punchline: existential dread's Topics (31)

hot diggity damn they all have balls the size of golf balls

all these disgruntled comments are giving me life. good to know i'm not the only one hungry for seke!

whatever my feelings are about rape as a motif in yaoi, i'm floored and impressed that everyone's chipping in their own two cents about it. a lot of well-argued and impassioned defenses here. funny thing is, i haven't even read the manga yet! is there a reason there's such a wealth of thought on this topic, on this particular page?

takami unzipping seki's jumpsuit, holy fucking christ. i don't know why but that image always gets me: that long exposed line from nipple to navel. i think i might have died and gone to heaven.

this manga is just so fucking refreshing and all-around delightful. yukue moegi is obviously very skilled at her craft and very deft at navigating around the pitfalls of the yaoi genre. let me use chapter 8 as an example. SHE SUBVERTS SO MANY TROPES

Exhibit A: Bento of Love. it's always a rite of passage in yaoi BUT the mangaka uses it also as a jumping point for dear sweet angery face boi ryuunosuke to encourage shima to ask his workaholic and oft-absent mother for a bento, mending/deepening his familial relationships, which, fite me, is so fucking touching

Exhibit B: making the bento a smiling bear because of a crying bear emoji????? be still my heart, too much gap moe

Exhibit C: when the bento gets inevitably ruined, there's no disproportionately big scene made about it, shima just acknowledges the heartache and moves on, and immediately directs it to more productive, edifying, and relationship-building ends, and his solution is fucking clever: *HE'LL* be the one to cook the bento -

- and at this point you think you know where this is going, right?? You think, oh, then the MC who has no experience cooking is going to make a bento bomb and deliver it to his boo (cue mosaic and censor bars), who braves gastritis to eat it and also pretends it's the best shit they've ever eaten -

BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT HAPPENS! BECAUSE LIKE ANY SANE, REAL PERSON SHIMA IS ACTUALLY SELF-AWARE (he knows he's an occupational hazard in the kitchen) and accepts help from the most logical candidate: ryuunosuke, who is fucking kickass at cooking.

and THEY END UP COOKING TOGETHER@!?!?!?! YES????!!!!!!!!!!! come on, that's the most romantic thing ever.

i also like that the meddling brother stops overstepping ryuunosuke's boundaries and just generally obnoxious behaviors pretty early on in the manga, and also how shima winds up deepening the relationship between his boo and his brother, and then the brother helps deepen their romantic bond in turn. this is one of those rare yaoi mangas i've read that actually portrays this bridge between family life and love life holistically and respectfully.

because one can't thrive on romance alone. everyone knows that a healthy life is one where many different needs are met, many dimensions equally weighed - i.e. the realms of family, friends, and career; none of these can be neglected at the expense of another. any romantic relationship where the romance consumes or subsumes or eclipses all other dimensions in a person's life is not a healthy romance, and is honestly such a bore to read, because it doesn't make anyone into a better person, it doesn't precipitate any life-changing, -defining, or -affirming moments that grow the character, and it doesn't ever, ever touch the reader's heart. it's like... the difference between watching The Kissing Booth and Amelie.

and i think yukue moegi did justice to her story, and to her readers, by acknowledging this fact of life.

thank you for reading my essay.

can i just say i LOVE how androgynous herma looked in their nightclub clothes. like galatea come to life, part swanning odalisque and part byronic dandy. ever seen tilda swinton as gabriel in constantine??? that's the vibe i was getting ugh

*cries in bisexual*

i think what most people don't understand is that this isn't a manga in the conventional sense. it's closer to a visual essay on what makes yoneda kou tick. i'm impressed at how two mere pages can provide invaluable insight into the key to her storycraft: her very singular stroke of stoic eroticism that belies her characters' apprehension or diffidence in love.

there's hardcore bara, and then... there's this

ace representation!!!!! hell fucking yes

it's obvious this author is dedicated to portraying the lgbt community realistically. her work doesn't feel fetishistic to me. i love that.

٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶ this series is both waki and sweet and at times heart-renchin