chlorine's activites

Between Love, Hate and Affection

Deravillael, an Academy of Holy Knights, founded to train future knights who are capable of defendin...

• Author: Bucci
• Genres: Yaoi / Smut / Fantasy / Supernatural / Webtoons

This one star is dedicated purely—and I mean purely—to the art. This has some genuinely phenomenal art, to the point that it's almost disappointing to see it used on such an ass story. There's such a blinding disconnect between the quality of the art and the quality of the writing.

For me, the biggest issue this story had was the fact that it's just not subtle. At all. So much of the story is spent on Risbel wondering why Kendon is acting weird after Risbel had his demon lapdog infest his dreams . . . And it's just so blatantly obvious that he's weird because he dreamed of Risbel. Like it's so obvious that it's almost frustrating to read. I don't find any enjoyment in dwelling on some half-baked emotional mystery that just isn't a mystery in the slightest. This is only ten chapters yet it felt too long. When the reader knows what's going on and the main character for whatever reason just isn't catching up, it's not enjoyable. It's frustrating.

I also thought the dynamic between essentially all characters just wasn't fleshed out enough. There's two main relationships going on, being Risbel & Robernia (the aforementioned demon) and Risbel & Kendon. While their dynamics aren't particularly bad, I did find them to be rather shallow, and that's easily attributed to the fact that this story simply isn't long enough to create a good, dynamic relationship between basically three people. They have the basics down but there's not enough room to really grow or explore these relationships in a way that feels meaningful and impactful, but especially amongst Risbel and Robernia.

Risbel and Robernia is especially annoying as they get a lot of focus together, but ultimately kind of don't amount to anything. Robernia just gets up and disappears at the end of the story after Kendon comes in and makes his move, so I'm left just thinking . . . "That's it?" The focus on their sexual relationship could have instead been shifted to further focus on Risbel and Kendon and to actually further develop and show the two of them together, as Robernia ends up being such a nothing character to me.

One last thing that's kind of annoying is that this story puts a lot of attention to sex, and the sex we do get is pretty hot . . . But it's barely there. It's like we get sprinkles of sex scenes instead of just full ones and it's kind of confusing? It's only ten chapters, and you already introduced the sex scenes, so why not put more focus on them and make the story some shameless smut? It's not like it has much to otherwise offer.

My Darling Liar Boy

Ryuusei is tasked to be the star in a prank video in an attempt to go viral. His objective? Confess ...

• Author: Akai shirafu
• Genres: Yaoi / Comedy / Romance

. . . It was alright. It was serviceable. It was cute.

This isn't a particularly memorable story, though I don't mean that in a way to say it's boring. It's not boring. It's cute, it's funny, and it's sexy . . . It just doesn't really do anything new. It doesn't set itself apart from the crowd.

I will say, though really no fault of the story, that my expectations weren't met. The base premise of this story is that Ryuusei is confessing to Sawami as a "prank," in hopes of going viral. I thought them basically being YouTubers was a fun premise and I was hoping to see that intertwined more in the story, especially since it is in the first chapter. But it's just not. After Ryuusei confessed that entire aspect of the story is just completely dropped—because Ryuusei & Sawami aren't the YouTubers, it's the twins they're friends with, and the twins are basically just complete noncharacters. Again, this is no fault of the story, but I do think the story would have been more fun if that aspect had a throughline throughout.

There were a few things I didn't like, mainly being the pacing. This issue is really highlighted by the conflict that comes once Sawami finds out Ryuusei confessed as a "prank" . . . It's just over as soon as it begins. It lasts like a quarter of a chapter. It's so short that it makes me question why even write it to unfold the way it did. In general, I don't think this aspect should have been a conflict, or at least not at the point in the story it ended up happening. Sawami finds out that it was a "prank" after having fucked Ryuusei . . . At that point, it's common sense that it's gone beyond just a prank. Like no one fucks as a joke. So to have Sawami blindly react and push Ryuusei away—to then immediately take him back, mind you—is just silly. I would have preferred if this happened before they fucked, or alternatively have Ryuusei explain his POV after the truth came out. Ryuusei actually never explains it, which I didn't really like. He technically didn't need to as Sawami realizes there's no way he didn't love him, but it still would have been better to me if Ryuusei explained he only went along with the prank because he did actually like him.

When it comes to the characters . . . Meh. I didn't love them but I didn't hate them.

Ryuusei was a very emotional and animated person. He expresses his feelings in a kind of loud way, and I personally found it kind of annoying. It wasn't to the extent it ruined his character, because he was still very cute and there was still even something endearing about how emotional he was, but it was something I don't particularly seek out. He's definitely not one of my favorite ukes, that's for sure.

I definitely liked Sawami more. He was written to be quite "cool," and I mean, he was. He was very suave, and quite confident. It verged into cocky but it never quite broke into that. He's confident and shameless in a way that's both attractive and surprising; there's a scene where he goes to a sauna with Ryuusei and he's just letting it all hang free, and even gets hard to brag about his size to the other guys there. Some people might not like it but I did, there was something kind of sexy about the way he didn't care tbh.

The best thing about this story was the size difference. It was fucking crazy. It was so sexy and idgaf it should have been focused on more. Ryuusei was so much smaller than Sawami and it was so sexy