stressedpenguin's manga / #rural area(14)

5/10

Bleh the seme is such a sleazebag with zero respect for the uke. He just does what he wants and the mangaka wants us to pretend like the uke is the unreasonable one =_=. And of course the friend is a homophobic asshole too, but at least he gets better. Shout out to the sister for being the only good character with screen time 3/10

Country boy's bias from his favorite idol group moves in next door suddenly. It's clear the idol is burnt out and our MC wants to help. After a bit of a rocky start, they start becoming friends. Update ch 15. THAT'S THE END?? Okay. Okay ima rant for a sec cuz that's wilddddd Personally, I really like the friendship as a friendship and wouldn't have minded that it stayed that way IF the story wasn't relying heavily on classic BL tropes especially in those last few chapters. Escpailly the takeout girlfriend. The ending only felt abrupt to me because they were setting up a confession that never came. If the author never intended this to be a romance... I guess you could still argue it is, but because every romance story has a confession, not having one or at least an equivalent act becomes disqualifying... Anyway. After centuries of romance coding everything, we've all been trained or hardwired to read romance into everything. It's why characters that dont remotely interest or genuinely despise each other get shipped. People are just like this. Authors have to actively counterbalance tropes that are romantically coded to temper their readers expectations, not lean into them. At least half of us shouldn't be expecting a BL when it's a story about friendship. I prefer platonic relationships and think it's a shame that intimate male platonic relationships are so rare in stories of all mediums. I would've love this story if it was clearly about that. But it wasn't. This was just bait Ummmmm so that leaves me conflicted for the score. On the one hand I really enjoyed this cute, slice of life, friendship and healing story. But on the other hand, this wasnt just delusional yaoi fans thinking it was BL, in story elements were telling you it was BL. So like...mmmmmmm 6/10. Would've been a 7 or 8 but the ending realllly pissed me off

Uke with a passion for rice quits his job and wanders into farmland during winter with no plan and a dream. He's picked up by some twins and winds up living with then and their megane older brother and he kinda romances the brother and then they're together. It's nice aand slow and cute.... but I just didnt feel much chemistry with the two... 6/10