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That maid is a class traitor.
Wow, a lot of stuff went down here since I last read it. I do want to add my two cents here that workplace harassment is actually something that's become a bigger problem that's being paid attention to in recent years in pretty much all of the East Asian countries so I'm not so sure about the "progressive" claim. No matter what though, abuse of power in relationships (I'm using the broad term and not the romantic version) where there's a power imbalance is never "progressive." The fact that this work didn't try to portray it as a bad thing and as something that's supposed to be funny already takes away any kind of progress the author could have tried to convey. If it was satirical then sure maybe, but this work didn't come off as satire nor did it pull off the subversive trope it was trying to.
The problem with what the author was trying to do here was that they wanted to subvert an already subverted trope. There's a reason why it was subverted in the first place so if you reverse that then it ends up falling flat and leaving a bad taste in people's mouths. The subverted trope being the boss x maid relationship where you expect the boss to be the one with the upper hand but then get "surprised" that the maid is the one who calls the shots. If you reverse that, then it just becomes workplace harassment and coercion so that's why a lot of people dislike what the one-shot portrayed. There's an unfortunate reality we live in where people with money can get away with a lot of things and a lot of people don't like being reminded of that.
As Lucas thought, the whole problem is that she is a rich girl and only that.Seriously, it's a fictional work. Just try to get over this fact enjoy it.If you can't then too bad.Honestly, the only abise of power was about getting an answer, it was never about getting out.Nobody said she will have done anything if the maid said no. Also this "Since when did you start thinking we're equals ?" That's hard to misunderstand that the Lady when their realtion to be as equals and not Lady/Maid.
If you reverse that, then it just becomes workplace harassment and coercion so that's why a lot of people dislike what the one-shot portrayed. There's an unfortunate reality we live in where people with money can get away with a lot of things and a lot of people don't like being reminded of that.
If you simply look at it like that, then yes I agree with complains. I understand why people have issue when person in power uses their power to gain something or force people to do what they want. In a vacuum getting outraged at that is 100% reasonable. That being said...
It's a incredibly generalized, shallow and narrow-minded look at this story. First of all. We have a joke based at subversion of expectations. A girl that appears to be a rich lady talks about them not being equal. Your first assumption is that she's looking down on some maid for even thinking she'd reciprocate her feelings and that she'd lower herself to date her. But then it was subverted by revealing that it's actually maid saying that to the rich lady of the house who's absolutely love struck by her and doesn't care about any of that. Then maid give justifications why she doesn't want to date rich girl and yes, it's all about social hierarchy, structure and outdated norms, but again it's not something we normally see. Usually maid wants to get all the benefit of being rich girl's favorite or in fact, be potentially elevated in status by dating her. Or she simply loves her and is happy rich girl loves her too. But here maid instead is playing into how they're not supposed to be together and she doesn't want to ruin what she already have and is happy with where she is. Rich girl completely ignores her though, cos she doesn't care about consequences, it's all about love, so she presses for the answer and maid tries to avoid answering, but rich girl turns the tables on her again using the love for work she just proclaimed, which involves following the orders of rich girl, since she's maid serving her house after all. The joke is that the lovesick girl that seemed innocent and harmless, suddenly made a 180 and actually used her power to get what she wants from maid. And as people already explained, what she wanted was a answer from maid. Only thing she forced maid to do was answer her confession. And as is clearly shown, maid actually is so charmed by sudden display of dominance from normally passive lady that she gives in and answer her honestly. So yes, rich girl used her power, but it was still a subversion of her normally docile personality. Not her overusing her power to make maid date her. And by the end we see everything worked out well and they're dating happily with maid keeping her work.
I can totally see how the same exact story could be told with all the drama and conflict of real world, but this story clearly has no intention of going there and instead keep it fluffy and wholesome. If we're going to cancel a story just because it has a implication of some real world issues, then we pretty much can't write about anything or our stories selection would become incredibly limited. I understand it plays on some real life issues and triggers bad memories, but saying this story glorifies them or depicts a abuse of power in relationship is imo going a bit too far.
last edited at Jan 3, 2021 4:31PM
That maid is a class traitor.
Best comment in all this thread. Two thumbs up! d(´∀`)b
I will admit, I was wrong about there being intended coercion in this story. It does seem clear that the girl wasn't intending to force the woman to go out with her, only give her an answer. That order, however much of a subversion it may be, is still problematic. I see personal or household maids as archaic, and an echo of a time we need to move away from. A time when indentured servitude was commonplace. Orders are only given to people who are seen as lower in standing. Lower-ranking members of the military follow orders. So do slaves. Employees fulfill employers' requests that fall in line with their job description; they don't follow orders, and especially not arbitrary orders that have nothing to do with their employment. Again, I'll re-iterate that I have no problem with people liking this. It still rubs myself and several other people the wrong way. Passive-aggressive remarks or being told to "get over it" only serves as an attack.
Cryssoberyl
I am not interested in repeating myself, but I will oblige you a quote so my intention is clear:
Two. Comments in the vein of "lol Dynasty," "imagine getting upset at a doujin," etc. are not constructive and better left unsaid.
I very much enjoy this four-page fictional work of comedy.
I believe I was quite clear that such sentiments would not be entertained in this thread further. No amount of innuendo or intended humour makes this behaviour acceptable. Your comment has been removed and your posting privileges will be revoked for a day.
Lilliwyt
Seriously, it's a fictional work. Just try to get over this fact enjoy it.If you can't then too bad.
I appreciate that English is not your first language, and that you attempted to add nuance to your take. With that said, you were also exceedingly dismissive of the concerns of others, when I specifically noted that such conduct was intolerable. This serves doubly given that the post directly above yours was written with great care and consideration. You've been banned for a day.
If either of you have an issue with this, you know where to find me.
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last edited at Jan 4, 2021 10:57AM
Orders are only given to people who are seen as lower in standing. Lower-ranking members of the military follow orders. So do slaves.
Well, it depends what you exactly mean by lower in standing, but there's plenty of jobs where you're required to follow orders. Especially for works that require teamwork and coordination, 1 person is usually picked as a leader and/or supervisor, but in turn is taking full responsibility for work going smoothly. It's entirely unrealistic to create world where you never have to listen to someone else in order to perform your job. I think blankly saying that following orders is always bad is a bit too big of generalization. I mean, even your example of military is a bit confusing. Do you really want solders, or police officers or firefighters or nurses just doing whatever and working how they like without listening to anyone?
Employees fulfill employers' requests that fall in line with their job description; they don't follow orders, and especially not arbitrary orders that have nothing to do with their employment.
That's the crux of it, isn't it? I fully agree that employee should be only required to do what their job description says, but what if that job description involves listening to someone else's orders? Again saying employee's don't follow orders is a huge generalization and honestly unrealistic. I'm not expert about maids, but from my understanding your job description is pretty much following orders of your employer. Like what function in house etc. you're assigned to and what you're supposed to do is solely depended on what you're ordered to do. And especially if the maid from story was assigned as personal maid to rich lady, she surely was given general guidelines of her job, but also in general is supposed to do anything lady could ask her to do. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but that's what their job entails. Of course the expectation is that rich lady or anyone in general, won't abuse their power and it's of course unacceptable they often do, but still technically she has power to boss maid around. So imo the fact only selfish thing she decided to do was forcing her to answer her confession is still leagues better than the usual. I'm not denying she was definitely threatened to lose her job if she didn't answer at all though.
I see personal or household maids as archaic, and an echo of a time we need to move away from. A time when indentured servitude was commonplace.
While I understand and agree with your sentiment, I think it's possible to have that kind of old-school job like maid without any toxic or problematic elements associated with it. It's all just matter of proper contracts and enforcement. I can see how work that guarantees you full board accommodation could be beneficial under certain situations.
That being said, even if we'd agree it's not acceptable irl and we should get rid of it, I don't think trying to remove it from fiction has any point. Ignoring the typical, it's just fiction, it doesn't hurt anyone etc. I just dislike imposing that kind of limitations on artists. And even if I'd grant the argument of "it's unrealistic to depict it in modern times" (which, let's be honest, most fiction is unrealistic af and authors rarely care to even try and portray things as they actually are irl), there's still plenty of other places we'll see it often and it'll make perfect sense. Historical stories, fantasy stories based on medieval times, modern times with completely made up cultures. In the end there's just no point getting outraged about stories presenting those kind of problematic elements. It's much more productive to getting outraged and attacking actual real people doing it, though I'll admit first is much easier than second, so I totally understand why most people prefer to doing that instead.
Honestly, I know I'll never be rich, I'll never have a cute maid and I'll definitely never have a innocent love affair as a child with her, so I don't particularly mind reading stories like that once in a while. It's nice being able to be put in position of someone filthy rich and experience how it's like through fictional stories. All in all, I just don't really care about bad stuff in fiction that much, since in general it doesn't really affect me or real life. I'm much more concerned about fixing actual real world. In the end while fiction can influence how people think irl about things they're not really knowledge about, if you educate and change actual people to be more aware and sensitive to those things, the fiction they'll create will be better as well. Two birds with one stone.
The problem with what the author was trying to do here was that they wanted to subvert an already subverted trope.
I wanted to add 1 more thing about that. I'm pretty sure there's still plenty of stories that have typical person in power abusing their power over other person to make them do what they want, but I also feel like the subversion of it with supposedly subordinate being actually dominating in relationship is very common subversion. But if it was like you said and everyone was subverting it, because that's the only acceptable way to show that kind of power dynamic, is it really a subversion anymore? Wouldn't you say then, taking that power dynamic and actually make person with power, being dominating again, actually subversive?
last edited at Jan 6, 2021 1:44PM
I wanted to add 1 more thing about that. I'm pretty sure there's still plenty of stories that have typical person in power abusing their power over other person to make them do what they want, but I also feel like the subversion of it with supposedly subordinate being actually dominating in relationship is very common subversion. But if it was like you said and everyone was subverting it, because that's the only acceptable way to show that kind of power dynamic, is it really a subversion anymore? Wouldn't you say then, taking that power dynamic and actually make person with power, being dominating again, actually subversive?
The subversion in a servant dominating the master comes from the reversal of a socioeconomic relationship- the master still has technical control and privilege, and could easily overturn any mutinies from the servant if they so wished. It's not subversive on a visual level, like a femme dominating a butch in opposition to the way we imagine this dynamic- master x servant is fundamentally rooted in a certain amount of real-world socioeconomic context. The author didn't conjure it or place it in a world with markedly different dynamics- it's a trope that's quite close to reality, lending it great subversive value, because the maid dominating the master will be transgressive so long as hierarchies exist. You could take a purely trope-driven perspective and argue that the subversion has grown common in the manga industry and is therefore 'stale', but it hasn't lost its fundamental relevance. The only way it'll ever grow stale is if the working classes enslave the upper ones, which by definition would make them the upper classes, so basically, never.
It's the same as why 'war is bad' will never be a bad message- you could write a subversive story where a certain war is portrayed as necessary to prevent worldwide destruction or a fascist regime, but that would still be an indictment of those that started the war rather than a celebration of war itself. You can't really say, "Oh, everyone portrays war crimes as evil, so I'mma shake the industry up by having the victims orgasm as they're genocided." Tropes aren't created in a vacuum- they fundamentally stem from reality, and subversions are more often than not even closer to reality than tropes, because the fantastical nature of certain tropes breed expectations that subversive media can then shatter. To refer back to one of the earlier examples I made, you could take the old shoujo romance model in which the boyfriend is often a rapist, which is often avoided or subverted today because of how traumatic rape can be. If you write a story that presents the rapist as a 'chad' who triumphs over a soft, caring partner, or a story in which the victim is actually into rape, then you're not subverting anything- just circling back to the original trope that was phased out for a very good reason.
Nuanced, compromise-driven takes can still exist, of course- you could write a story in which the rapist goes through repentance because they were young and stupid and spends their entire life regretting the act and making it up to a victim. A Silent Voice is a brilliant example of a story that features a vicious bully repenting and rehabilitating himself before falling in love with his former victim. But that requires a certain degree of nuance, subtlety and tact which I maintain that this four page oneshot was either uninterested in or incapable of providing.
That is my personal opinion. You may differ on it. That is fine. If you enjoyed it, good for you. Happy New Year.
wow another kawauchi one-shot yuri
Read thread
Day ruined ಠnಠ
Page 1 leading into page 2 was golden. I would never have guessed that the one speaking so haughtily on the first page was maid to the other. After that, it quickly flamed out for me, and I can easily see why it became so controversial.
Not going to even try to read through all the comments, but I see some good analysis mixed in there. I understand both the point people make about this being fantasy in the same way that student/teacher or incest are fantasy, and the point that the author was trying to subvert a trope. Where I think this one touches a raw nerve in some readers is that too many people have experienced coercion by someone in authority. In the wake of "Me Too", the office I worked at tried to open up conversation on the topic, and it quickly turned out that over 60% of the women in our department had been pressured for sex at some point in their careers and had even lost jobs over it (never mind the things left unsaid in that dialogue). And I'm not even talking about general sexual harassment. The point being that a fantasy can remain a fantasy only so long as it is not someone's reality. If neither you nor anyone you know has experienced that kind of situation, and you can thus still enjoy the story as pure fantasy, consider yourself fortunate. Some of us aren't so lucky.
First of all. We have a joke based at subversion of expectations. A girl that appears to be a rich lady talks about them not being equal. Your first assumption is that she's looking down on some maid for even thinking she'd reciprocate her feelings and that she'd lower herself to date her. But then it was subverted by revealing that it's actually maid saying that to the rich lady of the house who's absolutely love struck by her and doesn't care about any of that. Then maid give justifications why she doesn't want to date rich girl and yes, it's all about social hierarchy, structure and outdated norms, but again it's not something we normally see. Usually maid wants to get all the benefit of being rich girl's favorite or in fact, be potentially elevated in status by dating her. Or she simply loves her and is happy rich girl loves her too. But here maid instead is playing into how they're not supposed to be together and she doesn't want to ruin what she already have and is happy with where she is. Rich girl completely ignores her though, cos she doesn't care about consequences, it's all about love, so she presses for the answer and maid tries to avoid answering, but rich girl turns the tables on her again using the love for work she just proclaimed, which involves following the orders of rich girl, since she's maid serving her house after all. The joke is that the lovesick girl that seemed innocent and harmless, suddenly made a 180 and actually used her power to get what she wants from maid. And as people already explained, what she wanted was a answer from maid. Only thing she forced maid to do was answer her confession. And as is clearly shown, maid actually is so charmed by sudden display of dominance from normally passive lady that she gives in and answer her honestly. So yes, rich girl used her power, but it was still a subversion of her normally docile personality. Not her overusing her power to make maid date her. And by the end we see everything worked out well and they're dating happily with maid keeping her work.
This is a really cool analysis, it hits me like seeing people talk about the Star Wars prequel trilogy and George Lucas's ambitions for it--most of it doesn't show up for me when I consume the media, but it's really cool to see the interesting ideas that were underneath. I think this cements my opinion that this needed to be 2 or more times longer to deliver its message in a way that would make sense for me.
Now that’s cheating…
oh no
This is so precious OMG XDDD ♥♥
last edited at Mar 22, 2021 3:34PM
Walls of text aside there's a new bit from Kawauchi from twitter so it's here now
If anyone posts anything annoying, I'm deleting it. I've already addressed the previous issues and I don't intend to do so again. Please be careful, thank you.
last edited at May 16, 2021 5:03PM
the spaces between lines in the go out with me dialogue is still different for each line this is literally unreadable, i hope someone got fired for that blunder
Gonna still have to talk to my manager to get me fired for that one, chief
Funny read.
Commenters yall have it rough. Feel petted.
Forgot I read this already and it left just as bad of a taste in my mouth the second time around.
In before this thread gets locked again. The comic to me isn't that serious or offensive, it's pretty silly, but whew people really take issue with it.
damn this thread was interesting. it's nice to see everyone's point of view
I feel like the nuance of this one-shot was probably lost in translation.
If the idea is that the maid's objections were thinly-viewed excuses and that the other girl was "ordering" the maid to be honest with herself, then the translation mighta been better as something like:
"We can't go out. I'm your maid. You're my lady. It's not appropriate for us to be together... Besides, your parents might fire me if we start going out... And I really need this job..."
"Well, if you're my 'maid', then you're obligated to answer me honestly, right? I'll ask again: Will you go out with me?"
*EDIT: So when afkeroge said kawauchi was progressive s/he meant kawauchi made stuff like https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/the_meaning_of_us_1#1 . Yeah, that's pretty hard to argue with.
last edited at Jul 24, 2021 9:39AM
