Mmmmm, wild boar. I'll tell ya, the best meal I ever had in my life was wild boar in a red wine sauce with bacon and, I believe, wild mushrooms. God it was yummy. Seems like a good recipe, too. Wild boar, check. Wine, check, although I'd use red, but it doesn't matter that much. Making the reduction in the pan you browned the meat in so you don't lose all that delicious browned meat flavour, check. Onion, check.

Not totally sure if I'm into the balsamic vinegar with boar--don't get me wrong, I love balsamic vinegar and would use it for a lot of things, but wild boar? I dunno. But it might work. I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. All in all, this chapter's food seems like a winner.

Virgo seems so quiet and unassuming until you mess with the fitness of things. There shall be no untidy spoilers! Things will happen in their correct order!

Well. Creepy psychological, fine. Mini-twist at the end. But somehow . . . and maybe it's not so much this particular one, maybe I've just realized something about how I feel about this kind of schtick in general . . . but it didn't have impact, because I found myself thinking "This is facile, I don't think real damaged people think like this, I don't think this particular kind of creepy reflects anyone's real psychology".

last edited at Mar 1, 2022 1:01PM

I cannot help but admire Hinako's earnest wish for death.

I can. Get a grip, girl. Your parents would want you to live. You've got a friend who would give her tails to help you live. You'll never forget your family, you'll always mourn them, but there's plenty worth living for and your family would want you to find it.

When you’re in the hole like she is, that’s only going to come off as platitudes, unfortunately. Convincing someone in that headspace of a nebulous “something” worth staying miserable for is a hard sell

Indeed. Having been in that hole I concur hearing "there's so much to live for" feels like an insult. It's like saying to a blind person "there's so many wonderful things to see in this world." We cannot see those things when in that state.

Never suggested I'd be able to convince her to change her mind. What I said was I don't ADMIRE her suicidal fixation.

Oh, come on, girl! She just saved your shaved ice and now she's gonna drop it again!

"Although I think it's a bit early for us to be doing that..." the way her response is this instead of denying the possibility of doing it... she definitely subconsciously knows she wants it

I'm pretty sure both the speech bubbles in that panel are Elsa.

I don't suppose it will do much good for her to say "Well mom, I decided to learn from you and not go out with some deadbeat guy."

I have no recollection of this. Guess I'll try looking at the beginning.

When you lack the creativity to do anything with your premise, add a love triangle. Wonderful. Works every time.

"Hmm I wonder what the characters personalities should be...I know! The new tsundere roommate and the childhood friend who gets so little screen time that there is literally no suspense as to who the main character will end up with and only serves to pad chapter time with meaningless drama that leads nowhere! Brilliant, its amazing no one has aver thought of this before!"

I think you are being uncharitable. Creative or not, this is not an add-on, this is backstory. Those two at the tea party have something to do with how second lead got so bitter.

last edited at Feb 17, 2022 10:06PM

Gee, Yvonne, if you want something whose absence won't be seen so it doesn't inconvenience her as much, you're currently pretty close to her panties.
I was actually imagining the plaque showing up with something on it like
"Villainess Task

. . . Wait, you're lying there with your HEAD ON HER LAP?! What kind of villainess-ing is that? I don't even . . . I give up, you officially fail as a villainess"

What will they do next? Shogi. Definitely a nice game of shogi.

Say, I noticed one thing about the last chapter that, unless someone corrects me, really underlines for me a certain "trying too hard" going on. That is, didn't the MC stop being able to see the love arrows after she fell in love? But now, after the time skip, just to reassure us that the triangle/poly is off and there's really no hard or lingering feelings, suddenly she can see the other love interest's lotsa-little-arrows-but-none-really-pointing-at-the-MC.

So, why can she see that, aside from it being convenient for beating us over the head with "It's cool, no lost love to see here"? Did the ability come back and I missed it, or something?

I'm not even a huge fan of poly, but in this case I really feel like dropping it was a failure of nerve and didn't work well at all.

I do not get what happened in the manga ,can someone explain it to me?

So they fell in love, right? But, they didn't know what to call it and the MC wasn't sure if the other girl felt what she felt, especially since she didn't really know what that was.
And then this boy came along with a crush on her, right? And it turned out her "friend" was so jealous she had to steal and shred all his love letters to keep him away from her. And finding out, MC was like "OH! She REALLY CARES!" and knew this was who and what she really wanted.

Case in point, I think the way Seungha is treating Swallow is awful and no one should take it as a good template for romantic behavior.

Discussing specific stories and how they work is a separate endeavor from writing moralizing lectures addressed to hypothetical readers who are under the delusion that fiction functions as a guidebook to praiseworthy real-life behavior.

You may take it as a given that the character is "distressed" and therefore the other character is "toxic," but clearly the story disagrees with your value judgment.

Oh, well, if "the story" has spoken, I guess I should change my own ethics to fit, shouldn't I?
No, really, this isn't "flustered" like you said higher up. This is upset and distressed. Which the author may think is cute, but that doesn't stop it from actually being cringey.

It's actually that combination that bugs me--I'm sometimes up for a manga or toon or whatever that's about train wreck relationships and dysfunctional people who harm each other. And even if they're not something I actually feel like reading, I won't say they're a bad story if they're done well. But generally not if the authorial voice is trying to say this is how things OUGHT to be. If the author is showing a dysfunctional, harmful relationship AS IF it's just the most romantic thing, that creeps me out. It's like the difference between "A story about racism" and "Some butthead telling a racist joke".

I cannot help but admire Hinako's earnest wish for death.

I can. Get a grip, girl. Your parents would want you to live. You've got a friend who would give her tails to help you live. You'll never forget your family, you'll always mourn them, but there's plenty worth living for and your family would want you to find it.

Since "aromantic/asexual" is in quotation marks and so pretty clearly the MC is using a term somewhat self-consciously, what's sad in Japanese is probably pretty much exactly what was translated. But it would be funny if it had actually just been a translation thing and the original Japanese didn't really connect to the aro/ace tags used in English and so the whole discussion was about a mirage.

I think it's not uncommon experience for people to just assume they can't feel romantic attraction until realizing they can but it's just same sex. This theme has been done 10000 times in yuri manga but I think people are setting themselves up for confusion or disappointment because this specific manga used the terminology "asexual aromantic" specifically instead of just saying "I've never had any interest in romance" because that's a term that exists now. This is pretty clearly just going to be one of those types of yuri developments. It's not sporadic or bait it's just a common yuri (and well. Gay media in general) trope.

Exactly.
And I think fans of aromantic for dead sure, and asexual nearly all the time, are going to be disappointed if they think those are going to be featured as leads in ROMANCE manga. Because, like, if they really are aromantic then it ISN'T a romance manga, is it? Even the robots in romance manga aren't aromantic.

And I mean, from a plot perspective, what's supposed to happen? The character starts to think maybe they have odd feelings for someone, but it turns out to be a false alarm, they just had indigestion, so they make no changes to their relationship, the end?

On the other hand, it's distinctly possible that many leads of adventure manga are aromantic. We don't know different, anyway.

last edited at Feb 3, 2022 3:55AM

Well, I like it. But I'd like it even more without the titular cigarette.

next chapter is not to be viewed by children huh... well then I think I can make a prediction as to what is about to happen

Handholding? Headpats??!!

(laugh) Oh, brother, Ai, way to make this sound as bad as it possibly could sound, given the relatively innocent nature of your actual relationship.

True enough. Lover?! I mean, sure, theoretically . . . no kiss yet though, right?

Wow. Well. Honesty is the best policy. Not always the most CONVENIENT policy, though, or the safest for that matter. Gotta hand it to her . . . a gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do.

Cute. And I think, if someone had a pic like that, you could at any rate be pretty sure they weren't a player.

You know, although she hasn't done anything substantially wrong in the present timeline, it still feels like bullying to me. Like, she's clearly trying to make her uncomfortable and take away control of the situation from her. Using the photoshoot setting as an excuse to do some unwanted touching, just to give her that vulnerable "I can touch you and you can't stop me" feeling. The art supports it really well in a way . . . just looking at that minimalist smirk makes my every instinct yell "Tell the director you're not working with this person, walk away and have no further interactions!"

Unfortunately I don't see how something can be concentrating this exclusively on a pair of characters and not plan to have them together. But I'd rather see the light-haired one's face mashed in, to be honest.

last edited at Jan 24, 2022 12:04AM

I hope Tanya makes sure she doesn't try to use a back scabbard, too. :V

Eh, back scabbards would make sense for her imo. The sword wouldn't swing around so much when running and wouldn't hit the ground when trying to crawl around etc. Scaling cliffs, climbing ladders, the like would also be easier.
And considering how ridiculously big her sword is it'd also distribute the weight better

So long as they don’t show her drawing the sword from the scabbard while it is on her back I’d be fine with it.

It can be done. Most people "showing" that it's impossible try to draw using the hand on the same side the hilt is. It works fine if you do a cross-draw . . . just like you do with a sword at your side. This guy demonstrates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NzxETuWeQE