Definitely I think there are things worth critiquing about Ten Count. Of course there were blatant moments of nonconsent or dubious consent, there’s the power dynamic, the “treatment” is…lol, there’s the whole thing with Ueda and Shirotani’s father, etc…at the same time I feel like there are a couple things people either missed or are reading into too literally.
Re the more problematic things, first of all…I think it’s a bit shallow to just say “depicting x is bad” without taking into full consideration HOW x is depicted and why its part of the story in the first place. Personally I think you can depict anything you want in fiction, so long as you handle it with nuance and awareness. And then I’d give caveats for things on a case-by-case basis depending on what type of story it is—like I’m not going to expect a porno, for example, to accurately portray lifeguards LMAOOO. Ten Count isn’t just porn though so I think it’s fair to hold it to higher standards in terms of depictions.
So for example, reading over a few comments, personally I think it’s not enough to just say it was bad for the author to include a relationship between an (underage) student and a teacher. Of course those types of relationships end up happening, unfortunately, and I think it’s fine if a story brings that to light. I’d say the issue THERE with regards to this story is that the relationship is never addressed further beyond being a source of trauma for a young Shirotani…Ueda is never framed or acknowledged as a victim herself, instead being nothing but an aggressor. Frankly it’s incredibly easy to glance over the fact that she herself was just a student at the time, not an adult who could consent to that type of relationship. Not that she didn’t do things wrong, but now that I’m older and can see that, it’s a bit…and then you factor in what feels like blatant misogyny from both the author and the readers (I remember even back when I first read it, so many people were calling her a bitch…of course one of the few female characters in the yaoi has to be evil, lmao)…yeah, it rubs me the wrong way now.
Another thing I’m seeing is also critiques of the patient/doctor dynamic between Shiro and Kuro. I’m not going to defend this out and out, I think there are still critiques that can be made, but correct me if I’m wrong…didn’t Kuro try to break things off between them when he realized he couldn’t get over his feelings for Shiro? Like I did come into the reread expecting medical malpractice LOL and there arguably still was but I remember commenting to my friends about how I thought it was nice that Kuro explicitly tried to avoid that lmao. The only thing is yeah I’d say the transition from the patient/doctor relationship to the more platonic/sexual/romantic relationship wasn’t super clear, and of course Kuro kept trying to treat Shiro rather than suggesting he go seek professional help with someone else and all but…at the same time with something like exposures/exposure therapy, it’s the kind of thing you would, could, and should still do outside of a clinical setting, right? (My knowledge of stuff like OCD/anxiety is limited, I had a brief episode in my life where I ended up getting treated for it myself so I know a bit but not much in detail lol.)
Anyway with those couple of things aside (this is so long already lol), maybe it’s because of my own preference for the psychosexual but I think that Kuro and Shiro’s relationship overall perhaps shouldn’t be taken too literally. To me at least, I feel that while both of them are their own separate entities of course, they also act as extensions of/representations of something crucial to the other person/their inner desires. To Kuro, Shiro is his path towards atonement for his mishap with Nishigaki—I mean it’s blatantly shown that the reason why Kuro went into psych in the first place is because he learned about how much Nishigaki was suffering and felt so bad about the possibility! that he might’ve been responsible for driving Nishigaki away or for making him straight up commit SUICIDE. That’d fuck me up as a grown adult, imagine as a kid…then of course there’s the overall parental neglect aspect, Kuro clearly craves praise, attention, and stimulation overall since he never got any of that from his parents growing up, and then the one person who gave him an ounce of anything was Nishigaki who disappeared…
Meanwhile I think to Shiro, Kuro is an embodiment of his real inner desires—his desires expressed without the overwhelming guilt and shame he himself feels about them. I’m obsessed with the scene where Shiro goes off to finger himself in the public bathroom stall, it’s genuinely crazy work. Because at the same time that he’s so disgusted by the environment and what he’s doing, he’s also ridiculously turned on by it, obviously (it’s crazy how our brains conflate disgust/taboo with pleasure)…and then because he can’t reconcile his feelings and actions and his desire, he just imagines it’s Kuro fingering him instead? So he doesn’t have to think of Himself doing what he’s doing? So that it feels more okay for him to do??? uuuuu girl you are so psychosexual.
Also the scene where, I don’t remember what sexual activity they did lmao, where Shiro burst into tears afterwards and apologized to Kuro for dirtying him… like I don’t know. Yes the consent is occasionally dubious if not nonexistent but I don’t think it’s that way necessarily just because Shiro outright doesn’t want it, he’s outright not in the mood or outright isn’t attracted to Kuro. I think it’s often that he DOES want it but the shame/guilt/disgust about his own sexuality he’s internalized from childhood ends up acting as a wall between him and his desires. So sometimes he and/or Kuro will sometimes more gently chip away at said wall and other times you see Kuro basically bulldozing through it lmfao. There are scenes where Kuro asks Shiro before doing something, after all, acknowledging where there might be a boundary he doesn’t want to cross, or where Shiro asks Kuro for something of his own volition, or where Shiro challenges himself to do something so that Kuro will then respond to him…again, not saying that the consent is never dubious, but I think contextualizing how and why says something more about the characters in this case.
Also like…okay. Can we really talk about Kuro for a second? I wouldn’t be able to diagnose him but there is something neurodivergent going on with Kuro, too, that goes beyond just him being some cool, calm, nonchalant seme. Even when as a child he’s depicted as hardly ever emoting. Like no expressions. His face barely changes when he’s shocked or when he’s sad/emotional/crying. He only ever seems to emote a bit more with Shiro and even then. Then he’s very straightforward and blunt with his speech, I even get the impression of a certain monotony about his tone of voice…I’m thinking about the extra where he jokes around about being an android and Shiro seriously can’t tell if he’s joking or not (yeah we could attribute that to Shiro being a naive bottom but lmao). I don’t know, maybe I’m reading into him too much. I just don’t think that guy is neurotypical himself, either.
Anyway. My long as review coming back to it. I still like it, in fact, I think I can appreciate it more and better than I could when I was younger and I couldn’t understand or think through some of these things…
Definitely I think there are things worth critiquing about Ten Count. Of course there were blatant moments of nonconsent or dubious consent, there’s the power dynamic, the “treatment” is…lol, there’s the whole thing with Ueda and Shirotani’s father, etc…at the same time I feel like there are a couple things people either missed or are reading into too literally.
Re the more problematic things, first of all…I think it’s a bit shallow to just say “depicting x is bad” without taking into full consideration HOW x is depicted and why its part of the story in the first place. Personally I think you can depict anything you want in fiction, so long as you handle it with nuance and awareness. And then I’d give caveats for things on a case-by-case basis depending on what type of story it is—like I’m not going to expect a porno, for example, to accurately portray lifeguards LMAOOO. Ten Count isn’t just porn though so I think it’s fair to hold it to higher standards in terms of depictions.
So for example, reading over a few comments, personally I think it’s not enough to just say it was bad for the author to include a relationship between an (underage) student and a teacher. Of course those types of relationships end up happening, unfortunately, and I think it’s fine if a story brings that to light. I’d say the issue THERE with regards to this story is that the relationship is never addressed further beyond being a source of trauma for a young Shirotani…Ueda is never framed or acknowledged as a victim herself, instead being nothing but an aggressor. Frankly it’s incredibly easy to glance over the fact that she herself was just a student at the time, not an adult who could consent to that type of relationship. Not that she didn’t do things wrong, but now that I’m older and can see that, it’s a bit…and then you factor in what feels like blatant misogyny from both the author and the readers (I remember even back when I first read it, so many people were calling her a bitch…of course one of the few female characters in the yaoi has to be evil, lmao)…yeah, it rubs me the wrong way now.
Another thing I’m seeing is also critiques of the patient/doctor dynamic between Shiro and Kuro. I’m not going to defend this out and out, I think there are still critiques that can be made, but correct me if I’m wrong…didn’t Kuro try to break things off between them when he realized he couldn’t get over his feelings for Shiro? Like I did come into the reread expecting medical malpractice LOL and there arguably still was but I remember commenting to my friends about how I thought it was nice that Kuro explicitly tried to avoid that lmao. The only thing is yeah I’d say the transition from the patient/doctor relationship to the more platonic/sexual/romantic relationship wasn’t super clear, and of course Kuro kept trying to treat Shiro rather than suggesting he go seek professional help with someone else and all but…at the same time with something like exposures/exposure therapy, it’s the kind of thing you would, could, and should still do outside of a clinical setting, right? (My knowledge of stuff like OCD/anxiety is limited, I had a brief episode in my life where I ended up getting treated for it myself so I know a bit but not much in detail lol.)
Anyway with those couple of things aside (this is so long already lol), maybe it’s because of my own preference for the psychosexual but I think that Kuro and Shiro’s relationship overall perhaps shouldn’t be taken too literally. To me at least, I feel that while both of them are their own separate entities of course, they also act as extensions of/representations of something crucial to the other person/their inner desires. To Kuro, Shiro is his path towards atonement for his mishap with Nishigaki—I mean it’s blatantly shown that the reason why Kuro went into psych in the first place is because he learned about how much Nishigaki was suffering and felt so bad about the possibility! that he might’ve been responsible for driving Nishigaki away or for making him straight up commit SUICIDE. That’d fuck me up as a grown adult, imagine as a kid…then of course there’s the overall parental neglect aspect, Kuro clearly craves praise, attention, and stimulation overall since he never got any of that from his parents growing up, and then the one person who gave him an ounce of anything was Nishigaki who disappeared…
Meanwhile I think to Shiro, Kuro is an embodiment of his real inner desires—his desires expressed without the overwhelming guilt and shame he himself feels about them. I’m obsessed with the scene where Shiro goes off to finger himself in the public bathroom stall, it’s genuinely crazy work. Because at the same time that he’s so disgusted by the environment and what he’s doing, he’s also ridiculously turned on by it, obviously (it’s crazy how our brains conflate disgust/taboo with pleasure)…and then because he can’t reconcile his feelings and actions and his desire, he just imagines it’s Kuro fingering him instead? So he doesn’t have to think of Himself doing what he’s doing? So that it feels more okay for him to do??? uuuuu girl you are so psychosexual.
Also the scene where, I don’t remember what sexual activity they did lmao, where Shiro burst into tears afterwards and apologized to Kuro for dirtying him… like I don’t know. Yes the consent is occasionally dubious if not nonexistent but I don’t think it’s that way necessarily just because Shiro outright doesn’t want it, he’s outright not in the mood or outright isn’t attracted to Kuro. I think it’s often that he DOES want it but the shame/guilt/disgust about his own sexuality he’s internalized from childhood ends up acting as a wall between him and his desires. So sometimes he and/or Kuro will sometimes more gently chip away at said wall and other times you see Kuro basically bulldozing through it lmfao. There are scenes where Kuro asks Shiro before doing something, after all, acknowledging where there might be a boundary he doesn’t want to cross, or where Shiro asks Kuro for something of his own volition, or where Shiro challenges himself to do something so that Kuro will then respond to him…again, not saying that the consent is never dubious, but I think contextualizing how and why says something more about the characters in this case.
Also like…okay. Can we really talk about Kuro for a second? I wouldn’t be able to diagnose him but there is something neurodivergent going on with Kuro, too, that goes beyond just him being some cool, calm, nonchalant seme. Even when as a child he’s depicted as hardly ever emoting. Like no expressions. His face barely changes when he’s shocked or when he’s sad/emotional/crying. He only ever seems to emote a bit more with Shiro and even then. Then he’s very straightforward and blunt with his speech, I even get the impression of a certain monotony about his tone of voice…I’m thinking about the extra where he jokes around about being an android and Shiro seriously can’t tell if he’s joking or not (yeah we could attribute that to Shiro being a naive bottom but lmao). I don’t know, maybe I’m reading into him too much. I just don’t think that guy is neurotypical himself, either.
Anyway. My long as review coming back to it. I still like it, in fact, I think I can appreciate it more and better than I could when I was younger and I couldn’t understand or think through some of these things…