Akaito's Topics (31)

No wonder Garon is fucking psychotic tbh. Mommy issues will do it to you. Though I’m like, how much of what’s wrong with Garon is just his mother mistreating him, and how much of it is just something…genetic? Heriditary? She herself clearly wasn’t right in the head, which did lead to mistreatment, but no matter what like…something has to be a little wrong with you yourself to be able to order a bunch of imae to tear apart and eat your mother right in front of you? And watch unflinchingly? I mean it’s clear from how Garon still thinks about his mother, especially in this chapter’s context seeing how respectful and self-sacrificing Raonhiljo’s mother is, that he felt Something about her—that he probably longed for a more nurturing mother. But sheesh.

It is interesting though that that’s one of the threads connecting the three together…aaahhh there’s a lot I feel like I could say about it both in terms of the story itself but also on a more meta level. Like Garon being responsible for the death of MC’s mother and now Raonhiljo’s mother—even though I think his killing of MC’s mother was more inadvertent, it still feels significant now with the context of this chapter…like he’s specifically punishing every mother for the sins of his own mother you know. Robbing people of the love and care and etc he was denied in retaliation. This feels more like a stretch but I wonder if it might also be his own twisted way of getting closer to MC and/or Raonhiljo’s, not just for the sake of the hunt but also like…emotionally speaking you know? I think last chapter he talked about having a hole in his heart and how MC was filling it (or it felt like he could feel it). People who still have living and loving mothers don’t have that hole, so he might as well gouge it out himself. I dunno, I’m yapping.

Even though there’s lots to be said about the moms in the story my little #misogyny #patriarchy alarm is ringing a bit because like…anyway I know it’s not that deep but it kinda is a little that deep when some of the most prominent and impactful women in here are all mothers and either pure magnificent nurturing angels or evil demons and they ALL DEAD shdhdh maybe it’s on me for not remembering more specific details on ‘em but hello, nuance? Like fair they are secondary characters but it’s just making me ponder you know. And it’s not even just about them I’m also just like where the papas at. Where the dads. What were they up to where’d they go. I. guess dying in combat and/or neglecting their familial duties too. LOL

the moment helm said he’d make his brother pay/the brother asked what helm could do i was like “he’s gonna kill himself” and i was right. fjhffgfjd they’re both so crazy. or rather the brother is so crazy helm has no choice but to adapt to it

he’s not irredeemable bc he acts like a spoiled entitled rich brat or because of his shit attitude or because he’s a predator. he’s irredeemable bc he is stupid. dan told him point blank period what the problem was and he still doesn’t get it. he’s still just like hmmm well my other manipulative tactics didn’t work let me try another one. surely it will work this time. i mean if i were being more serious i’d say more about how this reflects his character overall but it’s just funny atp. actual brick wall

idc if it’s borderline incestuous i wanna see vladimir fuck that old man and cry about it. or the other way around

I went and started reading Roses and Champagne because so many people were saying “oh people don’t hate Caesar as much as Jaekyung even though Caesar shoots, rapes, and kidnaps Leewon.” Here I was expecting their relationship to be batshit form the fucking get-go only to find that not only had Caesar been (mostly*** before someone comes swinging with “he did xyz bad things I KNOW. CONTEXT) kind, caring, and considerate to Leewon for the first 40 chapters of the webtoon but that he was very clearly and deliberately PUSHED into crashing out the way he does when he finally DOES crash out for real (I’m on chapter 43).

These two characters fundamentally do not operate the same AT ALL not just from a personality standpoint but also narratively speaking. Caesar’s wilder actions are justified and explained by the narrative, Jaekyung’s, so far, are NOT. The issue is not JUST that Jaekyung’s a fucking asshole, it’s that after 60+ chapters of the fuckass webtoon, we don’t know WHY he is, we don’t know what any of his bullshit is rooted in. Not to mention all the other shit that’s ass about the writing of this webtoon. THAT’S why people can like and enjoy and understand a character like Caesar but not a character like Jaekyung, even though, yes! Absolutely! Caesar DOES do worse things than Jaekyung! Don’t fucking piss me off.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendation. I’ve been enjoying Roses and Champagne a whole lot so far.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CeYCSiE7dtk

I can’t really say much because I’ve not read BJ Alex in literal years to the point where I can’t remember jack diddly shit about what it was about frankly lmfao (though I think it’s funny that way back when I was a wee fetus I had enough of an opinion about it even then to rate it just 3 stars amongst the stories I left either unrated or rated 5 stars…) but it’s interesting seeing the comparisons being made between the two webtoons and the critiques being made about it.

On one hand I’m like as a writer, it’s inevitable that you have a few tropes, themes, ideas, character archetypes, etc that you end up cycling around a lot in your stories. And it’s also inevitable that you might end up self-plagiarizing a bit, consciously and/or unconsciously, when you’re writing because you know, all your stuff’s coming from the same brain. Finally, there’s simply no original story ideas anyone can come up with and all that…basically, to an extent, I think it makes sense for this story to have commonalities with BJ Alex, or to be something like BJ Alex taken at a different angle. And obviously, the author can write what she likes too, and if this is what she likes then of course she can write it again!

But on the other hand, if it’s really as copy-paste-like as people are claiming it to be in terms of borrowing the same exact story beats without adding the nuance needed to accommodate the fact that these are somewhat different characters in a somewhat different situation…then I do think it’s kind of lazy writing my friends and I have honestly wondered if she is writing into these tropes out of genuine enjoyment of them or if the #market is playing a guiding hand in how she approaches this story, maybe it’s a mix of both. Obviously BJ Alex in and of itself was a hit, and then you obviously have much broader BL tropes that people ceaselessly eat up no matter what, so it makes me wonder if she may have felt the need to do an encore for the sake of securing an audience rather than try something new/different and potentially risky.

Wife, wait for me. Ark is not too far.

Idk how this will end but regardless it would be nice to see the MC able to heal and feel cherished…I just love him so much as a character…he can be so bold, cold, and calculating, and he often puts on somewhat of a strong front in the face of the things that happen to him and what he has to do/has done to survive, but then you also get these moments every now and then where he well and truly breaks down and we see the extent of the emotional toll everything’s taken on him ;-; that he thinks he’s worthless for exploiting his body/having had his body exploited…ouuu MC I hold you to my chest like baby…

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…