Just in case you're curious, here are the clichés I counted (feel free to add any more that I make have missed in this list):
1) People who work in the cleaning service are invisible, feel no pride in their job and are so miserable they must be wanting to kill themselves.
2) Grown-up, successful men who are "loved by everyone" are actually miserable men who hide behind a mask and can never be free to be themselves.
3) All the people hiding behind a social mask must all really have suffered at some point a kind of complicated, repressed childhood trauma.
4) Sado-masochism is the only, brief moment of relief that people hiding behind a social mask ever can get in their fake, fucked-up lives.
5) An over-demanding parent will necessarily cause his child to grow up to become "twisted".
...Any others you can spot?
- Rapist "top" as opposed to "bottom". Very few rapist nekos in yaoi, and ofcourse the man being raped will have been a straight man before this, but completely melt and fall in love now he's adopted the role of neko. cliche, problematic to say the least.
Oh yeah, you're right. Then we can add:
6) "It is shameful for a successful macho-man business top-dog to have sex with a lowly employee, get it up the ass, and even worse, to like it"
7) "getting it up the ass gives a closet self repressed gay top dog an instant happiness/love/the solution to all their problems"
And the cherry on top:
8) clichéd "rape can become 'healing' as a form of therapeutic sado-masochistic roleplay"
And the most hilarious:
9) if "everybody" loves you, don't be fooled, 'cause chances are none of them actually really know you. *poster laughs in tears*
"Yeah, don't fool yourself, dude... Forget about self-esteem. If people happen to love you, that's probably just your misguided percetion, your own self-delusion talking!"
10) Women are evil
And want to "meddle", and if they aren't a family member are perceived as being a rival, because obv one character is still "straight" which leads to lots of plot with the other being insecure.
The "straight' one, unless being raped will always be the one on top, the "seme" cause yaoilogic, where the "gay" character is perceived as not being able to top, literally not being able. If this isn't the case and you do have that rare "straight" character that bottoms, then by yaoi law their partner HAS to say "you won't be able to make love to a woman ever again" or words to that effect.
This convo about discussing the awful tropes of yaoi has been better than the actual manga :)
11) And women are stupid... And shallow. Actually, everyone else is also stupid and shallow, in a story where everyone "loves" the mc and are blind to his "twistedness" because they let themselves get fooled by appearances, physical attractiveness, and let's not forget, by this mc's "super elaborate" mask...
What's really cringy about this one is the amount of clichés it turns out to have once you really start counting them... Man, it even makes you feel second-hand embarrassment at the author, lol. Like, it must have taken them what, half a minute to come up with this storyline? Lmao. It's like a quickie that ends up too fast, with no orgasm.