picnic Volume 8 Review that Devolves into a Bunch of Quotes and Gushing

I’ve been wanting to do a review of Otherside Picnic Vol 8 because I loved it so much, but haven’t been in the right mindspace to properly convey my enthusiasm. But I’m about to get busy so it’s now or never. Here are my thoughts that are inevitably going to devolve into a bunch of quotes and gushing. Let's just go through it all!

-I loved this so much, first off. It literally inspired me to have an honest discussion with my partner about my own intimacy and relationship quirks and what we want from each other. It made me feel a little better about myself and my own weirdness, that’s how much it affected me. It really got across the relief of just communicating in a relationship, of having frank conversations with your partner, and accepting your differences from the mainstream as okay.

-The conversation about romance, love, and sex being different actually made me tear up, which is how I knew this book would murder me from the beginning. It’s just so nice to see one of my favorite yuri and favorite romantic stories ever acknowledge asexuality and the full spectrum of experiences in such an understanding and thoughtful way.

-I love that this book really recontextualizes the oblivious-to-love protagonist, slow-burn and often stalled development that aren’t uncommon in animanga adjacent media romances and made it into something incredibly interesting. This was already hinted at in previous volumes, but Sorawo’s disconnect with her own feelings and slowness in responding to Toriko wasn’t just to tease the audience, but because her view of romance and her understanding of her own feelings conflicted with societal ideas of romance and it left her lost and confused. It makes everything that came before it so much more meaningful. This is also extremely relatable, and I love that Sorawo was frustrated with the idea of her relationship fitting into a socially acceptable box, when she felt what she had with Toriko was a lot more complicated and far reaching and didn’t want to define it so neatly.

-Honestly reading about Sorawo not being all that into kissing and basically being like "I don't hate it but it doesn't do anything for me" made me feel a little bit less alone and little more confident in talking about this aspect of my experience. ME TOO. GIRL.

-Every single yuri should have a line like “sounds to me like you’re a raging lesbian” from now on. How can anything ever live up to this.

-Toriko looking into sexual abuse gave me a heart attack because at first I thought she was trying to understand what happened with her and Satsuki. But she was researching Sorawo, because the stuff with the Red Person made her realize Sorawo has trauma and I felt so vindicated about my article. Then we have the hilarity of Sorawo, who literally has a “cult mode” when she’s made to relive where she had to deal with abuses from cults, where she becomes like a different person and talks to herself like she’s a separate person and is disconnected from her normal self…claiming she doesn’t have lingering cult trauma and doesn’t dissociate.

And then Toriko going “uhhhh what about the Red Person?”

“Huh oh that didn’t count. Cuz your love saved me.”

THE most un-self aware person, I love her.

(And EVERYONE knows it, especially Toriko, loved this exchange:

“Don’t try to force something I’m not aware of onto me.”

“Sorawo, there aren’t many things about you that you actually display self-awareness of.”

“Wow, insulting much?!” )

-The fact Toriko noticed how thirsty Sorawo was for her the second they met is so funny and makes that scene 100 times better in hindsight.

“It took me by surprise. Here I am, holding you in my arms, and you go and stare at my face, then your eyes start working their way down. I was like, ‘Girl sure has a lot of energy for someone who almost drowned.’”

“So, what? When you were talking about me ogling you before, you meant—”

“Yeah, right from the get-go. From the moment you saw me for the first time.”

Sorawo didn’t realize she was doing it…the entire exchange is hilarious. SO much of this book was hilarious honestly, here are some other choice quotes:

Who would’ve known there could be such a touching scene right next to a shelf stuffed full of erotic manga with titles so incredible that I couldn’t possibly name them...?

And this, the best love confession ever:

“I love you! I love you!”

“For real?”

“Apparently!”

-I really liked that Toriko was genuinely worried Sorawo might not have consented to the previous kisses and might be bothered by them. It built on the ongoing theme of Toriko struggling with emotional and physical boundaries, giving her such good character growth, and It shows a concern and care most stories gloss over.

…Which is kind of a stark contrast to the lack of concern she shows about that time she hit Sorawo in volume 6, despite Sorawo bringing it up as a problem. This has been an ongoing issue that’s bothered me, and it’s been mentioned often enough I hope Miyazawa is going to actually do something to address it. He DID address the questionable consent of the earlier kisses, going beyond my expectations, so I actually have my fingers crossed this is something we’re going to explore and confront. It’s really jarring compared to the rest of how well everything else has been handled, and is the only mark against the story, so I’m hoping this is intentional. The Toriko who worries Sorawo might have been sexually abused and goes above and beyond to try to be sensitive and understand her and the Toriko who is dismissive of the time she hit her (now) partner seem so in opposition to each other, and I there could be some interesting exploration and resolution of that.

(Miyazawa does mention something about having to treat serious issues casually because of Sorawo's detached, cynical POV and hoping readers will understand; and I think it's likely he was referring to that, which gives me more confidence).

-Sorawo understands Toriko’s moms are lesbians now I’m so proud of her.

-the fact that Toriko wanted to fuck in her dead parents bedroom …she has so many problems, I cherish her.

-I loved getting more Toriko backstory and her moms. Love Sorawo being like “wow I probably should have asked about this but…” YES YOU SHOULD HAVE, FOR MY SAKE. But Sorawo’s focus on living in the here and now, and being content with the Toriko in the here and now, is such an interesting aspect of her.

-EVERYthing about the final scene was so good. Like how can I even talk about it? Toriko fucking Sorawo with her weirdass interdimensionally-corrupted hand while getting jazzed by Sorawo's magic eye is just PEAK lesbian fantasy, no other series had delivered this exact weirdness that I want, thank you for being there for all of us bizarre sapphics.

“I...might make you go crazy.”

“That’s okay.”

Toriko’s hand drew closer. It meant something different now than it had before. If Toriko touched me now, I’d be the one to go insane. She snuggled up to me, so close our noses could touch, and with a voice full of heated passion, she whispered, “Let’s go crazy. Together.”

“Girl hit me with your evil eye, let’s get real fucked up” I love them, they’re such freaks and I am here for it. THE PASSION. THE METAPHOR. THE PURE CHUUNI WISH FUFILLMENT.

-Honestly I just highlighted the entire final scene because it hit me right in my weird gay little soul the way few other things have and I want to be able to whip these out the next time some loser says wlw media doesn’t have poetic declarations of love and passion so I’m just going to go through them.

Here’s one:

But that’s not what happened. Toriko looked beautiful, opening before me like a flower in bloom, and I was aware of every minute branch of the tree, down to their very tips…[]

Toriko became rude, polite, lewd, or embarrassed. I didn’t have the composure to focus or think as I watched, so Toriko changed from one thing to another as my gaze wandered. Laughing, getting angry, crying, fearing, moaning—feeling as if she were flowing from one state to the next, in constant flux, and yet in all of them simultaneously.

Sorawo accepting all sides of Toriko, all her complexity, how she’s everything all at once! And the fact they have such amazing sex they basically GO TO THE OTHERSIDE? Dimension transcending lesbian sex? Showstopping, incredible.

The way her hand moved, tracing the outline of my body—its true outline—was as gentle as could be, sensitive yet bold, overflowing with care, incredibly unreserved, and audacious. It felt like it was packed full of all the experiences of being touched by another person. In another way, different from mine, Toriko was unraveling the person that I was too. I was being decomposed, broken apart. The things that had been pressed into a human form were decompressed, and expanded outwards without limit.

This is how you do a sex scene. If your partner doesn’t unravel you and make you see all the shattered pieces of yourself, is it even worth it? I love the motif of falling apart but becoming more whole at the same time- isn’t that just every human experience all wrapped up into one?

I had been afraid to look at Toriko. Toriko had been afraid to touch me. Now, as we were looking at, or touching, our partner directly, tossed about on the waves of madness, we began to gradually find a way to take control of the situation.

The idea of how maybe you can’t help losing your minds when you look and feel all the other person is…but maybe if you lose your minds together it will be okay. Romance.

These two beasts with all these bodies converged through their desire for one another and were bound together. We were blending together at the interfaces where we connected. The different ‘us’s melted together, without ever becoming a perfect whole, but without fully separating either. Like a chimera made from two types of living being. Or two galaxies colliding.

“We became a chimera” is the absolute nerdiest way to describe making love and thus perfect for them (also lol the beast with two backs).

That’s too long, so how about shortening it to Soratori?” I burst out laughing as I remembered the time she’d tried to use the name Soratori Road for what we now called Route 1 in the other world. “

That’s like one of those ship names,” I told her.

“What’re those?”

“You’re a mangaka’s daughter and you don’t know that?!”

“Nope, not a clue. Is it something dirty?”

“Well, maybe?”

“Hmm.”

Okay, so Sorawo is clearly in some fandom and ships something. Place your bet on what it is. Probably she ships creepypasta monsters.

Do you know what the ‘nue’ is?”

“It’s a Japanese monster, right? Made up of a bunch of different animals mixed together.” “Yeah, that’s the one. As an extension of that, the word can also refer to something that doesn’t have a discernible form.”

[...]

While we were there, the two of us got all mixed up together, right? Intertwined, melting into one, like animals... Depending on how you look at it, you might say we were like a nue.”

“So, basically, if you wanted a word to represent our relationship, we wouldn’t be ‘lovers,’ or ‘accomplices’...but a ‘nue’?”

Okay forget what I said this is ACTUALLY the nerdiest way to describe your relationship. And speaking of nerds, I love this stupid conversation:

“It’s cute. Nue. I like the sound of it. Maybe I’ll get a tattoo of the kanji.”

“You’d take it that far?”

“You’re not gonna get a matching one?”

“They might not let us in the hot springs in Japan anymore. You sure?

” “Huh?! I wouldn’t like that... You think it’d be okay if we put them somewhere no one will see?”

“Where would no one see? This is sounding painful, and I’m not really on board with it.”

“Wha?”

-

Anyway, yeah, this section was everything I wanted, no notes. Toriko and Sorawo have the most demented, fantastical sex possible, having a threesome with the otherside because they all are strange and wonderful, being the nerdiest dorks it’s possible to be, their relationship is now a chimera because that’s even better and more all encompassing that something boring like lovers, Miyazawa really gave us it all, love wins, gays win. What more can I say? I adore this series.