I Thot You Was a Toad's manga / #sex toys(4)

A door-to-door sex toy salesman can't satisfy his client with the usual machines.

Tamaquis Wren specializes in yaoi where the uke surrenders himself to love so much, he gives up his own dignity. Dignity is reinstated by love returned, a classic romance trope. This story is hardcore, however, for, instead of love, the sole motivation is vengeance, and there is no surrender, just rage-fueled detachment and dissociation. To extract the cruelest revenge he can, Yan, the son of a murdered king, becomes the favourite catamite in the court of the Chinese Emperor who committed regicide against Yan's beloved father. Bent on destroying his enemies and slowly debauching the Emperor past his body's capacity for tolerance, the only revenge Yan can extract is what he has, himself, endured. In the end, in spite of page after page of strangely utilitarian sex and seduction with child rape, gang rape, slavery, sex cults, drugs, felching, castration, BDSM, odd sex toys, vegetable-slicing(!) and a huge and surprising reveal right at the end, the story is empty and cold, just like Yan. Weirdly, it's the court intrigue and politics that move it beyond mere shota wish-fulfilment smut fantasy and redeem it (for me; I can't abide child rape), transforming it into Wren's best work. It isn't romantic at all and, for once, Wren doesn't pretend that soul-crushing depravity and oppression are romantic. Wren's drawings are distinctive and stylized, but here they focus on lips, hair, eyes, skin and a boy whose naked body is modified to look like a young woman's. Everyone else is nameless, fully dressed and, either a wild-eyed and lust-maddened rapist, or a fellow scheming manipulator — distorted through the lens of obsession. Yan is an interesting character who gains his individual freedom, revenge and personal power, although nothing else — certainly not love.

A very loud, warm, caring, self-assertive and very straight construction boss finds out his icy, finicky, elite supervisor is actually a blushing 28-year-old virgin, so tries to fix that for him. Smut ensues of the frottage kind and, then, the sex-toy-in-public fetish. Actually, this hits a few fetishes, including muscles (although not bara), aging virgin, men's room sex and lower class seme. Screwball comedy, but cute. (2) Story about a man who is so into his unrequited love for a neighbour that he fails to notice how much his neighbour's brother likes him. (3) "Beware the Lifeguard" — that's for sure. Trigger warnings on this one.