Discussing opinions is good, however I think it's pretty common for people to think you can only have one opinion on a subject, and people often think you can't have a nuanced opinion. There's a very black and white, you love it or you hate it narrative a lot of the time. Which isn't helped by the fact that we have various review systems for places like Netflix and Steam now, where you can only give a "yes" or "no" opinion in terms of your score, and it REALLY lacks nuance. Plus text obviously lacks tone, and well a person's tone of voice might also be misleading.
Edit: And I should note, I of course also fall into this trap sometimes. We're all human, conversation can be hard and sometimes it's easy to forget that there's more nuance to a person's view on something .
Hearing tone is definitely important. I sometimes like to read with voices in my head to get things flowing. But that's why we have to rely on phrasing which can leave things up to interpretation. And no, I am not trying to diss translators. I understand the difficulties of translating and the impossibility of expressing sentences/dialogue verbatim.
Yeah, and with phrasing in conversation I often over think things and get overly wordy, on the other hand sometimes I don't say enough. So I know phrasing can be tricky, and getting the right intent across. Especially when everyone has their own interpretations and the like as well.
As for this story, I think the author blatantly romanticizes selfishness, in this chapter especially. I believe it's brought up 3 times? Even only using the end as an example, "I love you Sei, your selfishness, your everything". It's okay if people enjoy that, and perfectly fine for the author to write it. I was only saying that I personally think the romanticization of selfishness is weird, and it's not something I like. I'm still entertained by the story, and I don't regret reading it. I'm even curious what the author's next work will be like.
I guess I see it as not so much romanticizing selfishness as it is romanticizing the embracing of your love's flaws. Yes, Sei's flaw is selfishness but from a broader perspective my mind is reading it as Aya loves Sei even though she knows how imperfect she is. Which is more what the message of the story to me is? It's even encapsulated in that last line of Chapter 19. "Your everything." - meaning the good and the bad that makes up Sei.
We see how Mochida and Haruki romanticize their love. Mochida loves her nurturing teacher yet what does she know really know about him? I feel like that moment when he says he doesn't care about what Sei has done defeats her not only because she exerted all that effort for no reward but also she becomes disillusioned. Like maybe Mr. Perfect isn't all that perfect.
And then we see Haruki, how she constantly is trying to keep Aya from growing and the minute Aya doesn't fit that image of Aya that Haruki loves, she rejects that Aya and tries to prevent her from evolving.
Yet Sei and Aya both loved people despite their flaws. That was just my take though.
Honestly I don't think we even completely disagree here. We just have slightly different perspectives and that's fine. Along the lines of what you said, I also think the author is romanticizing the idea of embracing a flaw like selfishness. Embracing and/or Romanticizing a flaw like selfishness is weird to me, mainly because I think any kind of relationship should be about two people willing to work together, mutual give and take in theory. Which again, that's my opinion. I'm not saying the author is wrong for writing something that disagrees with what I think, and I'm not saying people can't enjoy the way the author writes this.
Edit: I should state again just to be clear for anyone reading, I don't have to agree with everything in a story or how the author writes it, I can still find a work like this interesting and even enjoyable in some aspects. I like reading stories that are different than what I think and who I am. Having all my media revolve around who I am would get boring quickly for me, so going out of my comfort zone is something I try to do often.
last edited at May 27, 2021 4:46PM
