#when I read the fan-translation I definitely read the stories based on how interested I was in the focal character for each story)

[loregoddess]

I think I've figured out why I like On the Way to a Smile so much, and it's not bc it made Advent Children make sense, or explain Rufus and the Turks' seemingly sudden heel-face turn...

but rather bc it's about that weird timeframe of "after the adventure comes to an end and the world must heal", but not in a vague "and then they rebuilt"--it actually takes and explores a handful of characters and makes that weird narrative timeframe (which so often gets glossed over via "x years later" in epilogues and stuff)--the book makes that weird timeframe the story focus itself

[leviismybby]

However, I don't know how to feel about Levi because of the real source material (Isayama interviews, smartpass story and side material like that…) and the 'professional' Japanese translators on this blog. I think he really is, according to the correct Japanese translations and Isayama interviews, he is really dragging humanity through the mud for his personal feelings… and he is someone who is floating and aimless because of Erwin's death… So much so that Isayama even thought of killing him many times because he didn't know what to do about him and threw him aside… also I guess he has no interest in women… oh and Ackerbond is probably real… I know it's not a canon ship and I know he's not in love, but that doesn't mean it's not written too reductively to Erwin. And it disgusts me…

Because of the source material, side material, canon discourse and Japanese translator blogs, my opinion of him is changing more and more and I think I will throw my LevixOc project in the trash… Levi is really someone who (because of Isayama's writing) has been hypnotized by Erwin's own goals and has taken control of Levi's entire character and actions. I don't think I could take him (or s/o) out of this hypnosis.

I know you can say "Isayama's opinions can change" or "only what is in the manga is canon" and I used to hide behind that for consolation, but I realized that once Isayama said it, it was true and it stayed there. And I think the interviews are necessary to understand the content of the scenes etc. in the manga.

Even analysis is no longer a comfort for me… after all, why need complicated writing when interviews and manga are the source of what really happened there…

I guess he's not the character I thought I wanted… I wish he was his own man… I wish he wasn't a character to be discarded just because he died because of another character… or someone who is too picky and only accepts high standards… (this is just my own opinion based on the manga and the material/opinions I think Canon!Levi would be like that)

I'm deeply disappointed… As delulu as the Eruri fandom is, most of what they say is unfortunately true… after all, they take real sources and cite them as evidence… I don't think they are mistranslating because there are professional cold-blooded translators in this fandom and most of them quote what that blog says…

I wish I had never encountered this fandom and this character, so I wouldn't have to be so upset all these years…

Except that half of the interviews are either fake, completely twisted or don't exist. Especially that flaoting ballon bullshit, which a lot of Japanese fans say wasn't even said.

I will this again, please read the manga on your own and base your opinions on Levi on your own.

Since you already mention Eruri and i might ruin your day here but Eruri is as canon and Levihan is, it isn't. No Levi never prirotized Erwin over humanity and you'll understand that if you read the manga for yourself and analyse it for yourself without letting the fandom get to you.

Levi is his own man, he has his brain to think with and the only people who think he doesn't are shippers. Not once did Levi put his own selfish desires before humanity for anyone, he was as sad about Erwin's death as he was for the rest of his comrads. Not a single instance in the manga/anime or any actual official interviews given by Isayama was Levi reduced to Erwin, only a shipper would think that way. Oh and Ackerbond thing too, not only is that damaging to Levi's character, it is just creppy and definitely not a thing.

I am sorry anon but it seems like you don't understand Levi and his character at all. Isayama always said that Erwin and Levi were equal and sworn friends, he didn't say that because he hid some sort of hidden romance between the two, he said it because that's how it is, its a strong bond of trust and commandership and reducing it only to "Oh Levi is a love sick puppy who only cares about Erwin." is a mischaractertion at max.

My advice to you is to take a break from the fandom is they are making you not like your oc x Levi anymore, that's the best way to get them out of your head and please, base your own opinions, not what people online say.

[olivsie]

Something I like about epic the musical is that it Gives it's changes to the original text an actual Purpose

( The first couple paragraphs are basically a rant regarding retellings. If you only want to hear about epic Skip to paragraph 4)

1. I am a bit annoyed by the lack of. Understanding as to why RETELLINGS aren't the most historicaly accurate things in the world. Sorry to break this to you, but that's both just how they work and I would guess how they reach success. Ancient Greece is a much different culture than our own, And most of us would be terrified to actually live back then. When you are Trying to create content That is based on ancient Greece And you want it to be successful/ At least reach a wide, and notably, MODERN audience. You're likely going to have to take some creative liberty And change a few things. Don't get me wrong, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO LIKE RETELLINGS KNOWING THAT FACT ( Me personally, I'm not the biggest fan of Miller's novels Even though I do like epic) BUT IT IS SOMETHING TO BE AWARE OF. And because of that I don't think I would ever expect a retelling to be perfectly accurate And I don't. I had interest in mythology LONG before epic the musical But I didn't actually read the Odyssey until getting into epic. I did not expect it To be just like the musical, I knew Odysseus was going to be much more of an asshole, along with other characters. The odyssey and epic are different pieces of media to me And I am not less of a mythology nerd for liking epic ( Though I will admit that sometimes I take tiny little fun facts of mythology And like to think of them in the context of epic, but that's just for fun.)

2. The Only time being a fan of retellings is wrong as if you genuinely believe they are perfectly accurate And refuse to listen to anything else ( Which has definitely happened, And mythology nerds have the right to be annoyed at that)

3. Some people only like to consume real mythology media, Others like both real mythology and retellings, Others only like to engage with retellings (I would hope they have the self-awareness to know It's not real mythology, From what I've seen some do and some don't, Unfortunately)

4. Ok. now on to what the title of this long ass rant says

I like that epic the musical Retells the story, Not only to both cater to modern audience But Also with its OWN purpose of man versus monster.

Obviously, this is not the point of the original text. Mythos Odysseus does not give a single fuck About the stuff that epic odysseus does. I don't know why the creator Decided to rewrite it this way, (If he's ever said why let me know) But I would assume he wanted to make something about the oddessy And this was simply a very creative way to Translate that for modern audience.

I like this because, yes, holy damn. It does have changes from the original text. But it's not JUST changing it. It's changing it with a purpose

It feels reminiscent of some kind of Dramatic play. the way that epic characterizes.

Polites' kind nature is Representative of the Concept of being merciful Represented in his lines such as " This life is amazing when you greet it with open arms" /"There is so much guilt inside your heart, So why not replace it?"

While in contrast you have eurylochus with more ruthlessness and cautious nature, this is Found in some of his lines such as "You rely on wit, and people die on it" /"we don't know what's ahead" / "I say we strike first. We don't have time to waste so lets raid the place-" /"Let's just cut our losses, You and I and let's run"

And then you have Odysseus, the man/monster. The first act of this Musical is his internal struggle With what He should be On that scale. And the other characters Represent this struggle in the song monster

" Is the cyclops struck with gilt when he kills, is he up in the middle of the night? Or does he end my men to avenge his friend and then Sleep knowing he has done him right?

When the witch turns men to pigs to protect her nymphs, is she going insane? Or did she learn to be colder when she got older and now she saves them the pain?

When a God comes down and makes a Fleet drown Is he scared that he's doing something wrong? Or does he keep us in check So we must respect him and now no one dares to piss him off"

He then Applies this to himself

" Does a soldier use a wooden horse to kill sleeping trojans cause he is vile? Or does he throw away his remorse and save more lives with guile?"

And this marks his turning point of deciding that Ruthlessness It's ultimately worth it if it means Getting home, as aeolus says "The end Always justifies the means"

It's in my opinion, a very creative way to go about retelling a myth. Is it accurate? Absolutely not. For example, circe (From what we know) is not protecting When she turns men into pigs, For all we know, she could just do it because Shits and giggles.

Her character and most others in epic is changed from the original. But it's not ONLY changing for the sake of apeling to the modern Western audience and being successful like Many other retellings. It is also and mainly changing for the sake of influencing the plot that Jorge Rivera herrans crafted For the sake of Retelling epic. It is creative and I enjoy it despite knowing it's not accurate.

[insane-thoughts-oftheday]

A (not) so small philosophical interpretation of Odysseus in epic

Disclaimer: I'm doing this analysis for fun, please don't take everything I write as truth, because this text is based on my interpretation and, even though it took some academic research to do it. It's worth remembering that I don't have a degree in philosophy yet, so I can still make mistakes on some points. Another point I want to highlight is that I wrote this text in a language other than English, and there may be some translation errors by Google, so I apologize if anything is confusing or if you have any questions about something, feel free to comment or send an ask, I'll do my best to explain.

(Notice that's basically me as far as you decide to read this blog)

EPIC:the musical is a work that is very present in my life and in the lives of many other people who are reading this little fan outburst; And if you've just stumbled upon this craze and are hearing about it for the first time, a brief summary is that it's a musical, more addictive than drugs, that tells the story of Odysseus, that guy from Greek mythology who spent 20 years trying to get home after the Trojan War, also known as Simp by his wife Penelope. We have moments of joy, sadness, introspection and many fan outbursts caused by the owner of it all, Jorge Rivera-Herrans, who is not only the creator but also the lead singer of this masterpiece, playing Odysseus and a few others.

But let's get back to the analysis here because I could talk about this for hours without stopping.

A few months ago, when the Underworld saga was released, I remembered the phrase:

"If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."

This phrase was written by Nietzsche in the book Beyond Good and Evil, and it reminds me a lot of the Odysseus we see in EPIC, although the phrase is incomplete in the previous quote, even though it is the most common one we see being spread around. The original is:

“Whoever fights monsters should take care that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

And I also remember thinking about that phrase by Heraclitus, which I think everyone has heard, probably incompletely, at some point in school:

“No one can step into the same river twice, for when he steps into it again, the waters are not the same, and the being itself has already changed. Thus, everything is governed by dialectics, the tension and the alternation of opposites. Therefore, reality is always the result of change, that is, of the struggle between opposites.”

In my opinion, I think that both phrases fit well with the version of the character that we see starring in the entire musical, since most ancient myths and poems have different versions and translations and of course Jorge took some artistic liberties; Odysseus is a Greek hero who fights against many monsters, both mythical and internal, taking into account his ethics as a person while trying to survive and return home.

I think it's interesting to point out that from here on I'll use some different terms, but I'll do my best to explain them.

We can see that throughout all the sagas Odysseus is describing the line of what it is to be human and how one can easily slip off it; this line is located between the definition of gods and monsters/animals and is known as Metron, which gave rise to the word measure, and here we will use it as a synonym for limit for something. It's also good to say that metron has nothing to do with a person's morals/character, because it's a question of ethics.

Morals are the set of rules that concern good and evil, right and wrong. These standards refer to values ​​that are passed down from generation to generation and guide the conduct of individuals in their daily lives. (personal)

Ethics is a field of philosophy whose object of study is the principles that guide morality. In this sense, ethics is a philosophical reflection on morality, approaching the universal principles that govern the common good and coexistence between human beings in general. (common sense)

In my opinion about the musical, the issue of gods and monsters is not so different. For me, in that context, monsters and gods are the same thing, since they are outside the ideal of humanity, but this point may be mentioned later.

Metron is not a knowledge, it is, above all, the limit between impossibility and weakness.

We can see in several Greek myths that human beings like to cross this line, most stories end in tragedy because of this, human beings can also be called “Hybris” which is an excess, it is being hybrid, having two natures, acting in two ways, it is being in the Metron and trying to be something that one is not, because thinking that we can be more than men is arrogance, and arrogance is a human emotion, another story that exemplifies this well is the myth of Oedipus who tries to overcome his destiny given by the gods and ends up fulfilling it anyway.

Hybris is a Greek concept that can be translated as "everything that goes beyond the measure; "immoderation" and which currently alludes to excessive confidence, exaggerated pride, presumption, arrogance or insolence (originally against the gods), which often ends up being punished.

It is worth noting that hybris would in no way be a sin, in the concept of the word and the ideal current translation for it would be "Hamartia", which by chance is also no longer used in its original meaning because of the Catholic Church.

Now going to the interesting part because I was just giving context of terms.

In The Horse and the Infant, we 'meet' our beloved version of Odysseus, where during the Trojan War he states that everything he is doing is for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus, using this as a way to inspire his men to carry out the massacre that he himself did not want to participate in, I think because of his moral nature, the proof is so much that in Homer's original Odyssey, he pretends to be crazy so as not to show up when called, unfortunately he is unmasked and forced to go.

We also see here that up until now Odysseus is still a very moral character, he has his reasons for being there, he, like the other warriors, has a family and his deepest desire is to return to them. So with this we can conclude that he is still just a man, he is human.

In the same song we see how far his morality goes, as he receives the divine mission to kill the young Trojan prince, Astyanax, who is just a baby, due to the threat that one day he will want revenge on him and his kingdom.

All of this creates doubts in Odysseus, about the morality of gods and men. Here we see him crossing the line and this whole text begins to be about ethics, as it is common sense that killing a child is a monstrous act, but for him not to kill means that his family will die in a more horrendous way later and he cannot let that happen.

Then we have the monologue in Just a Man, the best song, where we can really see the doubts mentioned earlier. And one detail that I find very interesting and that will be important for this text is that in Gigi's animatic, we can see Odysseus' "monster" being 'born' and its source is the baby and his doubts about whether he would really be a monster just for that, even though at that moment the baby is still just a human, the mission to kill him little by little makes him a monster due to the possibility that one day he himself will commit several atrocities.

It's fun for me to think that representing 'the monster' as a tree could be an allusion to the fact that trees take as long to grow as a monster takes to be formed by man.

I think you now understand part of Nietzsche's quote. Odysseus looking at his own reflection and not recognizing himself, seeing the monster he will become if he crosses the metronome is very well treated in several animatics, but the most visible is in Gigi's where he is not only referenced but shown as a completely different being both in attitudes and thoughts.

I'll just pause to say that I love how Gigi did the work of showing the tree growing in the shape of a skull, which could be the deaths that the monster will bring or that it is a macabre thing to do, I don't know, I just love this detail for some reason.

And also how I think that makes a point of showing that the real problem is not the baby but rather Odysseus' unethical thoughts developing because of his doubts.

Ok, end of the pause and start of a mini explanation.

I didn't think this analysis would be so long and in my original thought I was only going to end up mentioning a few songs and focusing more on "No Longer You" and "Monster" but it ended up getting out of control and listening to the musical again it seems like I can make a lot of connections that I hadn't thought of before but now I can't express them properly, so from now on there will be a gigantic gap in content that I might fill later in another post or by editing this one, but at the moment thinking too much about it is giving me a headache and I really wanted to be able to post this now along with the Wisdom Saga because it's something I did for fun from fan to fan and I know that now the fandom is busier. One day I swear I'll do a complete analysis relating song by song, but not today for the sake of my mental health.

End of explanation, subject change.

Going through his entire journey, Ody goes to the underworld after Tiresias who reveals that he will never return home, which makes him indignant, I think any human would be, how much he suffered to get there for nothing. Here we can see how Heraclitus fits into the prophet, and as much as I hate cutting philosophical phrases in half, I don't think I need to use the whole thing to make sense of it here, because the most well-known part of it is enough to get to the point discussed here, since it really won't be him who returns to Ithaca, but rather another man, a man haunted by his own past and by the ethics of his people.

There is no way a man who spent 20 years away from home, suffering for the divine and for his own mind, can be the same, because this is a human characteristic, humans are hybrid beings, which implies that we can change our own nature while gods and monsters will always follow the same line of thought, since they are perfect they do not need drastic changes to live as they are.

That's it. So finally we have the mental breakdown where Ody begins to accept that it doesn't matter if he is a monster to everyone, he did what was necessary. He looked into the abyss and was looked back. He becomes the monster, even if he compares himself to the other divine creatures, which I think he never really learned to differentiate from humans, because Ody my friend there is no way you can really reach the level of a cyclops or a god with a wounded ego, or a traumatized nymph, time makes things very trivial for them and let's face it you will not live even half as long as they do because you are just a mortal.

And I don't know how to make gifs so here are some prints to illustrate the last paragraph. But before that I wanted to thank you if you read this far, I know the ending was kind of bad but I'm emotionally tired, I hope I at least conveyed the idea that was in my head. Thank you and stream the new saga!!!!

(All arts belong to gigi!! go check out this amazing work!!!)

[asaka-lucy-dr-rc]

About the relationship between Fubuki and energy bars:

I would like to explain why there are Calorie Mate (energy bars) in the birthday presents given to Fubuki, as I think most overseas fans don't understand why there are.

Let's get straight to the point: this is based on the episode of the official novel "Waiting for Yuma". The story in the Fubuki chapter of that novel was really good, but it hasn't been translated, so I'd like to share the synopsis with everyone.

All in all, this novel is about the cases that the master detectives solved in the past, before they came to Kanai Ward. And there is a guest character in each chapter, and in the Fubuki chapter, a newspaper reporter appears. The man is trying to report on an abandoned factory that has a suspicious rumor that no one can return from it once they enter, and coincidentally, Fubuki is also trying to enter the factory to look for a lost cat. In fact, the factory was full of dangerous traps. As soon as the reporter tried to enter the abandoned factory, he was shot and killed. Of course, she rewound time to save him, but no matter how many times she tried, the route that tried to get away from the factory was always being shot at, so it didn't work, and even though she knew it was dangerous, she had no choice but to enter the factory. Fubuki was exhausted after using so much energy just to get to the point where they could enter, so after going a little further into the depths of the factory, they decided to take a short rest. It was then that the reporter offered her an energy bar. (There is an illustration in this scene, and it definitely looks like a Calorie Mate!) The first time she ate the energy bar, she was so impressed by how delicious it was that she was overjoyed. A reporter saw this and said to her, "If you like it so much, I can buy you as many as you want. There's chocolate, strawberry, and even cabbage!" Fubuki was very happy to hear this, but shortly afterwards, a bomb planted nearby exploded, killing him. She rewound the time again. She then told him where the bomb was hidden, saving his life. As a result, the fact that he promised to buy her as many energy bars as she wanted was lost. She realized this and tried to talk to him about it, but when he said we should hurry, she just agreed.

I'll skip the rest of the story, but this was a very memorable scene. Fubuki tried to save his life by rewinding time over and over again, but he has no idea what she did, and he even thinks that he took care of Fubuki (since she was exhausted most of the time when they were together). And even though there was a chance for him to show his gratitude by buying her some energy bars, that too was lost because she rewound time. I think this story really expresses the loneliness of her abilities. Even though she gets very tired from rewinding time, no one thanks her for it. (But she doesn't really mind. That's her great charm!)

At the end of the novel, there is the Yakou chapter, where Yakou buys Fubuki a cabbage-flavored snack, one of the flavors Fubuki was interested in. It soothed my heart a little, but there is no episode where she eats an energy bar again, so I was warmed by seeing Fubuki's fans giving her lots of energy bars of different flavors as birthday presents. 😊💕

Thank you for reading!

[bookaddict24-7]

REVIEWS OF THE WEEK!

Every week I will post various reviews I've written so far in 2024. You can check out my Goodreads for more up-to-date reviews HERE. You can friend me on Goodreads here.

Have you read any of these? What were your thoughts?

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297. Almond by Sohn Won-Pyung & Joosun Lee (Translator)--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Did I enjoy this book? If I say that I listened to this audiobook and then went and bought the physical book as a trophy, would that be enough to show how much I enjoyed this book?

I wasn't sure what to expect from ALMOND, especially because it was recommended in a batch of other recommendations that were either low-ratings or DNFs. But I'm so glad I gave it a shot because it was an incredible read with, ironically, a lot of heart.

The MC is teen boy who was diagnosed with a disorder that leaves him without the ability to understand emotions. As tragedy strikes his small family, the truth of his situation is made even more obvious. That horrible moment sets off a chain of events that will lead the MC to incredible character growth and, in some ways, showcases him showing more empathy and understanding than others who CAN feel emotions.

ALMOND isn't the kind of book where I'd say I loved the relationships the MC cultivates, but I did appreciate them and the role they played in helping him grow. One of his childhood friendships is slightly abusive, but because the MC is so straight-forward, I was able to look past that and see the friendship through his eyes. The character in question is morally questionable, but his intentions (when stripped of all emotion) were things that made that friendship worthwhile.

There were many moments of prejudices, assumptions, abuse, and grief, but because it is from the perspective of someone who lacked emotion, the story felt strangely candid. I really, really enjoyed this book and it definitely left me thinking about how the world is and how heavily it depends on emotions and the perception of situations BASED on those emotions.

I highly recommend this one for anyone looking for a unique story in translation and for anyone who wants a very interesting exploration of grief.

___

298. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Andy Weir will always be an auto-buy author for me. I don't know if I'll get to his books right away, but you bet that book will always be preordered.

After hearing so many good things about PROJECT HAIL MARY, I finally told myself to start reading Weir's latest. The hype doesn't lie--just like with THE MARTIAN, weird somehow made a book heavy with science and tech talk feel like a hilarious adventure.

For anyone who wasn't a big fan of Weir's second novel, keep in mind that this one is more in line with THE MARTIAN, just definitely a bit more science fiction. Weir's famous wit is mixed into some seriously interesting science as the MC races to save the world from a sun-ending parasite. The way that the past and present were braided together made the story flow so well and I liked that we slowly had information given to us AND the MC.

I really loved the connection between the characters in the present time, and enjoyed the back and forth of the characters in the past. That wit and banter in both made me laugh a few times, or at least smile. And despite this being a bit of a lengthier read, it flowed so well! (The only reason why there is such a gap in my reading is because I had to pause and focus on other books first). But even as I was reading the other books, I couldn't stop think about this one and what would happen to the MC and his new friend.

While THE MARTIAN will always be my favourite by Weir, this one is a close second. It had that fun energy that his debut had and kept me hooked. The MC and his new friend were great together and I loved their bond of their need to protect each others' homes.

I highly recommend this one if you're looking for a science fiction book that isn't too heavily science fiction, save for a few aspects, but could also technically be speculative fiction set in space.

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299. The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

THE STARS BENEATH OUR FEET was one of those books that I went into fully blind and without any sort of hype. It has lived on my bookshelf for years and I finally picked it up in an attempt to tackle my physical book collection.

There were times where I almost DNFed because I was wary of the MC and how his grief was driving him down a very not-nice road. I find that even though these books are sometimes tough reads, I do appreciate them being middle grade reads because it will hopefully help a young teen who is in need of reading a similar experience in their lives.

But ultimately, I loved the character growth. I liked that the MC takes accountability for his actions and although he ends up making decisions that work better for him, he still has his human moments where his questions what is right and what is wrong. And through it all, we see his best friendship grow and face some pretty heavy obstacles. We also see him making a new and unexpected friend and I really liked how that was approached and that representation.

The messiness of grief is also a big topic in this book, and also the queer representation that wasn't made into a plot line but was just a fact was refreshing.

I thought this book was also a great allegory for following your dreams even when everyone else thinks they know what you need or want. At the age that the MC is, a lot of people think they're the ones with the power to determine what a kid should or shouldn't do with their lives, but I liked that he made his own decisions--even if they were difficult choices in the end.

I think this would be a great read for anyone who loves LEGO, anyone who wants stories that explore grief and how it affects a family, and the difficult decisions made when one lives in a community full of gang violence and at-risk youth.

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300. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Definitely one of those books I had to restart a couple of times, read the synopsis to remind myself why I was reading it (LOL), and then had to sit with while listening to the notes at the end of the audiobook.

This book hits hard and I ended up getting hooked on it. I feel like this is definitely one of those books that could be read more than once in the future. It was such an incredibly powerful read. It was such an interesting take on humanity and how lonely it can feel, even when surrounded.

There were definitely some jarring moments, but the way everything was described made it so easy to see everything in my mind. I could easily imagine the land the women explored and the way everything started changing as time went on.

I think one of the most fascinating things about this book was how we get to see the story form from such a young perspective and then we watch her grow and see how the perception of her world changes. She has a wholly different experience than the other women, simply because of her age. We get to see how the idea of womanhood changes throughout the years as she navigates this strange world, which is something that the other characters never really get to do.

The end of the audiobook had some great commentary on the novel and offered deeper explanations of the themes in I WHO HAVE NEVER KNOWN MEN. Some of the important points centred around consumerism, feminism, and sexuality.

Overall, though the story itself feels bleak, there's a certain level of hope that you can't help but feel for this lonely character. And though learning where they could be was certainly a twist, it could also be a sign of new beginnings away from the humanity that kept them encaged.

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301. Forgotten Romance by Saxon James--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I'm so sad to see this series end!!!! These two idiots were so in love.

This was one of my more anticipated reads in this series and while it wasn't a favourite, I still loved their love story. It wasn't as spicy as the other books, but the tension and chemistry was there between the two.

I loved seeing the side characters and the kids were hilarious and adorable. I found the ending a little too easy BUT I still liked it.

I'm really sad to see this series end, especially because there was one character who deserved an HEA. But I'm excited to see what new series Saxon James does next!

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302. The Black Girl Survives in This One by Various--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

THE BLACK GIRL SURVIVES IN THIS ONE was at times hilarious (because of the twist in the usual cliches), entertaining, and terrifying. Some stories were better than others, but overall the collection was a great exploration of how we perceive Black characters in horror. I loved the intro to the stories because it expressly mentions the portrayal of Black characters in horror media, so you kind of have a very clear picture of what's coming next.

First, I want to say that it was very refreshing knowing that no matter how dire the situation was in a story, the Black character survived. Not a spoiler, it's literally in the title.

That first story HOOKED me, it was my favourite and immediately creeped me out. I think that of all the stories, that one was the one that really scared me. I remember I was listening to the audiobook at night, while brushing my teeth, and I had to pause what I was doing to fully feel that terror that crept in during the story. The reveal of said story had me wondering if I had locked the doors of the house and the twist at the end had me yelling out because while not wholly unpredictable, it was just such a classically great ending to a scary story.

As I mentioned before, some stories were better than others and some were outright weird. Some stories I wish we had for longer moments than a few pages in an anthology, while others I thought were too long.

Overall, if you're looking for a scary anthology for this upcoming Halloween season, I highly recommend this one. You get a good dose of terror with your social awareness of how media treats characters that aren't caucasian. You'll especially feel this when a certain group of people become the victims in these stories.

___

303. The Pairing by Casey McQuiston--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

THE PAIRING is probably the spiciest book McQuiston has written, but in my opinion, it's also the most sensual. I really liked how they wrote this story and how they presented this relationship. I liked how messy the characters were, but how they found each other in their own unique way.

And trust me, I know this can be polarizing--the conflict of their love and how they find themselves in the end.

But I loved it. I loved the back and forth and the sexual tension that kept building and building as the book progressed. The travel and the wine and the food--these were all aphrodisiacs for a relationship that shuns the conventional ways of viewing a relationship. I remember it took me a moment to adjust to the idea that these two characters were so sexually active after their relationship ended because past romances have (falsely) taught me to believe that the only way to show love is to be abstinent until the reconnection happens. But not every great romance is the same.

I genuinely loved their sexual chemistry and how their relationship evolved into what it is by the end of the book. They are literally on a tour of over-indulgence so it's only fair that they over-indulge.

But beyond the chemistry, I genuinely enjoyed the commentary on the food and wine. It was informative and gave the book an interesting fullness so the story didn't solely focus on the romance. I felt like I was going on tour with these two and was enjoying their company along the way.

The star loss comes from a few things. One being how the miscommunication was once again a star player in this romance. While I DID love learning about their history together, I thought it should have been a strong enough history for them to communicate beyond the initial misunderstanding.

Another reason for the loss of the star is that I felt this one was a little on the long side. There were moments that would fly past, but then I'd hit these patches where the story would just lag and it ruined the rhythm of the book for me. Overall, this felt like one of those books where I felt every hour passing of the audiobook, whereas there are some books where I don't even notice the time passing.

Overall, I really enjoyed the characters and their romance. I liked them individually too and how much they showcased their growth after their breakup. One of the best things McQuiston did for this book was making it have a dual-POV narrative. Reading this from the other side added a wholly different level of angst for the romance between the two MCs.

I'd recommend this if you love travel, food, wine, and a whopping amount of sexual tension. While it isn't the spiciest book on the market, it definitely has a very fun sensual element. It presents an interesting side of sexual connectivity that we don't often see in traditionally published books and, trust me, my pansexual self was very content with some of the things mentioned in this book.

___

304. The Pumpkin Spice Café by Laurie Gilmore--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Honestly, this was cute but not spicy enough to get that "spicy romance" byline.

This was, for all intents and purposes, a hallmark movie put into a book. The romance was kind of quick and didn't have a lot of body to it. The MMC is self-aware enough to know that he tends to fall too hard and fast, so I was surprised (not) when he falls so heavily for the FMC.

I always find it fascinating how certain books get hyped up for their spiciness and then only have a couple of scenes of spice. It's not that I want a book with a lot of spice--I enjoyed this for what it was--but I know some people will jump into this one and be disappointed.

The story itself was cute and cavity sweet. The romance was a little insta-romancey, but it had a surprising mystery. While everything was a bit predictable, it was still fun to guess with the characters to see whodunit. This added layers to the story that made it harder to put down.

My biggest gripe is with the FMC and how much of a pushover she was during the whole thing. Someone does something scary around her store? Let me not call the cops because I don't want to be a nuisance! Her decision-making skills were truly something else. And you're telling me this woman was once the secretary of a CEO? Please. He would have eaten her alive.

And back to the spice--this wasn't closed door, but like, the scenes were BBQ chips level of spice. They were quick and just...shrug.

But again, I didn't stay for the spice. This was a cute romance I'd recommend for Autumn reading. LOL I HAVE ALREADY ORDERED THE OTHERS. Don't judge me too much.

___

Happy reading!

[bleachbleachbleach]

Verisimilitude (long thoughts about writing)

Sometimes I get mailed random books to consider for course adoption. The first one I looked at the other day was so incredibly bad I could not make it past page 12--"oh my god I hate books" bad; "trees were wasted on this!!" bad. And then there's this one. I've made it to page 30-something and I could have told you 20 pages ago that Oliver Twist it would remain, but I am still reading it to read it, and maybe keep it to recommend extracurricularly. (The protagonist Alva is a weeb for American culture, whatever the word is for that, which I think could make for interesting study!) But that's all context to say,

AH YES THE INTERNET RABBIT HOLE OF NARUTO FAN FICTION, HENTAILORD. WE'VE ALL BEEN THERE.

SO...

BLEACH MENTION WHEN????

Based on the style of her screen name, the Naruto porn, and her listening to My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park, this girl is definitely living her teenage life in the mid-00s, in ways that are searingly obvious. Which feels like it should be a massive success in terms of using verisimilitude to pinpoint a particular time and place and, by extension, person. But I don't think it does?

In thinking about why this doesn't work for me as a reader:

1. As a general rule, I tend not to enjoy "fandom" subculture references like this in fiction, because they have never felt true to my experience of fandom, or even my experience of others' experiences of fandom. The specificity is there but not the verisimilitude. Whether this is because of an inability to articulate the breath of life that animates fandom spaces, or a feeling of needing to at least kind of translate it for the uninitiated general audience, I don't know. Not that Alva's narrative goes far enough to merit this discussion; she's just reading Naruto porn for one sentence, but it just doesn't land right for me. (Sidebar, this is probably also why I don't enjoy acafandom or fandom essays that aspire to acafandom; there's usually this attempted, manufactured critical/"objective" distance from the text that often feels performative, or at least the wrong [or less interesting] tool for the job. And even where 'in-group' positionality is addressed, the translation required to make these things legible to the out-group is just--well, not what I want in life, I guess!)

2. I am a great believer in drawing greatly from what you know and feel and all those random thoughts and behaviors and emotions and tics that make life interesting, and giving them to fiction. In fanfic especially, I am a great believer in seeing the author's hands in a text, making the story (and the original canon) unmistakably theirs. But I kind of always want them to be hands that are in the act of giving. By which I mean, I think there's a difference between all these things existing in a story and having been given to a character or a world or a story, and integrated genuinely into them.

Like, all I can think about while reading this book is how the author definitely lived through the mid-00s in a particular and very familiar way. Rather than create a richly immersive world, the details jump out of the page and leave the story behind. They don't feel like they belong to Alva (or perhaps Alva does not feel like a character with the depth to hold them and make them hers). They belong do the author, and to me, and to history, but Alva falls out of the equation. And if this is going to work, I feel like Alva can't fall out of the equation.

3. I was talking to a friend about something similar a few months ago. She was complaining about a historical fiction book she was reading with a book club she leads at the library she works at--how it was clearly very well-researched, but dry as hell. The information was not animated by the story itself. And I compared it to a fanfic I'd (not) read, where the author was very proud of all the research they'd done and how accurate-to-life its setting was. (To be clear, I'm not subtweeting Bleach fandom. Completely different fandom! Also this fanfic was published like 16 years ago.) The fic did bring in lots of specific details about trees and highways and city names--things I knew well, too, because it was set where my sister lives--but rather than be as exciting and, again, rich, as I feel like that familiarity could have been, it all felt dead. Because all these things were described specifically, but not true to how the narrating characters would describe them, or mentally catalogue them, or experience them.

And you might think, well, how would we possibly know how a character thinks about highways? It's not like he's explained this in canon. And I'd say, well, you definitely can. There are probably a lot of different ways a character could plausibly think about highways, depending on the specific shade and flavor of your characterization of them, all equally believable; but it's got to be part of the equation. There are a lot of ways to be right, and you know it when it's wrong. The wrong-est way it can be is for the way they think about highways to not factor into the way those dang highways are being described by them, in their POV.

4. I think about this both as a reader and as a writer--certainly more often as a writer, because I find that level of imagining a character's headspace the VERY best part of the process, and also because I am often concerned I am not doing it, or at least not well, lol. I'm positive I've done all the things I've just talked about not enjoying.

These concerns exist at the level of characterization work in general, but also at that level of, is the wizard behind the green curtain? Are his hands giving? Because while I do write fanfic because "it is fun" and because "this idea interests me," I am also usually writing it to work through deeply personal emotions/experiences. Which again, perhaps selfishly, I support that. But from a craft perspective I don't want it to feel, transparently, like "oh lol this author is going through it."

Moreover, from a relational perspective, I don't want that to be the relationship between me as author and the characters. Because one thing I am ALWAYS writing fanfic to do is to indulge my feelings about how much I am in complete, rapturous love with the characters and worlds in question. I don't want to just place things upon them, like a film or shroud; I want them to be given, integrated, arriving in the text wholly in their bodies and in their minds and entirely theirs. And I mean this for both the emotional arcs and conflicts and the random tics and details. I want them to have been given, and to belong, and to feel completely and inextricably theirs.

So, those are my thoughts about mid-00s Naruto porn!!!

I'd love to hear others' perspectives, as readers or writers or both. Have you had similar reactions, or quite different? Why do you write, and what do you want? What's your template for how you think about characterization, or your writerly relationship to canon/characters?

[lilyginnyblackv2]

“Father” Based Words in Buddy Daddies

I figured a lot of Buddy Daddies fans might be interested in this video from Unseen Japan called “How the Japanese Words for Parents Lost Out to English.”

I also thought that this would be a great video to talk about how Kazuki, Rei, and other characters usage of words for “dad” and “father” in Buddy Daddies thus far (as of Episode 9, though, if there are any further interesting usages or things I feel could be added after the series ends, I will definitely include and update reblog on this!).

In Episode 3, when Rei asks Miri:

“What about your real father?” He uses the term 父上 (chichiue), which is far more formal than other terms that we see other characters use, such as Miss Anna. She refers to Kazuki and Rei either as お父さん (otousan) or パパ（達) (papa (tachi)), usually she uses Papa when talking about Kazuki or Rei directly to Miri:

(Miss Anna to Miri:  “Are you happy to have two papas?”)

While using otousan when directing her speech at Kazuki and/or Rei :

(”Two fathers, you say?” - She uses お父さん - otousan here, which gets translated to “father,” just like Rei’s use of chichiue did, because they are more polite and formal ways to say “dad.” But, we’ll talk a bit more about this later). 

We’ve never had Kazuki mention his mother and father separately, just in a more unit type of way (”parental abandonment” etc.). But, we see that he refers to the other mothers as ママ友 (mamatomo), which can be translated as “mom friends” or “other mothers/moms,” like in Episode 6:

(Kazuki: “Of course, the other mothers all say the same about their kids.” - Since he is talking more generally here, and not, for example, about his group of mom friends, it makes sense that the English translation went with “mothers,” instead of “moms”).

When talking about himself, he sometimes uses papa, specifically when talking to Miri about himself, like in this Episode 6 scene:

(The English subs use: “Anna-chan told me a little story,” while the Japanese itself has Kazuki saying “Papa heard something from Anna-chan” or something more so along those lines, that’s a bit unnatural sounding, and usually English speakers don’t refer to themselves as their parental role, unless it’s something like “As your father/mother/etc...”).

And, speaking of that phrase, in Episode 6 as well, when Kazuki states:

“As a father...” He uses chichiue. Like Rei did when talking about Miri’s father, which we’ll get to in a bit. I believe there is one time when Kazuki is referring to himself as well, and “dad” gets used, either in the sub or dub translation. I can’t remember the exact scene though. But,that fits with the point that, generally speaking, Kazuki is pretty informal with his speech. Like how he calls Kyutaro, Kyu-chan, as opposed to Rei, who calls him Kyutaro-san (more formal). Miri seems to be following after Kazuki in this way though.

This post is getting quite long as it is, so I’ll put the rest of this under a Read More:

Although, the teen Miri that Kazuki envisions, isn’t just informal in her speech, but also rude.

The subs have her calling Kazuki, “old fart,” which is an appropriate way to translate ジジイ (jijii), both a very informal and rude way to refer to one’s father.

Getting back to Kazuki though. He uses chichiue when talking about the idea of “father,” right. “As a father...,” but not for himself. Since chichiue is distant sounding. It’s colder and more formal (Draco Malfoy refers to his father as such in the Japanese version of the Harry Potter books, for example).

This then brings us back to Rei. He referred to Miri’s blood father as chichiue, and then he thinks:

“Father...” using chichiue and thinking of his own. 

When he calls out to his father, he uses 父さん (tousan), which gets translated to “Dad!” It’s a very common way for older children, teens, and adult children to call their fathers, so that makes sense. Most children speaking English, at least in the states, switch from “Daddy” to “Dad” when they’ve reached the age Rei is here (probably near his preteens). 

But Rei’s father replies back:

“Don’t call me, ‘Dad.’“ He uses 父 (chichi), which is more formal. Over on Hi Native, a Japanese individual did a break down on politeness levels for different father words:

Text: 

お父様 - otousama - formal polite

父 - chichi - formal

お父さん - otousan - polite

父さん - tousan - less polite

親父 - oyaji - casual

パパ - papa - casual

His father requests that Rei uses “Boss,” a term not attached to fatherhood at all, and it is the word Rei does end up using:

(Rei: “Forgive my long absence, Boss.”)

As we can see here in Episode 8, when he calls his father, “Boss.”

But, of course, when it comes to himself, Rei is a Papa. He calls himself Miri’s Papa, responds to Papa, and has used it for Kazuki as well.

Rei’s own experiences with his father, his ideas and concepts of fatherhood, and his own relationship with politeness levels all played additional roles in his reluctance to referred to as “Rei Papa/Papa Rei” at first. 

But, as you can see, Buddy Daddies has used a variety of different words for “father” over the course of the show, each with their own levels of politeness, tone, and warmth to them, and many of which are mentioned in the above video I embedded into this post. So definitely give that a watch if you haven’t yet! 

[dairy-farmer]

genuine question, how was like dc incest ships formed? like how did it all start :0

ooof that stretches back WAYYYYY back to like...the birth of dc comics. i'm no comic historian and i have limited knowledge for the rest of dc aside from batman but based on what i've read and know i'm 99.99% certain that the first ever batcest ship was between bruce and dick. and it became rather infamously known because of this psychologist named fredric wertham who sort of waged a war against comics- remember in like the mid 2000s when parents were clutching their pearls and saying videogames made kids violent?

well this was that, only with comic books and in the 1950-60s. he said comic books were filled with violence and sex and they would make kids violent and engage in sexually promiscuous behavior.

he directly addressed batman and robin's relationship calling it essentialy queercoded. his exact words about their relationship were:

"Several years ago a California psychiatrist pointed out that the Batman stories are psychologically homosexual. Our research confirms this entirely. Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoerotism which pervades the adventures of the mature “Batman” and his young friend “Robin.” (p 189)

"Just as ordinary crime comic books contribute to the fixation of violent and hostile patterns by suggesting definite forms for their expression, so the Batman type of story helps to fixate homoerotic tendencies by suggesting the form of an adolescent- with-adult or Ganymede-Zeus type of love-relationship." (p 190)

"Sometimes Batman ends up in bed injured and young Robin is shown sitting next to him. At home they lead an idyllic life...They live in sumptuous quarters, with beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit by the fireplace the young boy sometimes worries about his partner: “Something’s wrong with Bruce. He hasn’t been himself these past few days.” It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together." (p 190)

my favorite is this one:

"The Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies, of the nature of which they may be unconscious. In adolescents who realize it they may give added stimulation and reinforcement."

translation:

the goddamn batman is going to make kids GAY

however there is one thing to note about what wertham was getting at: he was outraged that batman and robin were gay- not that they were incestuous. in fact, nowhere in the book does it mention anything about incest but i just ctrl + f searched that so it's possible they COULD have mentioned it, but if they did they didn't call it "incest".

outrage from conservative parents and "proper" communities of course meant they didn't want their kids reading this "filth". internet archive, which has a copy of this book you can read for free if you're interested in the quacky stuff he was trying to argue, has a footnote about the very REAL conseqeunces his publishing of this book had.

it was that "fredric's book and testimony at Senate Hearings within 6 months of his book publiation, was used to ban many comic books and an industry-wide self-censoring to be launched."

this is what led to the Comics Code Authority (1954). below i included a screen shot from wikipedia of a list of the things they censored and banned. you'll be able to note not a single bullet point mentions 'homosexuals' and that's because it fell under the umbrella of "Sex perversion". gay people were percieved as sexual predators by default then and still today they're viewed that way, though the conversation has shifted more towards pointing fingers at drag queens and trans people.

batcest has a pretty deep history and i could go on about how adam west and burt ward's flamboyant portrayal of batman only fanned the flames of the whole 'batman and robin are gay' thing but i think this small batman history lesson was enough.

even though the Comics Code Authority is no longer a thing, getting dissolved in 2011, i think you can still see the little threads of influence that remain and the fact that many of the writers and artists really don't have full creative freedom and control over the character they're writing for.

which is a shame. an enviornment where creativity isn't allowed to thrive is not an enviornment where it will survive.

[kukuandkookie]

Lmfao help I totally forgot I scheduled my last post where I rambled about Jian Suiying in the tags (I probably scheduled it to seem more normal or something because I didn’t want to flood my feed 😂).

The reason I find it extra funny is because I literally feel like I’m going feral right now and I did just draft another Twitter thread ramble before coming on here and immediately seeing my scheduled post with those tags LADNSKDNS.

My Twitter is still on hiatus until further notice—aka when I am more comfortable interacting and sharing things socially—but over the past few weeks, my drafts have become very full of thoughts on LiJian (Li Yu and Jian Suiying) and YuBai (Yu Fengcheng and Bai Xinyu).

And the main reason I feel so feral right now—as in right this minute—is because of the author of this really good fic (which I found thanks to the fan audio drama adaptation on MaoEr FM) that’s multi-chaptered where the premise is that a younger Li Yu ends up in the present day in Li Yu and Jian Suiying’s house. Li Yu is obviously very upset by this because he hates his younger self for how he treated Jian Suiying, and the story is about helping him heal from that past.

And well anyways this post isn’t about that fic specifically, although it’s a really good fic and I went crazy over it a while ago as well: since it’s told entirely in screenshots on Weibo at least, I actually captured every image of text until I had everything and then I MTL’d them using Google Translate and then I severely edited them on-and-off based on my own Chinese knowledge—so this included grammar and pronouns but also less obvious stuff where I had to check line by line or turn it into audio to listen to. 😂

It’s a really fucking good fic though. So worth it.

And well the author has done other versions; one is where a younger Yu Fengcheng gets transported into current Yu Fengcheng and Bai Xinyu’s life, and I’ve already collected every part of that one (it’s still incomplete).

Except it referenced a case where there were two Jian Suiying’s, a fic the author said they were planning to write back when they released the two Li Yu’s fic, which obviously made me a little feral.

I struggled to find it until I finally did (yay!!) alongside a masterlist of their fics in general (yay!!!), and I really really want to translate and read it right now.

But part of me also wants to save it—because I like saving things I like—to the end, since the author has other fics I can translate first, including one where Li Yu gets amnesia, which will definitely also be quite interesting.

And yet. I cannot get over the concept of there being two Jian Suiying’s and how that might resemble or reflect or differ from the fic where there were two Li Yu’s (especially since the two Li Yu’s one is just very thematically perfect).

I might just translate it first because I can barely resist??? I already translated the second half of the first part just to tease myself, and it has me screaming because like:

(The above screenshots are from this fanfic here by 丧心病狂de凌子 on Weibo!)

The image of Li Yu dragging whom he assumes is his spouse (and he is; just from a different time period) back home only to come face-to-face with his actual spouse (of this time period) being all cute in his soft cozy home clothes with a little mug instead of having gone out drinking (which the Jian Suiying from a different time period in his arms had been doing—as all the fics so far have had the person from the past end up in the present after getting blackout drunk) which was a thing about Jian Suiying that Li Yu used to worry about…

(The above screenshot is canon and from the original novel!)

Yeah do you see what I mean???

I’m just so excited because you’ll get the chaos of two time periods intersecting, but also because Jian Suiying used to go out to such places and it upset Li Yu a lot since he knows Jian Suiying’s past life and their relationship took so long to get to a good place that he’s afraid Jian Suiying will discard him again when out partying—so seeing Jian Suiying here, at home on time, patiently waiting for his husband to come home from his business trip…

*sigh* They’re pretty cute even after all the craziness of their original novel lmao. 🥹

And yeah. Typing all this out…I think I’ll translate this first out of all of the author’s fics. I’m going to go insane otherwise SLFNKSDJSKS.

[asordinaryppl]

A3! Main Story: Part 4 - Act 13: Budding Spring - Episode 22: The Door That Leads To A New World

!! this chapter makes references to the knights of the round iv: the stage event story, you can read a translation of it on yaycupcake!

Local employee A: << The afternoon meeting will also take place here, so please return after your lunch break. >>

Colleague A: << Understood. >>

Local employee B: << By the way, Chigasaki-san, you’re an actor, yes? Feel free to give us your honest opinions regarding this project. >>

Itaru: << I’d be happy to do so if it will be of help. >>

-

Itaru: Whew…

Itaru: (Using English on top of maintaining my professionalism depletes my stamina twice as fast…)

Itaru: — —

Itaru: (A hobby shop… They’ve even got KniRoun figures. I’ve been curious about what they’ve got outside of Japan, I gotta check this out.)

Passerby: << Hm…!? Are you Lancelot!? >>

Itaru: What?

Passerby: << You played Lancelot in the stage play adaptation of KniRoun, right!? >>

Itaru: << Ah, I did. >>

Passerby: << I knew it! I never thought I’d meet you here! I’m so shocked! >>

Passerby: << I watched a stream of it. It was so good! Not only was it faithful to the original, but it was also interesting as a stage play! >>

Itaru: << — Thank you. >>

Passerby: << But… >>

Itaru: ?

Passerby: << I think one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much is because of your pre-show talk. >>

Passerby: << I’d been a fan of the game since I was a kid, so I was nervous about seeing it adapted into a stage play. >>

Passerby: << But after hearing what you, as Lancelot’s actor, said, I understood that this was a stage play created with us fans in mind… >>

Passerby: << Thanks to you, I was able to relax and let myself be led into the stage play’s KniRoun world. >>

Passerby: << Thank you so much for being Lancelot! >>

Itaru: << And likewise, thank you for watching it. >>

Passerby: << I’ll definitely come watch if you perform here! Good luck! >>

[The passerby walks away]

Itaru: (To think I’d be thanked for playing Lancelot… If the Itaru from back then heard that, he’d get real happy.)

Itaru: (I had a lot of worries during that rehearsal period, but I’m glad I was able to perform in KniRoun’s stage adaptation.)

Itaru: (I should let everyone know about this. I’m sure they’ll be shocked to hear I encountered a fan overseas.)

-

Local employee A: << So, if anyone has any opinions they would like to share regarding the ceremony event for the theater, I would love to hear them. >>

Itaru: << … I do have something. >>

Itaru: << This is about the most important part of the project: Revealing it to the residents… >>

Itaru: << How does creating a stage play based on something that has lots of fans around the world sound? Like an anime or a video game, for example. >>

Itaru: << When young people think of Japan, they think of anime and video games. >>

Itaru: << The video game “Knights of Round” is one such example, it is widely known overseas and has a large following. >>

Itaru: << As a Japanese company has taken on this project, I believe it is expected of us to build a bridge between Japan and this country through the arts. >>

Itaru: << I believe it would make sense for the ceremony event, which could be said to be symbolizing that bridge, to be something related to Japan. >>

Itaru: << However, I think simply introducing Japan to people hoping to liven up the arts field here won’t be enough. >>

Itaru: << I am speaking from experience, but I participated in KniRoun’s stage play adaptation, and earlier today I was approached by a passerby on the street, and it made me realize how highly recognized KniRoun is overseas. >>

Local employee B: << Certainly, as a lot of stage events will be held in the theater, many of them could be directed towards younger audiences. >>

Local employee B: << Conveying that this theater was created with them in mind as well is a good idea. >>

Itaru: << If deemed necessary, we can have a specialized research company look into the demand for each content. >>

Local employee A: << Please do. >>

-

Itaru: Ahhh, I’m exhausted… Having to work overtime even overseas is crazy… I’m an SSR amongst corporate slaves…

[Itaru takes his jacket off]

Itaru: I need to unwind for a bit…

taruchi has entered the chat

Itaru: (... It’s late, so I guess everyone’s sleeping.)

taruchi: i was approached by a kniroun fan today bc he recognized me from the stage play. he said it was great bc he could feel the love for the original work taruchi: i’m happy it had reach overseas too

Itaru: (We’ll need to think about various ways to expand our reach if we’re seriously considering the overseas market.)

Itaru: (There might be something I can use from this support training.)

Itaru: (I used to treat this job as just a way to make ends meet, but I’ve found out that it’s more interesting than I thought…)

Itaru: (Guess the door that leads to a new world can be somewhere surprisingly close to you.)

Itaru: (It’s important to be honest with yourself, huh… Well, let’s get back to work.)

previous episode | masterpost | next episode

[pruneunfair]

Seducing the villains father is surprisingly not bad.

Most manhwa now follow the same plot of deconstructing the typical fantasy that is considered outdated. The FL is either a regressed empress/queen/Duchess or a isekaied woman from modern day Korea, the ML is first said to be a cruel man with a long history of death (the Duke of the north if you will), the ogfl is a green tea bitch who gets shit on for being the old school woman, and add a few devoted characters (usually maids) for taste, so for a book that is basically everything these manhwa try to deconstruct, it's an easier read

Dont get me wrong, it's far from perfect and the plot does absolutely drag on but it's so much easier to get behind since the protagonists aren't total douchebags all the time that your supposed to justify, the villain is competent and puts up a fight, and yes while most of the other characters like the maids or other nobles are just there for background support they aren't nearly as insufferable.

The FL Yerenica gives me more embarrassment than old videos of 5 year old me dancing to Taylor Swift but she still works for the most part and I think it's because she's a girl-failure in the good sense, where she's still an entertaining protagonist with her own misguided viewpoint ironically making her more flawed and relatable than the current mary sues

Here she straight up asks the guy who kidnapped her to marry her, and (un)surprisingly Erudian acts like most people would and turns her down (they do get together later and while I do not like the kidnapper-hostage relationship, it's tolerable i guess)

Honestly in any other media, Yerenica would be the green tea bitch who'd be torn to shreds by the fan base and be known as the resident trashta of Soleias story, probably why I could get behind her a little

Speaking of Soleia, For something so stereotypical they even manage to deliver a smart villain in the form of this badass. Great backstory, a twist that reveals she doesn't even love Erudian, and even a redemption. One of my complaints though is for a character that is described by all as a terrifying threat, she doesn't show up often

When she does, Soleia knows how to pull it off but alas, she's only needed when the plot calls for it

Erudian is.. well he's there, the basic scary love interest who has a soft spot for sweet ol Yerenica and doesn't want to marry Soleia, I don't really care about him but I don't dislike him either, pretty basic but I've seen worse ML. There are unfortunately translation issues where Yerenica calls him dad which is super uncomfortable but I've read versions where she just calls him "Dekalbs dad" so I'm gonna hope to God that whole father Schick was an error

seducing the villains father definitely has its problems and isn't for everyone but it's pretty decent for a quick turn your brain off romance.

[jmeldog]

Oh wow is that so, thanks so much for the clarification! I’m surprised though because I’ve seen a Japanese fanartist draw art monthly based on what they said was the latest chapter so I’m confused now about what they were referring to then. It’s definitely about Win though, like apparently the May issue has him poisoned, they take his shirt off to heal him and he seems to have a nightmare, does this ring any bells by chance?

So sorry for the trouble.

Ohhhh okay I think I get what’s confusing, lol. Long story short:

Duel Masters Lost is a spinoff web manga featuring Win in high school.

Weekly online releases.

It’s written by Shigenobu Matsumoto with art by Yoh Kanebayashi.

It's on hiatus.

It’s easy to legally read online + has an English fan translation going.

Duel Masters Win is the mainline and gets physical releases in Corocoro magazines featuring Win in middle school.

Monthly physical releases.

It's written and drawn by Shigenobu Matsumoto.

It’s still going.

There’s some places you can hunt for it online ;P. The manga is untranslated, but 5 eps of the anime are.

Now the very longer explanation, if you want, just to clear up some of the stuff you might’ve seen. I assume you haven’t read any of the mainline, and I’m very happy to infodump ✨

So you’ve read Lost, yeah? Well this is the life that Win lost*.

* (presumably—assuming it’s the same universe. We don’t know 100% yet)

The gist of the mainline is that Win’s a “it’s always good to look on the bright side of things and be happy with what you have” kinda kid, yeah? Well Jashin has rolled up to try and make him the king of darkness.

This is how they meet! Yaaaaaaay 🎉

One day Jashin manifests in his deck like “I am the wicked god who appears every thousands years and you just summoned me, so let’s destroy the world, kill all humans, I want blood, I want flesh, etc etc.” and Win’s like “🫤….Anyway this is a cool card.” because he’s happy with his life with his dad and friends and isn’t interested in power.

So things happen and such, but it’s a pretty reoccurring point that Jashin keeps trying to goad Win into being fucked up and evil, taking revenge on those who wrong him, and becoming the king of darkness. And Win consistently rejects that, even though he does show signs of slowly degrading as the world keeps trying him. He accidentally almost kills a guy like once. And later gets into a fistfight with said guy. But they make up eventually lmao👍

But later—more relevant to what you saw—a woman called Nonno shows up and messes with Win’s friends, and this actually really gets to him. Win gets so pissed at her he starts overflowing with dark power. Jashin is very happy about this, of course.

But just as Win snaps and Jashin goes to kill her, the rest of the members of Nonno’s group show up. The leader easily defeats and dismembers Jashin and takes him away, causing all of Win’s dark energy to dissipate and him to pass out. (Rip bozo)

He then got taken to the hospital, prolly what you’ve seen. Nothing’s necessarily wrong with him, but the dark power’s being all haywire. Basically when he wakes up he can’t control the power, and starts accidentally disintegrating living things.

He’s gotten the power of the king of darkness. Y’know, the powers to destroy the world 👍

Now that’s, yannow, bad, and he’s a threat to his friends if he outbursts, so the headmaster locked him away in a cube at the bottom of the ocean I guess to test how strong his heart is and 😭 he’s just gonna suffocate if he doesn’t get out. We didn’t see him this month’s chapter at all cuz he’s just been stuck in that fucking cube offscreen 😭😭😭

And that’s all caught up.

I left out and generalized a LOT—but that’s the gist.

The anime covers basically all the events leading up to Nonno and stuff, but there’s some changes and it’s a lot slower paced with a bit of a different tone and more random YouTuber collabs lmao. Like it shows Win’s friend getting messed with, but it doesn’t set him off the same way and they somehow wrote Nonna out of it. Also there’s no fistfight 😔

Some of the source materials are easier to find than others, like season 1 of the anime’s pretty easy.

Thanks for reading. I can’t proof this all so um let’s hope it’s mostly grammatically and logically okay.

[existential-muffin]

Newbies' Trigun Stampede/98/Maximum Analysis

To start off I was introduced to Trigun by fanart on Pinterest while looking for art inspiration. So thank you to all the fandom artists!! I'm not really into anime too much, so this has been the first anime thats had my attention in a long while.

I began this series by watching up to episode 3 of Stampede and then decided "I can't wait, I must consume".

Immediately watched the high trip that is Tri98 and then came the heart crushing Maximum. Also have to thank @genkooii for the link to the proper translation to Maximum. Here is the link to that post if anyone wants to read as well.

I'm really happy with the way I followed the series and love it so much. Each version having its own charm and still keeping Vash's core at heart. But there are differences and somethings i find that were done better than others. I'll give my feelings for each first and then compare them.

Begining with the first 3 episodes of Stampede The animation was new and interesting. I didn't know about the hate for CGI until later on. I agree that it does look different, but I quite like the potential it has. Its beautiful in its own right. For story, I have to admit even as a newbie, the pacing was rough for me. I realized this after Vash saved Jenora (again) barely had time to breathe and then EG Mine shows up. (I learned later that I stopped just before things ramped up even more) I like tragedy, but subtlety goes a long way. Will come back to Stampede again further down.

Next is the OG Trigun 98 anime. I didn't realize how much I missed the 90s anime aesthetic?? There's just something about it. Even though it is dated in appearance, there are some great frames and angles this anime had that just makes it so intense!! This version did have fillers, but I felt like they weren't out of place. I have to admit here that I have a bias for this version. I grew up as a Fallout New Vegas fan, and this just gives me the same vibes. The questioning of morality with no real defined answer? How people struggled to survive and how fucking wacky they were!??? All while the protag is basically a wandering gunslinger/cowboy. Loved it. Gotta have those spurs that jingle jangle jingle, while having an existential crisis.

And here we are at Maximum.. man, words can't even describe how Stamp and Tri98 didn't prepare me for this at all. It's like that hair-clutching-hysterical-crying that settles into soft calm laugher and happy tears. It was really painful, those tough and tender pages i read... I loved it. This version does have a combination of both the above. And Stamp is more based on this version. But the pacing, while quick, had the subtlety I craved. The action was cool and interesting, but i now understand why it was said as "hard to follow". It can get a bit confusing. Overall, I ate this manga up when I definitely should have been studying, haha!

I actually went back to Tri98 after Max and definitely felt the differences between them. It was a bit surreal. Had to separate the two in my mind, but I still love them both.

Return of the Stamp! Now having finished all prior media, I looked at Stampede with new eyes. I'm glad I waited because I binge watched the episodes. I definitely understand why older fans were concerned, but this was my original, and I am going to stick by Stamp's side for as long as I can. Hmm how to describe how I feel now that season 1 has ended... this Trigun is in neutral for me right now. Though the animation is enough to make me go bonkers over the expressions and lighting, it's not enough for me to say it's outrageously good storytelling wise. But it does convey emotions well when it wants too. And they are definitely setting the stage up for Vash and more trimax story. I'm eager to see the results. I enjoy it overall. Season 2 will truly decide for me.

Okay here is the comparison part and will likely contain SPOILERS

Pacing

Stamp- as I mentioned much too quick but hopefully since this prequel season is over they will have more time to space out the story a bit

98- quite like this pacing. Has world building and mystery towards Vash for the first half. Makes it intriguing. The later half does go by quicker. Plants are hardly mentioned or explained.

Max- always in motion. Only in the first OG(prequel?) Trigun manga is there filler, which is what Tri98 is based more off of. But also this filler still had meaning and made you think.

Character relastionships/Interactions

Stamp- very little, Meryl is basically the only one who develops with Roberto and a tiny bit with Vash at the very end of the season.

I feel like something was lost between Wolfwood and Vash in this version. Woodwold being cold and Vash saying he looks kind, if you haven't seen the other media it's nice. Technically, there's nothing wrong with it. But i now see this is one of the tropes older fans complain about. It lacks the depth the 98 anime, and Trimax WW and Vash had. It gets straight to the point but loses a sort of dynamic. This anime didn't have the luxury of time I suppose. I don't hate wolfwood here. How could I? When he made such a soft expression at Livio. He still has that need to protect and thats what really matters.

98- another reason I like Tri98 is because they actually had the characters interact more. Meryl and Milly came to see Vash more and more and understand, he isn't at all what they or others thought he was. They had more time to be inspired by him. Meryl is definitely more aggressive and very direct. I don't hate this version. It's a straight man to Vashes over exaggerated goofiness. For the anime it works but I hate that for how abservent she is, that she really couldn't see Vash as the stampede?? Kind dumb but it's a wacky show, had to have a sillier vibe.

WW I like how they are actually friendly to each other at first. When the person who made you smile/soften up, has a harshly contrasting moral view to your own, it creates a certain sort of tension. Loved Vashs and WW friendship here. His death was kinda sadder since he died feeling like he didnt acomplish much. Vash's moment of breaking down while eating donuts was heart-wrenching . Also Vash using the Punisher vs Knives, such a good scene!!!

I actually really like Milly and Wolfwood together. It's cute. Millys more capable then I thought. Love her.

Max- Meryl and Milly have much less time with Vash. I do like how they are inspired by him still, but they only come around every so often to say a baller couple of lines than they dip. Don't get me wrong, I understand why, and I love how they are the representation of the good in humans, but they no longer feel as close. Which is saying something because 98 Vash was still a really distant dude. It just feels like the gap between them and Vash is more apparent. But they also had a really big issue at hand, so understandable. When Vash is called out for not letting them help more, he acknowledges that he can't afford to think about it at the moment. These characters were still great on their own.

WW- by far the only real human relationship Vash has ever had. And I don't mean in the romantic sense, but a sense of actually getting to know someone on a personal level despite their tense differences. Learning, inspiring each other while opposing each other. To have faith in someone. Vash is either on a pedestal or on trial when around most humans and I like that WW brings him down to his level. In the worst and best ways, he makes Vash truly human. I thought his death in the anime was painful but this was so much worse.

Livio and Vash bounding over their lost of WW will always get to me. The spaghetti scene. T_T Glad that Vash has another companion that could help in the physical fighting to come. Livio vs Elendria was a great!!. Liked how Livio was a combination of WW and Vash. A surprise break out character for me.

Does it make you think?

Stamp- Kinda spoon feed the tropes to you. I don't expect this to happen in the 2nd season. You could feel the subtle messages in the last few episodes of the season. I feel like they are done being overly flashy, time for the thick sauce of you-gotta-think-about-this-now.

98- despite it being so much like an abridge series, the episodes do make you think. Thats whats so good about it. The unsuspecting "here is haha funny man, now think about the uselessness of being good in this world". Love the episode with the rich girl and her criminal dad. Shows her position like most humas on Gunsmoke/no man's land. Moral grey kinda thing? That the world they live in isn't simply black and white.

Max- better dust off the old noggin and soak it in your tears.

Sadness

Maximum wins. IWANTHIMTOGETAHUGANDATHANKYOUANDAND---'

Stamp close second might surpass Maxs trauma in time. Who knows.

98- Someone mentioned that this Vash isn't suicidal. That is how low the bar is to make him the happiest of all the Vashes. Technically, he also got the best ending, for now, at least.

Knives

Stamp- oh no.. hes hot...and they definitely made him more intimidating than 98. Coming back to episode 4 was a thrill ride, but this version of Knives is very yandere. He does care for Vash but very manipulative and narcissistic. Gaslighting galore. I kinda understand it because of the manga now, but the whole pregnant plants and all that really puts this Knives on the less redeemable scale. His piano theme is amazing tho!!

98- barely there, the ending fight was cool, and I enjoyed it a lot. I did still like him in this version, but it had a lukewarm water kinda feel. The lesser of all the knives.

Max- the great thing about Maximum is that it shows so much depth to the story that i knew before, and to Knives. How sad and alone he really his. How his intentions are really just to save his kind from a threat that broke his mind with their cruelty. I don't disagree with him, actually. What he saw l, what humans do, does go toe to toe with Vash's optimistic. Knives is so human compared to Vash in my opinion. It's kinda odd and so poetic. Also when the plant hivemind was ripped away from him, I felt sad. He was alone again. Still wrong for him to obsorb his siblings tho...

VASH the man the myth the lengend

Stamp - Hmm, this has Trimax Vash attitude, but more on the meek side. My first impression was that he was a cute and kinda like a kicked puppy. I want to pat his head. In this version I wasn't thrown off by him being an all loving protagonist he just had the vibe off the start. Watching him in the later episodes did make me tear up. He's so soft and does have that tenderness that all Vashs' have. A cinnamon roll, too pure to good for this world.

98- he uses his smile as a sheild and plays it off better than the other Vashes, but his pain is still there. He is also pathetic, in a loving way lol. Before getting to know his story, i thought he was crazy. I was like every other character that he met. I didn't understand his struggle. I just saw the crazy man who made things difficult by choosing to avoid killing. Him getting serious and holding fast to his beliefs amazed and stunned me. Had me step back and see his point of view. Highly respect his willpower. However I don't entirely agree with him. Which many have pointed out thats the point of Vash. He is also much more confident and sly than Stamp Vash. Which is weird because it makes him seem more experienced and I think Stamp is older? He manages to use his pervy and over the top silliness to disarm people and get the advantage in most situations. He's smarter than he looks. I enjoyed the ending for this Vash, because it touches on his moral code after having to kill Legato. Him finally looking forward to the future without Rem being the main focus to his life and decisions. There wasn't enough time in Trimax and I would have liked some pages on it. But he was a bit busy saving the planet... He may be louder than the other Vash's but he still strives for a world that is made of ----- LOVE AND PEACE!!

Maximum- this Vash is like an older dad of the other two. He is worn down and you can feel it but he will NOT stop fighting. He is a tad more direct than the other Vashes and I was surprised that he has a tiny mean streak when he's irritated. I like this. He isn't always hiding behind that painted smile. He definitely gives off more of that Angel theme the manga has. An older creature that is indeed different from humans but wants to care and look out for them, but people are so scared of him. Poor dude. Every Vash holds the same core elements, the tenderness, the wit, and the determination. But this Vash really nails it down that he is the OG. And man, some of the lines for Maximum were just chefs' kiss. Had me just staring at the pages pondering. But he is so broken and mostly picks up the pieces alone. I am bitter that he never got any comfort or closure at the end. I am grateful it was a hopeful ending but HE LOST SO MUCH!!

All of them need a hug and therapy

Personal Ranking

I can't choose between Trimax and Tri 98...................................... Fine. Okay, it's Max for the plot, but you'll have to pry 98 Vash from my cold death hands!!!

3rd -Stampede - I really love the look, music, and some of the emotional points, just not enough storytelling for me to appreciate it more. I also feel like it's a bit too early to judge. So much can happen in the 2nd season.

[your--isgayrights]

re: that ask about barthes/hsy. I feel like it's not an outright framework against the traditional constructed system of classifying media but rather a critique about how it's not always best to solely rely on the author's intentions but rather a mix of both(like not all interpretations are gonna be correct as well too, like you said thats delusion)? and honestly it's interesting because orv also sends the message to not be overly reliant on escapism. This ain't even an ask lmao idk where i'm going with this but yeah

Yeah you're probably right I'm not really a theory expert so my experience of death of the author definitely isn't in directly trying to interpret Barthes' assertions but like seeing how other people have interpreted/applied his framework in their own works. Like I think because I'm a fandom guy and not an academia guy I see a lot of people misinterpreting death of the author or applying it to their experience of like commercial lit/storytelling. I will say tho I am like a mega liberal in terms of what I consider 'literature' because I think folk/pop literature is really special and important to me. Took a lit class once where I argued that a gas station receipt is literature.

That being said I def get that Barthes' in context is critiquing a status quo of his time like you say, and I don't disagree at all that like ultimately lit analysis needs insight from reading the text as well as attempts at understanding the author behind it. In terms of tragedy/the delusion, the aspect I was focusing on is more like the literary/thematic element of death of the author as a tragedy if that makes sense? Bc like while it's cool that source texts are so much easier to find/document in modern storytelling traditions, there's still this mythos/feeling of a story that gets so big it leaves the hands of the author entirely to become its own thing. Like I love humans bc that's the kind of thing that started religions and pantheons in the past, stellar, love how powerful stories can become and the ephemeral nature of true origin in that case, but again the power the story has is then no longer in the hands of the author once the story is viewed by a reader, which is why in ORV KDJ is the one running the universe on his subconscious lol.

Like bc of that evolution of author death in modernity though, like based in the reality of webnovels like ORV as commercial texts that get reinterpreted and transformed by translators and fans over and over again with anonymous authors we might not know much of anything about, the delusion I'm speaking of is that some of those millions of readers may not think of author intent at all and just view the finished work as a Product, something consumable. This is what I meant by apathetic delusion when I got into the part you agree with here of readers who only see text as an outlet for their own escapism.

The feeling you have of 'mix of both' is exactly what I'm trying to convey by the "impossible communication." Because text is ultimately speech, storytelling is conversation, it is an attempt to communicate from one author to however many readers. The writing on the wall idea from ORV is very related to this in that you are trying to convey this thing that you are not sure anyone will ever see just in hopes of one day being understood or seen by others, even if you'll never see those others or know how your words affected them. This is why I felt that orv's emphasis on text as Relationship between author and reader.

[fdotaku]

Game Review: Choukyou Suru Rinjin

Quick Info:

Creator: Murasaki Gankyuu Suisou Title: Choukyou Suru Rinjin (調教する隣人) Media: Visual Novel (TyranoScript engine) sold on DLsite Content: Humiliation-focused pseudo-consensual BDSM

Note: This is an untranslated Japanese visual novel, which has a story focus. If you can’t read Japanese and aren’t satisfied with machine translations, you’re out of luck, unfortunately. Also, it’s chock-full of heavy BDSM, so those who’re turned off by that should look elsewhere. …But if you play VNs in Japanese and you’re willing to embrace extreme femdom, please read on.

Introduction: What Makes It Special

So, what’s awesome about it? Well, it has:

A scenario that’s 9 hours long, which for reference is double the length of an Msize game.

All female characters fully voiced, by the artist-seiyuu Narukamitsuki Ria.

2 routes and 5 different endings.

Unique and likable characters. The heroines are multi-dimensional, with their own reasoned feelings and attitudes toward the male protagonist, not cardboard cutouts of sadists like you’ll find in many other stories.

Some of the best comedy I’ve seen in a femdom VN, which rivals Noukano games and Haruka’s route in Shinkon Seikatsu.

Plenty of extreme femdom situations. There’s blackmail, exhibitionism, golden showers and piss drinking, the male lead pissing and shitting himself, forced cross-dressing and emasculation, SPH and mocked phimosis, various physical tortures, and much more that I won’t spoil.

A fast-paced story. The scenes are all concise and well-written, so it never feels like sex scenes are deliberately padded. As a result, the amount of story is far more than you’ll normally find in a 9-hour Japanese visual novel.

A suspenseful story. Of the two main heroines, one is an unpredictable and mysterious character, while the other isn’t simple to gauge either. The constant risky exhibitionism, along with various plot developments which raise the stakes for the male protagonist, make it impossible to predict what will happen next.

30+ base CGs, which for reference is comparable to an Msize game.

I’ll state its one major flaw up front: the art style isn’t consistent throughout the game. Though the sprites are beautiful, the CGs vary a lot. The artist’s skill improved as she drew for the game, actually, so some of the later CGs look much better. It’s far from bad, and I definitely prefer it over a generic art style. Still, this aspect, along with the extreme-ness of the fetishes–and maybe insufficient marketing–are what have caused CSR to remain a hidden gem for a few years now.

Next, I’ll discuss the characters to give you a better idea of what the story is like, and how there’s a unique sense of character and plot tension. Lastly, I’ll talk a bit about the game developer (a two-person doujin circle) responsible for this hidden gem.

The Story

Heads up for those concerned about spoilers: in this section, I’ll discuss the early parts of the game, around the first half hour or so, as well as the overall flow of the story. If you’ve already decided you want to play CSR based on what I said in the introduction, and prefer to play blind, skip down to the section “The Circle” below.

The story’s protagonist is a college student named Akino Yasuo. He’s 19 years old, and lives by himself. He’s smart, hardworking, and has a decent face. He tries to deliver a cool impression to others, and generally succeeds at it.

That said, Akino has a hidden side. To others, he uses the first person pronoun ore which is confident and assertive, but in his mind, he refers to himself as boku which is more meek. He has a strong interest in femdom porn. And he has a hobby he can’t tell anyone about… exhibitionism. He lives in an apartment on the second floor of a building, with the first floor being a snack bar. Every once in a while, when he spots a random female passerby walk past his building late at night, he opens the shades of his room, turns up the volume of the porn he’s watching, and lets her see him masturbate. He derives a perverse pleasure from being exposed to people’s gazes.

One day, he does this again. However, it turns out as you’d expect from a femdom VN… the woman who sees him doesn’t just walk away uncomfortably like all the other women did previously. Instead, the woman with a suitcase glares at him… and walks into the building. She’s Kaede, and he didn’t recognize her because she only just moved in to the apartment next door.

Despite having crossed the line, the memory of her glare excites him. When Akino accidentally blasts from his speakers femdom porn later that night, Kaede interprets it as a deliberate act, and goes and confronts him. However, she’s far more ruthless to him than he could’ve imagined; she immediately blows past his comfort zone and blackmails him. And thus, his life is turned upside-down by her.

From that point on, the plot largely chronicles Akino’s attempts to live his life with Kaede constantly abusing him and forcing him to do things that are illegal, unsafe, or mildly terrifying. To a certain extent, at first, you may think, “Hey, isn’t this too convenient? He’s an exhibitionist, but when he was ‘caught’ by a woman, she’s beautiful and she forces him to engage in more exhibitionism? Isn’t this just wish fulfillment? How can Akino not be self-aware of this?” I had that feeling at the very start too, but then it quickly became apparent that Kaede’s orders are far beyond what a “normal” exhibitionist like Akino would consider wish fulfillment. Kaede feels utter disdain for him, and doesn’t hold back. Akino’s psychological conflict over how he feels about the situations he finds himself, which both excite and terrify him, and his stress and anxiety over Kaede’s influence over him are rawly conveyed in the narrative.

Everything ends up centering around Akino’s relationship with Manaka Shizuku, a cute girl he has a crush on. She goes to the same university as him; she’s even in the same year, and attends the same lecture. On top of that, she’s a part-time worker at the snack bar that occupies the first floor of the building he lives in. (A snack bar is kind of like a hostess club, but more toned down; a bar instead of a club, and the girls just serve drinks and chat casually at the tables rather than sit together on a sofa.) Akino constantly visits the snack bar to chat with her. He wants her to have a good impression of him, and look up to him as a cool and reliable guy, in the hopes that one day he’ll be able to ask her out.

As you’d expect, Kaede soon realizes the existence of Shizuku, and involves Shizuku in many of the humiliating orders she gives Akino. How Shizuku reacts to everything that happens between her and Akino, and how the relationship between Kaede and Akino evolves, are some of the focal points of the VN’s plot.

The Circle

Choukyou Suru Rinjin was created by a circle called Murasaki Gankyuu Suisou, which translates to Purple Eyeball Aquarium. That’s MGS for short. They sold their first work on DLsite in 2009, so they’ve been active for over a decade.

There are 2 people in the circle: Senhime, the writer with a unique style whose plots usually involve extreme situations and exhibitionism. And Narukamitsuki Ria, the artist whose ability has gradually improved over the years, and who’s responsible for the female voices in MGS’s works. They’re close in real life; Narukamitsuki Ria often posts short humorous comics that feature the 2 of them as chibi-style characters, and they also have a YouTube channel called Doujin Kurui (which could translate to Doujin Madness) where they humorously and insightfully express their experiences running their doujin circle. The majority of MGS’s works fall into the femdom category, though sometimes they’re more femsub, or even yaoi with a cross-dressing seme.

Back when Choukyou Suru Rinjin came out in 2019, MGS had been active for a full decade, but they had never put out a manga or a CG set. Until then, they had only ever put out novels and voice dramas. But ever since the VN Choukyou Suru Rinjin came out, the circle’s style has changed: Narukamitsuki Ria has put out 7 manga and CG sets, and the writer Senhime even learned to draw and put out two manga of his own. And they’re even currently working on a new game.

Choukyou Suru Rinjin has its roots in an 87-chapter novel that Senhime wrote. It’s still publicly readable on Pixiv and Nocturne. That’s only up to chapter 86; the final chapter, which is probably something of an epilogue, can only be read if you buy the illustrated compilation of chapter 63 onward. The name this VN was sold under is actually “Game: Choukyou Suru Rinjin” to distinguish it from the novel. Senhime worked on it for many years and wrapped it up around late 2018.

At first, I expected the game to be a shorter, more abridged version of the novel. That’s usually the way it goes. But the visual novel version of CSR is actually a superior version! The novel effectively only covers a single route. And when I compared the flow of the plot in both, I noticed that there were a number of scenes cut or subtly altered, and in every case, I felt that the changes made sense, helping to better ground the plot and the characters. And while only a small portion of scenes weren’t carried over to the VN, a much larger number of scenes were added to the VN. I would guess that the VN’s script is at least twice as long as the novel’s script.

Conclusion

There’s a lot more I could say about this VN. Like how much I love Shizuku as a heroine… How I love the contrast between Shizuku’s two routes… How I love the evolution of certain characters… How I like the voice acting in certain scenes. But I’ve chosen to avoid spoilers in this review.

The existence of MGS really cheers me up, because the works they create are inspired, enjoyable, and a breath of fresh air in this 2022 femdom doujin game scene that’s overloaded with irojikake and succubi. Their upcoming second game is once again based on a femdom novel from Senhime; the novel is called Dorei Tenraku Kitan, which means very roughly Slave Downfall Fairy Tale, and the game version this time will be called something different for clarity: Femme Fatale. It will also feature Live2D animated sprites, and major revisions to the novel’s story.

Side Talk

Time flies, and the next Msize game, after a year and half’s delay, is scheduled to come out at the end of December, assuming Riumu manages to wrap up the work in time. mortalvyses is also on track to finish their translation of Ikisugi M Lesson around then, so it'll potentially be a double dose of Msize!

Pixiv recently enacted some potentially censorship-oriented policies at the behest of international credit card companies. This won’t impact any non-paid Pixiv content (like regular artist galleries) but it will affect Fanbox (PIxiv’s Patreon equivalent) content. The new rules won’t take effect until mid-December, and it remains to see how strictly they will be enforced. I’m especially concerned about the ones that would target incest, because I appreciate imouto femdom scenarios.

A lot of people are interested in AI these days. There’s been a lot of discussion about chat bots and AI story generation in the Femdom Finder thread, with the apparent consensus being that while AIs will react to what you say and build upon it, so you can “train” them to act like a dominatrix, they’ll often “glitch out” as their apparent grasp of the situation collapses and, for example, they suddenly act like they’re the slave. Parts of AI-generated stories can reportedly be somewhat enjoyable, if you can learn to tune out at all the weird and contradictory elements that are thrown in. And of course, most AIs aren’t trained on porn, so often the content will stay relatively tame.

I’ve also seen a lot of Novel AI posts in Pixiv. Novel AI is an AI art generator that was trained from Danbooru (so, mostly Pixiv works) based off Stable Diffusion. In response to the flood, Pixiv created an opt-in feature that filters out AI art, but it doesn’t catch all of it, since it has to be tagged. As a fan of latex fashion, I’m impressed by a lot of the Novel AI art I see, but unfortunately, AI ultimately just mimics vast data sets and lacks a concept of the world; therefore, trying to prompt it to display an interpersonal action of domination, or otherwise display more than 1 person, seems mostly futile. Unless you train it with a lot of data for a specific scenario, but then why would you need it generated anyway? Probably the best you can do casually right now is, say, have a dominatrix pose with a whip, though sometimes it’ll fuse with her hair. In any case, the tech is certainly thought-provoking, and many artists are at least attempting to use it to speed up their work.

Until next time, and happy holidays.