TachibanaChiharu's Topics (175)

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.

Mako? Haru? Is that you...?

I can see what the author wanted to do with this one, but s/he just couldn't quite manage to execute it in a sensible way. It's too bad, because I don't necessarily dislike the setup and possessive top trope, and I do wish to read interesting and different things in omegaverse (alpha/alpha), but everything was so sloppily done here that it really isn't worth a read unless you happen to like these specific elements. And even then, maybe not...

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Problems:

* Alpha/alpha fated pair makes no sense on the context of omegaverse mechanics. I'm not going to say it "can't happen", but if you're going to do this in your story, then it has to be explained how it's possible.

* Omegaverse was relatively wasted here in that rut doesn't matter, heat doesn't matter, they can't have kids, no omegas were major players trying to interfere with either alpha by using pheromones, no other fated partner of one of the two alphas showed up to mess things up, etc.

* The parents of a chaebol wouldn't be accepting of a male partner for their son if the pairing can't produce heirs. Some variants of omegaverse allow alpha/alpha pairs to produce children, but it was never explained in this story as being possible. Anyway, if it's never mentioned that it can (and it wasn't in this story), then alpha/alpha pairs can't produce kids. It's a problem that Heeyeon never had to deal with parental pressure related to this.

* Seowon was intentionally depicted by the author as not liking Heeyeon at all, all the way until midway through chapter 25. Before that, never once does Seowon express either verbally or mentally the desire to be with Heeyeon, sexually or emotionally. He's always going out of his way to avoid him, and have nothing to do with him. Even though Heeyeon pays Seowon for his time and yaoi hole, this is basically a stockholm/rape-to-love situation since Seowon didn't really want it.

* Fated pairing/name appearing on body thing was randomly shoved in at the end in order to wrap the story up quickly by forcing the leads to get together when Seowon still did not want to. There was no setup for this mechanic at all.

* Name appearing on body of a fated partner was explored some in Pian Pian, which is not omegaverse. Because this sort of mechanic can work in a non-ABO story as evidenced by Pian Pian, this is just further proof that the omegaverse setting of this story was wasted.

* The ploy at the end where Heeyeon and that omega pretend to be a fated pair to make Seowon (and the omega's bf) jealous completely won't work on Seowon as characterized -- Seowon is not interested in Heeyeon and does everything he can to get away from Heeyeon, so Heeyeon finding his fated partner outside of Seowon would be good news for Seowon. But also, fated pairs are treated in omegaverse like unbreakable magic bonds; even if two people are in love with each other, and one of their fated partners (someone else) appears, their relationship is effectively over, unless they can manage to overcome the "magic" of the fated pairing, like in Shounen no Kyoukai. But in Shounen no Kyoukai, that's the whole point of the story, how hard it is to deny fate. If Heeyeon's fated partner appears and it's not Seowon, even if Heeyeon/Seowon were in a loving relationship at that time, that would spell the end for their relationship because a fated pair trumps all else, usually, in omegaverse. What I'm trying to say here is that this scheme doesn't work in either case; Heeyeon finding his fated partner (not Seowon) would end Heeyeon/Seowon's relationship whether or not Seowon liked Heeyeon already or not.

* Seowon's tragic backstory for why he has trust issues is set up but never paid off. He was never really shown as getting over his trust issues, there was never something that clicked with Heeyeon to inspire it or whatever, and the fate of Seowon's parents was never tied back in with the present-day plot, beyond a dismissive "oh that guy's in jail now because he tried to trick Heeyeon's dad too but got caught". That's a lazy "took care of it off-screen" thing to do for something so important that completely defined the main character's current circumstances and personality. It would've been way better if the story made Heeyeon the son of the guy who screwed over Seowon's family. Then, from some perspectives, Heeyeon's family's money is actually Seowon's money, and Heeyeon paying Seowon to spend time with him is actually Heeyeon giving Seowon money he's rightfully owed, and changes their dynamic completely.

* How is it the case that Seowon owes someone money when the guy who screwed his family over is in jail? Never once do we see Seowon's debtors, or who he has to pay all this nebulous money to. Or even how much he owes, and how close he is to paying it off. Especially after some of the crazy deposits we see from Heeyeon. Was that USD $100,000 that one time? What exactly does he have to pay off that might be more than that? If someone paid me $100,000 to have sex with them, then did have sex with me, I'd be sending that money off to clear up my debt right now. This was all very half-baked.

* A huge wasted opportunity here was the perfect setup/circumstances for a seke omegaverse couple. When you have two alphas in a relationship with each other, what could be more natural or make more sense than to have them be sekes? Instead, Seowon is basically just treated in the story like he's an omega, even though he isn't.

* Several instances of lack of establishing shot for a new scene, which is jarring to the readers, who must flail for a bit before realizing a new scene with a new setting is taking place.

* I realize the group that worked on this did so of their own free will at no cost to the readers, but... the translation/adaptation was difficult to mire through in places, especially toward the end, and it detracted from my ability to understand the characters and what was going on in the story at times. Some sentences didn't make any sense, and others were totally awkward, phrased in Korean-style phrasing instead of being adapted to english and how an english-speaker would talk. I'm not going to post examples here. If representatives of the group are interested in understanding specifics of what I mean to improve their scanlations, they should PM me directly. Anyways, the point I'm making is that the translation/adaptation made it difficult for me to understand some scenes, which took me right out of the story.



This next point gets its own section. Many tiresome shoujo cliches appear here that just add to the overall frustration with the plot. Here's a laundry list of some of them:

* Seme/top has peers drooling all over him constantly.

* Seme/top is also rich, w/status, is has tons of disposable income independently from his family from "stock trading" even though he's never shown to be stock trading. Making money from stock trading does require a lot of a person's time to research and watch the market, etc. This is just the author being lazy and not wanting to put a lot of thought into how he earns his money.

* Uke/bottom is an outcast and/or misunderstood by peers.

* Hosts... again.

* Seme/top has a cool/expensive car and drives it up to the front of the school like his personal parking spot is the curb in front of the classroom building instead of parking in a parking deck like a normal person. At least there was one instance where he was shown to park in a parking deck, but it was way at the end of the story.

* Drooling fans question why the top/seme would hang out with the loser bottom, as if its any of their business at all.

* Drooling fans question top/seme about his relationship with bottom, and seme/top actually responds, even though he's under no obligation to tell them anything or take orders from them. Rich and powerful people don't care what the unwashed masses think, and an alpha shouldn't either, in general.

* Top/seme lies to random drooling fan about his relationship with the bottom and the bottom just happens to overhear, causing drama. This random drooling fan isn't even a named character, and yet the author wastes time in the story to show Heeyeon explaining himself to Mr Unnamed Character, when Heeyeon should just ignore this idiot and tell him to buzz off, it's none of his business.

* Drooling fans thinking they have any claim on the top/seme they're all slobbering over, and only declaring that they had no chance when a magical fated pairing appears, and not because, you know, they respect the top/seme's choices.

* Arranged marriage meeting trope.

* Pretending to date someone else to make love interest jealous trope.

I'm sure there are others, but imma stop here. You get the point.


Despite all these issues, I did somehow like the setup and story, at least, up until the part where Heeyeon feels the need to explain himself to his drooling fans for why Seowon got out of his car that morning. The amount of tropeyness that ensued at this point and after just riddled me with frustration to the point where I barely forced my way to the end of the story. Send these authors off to writing 101 lessons, please, before they're given the responsibility of creating a comic. It's really such a waste to do a ton of art for a plot so bad I had to rate it a 2/5. I'm sure the author doesn't want to be wasting his/her time either.

This comic is the equivalent of eating icing straight from the container instead of baking a cake, putting the icing on it, and then eating the cake.

Also, it's funny the title is "blah blah blah ... my big brother's aiming for my virginity" when that shiat was gone in like the first two chapters.

Is this completed, or are there expected to be more side stories or whatnot? On English Lezhin, it hasn't updated for a few weeks and is still listed on their dailies (ongoing) series pages.

This exchange happens so many times that all I can do is laugh at it --

Furukawa: (unironically) Maki, I'm trying to get you to relax! [by groping you in inappropriate places]
Maki: *becomes intensely unrelaxed, struggles violently, and screams constantly*

I also like that there's actually somewhat of a plot in this trashy-fun comic. It's not as bad as I expected it to be given the completely ridiculous title.

I generally liked this one.

The drama resulting from Donga's & Chunho's pasts were the most interesting thing here. It was really interesting to see the cardinal direction gods depicted in another culture (than I usually read), and for the author this time to provide an explanation for how they ascend or are chosen, etc. The three-legged-crows thing at the end was silly but in a fun way, and I guess its an actual thing in east asian cultures (just looked it up).

Things that caused me to rate it 4 instead of 5 (long):
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I won't call these minor, but I was never bored when reading this story despite there being some writing problems, a zillion chapters, and no smut (outside of the side stories), so that shows how strong the narrative/writing was despite some of these problems.



Yohan's inconsistent characterization:

- Yohan is characterized at the beginning of the story as confident, smooth, playboy. Sure, it may've been something of an act, but he's had many years of experience behaving this way in front of strangers, so it should or must come naturally to him.

- When the romance with Yoonsung is going on, Yohan turns into an emotional trainwreck teenager. It doesn't really gel with his earlier characterization.

- Yohan's past doesn't quite fully support/explain his overly emotional behavior; it's like a venn diagram where the interlocking circles don't have nearly the overlap that they should to explain things.

- Yohan being a (partial) charlatan is the first thing we see of him at the beginning of the story. This seemed to be a setup for a character arc, like this was Yohan's primary character flaw that would change by the end of the story. But at the end, he just becomes a real, complete, and total charlatan instead. What???



Yohan's and Yoonsung's love story was tropey and dull:

- Yoonsung has most of the typical "top" aka "seme" attributes (minus the intense aggression and dangerous atmosphere). He's drawn manlier, he's taller, older (29 vs 33), more mature, he's rich, socially powerful, good-looking, smart, and capable at all sorts of things. I would prefer these attributes to be more evenly distributed between the two. Maybe make them compliment each other more? As it is, things feel very lopsided in Yoonsung's favor, which in turn requires the narrative to more fully explain why Yoonsung would like Yohan so much (but it never really does). See the next point.

- There doesn't really seem to be any explanation for why Yoonsung likes Yohan beyond proximity, the fact that Yohan enjoys his cooking, and for some reason that Yoonsung can only sleep when he's wrapped around Yohan (but no explanation for why Yohan in particular on this last one). People can come to like each other, sure, but I don't really FEEL it from Yoonsung's perspective (and I feel it's necessary to explain it, because: see previous point).

- Their romance had very little tension, so it was kind of boring. The only tension they had was Yohan being a tsundere, and running away and crying all the time like in a shoujo melodrama. This is a tiresome conflict element present in plenty of other stories, and given the great job done with Donga and Chunho, the author could've done a little better with these two as well.

- Honestly, it should be Yoonsung causing the drama/tension in their relationship due being a Christian, which would imply he should have prohibitions against a gay relationship. But for some reason, being Christian in this story simply means he can't acknowledge Chunho, but doesn't seem to influence his feelings on gay relationships, where he's early-on depicted as being a very open-minded individual with regards to LGBTQ+. It's weird that the author chose to include this element without really understanding how many (disclaimer: not all) modern Christians behave and what they believe.



Themes:

- Yoonsung's Christianity is used as plot contrivance to bludgeon Yoonsung into Yohan's life against his will at the beginning of the story, and then once its usefulness in doing that is over, it is completely forgotten. Normally this should affect Yoonsung's outlook for the entire story, and should be addressed again with respect to how his character changes over the course of the story, but this never happens.

- Yohan is rewarded for helping his friends on the scary journey to the underworld by getting all his missing powers back from Donga. He then has them for about an hour before they're taken away again for no good reason (see the next point). Normally, when a character receives a power-up or some other boon for things they do in the plot they get to keep them, yannow, because they earned them. It's weird that this is taken away from him again almost instantly.

- Yohan's sacrifice of his powers at the end did not tie back to any bad things he did or any faults he had. He was just randomly the one who had to be punished to add more drama to the story (and to justify the title?). Yoonsung's situation not only was NOT caused in any way by Yohan, but it wasn't even related to Yohan, and was merely an accident brought on inadvertently by Chunho (in essence, it was Chunho's fault). Normally, a sacrifice of this nature should be narratively linked to some behavior that must be atoned for or changed, usually in the person related to it (in this case, Chunho).

- Yohan's job was fortune telling or w/e, and losing his powers means he can't do that anymore without being an actual quack. Like, wasn't that his big flaw? Being somewhat of a liar charlatan? Buuuut, instead of him finding a legit job, or just living off of Yoonsung's chaebol money and job, he actually becomes a complete and total snake-oil-salesman when he continues doing his old job, only stepped up a notch, but without any spiritual powers at all now. What lesson is this teaching??? Double-down on your shady behavior after having one of your toys, that enabled you to be shady, taken away?



Miscellaneous:

- The smut chapters are overly censored. In most of the panels with censoring, it is nearly impossible to tell what's going on, much less which way is even up, or what is even in the picture.

- Didn't the Jade Emperor say that Hades is his brother? It feels like this comic went from 0 to 1000 with the smut chapters, when it was pretty wholesome during the main story, yet suddenly has smut incest in the side stories.

- It was weird that the title of this comic is "Prince Bari" when the exact name doesn't ever come up, and "Princess Baridegi" only shows up in the last like 8 chapters or w/e. I kept trying to figure out why it was called this when I was reading the earlier parts of the comic. I mean obviously it's referring to Yohan, who gave something up for the flower like the current Princess Baridegi did. Still, if this is going to be the title of the comic, I feel like it should interleaved more from the beginning, like having a prelude chapter about the flower, and who tends to it, in order to give it a more proper set-up. Maybe this is something that makes more sense in Korean, that I just don't have the context for. After googling: ok, this is a legend in Korean culture, so yeah, Korean readers will have more context for this to make more sense.

- Imma be honest here, the wedding side story chapters I felt to be really corny, to the point of being cringy, for me at least.

Well, this comic is complete at 60 chapters on Lezhin. I don't know if anyone's gonna bother to take it over because it's really just rehashed shoujo plots and tropes of yesteryear. This is basically an amalgam of every disney princess story. Unlikely coincidences happen all the time, everyone's a hot ikemen except the main character. The main character looks so much like a girl he may as well be one. He's a ridiculous foot and a half shorter than his love interest. And of course his love interest is the biggest catch in the land, the reclusive/secretive crown prince. Idk. Ymmv of course, but I just can't read childish stuff like this anymore, especially not 60 chapters worth of it.

Given the length of this story, I had high hopes I could make it to the end before starting it (surely, if this much of it was written, it must be good or at least decent...). Then I started reading it.... All the tropes, and all the BL-crazyworld stuff going on in the story tested my patience, but I persevered. But then, I hit the rampant victim-blaming going on in-and-around chapter 43, and that was it for me.

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Henry accidentally gets Jimmy drunk (he accidentally gave Jimmy the non-watered-down beer). Drunk-Jimmy runs off looking for Taylor. Mason intercepts him, and they get into an altercation, and Jimmy goes back to Mason's hotel room to treat Mason's wounds after pounding him in the face. Jimmy drinks a drink in the hotel room he doesn't think is alcoholic, but it was, and he passes out. Mason assaults him while he's passed-out, although it does NOT appear as though he raped him. Henry comes and retrieves Jimmy from the hotel room under BL-crazyworld circumstances*, and Mason explains to Henry the extent of what he did to Jimmy. Later, Mason confronts Taylor and brags about "sleeping" with Jimmy before Jimmy started dating Taylor, and Taylor just believes an obviously bad person using ambiguous phrasing. Then Taylor turns around and blames Jimmy for not being faithful or whatever. Later, Jimmy, distraught, talks to Henry about it, and Henry also blames Jimmy!

WTF.

None of this is Jimmy's fault! Jimmy is the victim here 100%. Getting him drunk is definitely Henry's fault, and Mason's actions are all Mason's responsibility. This just crap. Crap people, crap behavior. I cannot believe Jimmy ends up with someone who blamed him for being assaulted. That's not a happy ending. I doubt Henry will even apologize for doing such a thing, but I'm not sticking around to find out.

Anyway, what someone does with their own body before they date you is none of your business really, Taylor. Stop acting like having sex with someone taints a person forever. Even if it were true that Mason had sex with Jimmy, 1) it wasn't Jimmy's fault and would be considered rape, 2) it was prior to Jimmy dating Taylor, so Taylor has no right to be bent about it even if sex occurred, and even if that sex had NOT been rape. Good grief, grow up!

Basically everyone around Jimmy is a bad, terrible person, and not any single one of them deserves his affection. I don't want to read a story about him ending up with one of these a-holes, and I don't want to read a story about him ending up a monk, so I guess I'm just gonna drop it here.

* How did Henry even know Jimmy was with Mason, other than the fact that Mason was gunning for Jimmy? DID Henry even know Mason was after Jimmy? I don't remember if Henry was ever told this on-screen by Mason. It's a pretty big assumption and leap-of-logic if he hadn't been. I'll give Henry a grudging pass for knowing which type of hotel room Mason would've rented, but also, Mason registering under an alias seems like a pointless BL-crazyworld complication, not that the front-desk chick would even be allowed to disclose his room number even if he hadn't done so.