屋森8/13/2015 12:22

実はリボンの端を穂乃果ちゃん自ら握っているとこがポイントです

The point is honoka holding one end of the ribbon herself. <<< approximate translation.
That's Yamori's comment on pixiv, about the cover. Guess really Honoka's own willing from this, and belt on her foot with no lock. But also possible stockholm syndrome.

Love tsubahono, but cannot understand this one prefectly.

I noticed the ribbon thing right away, because it reminded me of the red string connecting the two lovers that we see so often in manga imagery. But here it is a red ribbon used in a BDSM context, one end held by Tsubasa and the other by Honoka.

There is also the chain and the belt on Honoka's ankle, which, as people have already pointed out, presents no obstacle whatsoever. Some tried to argue that the chain not being a problem does not matter if the doors and windows are locked, but we see exactly zero doors or windows (let alone them being locked and bolted) in the doujin itself, so this is pure speculation on the part of the readers.

And lastly, there are Erena and Anju, who explicitly know about Tsubasa and Honoka's circumstances and have not called the police yet. This is something that literally nobody (except for Lilli up there, but he missed the implications entirely) brought up in this thread. If Tsubasa was a crazy yandere who literally kidnapped Honoka, why would Erena and Anju even know about it? What would compel a crazy Tsubasa to confide in her friends?
The whole point would be to have Honoka all to herself and not allow anyone to come between them. To confide in others is to directly jeopardise this. Them knowing makes no sense, at least in the yandere scenario.

"Quit screwing around." "What an idiot..." "Just what is that girl thinking? ...and Kousaka Honoka too..."
These are not reactions of people whose friend is a maniac committing a serious crime. Far more likely, they are reactions to a friend (together with her lover, that last sentence pretty much spells it out) being a reckless moron.

I read it as a BDSM play that had gone too far, in the sense that both of them got wrapped up in it to the point they stopped thinking clearly and just do not want the play to end.

Plus Honoka is not a dog, she is a human person.

You do know that roleplay is part of BDSM, right? Yuribolt's explanation actually fits perfectly.

Now, granted, with the creepy expression Tsubasa sports at the end, and the fact nothing is openly stated, merely implied, this could still be viewed as kidnapping and Stockholm Syndrome. But with the imagery used on the cover, the fact the author explicitly pointed out to it, and the various implications scattered about, I just do not buy the yandere explanation.

last edited at Sep 16, 2020 1:54PM

You can not upload stuff, but you can request it to be uploaded, you have the Upload Request option under your profile. The staff will evaluate and decide whether or not to upload it.

Satashi is alive. And she is writing yuri.

To anyone even remotely familiar with Nanoha fanfiction community this is all the information they need. For everyone else, allow me to elaborate.

Back in the day (and I mean, way back) Satashi was one of the best writers in the Nanoha fandom. In fact, there was pretty much consensus that she was the best. Even today, after 10 years, if you search Nanoha fics on FanFiction.net by number of favourites, her fics will be amongst the most popular.

However, she stopped posting anything after 2010. I kept checking, but as years went by and nothing was coming I pretty much gave up. Until today, when I got the urge to re-read "Saved by the Bell", but unfortunately (or as it turned out, extremely fortunately) I was on my phone. Hating small screens with a passion and wanting to save myself the trouble of typing the title and franchise I just wrote "Nanoha Satashi", so I could access the fic through her profile. Only to see said profile was updated with a truckload of new stuff.

Apparently, it was so long ago when I last checked her page, I completely missed the fact she posted two large Stardew Valley fics in 2016 and 2017. I know nothing about that franchise, but going by characters listed the fics seem to be yuri (Satashi is not a yuri-exclusive writer). But what made me happy beyond belief were the 17 "Eventually, I Will Become Yours" fics, all from this year. There is Yuu/Touko, of course, and... surprising amount of Yuu/Sayaka, which is like, HELL YES GODS EXIST AND THEY LOVE ME!!! ...do not kill me, I was born this way...

I mean, to see one of my all-time favourite fanfic writers come back after basically a decade of inactivity, and for her to pick up one of my favourite yuri series, and to concentrate on a pairing that has been my guilty pleasure for ages... there must be a higher power at work here~

In any case, while I can not recommend specific fics since I am still in the process of reading them, I feel confident in making a general shout-out, purely on the basis of who the author is. Satashi was just that good.

last edited at Sep 11, 2020 7:27PM

Ah, so it was the chapter before the last one. Thanks, Lilli. But on reading it, it undermines what the person I was responding to claimed even more. "You're definitely right when you say that we're lovers, and that we're dating. I just feel that those words aren't enough to describe us." Which is why I did not remember this scene in the context that person was bringing it up in, because this is nothing like the situation here, making the comparison rather disingenuous.

The author also confirmed this will be more of a deep friendship thing rather than romance

Except that's not what she said, but go off. All she said was that she didn't want to put a label on what Konatsu and Koyuki have because she thought it would be confining. The same idea comes up almost verbatim near the end of Bloom Into You, and I don't think anyone could seriously argue that that those characters' feelings aren't romantic.

Where did she say this? I was going from what was posted on the scanlator's site, and they stated that this was labelled by the author as "girl friendship", if memory serves. The post by the author herself was in moonletters, so I am banking on what other people said was written there.

Also, I fail to see the point of bringing up "Bloom Into You", that was explicitly a series about romance, it called it such since the beginning, and the whole point was that the main couple went beyond mere friends. Show me one single scene from this series that tells that, in actual words. I agree that the subtext is so thick here it barely needs yuri goggles (or rather, it does not need them), but there is not a single scene where they actually say anything openly, and the whole thing can technically be called an extremely close friendship. I just do not see any similarity between the two works that would merit this comparison.

In addition, I went and skimmed the last chapter of "Bloom", because the scene you are talking about sounded completely unfamiliar to me. I failed to find it, so feel free to link that as well.

last edited at Dec 30, 2019 2:17PM

There were no promises that this will be a story in yuri genre and how is this s-class when they are not even dating each other nor having feeling of a romantic love. Friendship can be intimate too and stories about it do exist. Friendship is a relationship with another person and it has similar conflicts like other relationships. It a shame to see this conversation over and over and this extent of labeling things right and left are oversaturates and erases real queerbait. I can understand bitterness over lack of good yuri-stories, but why do this.

This. Very much this. I think that a lot of vitriol towards this series comes from people not bothering to read labels and just projecting their expectations onto the work in question. This has been something that plagued this title (at least on Dynasty) since the very beginning, when the staff had to fight off a deluge of Yuri tag requests. This, despite the fact the scanlator clearly stated on their site (and this was linked in this thread numerous times) that this will not go for the yuri route. The author also confirmed this will be more of a deep friendship thing rather than romance (while also stating she does not mind if someone interprets it as romance), and people viewed this as a betrayal.

All of which is rather unfortunate, because if you stopped projecting such expectations onto it and just read it for what it is, you would get a thoroughly enjoyable experience, in my opinion.

"But we are both girls..."

The longer this scam lasts, the harder it will be when it all blows up.

If the plot actually went there, it'd probably be interesting. But we're all sitting here, knowing that at worst there'll be a chapter of insecurity or so. That's why this drama is annoying; it'll never go anywhere. It's just a gimmick.

As annoying as the current gimmick is, it could still be worse. Imagine if the author had no intention of actually ending said gimmick, and this just dragged on and on and on and on.

I finally figured it out. This author is deliberately trying to make me hate their work even more. It is a brilliant tactic. And it is fucking working like a charm.

We’ve established that Momono Moto is just doing the art on this one, correct?

Not that I always love her work, but this one seems particularly brain-dead, plot and character-wise.

The story is Kitta's, yeah. She is not primarily a writer. It shows... She is a voice actress. This fandom will best know her for being the voice of Kuroki Tomoko.

Edit: I just checked, "Liberty" is literally her first ever writing project.

last edited at Dec 2, 2019 9:29PM

I finally figured it out. This author is deliberately trying to make me hate their work even more. It is a brilliant tactic. And it is fucking working like a charm.

This is so cute!!

It will end in Vore and Tragedy, though.

I think Artoria is trying to eat the whole thing before Nero can take a bite herself. So greedy...

Message to GID: Have you ever seen Love Live? Do you know what Ayase Eli looks like? Also, scrolling through your post history, you seem to have an unhealthy but extremely amusing obsession with hair colour, and you apparently think it relates to psychological traits. It is quite hilarious.

Such a forbidden love~ It’s a pretty hot set up for a fantasy.

I don’t get why people are expecting not to get weirded out when they approach a story tagged with sex and age gap with a character that’s in middle school. And then keep reading it as if the premise is suddenly going to change. And then complain that this seemed creepy when looking at it through realistic standards.

But then again, I’m complaining on the forums about the people complaining on the forums. So I’m not much better.

Anyway 10/10 smut

Sums up both my opinion of the doujin and of this comment section.

Yeah I figured I'd have to go to the Discord for that, but I really don't want to. Though I figure that a lot of mod missile strikes are coordinated from there, so it would at least be interesting to see the process.

I will not comment on anything else, but regarding this, you would not see any process if you went there. Staff discussions are not conducted in the main chat.

Short but delicious~ Classic Kodama, messed up characters, lmao! Akane decides to show her feelings by jumping the main character while said character's boyfriend is sleeping in the same room, and Kotori herself is genuinely messed up. I think Minalinsky's analysis was the most accurate one regarding this.

Koveras posted:

Cheating is okay (or at least a cause for severe cognitive dissonance, as in some comments above) when a woman cheats with another woman on a man with whom she is in a committed relationship.

What can I say. Yuri makes everything better by default. Idk about others, but at least I am not afraid to admit I'm totally 100% biased towards yuri. After all yuritopia is my dream world.

I am actually in the camp that unapologetically likes works that feature cheating (although even that can have its misses, khmSuwakokhm), but I still get an occasional laugh when the usual double standard in yuri pops up. That being said, I do not think this work is really the best example. The best example would be a story that features a decent guy being cheated on, and then have people being fine with it so long as it is yuri. This guy, on the other hand... openly drools over another girl, sees his girlfriend is insecure because of it, and his response is not to reassure her he likes her and so on, but that the other girl would never be interested in him since she is out of his league.

What I am saying is that he is kind of a douche, and that will always have people feel less inclined to sympathise. I am certainly no fan of the double standard, yet the only response I had to him being cheated on was "meh".

last edited at Nov 23, 2019 7:30PM

Totally agree. But some people just habitually make up things and project them onto other readers.

Not actually a reply to you, but it ties in nicely. A few pages back, I said how the story lost its focus and is in all probability just aimlessly drifting. Cue people saying how most of such criticism is brought by the lack of a yuri payoff. Which I find hilarious, since I was dearly hoping Uta and Kaoru would not end up together. Kaoru falling for Uta would be just bleh, honestly. For once, I wanted an actual serialisation that does not go for the happily-ever-after ending, and the unrequited feelings stay unrequited.

This series obviously has a faithful audience that genuinely likes it. That is fine, liking the story is not the issue here. The issue is that some conflate liking it with quality of storytelling and character development that is just not there. This has been nothing but a back-and-forth discussion where one side continuously tries to excuse the glaring flaws of the work (and hilariously, just as Blastaar noted, the nature of the excuses has also evolved over time, just proving that that is what people are doing, excusing the flaws; otherwise they would have stuck to their original guns this whole time).

Ah yes I like when my 8 page manga tackles serious social trans issues, definitely not sending any wrong messages

So let me get this straight, a cute and heartfelt story that approaches its subject in a serious and respectful manner is a no-go because it is short? What should be the minimum number of pages for a story featuring trans issues to not send "wrong messages"? 50? 70? 170?

People seem pretty adept at making excuses for this one. Convincing arguments that it’s a successfully achieved authorial intention? Not so much.

Well, but what is the authorial intention?

That’s been the question all along—WTF does this author think they’re doing?

...how can you criticize the author for not achieving what they intend when you don't know what they intend...?

Anyway, it seems to me like the author is trying to tell an engaging melodrama about unrequited love and the costs of not speaking up about your feelings.

Not to mention the wacky romantic hijinx of a crew of lesbian high school girls who hang out at the apartment one of them lives in alone above the cafe where a couple of them work.

The “don’t know what the author intends” is a function of the incredibly muddled storytelling.

The series was not like this at the beginning, though. It started out pretty strong, and had a clear and concise theme, a girl with one-sided feelings for her sister-in-law. But along the way it started to lose its focus, and it muddled things to the point where it looks like it will need a further 30 chapters at the very least to resolve anything. Focusing on the side characters too much, adding unnecessary plotlines (to the point the original one pretty much vanished), I do not think the author is making a "slow burn" out of it, I think the author simply has no, or almost no idea where to take this, and is aimlessly drifting. I would be very surprised if these chapters are actually planned in advance.

What da hell Kodama ?

She is completely unapologetic. You just have to love her, lmao!

karp posted:

to take advantage of the fact that it's one of the very few pieces of yuri media that acknowledges women don't have sex by just kind of lying near one another.

How many yuri mangas have you read? Because there's plenty which acknowledge that, but I have hard time thinking about even 1 which does what you say. Are you sure you just happen to not read any NSFW works?

I very much tend not to read NSFW works, but mostly because the fact that most appear to be by and for, uh, a particular kind of straight man.

I have no words. Also, it might do you good to look up the surveys done on the demographics of this site, there were two so far and both can be found in this forum. The population is roughly half-half between men and women, and the majority of men here are not straight, so your imaginary audience of a "particular kind of straight man" (literally no idea what that is even supposed to mean) does not appear to exist all that much.

Edit: Went and checked both surveys, I have to correct myself, straight men do make the majority of the male population, but still only account for about 35% of the total population. Roughly 50% of the folks are women, and the remaining 15% are non-straight men (I say non-straight instead of gay because the bi and pan men actually outnumber the gay ones).

And I forgot to mention, but there are plenty of female yuri mangakas doing NSFW works, so again, I remain mystified.

last edited at Nov 9, 2019 5:03PM

Another mess piles on.

The Mother-in-law's reaction rings so true. "Just a kiss, it doesn't count".

I think she cares more about how her family is going to be seen if he divorces than about his, or Ayano's, happiness.

Exactly this. Not to mention if it gets out that they divorced because Ayano hooked up with a woman. The mother-in-law infuriated me beyond belief here, but it is a fairly realistic take, especially considering it is Japan we are talking about.

Fuck yeah delinquent drugs yuri.

Contains neither the actual drugs, nor any yuri friskiness. :<

Add more pages, Goddess Kodama, I beseech you!

It's pretty obvious the younger sister is confusing familial love with romantic love.

I disagree. Familial and romantic love have some rather... conspicuous differences, there is no way the two can be confused. If she is having urges that go beyond familial affection, it is pretty safe to conclude she is also feeling something other than mere familial love.

And this actually can be seen in the story, when Sunako thinks to herself how she should not be trying to "entice" Yasuko. She also muses how she is "probably doing something really bad", "something that might destroy our family". Simple familial bonding with her half-sister would not cause her to think like this. Romancing her half-sister, on the other hand, would.

Your 7 points are accurate, but I do not see how they infer that Sunako's feelings are "confused".

Going further, you omitted one crucial component that is usually required for purely familial love between close family members (barring the bond most parents develop for their children right at the start), and that is growing up together/beside the other person. In fact, it is this aspect that is crucial for people becoming sexually desensitised to their family members, meaning they can not see their family as potential sexual and/or romantic material.

By contrast, these two met for the first time as teenagers and are, for all intents and purposes, complete strangers. You do not become someone's sibling by simply proclaiming it on the first meeting. Both of them are fully capable of seeing the other in a romantic light, as any two perfect strangers would be (probably the reason why Yasuko does not seem bothered by Sunako's feelings, even if she did not really pause to think about it), which makes it all the more likely that Sunako's feelings are indeed what she thinks they are, romantic in nature.

I agree with one of the previous posters, that Sunako's circumstances caused her to basically throw everything she has into her feelings/relationship with Yasuko, and considering the utter emotional void that characterised her earlier life, I actually find her outright falling in love with her half-sister to be not only plausible, but actually fairly realistic in these circumstances, and I could easily see it happening in real life under such conditions.

Though the big sister is a bitch, and the younger sister should not be as kind to her as she is, it's clear dealing with her is better than everything her mother put her through. So we also have another negative aspect on the younger sister's life in which the best thing she could ask for is a bitchy sister.

It's a bit sad.

I disagree with this as well, heavily. In the first part of the story, Yasuko is indeed "bitchy", but the situation is not as simple as that. Her never before known half-sister basically stormed into her life out of nowhere, bringing knowledge that her father cheated on her mother and had another family on the side. And now that same sister is rapidly becoming popular and beloved by their classmates. Many siblings who do not come from such strenuous backgrounds are prone to jealousy, here it is not even surprising. Made all the more poignant by the dinner scene, where Sunako pleased Yasuko's mother by a well-prepared meal and by doing a chore Yasuko herself should have done, but forgot. This really struck a nerve in Yasuko.

Sunako is basically a stranger who appeared two years ago, and is now seemingly winning the hearts of both Yasuko's classmates and her own family. It is certainly understandable she would lash out. Not justifiable, mind you, but most definitely understandable.

Moreover, Yasuko openly explains she is being a bitch towards her half-sister on purpose, for her mother's sake.
Couple this with the fact the setting is Japan, and again you get something that, while not justified, is certainly easy to understand. We are talking about a culture where keeping the image is paramount, where families are perfectly willing to let their own mentally disabled kids be permanent shut-ins rather than providing them medical treatment, as that would make the situation known and would bring shame upon the family. A culture where divorce is such a taboo it is sometimes censored from anime, of all things. Imagine what it means to bring an illegitimate child into the family in such a place. The fact Yasuko's mother (and father) were willing to do it speaks volumes, it was definitely not a decision most Japanese would make lightly.

If anything, it is kind of weird how Sunako is so popular, in real life chances are she would be mercilessly bullied for her origins (and Yasuko herself would probably be bullied too, by simple virtue of familial association with the "bastard child").

When you factor this in, it becomes really easy to see where Yasuko is coming from with her hostility. But even then, when you read her explanation, it kind of feels like she is actually pushing herself to be this awful towards Sunako, especially given how she later breaks down specifically because Sunako protected her and refused to lay the blame for the ruined dress where it belonged, on Yasuko herself. This is not a reaction of someone who hates the other person and is being awful towards them out of malice. This is a reaction of someone who feels bad over what she is doing, and thinks she deserves to be blamed (which she does). A far cry from a simple "bitchy sister".

And that is just the first part, in the second one Yasuko is not "bitchy" in any way. Slightly adversarial, but it is obvious it is good-natured now. And she openly boasts (maybe not the smartest move) about Sunako's feelings for her. It is evident she is pleased with the situation and is now enjoying their interactions.

Uploaders have no greater degree of influence than anyone else and have no jurisdiction over what people may say or post.

No idea about this specific person, but some uploaders are indeed part of the staff, and can and do exercise jurisdiction over the Forum, without having any visible markers that would single them out from the rest of the uploaders (most of whom are not staff). In any case, just a heads-up.

last edited at Sep 28, 2019 4:02PM

Nope, hated it. At least the part after Shizuka returned to the room and Mio caved. Shizuka's tears were a dead giveaway, she started breaking down when Mio basically shoved the truth into her face. And she can not face that truth. The fact she is not even remotely over Kaoru (who, incidentally, seems to be falling genuinely in love with someone else), making Mio the last straw keeping her afloat.

She can not come to terms with Kaoru possibly finding something more than a casual fling with another girl, and she can not bear the possibility of simultaneously losing her cheap coping mechanism, which is what Mio essentially is, as far as I see it. If this ends badly, Mio will have only herself to blame.