No one here is okay.

I also like how everyone's fetishistic hangups seem to revolve around obsession and possession. I assumed the title just referred to having weird fetishes, but maybe it's referring to the toxic possessive "love" that these characters have for each other? It makes the choice to have fetishes centered around malleable clay figurines all the more thematically resonant.

It's not toxic "love" so much as toxic "roles". Fetishes are a form of ritualistic substitution behavior that arises in societies where sex and gender roles are heavily policed by social consenssituation. rural Japan). A fetish is basically a ritual where taboo behaviors are acted out through an object or ritual that takes the place of the desired action or behavior (fetishes are sociological rather than psychological). The "disgusting love" in the title is just that old trope of homosexuality's repression in a deeply heteronormative part of Japan. If the fetishes are themselves "disgusting" it is because they hint at the characters sexual orientation. I can assure you that these characters are actually rather normal given their sistuation.

In light of what I just posted, there's a different meaning to Meguru and Azuki's conversation. Meguru is sitting there with Azuki's bodily fluids on her hands, which of course is pretty close to what happens with digital penetration (lesbian sex). Thus Meguru has to be the cop here, reinforcing sexual taboos (Azuki's feeling is not love or romance, which are socially acceptable, it's just animalistic desire, which is verboten) and keeping herself and Azuki in the socially acceptable category.

I'm not sure if I agree entirely, but I do think you're right about regarding anti-gay societal beliefs leading to the characters being unable to express attraction openly and finding some other outlet. At the very least, that's what's going on in the story, whereas in real life sometimes the original motivating factor something non-sexual that gets reexpressed in a sexual context.

There are still these contexts of people who would be 100% okay with LGBT relationships finding it weird for someone to be sucking on doll legs or where these characters are not fully seeing the people who they think they love. I don't think any of this is really a contradiction. It's more that "the series/title/ is about X" is overly reductive and that this would be a one off instead of a series if the author only had one idea to talk about.

I don't understand what's going on, nor do I want to go too deep. I think it's odd with the dolls, but it must be a psychological thing.

The looks she got from the girl's mother and from Meguru oof. Azuki is not okay

Until proven otherwise, I'm feeling like those looks were her imagination. She has severe social issues and anxiety. The mother at first I felt was a bit too much for just a random stranger but also not out of left field, but when Meguru's face had a similar face out of nowhere with no reason to be like that, then the doll with no head, it clicked that Azuki has problems in general with people's faces and her insecurities.

but when Meguru's face had a similar face out of nowhere with no reason to be like that, then the doll with no head, it clicked that Azuki has problems in general with people's faces and her insecurities.

its probably true she has issues with looking people in the face, but i dont know if megurus face was out of nowhere. earlier when they were about to have dinner and the drama said something about love meguru made a face filled with disgust and said "its nothing more than lust disgusting" and when yakou put a plush in her face the mom said thaks implying it happens quite often.

Something about the way Azuki's adulthood is just the rotting of her adolescence and the way she's constructed a fiction of herself as tragically, one-sidedly in love is so awful and timely that I feel kind of nauseous after reading it.

This has big "my lesbian experience with loneliness" vibes

Definitely curious to see how this plays out. It seems like the author is teasing at more deep conversations that could be had between Meguru and Azuki in the future. Seems everyone has some deep rooted traumas to uncover. Perhaps Azuki doesnt love Meguru and has attached to that idea to cope with abandonment (she was her only friend before becoming her girlfriend after all).