TachibanaChiharu's Topics (173)

Some spoilers ig --
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Suk/Kiwoon are 3/5 for me - problematic, lack of grounding in reality, and no reasonable engagement with their sexualities.

Suk being interested in Kiwoon immediately feels like it came out of nowhere and he had no thoughts about being gay or not, just rolled with it, which I never find very realistic in any comic. Kiwoon, you think is straight at first because he seems to hate the attention he's getting from Suk, then when Jaeha appears, you think ok, maybe he did have gay leanings after all with Jaeha, but then later Kiwoon flat-out says he was not interested in Jaeha like that at all, so then you're left wondering if he really can ever be interested in Suk -- is he gay/bi/etc or not?

Meanwhile Suk goes after Kiwoon hardcore and Kiwoon legit seems to hate it for the first half to 2/3 of their story (season 1, ch1-38), and at some point you have to wonder, when should Suk have to accept that Kiwoon is not gay and not interested? At some point, right? Otherwise he's just a creepy stalker who needs a restraining order. But then Suk successfully badgers Kiwoon into a relationship which doesn't feel very good at all. It didn't feel like Kiwoon really chose it, more like he just gave up trying to get away from Suk.

I also really don't like Kiwoon's treatment of Jaeha. Yeah, I realize they got into a fight and Kiwoon was hospitalized. But the actual fight, how it started, escalated, and came to blows was never really shown in the comic, so we're left guessing about the specifics of it. It felt like Kiwoon probably started the fight with his misinterpretation of the situation, thinking Jaeha killed one of the cats. Jaeha was not there to get into a fight at all, but to get help for the cat. So if Kiwoon started the fight and or escalated it into a physical situation, then really, Jaeha was just defending himself? Because of the lack of clarity in this situation all the way to the end of the story, I can only help but think that Kiwoon started a fight he couldn't finish and then cut Jaeha off later in the story while never owning up to the fact that he, Kiwoon, started/escalated the situation due to a misinterpretation. Feels kinda crappy.

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Hyun/Jaeha are 5/5 for me - working through trauma and past failures to engage in order to slowly resolve their issues and come to a place where they can meet in the middle and grow a bit.

Their part of the story is chapters 39-96 which is way longer, but it's much easier to read than the first part because you can tell from the beginning that the two really do want to be accepted by each other but that certain things keep getting in the way. These two go through proper character arcs, unlike Suk and Kiwoon, which is largely why this section of the story works so much better. Hyun needs to learn to express himself more clearly and frequently and honestly, and Jaeha needs to stop letting his pride get in the way of trying to connect with Hyun and accept the help that he so desperately needs. And to be fair, the help that Hyun is providing to Jaeha isn't even really Hyun's -- it's his parents' money, apartment, etc. He's just sharing what help he's been given by someone else with Jaeha.

I don't have a lot to say about these two because I think the author wrote this relationship much much much better than the first couple. On the one hand, it does feel like maybe their part of the story is too long; on the other hand, it does take a while to work through the kind of trauma Jaeha has had in his life, so it feels more realistic that it takes so long for them to finally meet in the middle. I'm fine with it, and I hope the author is able to finish the story someday ("to be continued" at the end of ch96).

After reading today's chapter (86), I have to seriously wonder about the idea of....
(barely a spoiler)
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pairing Cirrus up with Skylar. Like, Cirrus is legit crazy. I'm not sure Skylar really deserves the duty of having to put up with this unstable person or to bring Cirrus back from the brink, or back to reality, or to help him learn to behave like a normal human. A bit much to ask of a teenager. I want to see Skylar happy, not saddled with the duty of having to recover someone he isn't even interested in at this point.

I don't even know what Cirrus needs. Maybe a dad who gives a crap and actually tries, and/or a psych. I am not sure if finding someone who genuinely loves him will be enough. *scratches head*

wish i could've seen a little more wrap-up for all of the characters.

Note: I did read the whole thing

The writing's a mess here, but the author does have some few capabilities with it anyway.

Aside from the art being pretty good and visibly improving over the course of the series, the author is at least able to maintain a brisk pace throughout the entire run, all the way up until the very abrupt ending. The main character Kang Junho is generally likeable even if his character bears the cross of some of the most egregious writing problems.

I guess, since I do this so frequently, I may as well discuss some of the problems in this story. Although I probably don't have too many outside of what others have already said in the comments/topics/etc.
(spoilers; long)
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General:

- Lack of establishment of scenes. Some scenes occur in places you have no idea about, or where they are, for example, that basement-y warehouse-y place where the chairman is holding Jihoon at the end. Is it the basement of his mansion? Is it an unused warehouse on the school grounds? Who knows! And I'd also like to know how crazy-blue-hair happens to know.

- Jarringly weird flashback-flashforwards in many, many of the chapters. For example, a chapter will end on a cliffhanger, then the next chapter will show a character flashed forward a few hours regretting something they did, then it will flash back to what happened in the interim.

- Overuse of tropey/cliche things. Lee Kang is that typical high-octane top, and everyone he bones falls immediately in love with him (apparently including Junho). Parents killed by car crash. Evil aunt/uncle who take him in then blame him when they can't make it work. Don't-have-an-umbrella trope and getting-sick-in-the-rain trope. As an aside, it is so irritating when a comic leans so hard on a trope that is total superstition to make things happen in the plot, such as getting sick in the rain, which pretty much never happens in real life. How do these people take showers?

- Junho being a beefcake is all aesthetics, and was put in this story to satisfy a fetish, rather than for him to actually be strong/powerful. He should've been able to throw at least a couple of punches against Lee Kang before getting grappled and raped any of the many times he was determined to fight back.

- BL crazyworld stuff. Everyone's gay, like apparently Junho's friend from the baseball team is suddenly in love with the TA and is ok with boning him without any prior hints of this? Lee Kang thinking that no one will love him at the end of the comic despite everyone he boned being totally in love with him as stated in the story. Having sex everywhere in public and only getting caught when it's convenient for the plot. People knowing other peoples' phone numbers without them ever exchanging numbers. Lee Kang always noticing Kang Junho spying on him, but never vice-versa (I guess he has a Junho detector). And many, many more.

- Characters do things that make no sense. At the end, the chairman threatens to ruin Junho's life in front of Lee Kang, and then Lee Kang's strategy is to go to school and ignore Junho rather than tell him, and help him to protect himself. A beefcake (Lee Kang) being at all threatened by an old man with twiggy arms (the chairman) when the chairman seems to be threatening Jihoon by himself at the end of the story. Also, Junho going to help Lee Kang by himself at the end when he knows what happened to Jihoon's leg back in the day, getting attacked by a group of toughs. How about instead make Junho assemble all the beefcakes on the entire baseball and swim teams, give them all baseball bats, and take them with you? I think there's a pretty compelling argument to get some support out of them in this situation, even if there's some personal risk.

- This is an addendum to the above two, but: Do police not exist in this world? How about we call the police when Lee Kang rapes Junho, or when the chairman beats up Lee Kang, etc. How exactly did the chairman have Lee Kang's parent's killed anyway? I can't imagine the police are so inept as to not be able to tell the difference between intentional sabotage and a drunk driver (??)


Story specific problems:

- Lee Kang needs to be redeemed before Junho decides he's in love with him. Doing this out of order turns this from a redemption plot into a stockholm syndrome plot, which is no good.

- Kang Junho is both ineffective and inept throughout the entirety of his own story. All he can do is get mad, look like he's about the beat the stuffing out of Lee Kang, and then ... not do that at all and get raped instead. This happens repeatedly, and it's so aggravating. But it's not just the rapes, either. Junho's inept at coming up with any kind of revenge to ensnare Lee Kang in, or in otherwise improving his situation. He has no plan and can't think of one, and so his character just has to sit there and be at the mercy of everyone else in the story. The entire ending was orchestrated by swimming #2 crazy blue hair and Jihoon. We don't even get the satisfaction of Junho putting his foot down with Lee Kang and refusing his rapist-summons and telling him enough is enough. In fact, no one has a moment of putting their foot down and saying enough is enough in this story full of bad actors, other than maybe Jihoon (who is also ineffective throughout). This item in particular sucks so much worse because Junho is the main character, and throughout the story we desperately want to see him make any progress at all in getting out of his horrible situation. But he just can't seem to muster it.

- The author trying to pretend a sad backstory is any excuse for the bad behavior of an adult (namely, Lee Kang). It isn't. Lee Kang should've had some glimmers of resistance and made some attempts at breaking free from the cycle before or threaded in with all the sad backstory stuff that was shoved in to try and make the audience feel bad for him.

- No explanation as to why Lee Kang likes Kang Junho in particular, in any way that is different from all the other sex friends Lee Kang has that are all so in love with him. It seems like it's solely because Junho is the main character, and that is the only reason why. This isn't good enough for a character like Lee Kang who is way beyond the norm in terms of things that make him desirable/a good catch.

- There was no reason to make the TA a vindictive baby, taking out his anger at Lee Kang on Junho, when Junho was a victim the entire time. And keep in mind that the TA knew this because he had the video footage of at least two of the rapes, including the original/first one that incepted it all.

- Why is this story about a high-skill baseball player and swimmer, yet we almost never see either of them doing either of these things? We didn't even find out that Junho was a pitcher (I think??) until all the way into the middle of the story. At least we see Junho working out regular intervals. I was actually hoping early on that we'd have Junho play in an important game, and see Lee Kang in the stands smirking at him to set him off balance, but we never got any kind of scene like that.

- The conflict between the baseball club and the swimming club is made to be a big deal at the beginning and on into the middle of the story, but this is never resolved. I was awaiting that moment where Junho and crazy blue hair aka swimmer #2 would lead both teams to storm the chairman's place, but we never got any kind of unity between the two clubs, or resolution to their conflict.

- The story had an abrupt ending with no real wrap-up of the main romance plot other than the fact that the two admitted they loved each other in completely separate scenes (but whyyyyy). The story just suddenly stops right after Lee Kang confesses. The redemption of Lee Kang was probably the most important part of the story but it was cut off before it could really get underway. Jiwon in BJ Alex had an entire second season solely devoted to his redemption arc, and Lee Kang was way worse of an ahole than Jiwon ever was, and needed at least as long to clean up all the messes he made.

- Why did the author use the same name for their two protagonists? Lee Kang and Kang Junho. This is confusing, and nothing in the story is ever done with it, so change one of their names to be some thing different so it's easier to understand who is being talked about.

- Why is Kang Junho's character design almost exactly the same as the #2 swimmer / crazy blue hair? There is no reason to make them look that similar unless the story was gonna go for an "Lee Kang's in love with #2, but its unrequited and #2's got a girlfriend, so he jumps on Kang Junho instead because he looks similar" type plot. Doing this for no purpose is confusing. Give #2 pink hair or w/e to distinguish him some.

- Raping w/o lube via buttsecks is ridiculous. I'm sorry, but you generally are going to have to have lube if you're not going to show major injuries resulting from a buttsecks rape or attempted rape. And even then, given the size of most of these BL tops/semes, you're just plain not going to get it in without lube.

Well, I think this is more than enough. I do want to say most of the general topics have many more examples, such as the "doing things that don't make sense" or things happening that have no setup for them. In fact these things happened so often I was frequently shaking my head at it. I really should've kept a list as I read so I could post the entire thing at the end. Oh well.

Anyway. While the problems were incredibly numberous here, I did actually find the story to be very well-paced, which is something a lot of other authors fail at. So kudos there. I also liked the art, especially towards the end of the series. These are the only things which saved this story from a 1-star rating from me. Peace, out!

This story lacked a final character growth moment for Yoon, and the place where this would occur was out-of-order with the climax of the story, which is why it felt incomplete and a little bit unsatisfying at the end. Allow me to explain...
(spoilers)
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The story was building up to a moment where Yoon would care more about doing what's right than his own life. In other words, he should've finally verbally stood up to Kaminsky and told him that if he didn't back off, Yoon would leave him, and if Kaminsky was going to kill him (Yoon) for it, then so be it. And since chris was the obvious choice for most undeniably "good person" of the people Yoon knew, it had to be on behalf of chris.

Instead Yoon hits himself in the face with a rock during the scene where kaminsky is threatening to kill chris, which 1) sends mixed signals, because part of the issue in their relationship is that Yoon never clearly communicates his real feelings, and 2) puts Yoon in a position where he can no longer help chris; Kaminsky could just kill chris after that while Yoon is unconscious and then just abscond with Yoon to get him treated. This is why at the end of the scene we don't know what state chris is in and Yoon has to ask, and kaminsky doesn't really give him a real answer. Anyway, this rock-to-the-head thing was just a terrible plan for protecting chris, which is what Yoon should've been doing during that scene.

In addition, this scene with chris was supposed to happen at or just after the climax of the story, but instead it was too early, before the encounter with Kay. Chris, being a local cop, could've been involved with kay's attempted capture of Kaminsky (also: the fbi would not've just sent one dude to capture kaminsky; this is silly), and while just doing his job, gets hurt in a similar way, where Yoon then has to finally step in and put a stop to everything going on by telling kaminsky 'no'. But chris was off in an unknown state during this kay scene and Yoon didn't really stand up to kaminsky during this scene either.

This scene was stupid for other reasons unrelated to Yoon's character growth, namely: 1) kay didn't just shoot kaminsky when he had yoon, so what was the point?, and 2) kaminsky was supposed to be such an ice cold badazz that it seemed like he should've just shot kay without regards to him holding Yoon, but he didn't really seem to struggle with this at all. This whole scene was pretty dumb because it lacked tension and meaning because none of the characters were really at risk, and they never completed their character arcs (kay trying to be an fbi vigilante, kaminsky not ever considering what Yoon wants, and Yoon not standing up to kaminsky despite the risk), which they should've been doing in this scene.

Of course this is all in addition to other issues like kaminsky going after yoon's azz just because someone else tells him Yoon's gay, and kaminsky's general toxicity, and character backstory moments coming suddenly and too late. Here's an example of the last one: Yoon being gay -> ok -> cousin shows up and now we suddenly have backstory of yoon being raped by his cousin -> so now we expect yoon to be gun-shy of buttsecks -> kaminsky goes hard after yoon's azz -> yoon rebuffs him because trauma(??) -> but we find out later he's a boyfriend-hopping ho -> so now he doesn't have trauma about buttsecks but doesn't want to do it with kaminsky who he's been attracted to since day 1 because...? because he'll turn into a raging slut??? is that the reason the author is giving here?

Anyway, because the setup and setting was more interesting than many other stories, I still gave it a 4, even though it's probably more of a 3.5-star. I liked it alright, but it does clearly have some issues.

This is now available on english Lezhin (Tuesdays); thru ch21 is posted now. Please purchase a few chapters if you can, if you liked it.

I ended up liking this one after all, and I didn't think I would. It did have a few issues, but what comic doesn't? Anyway, I did have to stop in the 30s and wait until it was complete before reading any more. It's one of those series you just have to binge or you'll get too frustrated.

Seth had the better personality, Sam had the better character design, and Henry is more stubborn than he needs to be. This didn't need to be 70-something chapters long. ;P

I did my best to try and finish this story but the most I could manage to complete was up through chapter 11. This entire thing can be summed up by a combination of these two idioms: spinning your wheels, and empty calories.

The biggest problem is that this story has atrocious pacing. There are so many pointless filler scenes, and so many unrelated and unneeded dialog bubbles just loaded with text all over every panel that it takes 4 times longer to read this story than other much "longer" stories. Comics are a visual medium; use art and character expressions to convey meaning rather than giant blocks of text. Anyway, point is, it drags so badly because of all this filler that I just couldn't force my way through it and gave up after completing chapter 11.

The unfortunate part is that I didn't really dislike the story or the characters and their dynamics (well, Azuma wasn't great, but he's better than some I've read), as well as the world the author was trying to build. It just wasn't really woven together in a satisfying/engaging way, and my eyes were constantly straying to the scrollbar to see how close I was to the end of the chapter. Not good.

Some suggestions on how this could be improved. Cut some of the side characters, reduce the random side-vignettes, make side characters more compelling with budding romances of their own, cut down on the dialog and find a way to condense it into shorter sentences and fewer bubbles, drop the random dialog from background characters, use art to convey meaning instead of text, cut down on the old shoujo cliches, give Azuma real problems instead of made-up-in-his-own-head problems, have the two leads circle each other more rather than making it seem totally one-sided from Takayama's perspective.

I may try to come back and finish this someday. I really did want to finish it. Ah well; we'll see.

This is the sort of story I normally drop in the first handful of chapters due to severe writing issues, but I was curious as to how a story with such amateurish writing ended up rated a 9.2. After reading the whole thing, I'm still not entirely sure, as the primary flaws exhibited at the beginning never really improved, but I did come away with an idea of what types of people might rate it a 5/5.

* Someone who is just interested in smut and doesn't care about plot/story.
* Someone who hasn't read much and doesn't understand the difference between good/bad writing.
* Someone who liked the art, which was mostly pretty good.
* Someone who just rates everything they read 5/5.

I don't think it's a problem to like it for any of these reasons, but this is by no means a well-written story. The setting is ill-defined at the beginning, the characters aren't established well, the pacing is atrocious, and the backstory is generally explained too late to give context to the things going on in the story. Also, there are two problematic elements: "incest", and a stockholm syndrome romance, which I'll explain in more detail after the spoiler space.

(spoilers)
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General writing issues first.

- Characters are not properly established. This is a multi-tiered problem, since there are several characters that do matter to the "plot" in this story, but none of them are established enough to make it compelling. The writing of the characters is way more important than anything else, because it allows readers to overlook bad/incomplete plot elements, and other structural issues, as long as they like the characters and their dynamics.

-- Who Alexander is, his personality, his desires and dreams, how other people who know him perceive him, who he has conflicts with in his family or at the castle and how he handles them, etc... This all needs to be established early on so that we can have some idea of what to expect from him when he encounters things in the plot. Then, when reading some of the Kline-backstory-with-Alex scenes, we'll have a better idea of if this Alexander is the person that Kline is looking for or not. But as it is, Alexander's personality isn't well-defined enough to tell, and it's definitely not well-defined enough to make his relationship with Kline compelling in a story primarily about their relationship.

-- Shio's relationship with Alexander seems fraught, but no explanation is given until it's too late, and the characterization is inconsistent leading up to that point. Rather than depict Shio alone as wishy-washy about his brother through the whole comic, start the characters off in the capital sparring with each other to establish their relationship. Have their father walk in to establish how the father treats both boys compared to each other, and how Shio reacts to what he perceives is his father's preference for his brother. Make it ambiguous, to where Shio could think there's favoritism, but vague enough to where he's totally misinterpreting, which would be revealed at the end of the story. This would also serve to introduce the idea that Alexander is a good swordsman and does in fact best his brother every time, which would be a proper setup for that plot point during the climax. This would go a long way to making the readers care about their relationship during their fight at the end of the story.

-- Kline is horribly bland. He does have some backstory stuff defined for him at least, but nothing really grew out of it, beyond him having mommy issues and wanting to bone the Alex from his past. He doesn't seem to have any personality quirks, traits, or desires/dreams beyond wanting Alex back. While you can empathize with his plight some, you can't really connect with his character because he doesn't have one. Show him doofing around his house in his solitary day-to-day life, give him a pet fox or something that he hangs around with. Show him dealing with a human intruder alone, how he handles the situation before Alexander has come into the picture. We need to know who Kline is before he meets up with Alexander in order to understand how meeting Alexander changes him.

- Lack of early setup and background for the main conflict. There's no understanding at the beginning of why it matters that Kline's a dragon. Show the background of the war with the dragons at the beginning of the comic. In fantasy properties, it's fine to spend a few panels or even a whole chapter showing/explaining what the state of the world is, to get the reader grounded in the reality of the completely made-up setting. This would've allowed for the readers to understand early on that Kline being a dragon is risky for him and liable to cause a conflict with Alexander and Alexander's family.

- The pacing is bad. In general, too little time is spent showing the details of the characters and the setting before and in-between plot points. Alexander and Kline meet for the first time at the end of chapter 1, and by the end of chapter 2, Kline is balls-deep into Alexander, out of 30 chapters. This is incredibly rushed. And then Alexander goes off to Kline's house for like 20 chapters, where time slows down to a crawl so that twelve smut scenes can be smashed in. And then the author realizes s/he needs to wrap up the story in chapter 22 or so, and then the whole ending is rushed because those last few chapters aren't enough to move the plot in present day along at a sensible pace while providing all the missing backstory we'd needed up until that point. Rushed, drags, rushed. It is never a bad thing to take then time to build up your characters and setting properly, and to provide more and more detail as you go.

- The characters don't act like normal people. No one's as dumb and naive as Alexander. Almost every choice he makes early in the story is unrealistic and serves only to accelerate the "plot" to get to the smut scenes. Characters will do something then immediately say "why did I do that?" all the time in this story. This is laziness, where the author realizes that this is out of character, but needs something to happen to move the plot along, so makes the character do it anyway. It's just baffling.

- Magic system is too ill-defined. The author needs to explain how the magic works and how a person is able to use it. You can say "all dragons have magic innately" and that's fine, since it's a very common thing in fantasy lore, but clearly daddy and Shio were magic users and Alexander wasn't at all. Why wouldn't he be too? Do you have to have the capability in your blood? Or can you just decide to learn it? Was he too stupid to learn it? Also, magic systems need downsides and limitations. You have to establish what magic can do, how it is used, and what it takes out of you to use it. The big showdown at the end lacked stakes because there was no understanding of the danger involved in throwing magic around.



Confusing story choices.

- Who is Kline's mother and why did she do what she did? It wasn't really wrapped-up in any satisfying way. The implication was that she had good reasons for murdering her husband, burning the village, ditching Kline, and running away, but it was never explained. Explaining this is important because it's part of Kline's character development (accepting the draconic part of himself).

- The communication crystals make no sense. They were shoved into the story to solve the problem of how to communicate long-distances since people in this setting don't have cell phones. The implication is you can just go into town and buy a sack full of them, and then send messages to whoever you feel like. Which, that being the case, why wasn't the king getting random communications from random villagers all the time with grievances, or trolling, or anything like that. Because you know that'd totally happen. It also wasn't clear if there was any way to identify the sender, or if Shio et al just happened to know the one messaging them was Alexander because it sounded like him or whatever. If some rando calls you using a communication crystal, will you really know who it is and/or where to find them?

- Their mission to the town at the beginning was some kind of nebulous bandits/monsters tax-fraud scheme, but it was so poorly defined that it was impossible to understand, and the readers are immediately dumped out of story immersion as their eyes glaze over. Give them a real mission to be looking into that showcases some of Alexander's personality and capabilities or something, and do all this BEFORE he meets Kline. Maybe have Orcs raiding the village and have Alexander take care of it, and then the captured orcs mention there's a place in the forest they're scared of and won't go (aka, Kline's house).

- The weird tax thing and backstory with the village mayor being salty over his son and Kline's mother is not worked together in a comprehensible way. I mean, Kline is his grandson; doesn't he even care at all? Also, a dragon burning the village after the dragon wars was already over; how did this go unnoticed by the king, who hates dragons like crazy? The story did have random villagers say they had been keeping it quiet, but the burning of the village to the ground would be obvious for months after the fact; you wouldn't really be able to hide it at all. It makes no sense. I'm also not clear on how Kline didn't end up being taken by his mother given how little he was at the time. So she burned the village, wasn't stopped or defeated in any way, and then randomly decided to leave an, at most, 4yo (ch6) in the forest and no one helped him, but he was ok somehow anyway? I dunno... this is a good showcase of how the author doesn't know how to coherently string plot elements together to build something believable.

- Alexander wanders off into the woods and gets lost, and then Kline picks him up, and then they just go off to bone for days or weeks, and even though there's knights and other people from the capital wandering around in the village, and those other people for some reason either don't realized that the prince is missing or do know and don't care enough to search for him? Whyyyy.

- The story gave the impression that Alexander was just brought along on the mission to humor him, like they were babysitting him while he played knight. The townspeople repeated rumors they heard about Alexander being a badass, which just made it seem like it was complete BS nonsense when contrasted with Alexander's actual actions, because the first thing that Alexander does is get lost in the forest while going for a walk, and the second thing he does, is let a random stranger convince him to take a D up the butt. Clearly this means Alexander is just plain incompetent and that he's only in the position he's in because he's the king's son, not because he earned it. But then at the end, he's like a good fighter after all? It's so confusing and inconsistent.

- How did Shio not see the guy slinking up behind Alexander to stab him at the end? He was shown in several panels and looked like he was moving slow, and was directly in Shio's line-of-sight. Also, what was the point of the stabbing anyway? Well, I'll tell you -- the author needed something to trigger Kline to turn into a dragon. But after that, the wound barely seemed to do anything to him, and Alexander went running off to Kline after that like it was no big deal, and didn't even seem to need any kind of healing. It didn't permanently scar him or anything. And then the guy who stabbed him was forgotten after Alexander runs over to Kline. This was just a lazy, shoe-horned plot point to get the half-dragon to turn into a dragon to escalate the situation.



Problematic elements.

- Kline and Alexander's relationship is based on a stockholm syndrome plot. Kline coerced dumb-dumb Alexander into sex, saying it was some kind of "magic cure" for his memory. Several smut scenes later, the "magic transfer" context was dropped completely and they just called it sex after that. It was always just sex. There was no indication that magic was happening. Magic being used was generally depicted as having that mysterious red halo around it, and the sex never had that. While I'd like to think Kline probably didn't lie, there was also again no establishment of Kline's character that early in the story to know the he's not the sort of person who would lie.

- There are several STRONG hints that Alexander's lil brother Shio is in love with their dad, and wants to split his buns in twain if given the chance. The reader is lead to believe that this is incest until way later in the story, where we get a flashback that shows that Shio and Alexander were actually adopted. Now, even though it turns out they aren't blood-related, some readers still consider this incest and squicky, and will refuse to read it completely based on this fact alone. I'm just not sure if this was a great element to include/imply in a story that already has many readability issues.



Anyways, feel free to like this story or not, ain't no skin off my teeth.

So much dumbness in just the first couple of scenes of chapter 1. There's gotta be a limit to how lazy an author can be about putting together a plot that's supposed to be at last somewhat compelling. A list after the spoiler space.

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In just the first few scenes of the first chapter:

- main character gets dumped by a girl who is already engaged to someone else. in real life, most people date one person, breakup due to circumstances they can't or won't resolve, and then move on to the next one. I have a hard time believing he didn't realize he was two-timed and/or didn't realize their relationship was on the fritz for five years where she was seeing someone else for long enough that she was already engaged to them when she broke up with the main character.

- hottest gay top picks up heartbroken straight guy in the street and gives him a coupon for a gay bar. I can't honestly believe that there is value in a gay guy sending a straight guy to an, unbeknownst to him, gay bar, even if the gay guy finds the straight guy attractive. this seems more like what someone would do as a practical joke. or something likely to get a gay guy murdered by an angry straight homophobe.

- straight guy doesn't notice he's in a gay bar for hours, or however long it takes him to get black-out wasted.

- this one is multi-tiered: 1) main character is groped by a pushy gay guy in the bar who's apparently ok with rape, 2) and immediately mentally declares "oh no, i can't resist!" (won't lift a finger for himself), so that 3) hot top from earlier can swoop in and rescue him in the most cliche of ways. like how friggin' lazy is that? Also it's a good thing these tops who swoop in to rescue bottoms who can't lift a finger on their own behalves are better fighters than the guys doing the molesting. what a different story it would be if the swooping-in top got his ass kicked for interfering. hmph.

- hot top from earlier was working at the bar for a while that night yet didn't notice the main character sitting at the bar the entire time, and the main character didn't see the hot top the entire time (even though he specifically came there to find him), over the course of hours (or however long it took the bottom to get black-out drunk). only when main character is about to be assaulted does the hot top happen to notice him. Mmmm hmmm, very likely.

- hot top takes main character, a straight guy who is blacked-out drunk and thus cannot legitimately consent, to a hotel room and immediately assaults him, while the straight guy main character says in his head again, "oh no, my body's not resisting". siiiigh.

- apparently straight guys don't mind having fingers attached to anonymous men up their asses as long as the guy doing it is hot and manly?? i did not know this!

- straight guy has a dick up his ass by page 19. i guess it was fine all along ?!

- honorable mention: at the beginning of chapter 2, the top blames the dubcon sex (more likely assault/rape) of the bottom on the bottom for "seducing him". and then it's just laughed away as the top starts getting handsy again with the bottom, trying to push him into public gay sex (although it doesn't materialize).

Is it too much to ask for the author to put a little thought into the plotting, a little care into the characterizations, and to ground the story in reality some?

Yes, yes it apparently it is too much to ask.

Tao is like Yohan from Sign, and Yousuke is like a less-crazy version of Dongsoo from Personal Immorality. What could be better?!

Somehow this story really gels for me even though in some ways it is just a basic romance between adults where one didn't start out being gay. All of the elements are tied together really well here, including all the character development, the side characters, the backstory of Tao and his family, and the property investment elements.