soulfulbongos's Topics (27)

if he looks like your love, and talks like your love, does it matter if he's not? can you fall in love with a facsimile, wholeheartedly, or will the real thing always haunt you? can you love the memory so much you stop caring? open wounds that will never heal...enjoyed how this played with body horror and identity similarly to 'the summer hikaru died' and there is the question of agency--hisao was born for his brother's sake and raised only for his sake, is that something someone can overcome? how do you give someone who was born to die survival instinct? love was not enough. adored the beautiful and eerie illustrations.

If I say that, does it make it love?

ouugh!!!! What is love?? Baby don't hurt me!!! Love how uncertain everything is between them. Is it love, or is it attachment due to their past hurts and history, or is it both? ch 27... gahhh shibal why does this only update once a month?

we could all see compton's mental breakdown and blow-up coming. there was no way the prof and garam could keep their relationship a secret forever, yet when it finally comes to light, it hits so forcefully, as if by surprise. compton's fury at garam is frightening (like a betrayal, but who betrayed whom first?), and garam's rebuttal "then play it yourself" is satisfying and vindicating...but also cruel. salt in the wound. can you even fucking play it? or are you a coward who ran away because he didn't have the talent, the love for music to stick it through?

of course it's in self-defence, and compton's being an utter ass, but when eva observes that garam has "definitely grown colder" it feels a little chilling. we think of garam as sweet, but he's sweet to the people who benefit him, and his sympathy for compton is paltry, tasting more like pity, and mostly self-serving, despite very clearly understanding how his professor has abused compton. garam's long since lost the naivety, innocence, and morality we knew of him in the beginning. is it for the better...? will this serve his music..?

god, the depths people will slink to for music (but, selfishly, beyond the purity of 'sound', they are seeking acclaim, acknowledgement, audience. what's the point of music if no one is there to listen to it, to share a connection that might be more vulnerable and intimate than sex because sex is with your body but music is with everything. with the hidden parts of you that you don't have words for that you fear other people seeing but need other people to see! even heejae needs someone to look!)

"the sight of you refusing to stop even while blood was pouring from your fingers! it left a deep impression on me!" heejae tells compton in the flashback and its a sober reminder of heejae's twisted essence, which has infused garam irreversibly, the same way garam has infused heejae. just because they're happy now, does it mean it's for the best? what other bitter wounds from heejae's past will come crawling out? (can't wait)

i'm rambling now, but i love how their artistry and search for perfection is at the heart of their toxic codependency, and how something as beautiful as a concerto can be so fucking ugly.

it made me wish for an anime adaptation or a live action so badly. of course the beautiful author conveys the emotional resonance of the music effectively through image, but actually hearing the music, imagining heejae--whose hands have only known how to hurt for so long--make a piece that feels so brimming with tenderness and delicacy, all for garam, it's so... music has this untranslatable language that i can't express in words. you have to FEEL IT LIKE HEEJAE FEELS IT, after everything, the screaming and loneliness and abuse and garam's patience through it all...

for anyone who missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE1ZUrWsCNQ

but holy shit are things about to go horribly wrong or what guys

intrigued by the slow build and whatever secrets dohwan is keeping. he's clearly hiding something, and i like how his dishonesty contrasts with yoonsang's sincerity.

a little bit tripped up by the name 'yoonsang' lol. can't help but think of korea's father of electronic music, lee yoonsang. brb gonna go listen to 'destiny' by lovelyz again

how satisfying it is when garam finds his rachmaninoff not inside his own darkness, but through his ability to endure and even love the professor's darkness. i do worry how much garam's sound and music is tied to the professor (the codependency is severe) but i also love how insane and obsessed they are about one another and would be sad if they achieve 'normalcy.' maybe that's impossible knowing where they started from, but it's beginning to feel like their relationship is fulfilling and sustaining in a way it wasn't before. they've both transformed one another but I can't let go of my anxieties that it's too good to be true... perhaps compton is brainwashing me too...

i can't help but feel pity for compton ( or cumdump or condom or whatever nickname the chat has given him now) because you can see how much he loved and admired the professor in his need to rip away and 'save' every student from the maestro (save himself, really). did the maestro do something uniquely evil to him? or did compton go falling in love, thinking he was so special, all on his own, and couldn't handle the truth?

i wonder if we'll ever return to the characters from the first arc in the university.
don't know if i'm misremembering, but didn't garam ask the professor for a favour-- to bar one of his old classmates from performing at a venue or something? that made me curious since garam doesn't seem the type to hold grudges. and i want to see what youngjo and naeun are up to and their reactions to garam--his artistry and confidence as he is now. i LOVE that the author never made him some mega talented genius. it's been gradual and painstaking the whole way.

also need to find out about heejae's old manager/lover... but i also love the way he exists as this incorporeal spectre haunting heejae's every moment alone.

for free...all of it...and caught up at such a perfect part. oh boy. i cannot wait to see how everything falls apart. this has such beautiful art and storytelling... this yearning is like crack to me. i just ate that red sauce at the chinese restaurant and went crazy

i love how messy and real this feels. the characters are flawed, selfish, and unkind, but human, and they love how humans love: irrationally and desperately.

i appreciate how this manga captures the complications of bisexuality and its clashes with conformity. do you go after who you love, when you're not even sure what love is, and the world is screaming that your love is wrong, and there's a 'better' option? do you keep hurting your partner because you can't commit, or do you end it, even when you want it so badly? because kyouichi wants it so badly.

when kissing imagase, kyouichi spots his own blurry eyes in the mirror, lost in lust, and can barely reconcile that version of himself with the imagined one in his mind... the moment reprised at the end, when he sees himself as imagase is penetrating him--the final emasculation, no turning back--and imagase covers kyoichi's eyes... if you make an escape route, a man will escape. cornered mouse, there's nowhere to go here. you've got your final slice of cheese.

this can't end well, but oh how you want so badly for both of them to be happy! but can a selfish, cowardly man like kyouichi ever truly commit? will he take what he has for granted, searching for escape to a better option once the novelty and initial rush fades? always turning towards who will love him the most, the best, because he can't believe in his own worth? can't believe he can love right? and will imagase ever be satisfied and secure? will he ever let the paranoia rest? they're happy now, can they be happy forever? maybe if they can grow and change, but can they? ough it hurts so good.

will preface by saying i don't think this manga is Bad. it had Vibes, but...

it kinda dodged the exploration of shou's dark urges, or just diverts to a different direction than i was expecting. "what i was feeling for you wasn't an urge to destroy. it was love from the start" good for him but not the climax i was looking forward to... like taking a sip of orange juice that's actually milk. like, it's fine, but i wanted orange juice... even when shou smashes keijirou with a vase and ties him up, shou's just lashing out because he's hurt/jealous, not really exploring his sexual desires in that moment.

stepping into the dominant/sadistic mindset is a personal interest of mine because i feel as if a lot of bl always take the pov of the bottom. nothing wrong with that--often, it's people's preference--but it leaves us with a shallow understanding of the top's perspective at times. i want to see his anxieties. how do you balance someone else's pleasure, and your own? is there an internal battle? what about a callousness? if there's empathy or guilt, and to what degree?

and i guess i just never bought into the chemistry between them. they felt like temporary bandages to each other's wounded psyches. kei's loneliness leading him to date a minor. shou's secret twisted lusts drawing him to seek out strangers (and where are the twisted lusts hmmmm??! the initial build up is so good).

and the ending with the time skip was super rushed...

he'd learn some things, you know?

lot of interesting themes: what is gender identity? what does it mean to like someone? (does that mean you get to monopolize them? what do they owe you of themselves?) what is lust? is lust inherently dirty? why do the people we love not like us back? how do i truly connect with the people i want to connect to? is there a fundamental, unbreachable distance between boys and girls? how is sex supposed to feel?

you should never read oshimi at face value. I've seen people say kei (or alice) was being predatory to youhei at first, playing into negative stereotypes of the over-sexualized transgender body, but if you stay with the narrative, you'll see that's the opposite of what oshimi is trying to say. kei wants to be closer to youhei because they have connections beyond their bodies or lusts (they want to escape into each other, to grasp that simple joy that used to be so easy in childhood) and is trying to do it the wrong way, because society doesn't necessarily have a roadmap for the kind of connection kei wants. but kei does know that society constantly tells you sex brings you closer to someone. everyone wants sex. sexual attraction (mitani's confession) was one of the instigating motivations behind kei's self-realization and gender expression. It's impossible to totally avoid the concept, and maybe kei's obsessions begin with a rejection of society's messages and rules.

let's all renounce gender and transcend to the sky with life-partners who understand the most intimate, free parts of ourselves, yeah?