Just so you guys know, the author recently did an interview about this series. They posted about it today.

There was a discussion on it in the Discord server yesterday, one line in particular drew attention. The author said she would not call this manga "yuri", stating it is more a story about "affection/ friendship between girls". That said, there was some debate on whether she was talking about the story as a whole (including the parts not yet written) or if was she simply referring to the story so far and was expressing doubt as to where she would take it eventually.

A girl is fascinated by another's forehead and asks to smack it. After getting permission, she goes to town on it. I think there was a third girl present, mostly as a spectator. The word "forehead" is not in the title and we lack a Forehead tag, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Come on, they were face-to-face and she did not yet pull her mask up! Come on, manga! Are you telling me Aya is blind...
Also, all the talk we had about visual cues, but what about Mitsuki's voice? Does she alter her voice when she is working? Why would Aya not recognise the voice?

Comment by Masina with un tagged spoilers: https://dynasty-scans.com/forum/topics/18627-my-girlfriend-s-not-here-today-discussion?page=24#forum_post_787995

Looks like they've already edited in spoiler tags themself.

I mean, I might be blind, but I do not see any spoiler tags there. And there is discussion of chapters not currently on Dynasty (the two extras and chapter 8 - we are currently at chapter 6 on this site).

Adding lines to a quoted post that the original user never actually wrote. Using a sock (such bravery). Accusing a well established regular (who is also a woman, and gay) to be a homophobe. Nice going there, person lacking in common sense. You do know that the staff can track down your IP and connect it to your main account, right?

Loved your comment @Omega Deuse, totally agree with the second part.

All that aside I get really happy when I see the story gets on the top reads section every new chapter. A part of me hopes the author gets to see how many international fans this story is getting.

You better hope otherwise. Most authors are not fond of scanlation and this author mentioned stuff like that in the past. I know that sometimes people here get carried away and forget that this site is meant to be a home for illegal pirated material, but be smart, please. There was a villainess story pulled from this site just the other week because the author discovered the translation.

stocxt posted:

calling it now, the tattoo on her wrist is what will give her away. or it'll cause a misunderstanding where Aya thinks she's dating her male self and they have matching tattoos

She's already getting the sense that they have the same air/look alike so perhaps she would think they're siblings instead.... but it would be pretty bad imo if she's like "Can I see your brother?!" and it turns into a really big and complicated lie with no end in sight

I always disliked the "oh they must be siblings" gimmick... it's completely unrealistic. If you see someone who looks just like a person you know in drag/disguise, "it must be that person in drag/disguise" is the first thing anyone would think.

Even in Don Gil de las Calzas Verdes, which is from 1615, when Doña Juana has no choice but to appear in society as a woman, Doña Inés and Doña Clara immediately start suspecting that Don Gil (the bewitching man they've both fallen in love with) was actually always Doña Juana in a man's guise... and they're 100% right, lol. It was already considered an obvious reaction centuries ago!

It was kind of funny seeing her freak out about a tiny spot of nail polish, because there are far bigger clues. Like that conspicuous mole under her eye, the length and shape of her bangs, or the fact her ear has holes in exactly the same places that the "guy" from the music store has piercings in. Aya even immediately flashes in her mind to the "guy's" face the first time she actually has a good look at Mitsuki in school (note how prominently the mole and the pierced ear are displayed there).

I will actually be mildly frustrated if Aya does not connect the dots on her own, there is plenty to go on here. There is also stuff like the shape and colour of the eyes, shape of eyebrows and such. Like, if this was someone she saw masked but only in passing and then does not recognise the same person without the mask, I could buy her not realising. But with how much she stared at the masked version and given that the unmasked version is literally sitting next to her, I am beginning to think it more and more unrealistic that she is not going "wait a moment, this is the same person". Especially since she does get flashes of the "guy's" face when she looks at Mitsuki.

That memory of Makiyo being bedridden in a hospital room, hooked up on IV's, thinking "I always wanted to be free", that is quite a hefty emotional punch for a single panel. It also adds in retrospect so much weight to this, "I just want to keep living, that's all..."

I liked this a lot.

I'm a mostly new reader, I haven't read Liberty regularly since its first few chapters. I don't think this series sucks nearly as much as it's hyped up to. That said, the last 6-7 chapters are a hysterically bad ride, and I'm honestly amazed at just how unashamedly the "shocking" twists and convenient cliffhangers are abused in every single new chapter. Keep going, Izumi. You're awesome.

I suspect the reason people (myself included, of course), panned this series for ages is because we were reading it as it was coming out. Again, the unapologetic crappy dorama is something that I now enjoy with this work, and if the series started out like that, I doubt many people would have complained. The issue arose precisely because of those first few chapters, which read markedly differently than the rest of the content and which set decidedly different expectations.

I imagine said expectations are far less pronounced if the reader binges the whole thing, even more so because at this point the series has something of a reputation so even new consumers are fairly likely to be aware of what to expect. But when you read it periodically, following the release schedule, with all that time in between that solidifies your expectations (plus, you have no idea of the swerve that is in your path), it can be pretty jarring.

Yeah people are definitely mischaracterizing her here. They’re acting like she went “I know , I’ll threaten my sister and get her to give me money!” rather than what actually happened, which was the sister making up both sides of the scenario in her head and then just taking the money her sister offered her.

"Please don't tell Mom! I'll do anything!"
"*Anything?* Eh...? Alright, there is one thing I'd like from you..."

This is literally what's on the page. There's not much room for interpretation.

For the record, I, at least, am not suddenly in a position of, "Wow, I now hate this story and character." If anything I find it funny just how low she's gone. But I must acknowledge that it is horrible of her.

Essentially this. It is interesting how many people have come out of the woodwork to actually defend and outright try to excuse the main character. "Oh, the sister set up 90% of the blackmail herself", as if that is not an utterly insane position to have. Or concocting fanfiction scenarios where the sister is not bothered and is almost depicted as happy to be giving money to her "cute baby sister". (Amusingly, although there is at least one poster here who usually has issues with such fanfictional interpretations, they apparently do not have a problem if the particular fanfics are feeding into their own narrative.)

But as usual, these pious lectures always ignore the fact that in stories context matters—generic context (the expectations for a given genre), tonal context (the tone set up by a given story, including the art style as well as the writing), authorial context (how a given author usually tells stories), etc. The idea that readers of this story might be led to think that real-life blackmail is “good” is quite ludicrous.

Tonal context is the issue here, and is almost definitely the reason some people reacted strongly to this chapter. The main character was not shown doing anything as scummy as this before. Her victims were also presented rather unsympathetically (the parents), giving people even less reason to be upset. And all of this was presented in a light-hearted comedic tone. And now suddenly she is blackmailing her sister in order to get money to pay for a gay prostitute, and what is she blackmailing her sibling for? Oh, right. For being gay. Presented in the same light-hearted comedic tone.

Her actions are telling us that what she has done is repugnant, but what the tone and the cutesy art are telling us is "lololol, look how scummy she is, she like, booked a hooker immediately, how funny is that, lololol".

yeah, though to clarify, i'm like honestly happy that she's doing something scummy because it's like, finally I am getting what this story promised me. haha

My issue is that 16 chapters in is far, faaaaar too late for the story to do that. I actually expected something like this would happen when I picked up this series, because, you know, the title. But then it went on and on and on and I was never really sold on the main character being scum because that element was barely there at all.

If the author wrote her to be as scummy as she is now from the get-go, even with the comedic tone, it would have been fine. That would be the whole point of the series, and people would know what to expect and could enjoy it for what it was. Very few people would be surprised or outraged, as all of us literally signed up for this exact premise.

But then the author spent 15 whole chapters establishing the main character to not really be all that scummy, and only now swerving into what the manga was supposed to deliver from the beginning. And again, even such a swerve could have been handled better if the comedic tone that laced everything up until this point was dropped, at least for this particular scene. But nope, the author decided to have their cake and eat it too.

The combination of the main character's previous antics being less severe and the fact the tone remained the same creates the impression that the author considers this blackmail to be just as innocuous as the aforementioned previous antics. To draw a comparison with a series that otherwise has very little in common with this manga, in Liberty the love interest is a horrible and deeply unstable person without any redeeming qualities, but the way the author writes her is as though we are supposed to sympathise with her. There is a dichotomy between what we are presented with and the way the author presents it.

Essentially, it is bad writing.

the art is really nice, not too moe but not too old-school.

It actually is old-school, just not yuri old-school. The author is a yaoi artist, and it shows, lol. Long arms, large hands with long fingers, long faces with sharp features, particularly the sharp chins, it gives a rather stereotypically masculine appearance (in terms of manga looks) to the characters. Mind you, I dig this, it is good stuff.

last edited at Feb 3, 2022 5:40PM

@NexiKuro
Three big inaccuracies here. Firstly, ATLA was not cancelled early. It was not cancelled in any way. It was a critical and commercial success, and a major one at that.

Secondly, Azula's abusive upbringing was very much explored in-depth, in the comics, and how the combination of both her father and her mother's influences (although that was never her mother's intention) warped her mind.

And thirdly, TLoK never had to fear of not getting renewed. All four books of the series were approved and bought up by the network before the first episode even aired, giving massive benefits to the creators in terms of what they could now do with the story, given that the airing was secured no matter what.

In fact, it was because TLoK was bought up in advance by Nickelodeon that the show was not cancelled. TLoK's viewership declined significantly after book one and it continued to plummet all the way to the end of the series. In fact, with the third book the series received such poor ratings that mid-season it was removed from Nickelodeon's broadcast and relegated to online distribution. Under normal circumstances such a series would have likely been cancelled, but since TLoK was already approved and payed for under contract in its entirety, that was not an option.

^ Krul is a vampire and is well over a 1000 years old. Shinoa is 16.

^^^^ Hylarn said that it is not a pillow, though... I do not get what is so confusing here, her hand is beneath her head, hence why it is not seen. Because of all the hair...

My favourite rare Nanoha pairing, bless. There is a whole series of very good (if very old) fanfics featuring this couple over on FF.net, I wager this artist must have read them, lol.

@GrimEater
When the network imposes limits as to how far you can take things, it is not really fair to criticise the creators. And I disagree about the comics, they are essentially an official continuation of the story so implying they are irrelevant is kind of disingenuous.

That said, I do have issues with Korrasami. For one thing, while the show was limited in depicting romance between them, they also failed to depict much of anything else in regards to their relationship. Korra and Asami barely interact with each other for much of the show, even when they are supposed to be close friends.

This is a recurring theme with the series, the personal relationships between characters are so criminally underdeveloped. While the original Avatar had this tight group of friends-and-companions-for-life, Korra's gang is far more loosely connected. Although we are often told how close friends they all are, we are rarely actually shown that, and Korra/Asami is no exception. They could have at least shown an actual close friendship between the two, one which would later bloom into a romance; in that respect literally nothing was stopping them.

People might argue that they had limited screen time, but so did the original Avatar and it succeeded just fine on this score (establishing close relationships within the whole group). Plus, Korra had all the time in the world to waste on that godawful love triangle nonsense, so it is not like the show was that pressed for time.

As for the comics, well... The original Avatar comics were very good, the art was basically lifted straight from the show, writing was competent, they felt in everything like a genuine continuation which seamlessly carried on the minor plotlines of the series. By contrast, both Korra comics are kind of garbage, with Turf Wars (the Korrasami one), being especially egregious. The "plot" is riddled with holes and goes pretty much nowhere by the end, and it is painfully obvious the entire thing is just a paper-thin excuse to showcase the main couple. The art itself is... bad, to put it mildly.

Also, even outside the bad plot the writing is atrocious. Like when Korra introduces Asami to her parents and reveals their relationship. Her parents are instantly accepting and supportive, but they also warn the couple to be careful because other people might be prejudiced in this regard (as Korra intends to let the entire world know about her relationship). Cue Korra attacking her family for being "narrow-minded" and storming off in a fury, apologising to Asami for her parents being "insensitive".

last edited at Jan 30, 2022 3:11PM

Even though I get how that can make for a more interesting character, and it's not like I was expecting or wanted her to actively try and stop the revolution, I just can't bring myself to like her. I don't know why, since I've definitely seen characters in other works that seem to be fixated on only a single person, with little care what happens to the rest *cough cough* Sorawo *cough*, who I've really liked. Maybe it's how this author seems to have gone out of their way to tell us practically nothing at all about this person, other than the fact that she likes Claire and wants to protect her. Like, who is Rei? At least in the manga, we know next to nothing about her and tbh this secrecy seems to only feed my dislike, rather than intrigue me. Also, the way she acts like two completely different people makes her usual behavior seem insincere to me. I'm not saying that it was, I'm just saying that, to me, her happy-go-lucky attitude —when she clearly knew what was coming and had probably been planning what to do all this time— feels fake. I can't believe I came to like the ohoho-ing ojousama more than her....

It might be because there's nothing really compelling about her fixation with Claire, where it mostly feels like she's in love with Claire just because. Maybe Sorawo's a different case.

At one point she did say that Claire "saved" her, but she did not elaborate. I presume she meant something along the lines of "attachment to a fictional character pulled me from my depression". But yeah, probably the root cause of my frustration with her is what the original poster wrote here. We are given next to no insight into her mind, and apart from her fawning over Claire and trying to protect her, we really do not have much to go on here. We know more about the mindsets of almost every other character than we do about the main one.

That said, I also can not help but feel that this is very much intentional and will be used in some sort of a twist later on.

I can understand the frustration, but I kind of liked that Rei's ambitions are more small-scale.

There are so many Isekai stories where the main character becomes the big hero who can change the fate of nations; so I found it kind of interesting that Rei is a more-or-less normal person who's just trying to protect herself and the people she cares about during a period of dramatic political and social upheaval. More of an action survivor, rather than an action hero.

When you put it like that, it is actually kind of neat. I can dig that.

I don't think this is necessarily a spoiler, since it just speaks to motivation, but in the novels at one point Rei does mention that she's afraid of deviating too much from the game's plot, because then she'll lose her ability to predict what's going to happen.

And she's afraid of making things "worse," and then being unable to adapt because she no longer has the right information. So whether you think she should being doing more at this point, she has reasons for why she isn't.

Yeah, this actually goes a long way to explain it. That said, it is a pretty selfish motivation, huh. Since it means her goals really do boil down to "Claire and I". Still, it is not like I have a massive problem with that, it is just kind of mildly frustrating, is all. Though, I wonder how saving Claire will work out then, since it seems that in the original game Claire either died or "fell to the dark side" or something at this point, and Rei just actively prevented it.

"fuck everything, I just want my waifu here"

(and just imagine how much work that would take while also working as a maid and studying)

I mean, keeping up with being a maid and schooling seems like a serious case of skewed priorities when you know bloodshed is about to be unleashed upon the whole country.

She's not trying to be a hero and save everyone or do something stupid like become Nostradamus for these people or worse, ending up being called spy or traitor for knowing too much without exposing the fact that she came from another world and everything here came from a game

Never said she should try to be a hero. I suggested a quiet approach, trying to get the people with actual influence to push for reforms. I have a hard time seeing the princes turning on her if she told them the truth, for example.

joining the anti noble faction would be like saying good bye to Claire, if that happened just for some stupid sense of heroism or obligation to "her people" then I would drop this because it would go against her nature and everything she has done and say thus far

Again, nothing I wrote was about heroism or even choosing sides. She could have done what I outlined and still kept close to Claire, this was not an "either/or" type of scenario I was imagining.

Rei has never lied about her intentions. I think she's playing her cards right FOR Claire and I don't know why would anyone expect any different.

Rei's intentions seem to be very limited is my problem. Her honesty is not under scrutiny here. As for expectations, the series up until now was pretty light-hearted, there was no reason to expect anything other than "I want Claire" from her. But with the stakes being raised so high now, I can not escape feeling how selfish that seems in the grand scheme of things.

I am not saying that everyone should suddenly have a problem with Rei's goals, I explicitly said that I feel frustrated with her, and I explained why. I know that the explanation as to why she has not tried doing anything can simply be "I really do not care about anything other than Claire, at least not enough to do something about it", and if other readers have no issues with it, that is fine. I personally just find it incomprehensible that someone with that level of knowledge of the events and people involved would just sit on the side-lines with no thoughts beyond "must keep Claire safe".

It is this level of detachment from the grand scheme of things with so many lives on the line that leads me to wonder if she actually perceives this world and its people as real, on a subconscious level at least.

Also note that by trying to deescalate the situation or at the very least going after the shadowy people who seem to be enflaming it for their own purposes, she would also act to protect Claire. I imagine Claire would be in considerably less danger if the revolution was avoided or at the very least its violence somewhat mitigated.

You know, I am kind of frustrated with Rei. She knew all of this was to go down. She knows everything since she played this game to death and back in real life, likely finishing it multiple times. Perhaps she could have prevented the violence, or mitigated it in some measure.

It's good you're invested, this becomes a major plot point.

Oof! Looking forward to it!

last edited at Jan 27, 2022 4:17PM

I love how they put the commoners as the villains here, no interest in reading anymore. Don't know why the author decided to put his dog water politics into this, just disgusting.

I don't think you're reading the same manga as everyone else

Perhaps they thought more in the line of "commoners are depicted doing evil and violent stuff", in which case the original poster needs to read on the French Revolution, upon which this setting seems to draw inspiration from. Historically, the masses of commoners absolutely and unequivocally did some pretty horrible acts once their anger boiled over. Having genuine grievances with the system is not a "any atrocity we commit is justified" get-out-of-jail card.

You know, I am kind of frustrated with Rei. She knew all of this was to go down. She knows everything since she played this game to death and back in real life, likely finishing it multiple times. Perhaps she could have prevented the violence, or mitigated it in some measure.

Perhaps let the princes in on everything (it would be easy for her to prove her claims as, again, she knows everything, including like, intimate thoughts of the characters here; just flaunt that knowledge in their faces), try to get them to deescalate things. Or perhaps approach the King. Try to impress the need for reform on the people who have the power to do something, scare them into action or some such.

Especially since this chapter seems to hint at someone manipulating the events to stoke up the unrest and violence (the whole burning incident seems to have been engineered by sabotaging Dede's wand in some way). Could be Lambert, could be the Queen or someone from the Church, hell, could be someone from the commoners' movement itself in order to galvanise people and get the ball rolling. Or it could be someone else entirely. But whoever it is, Rei knows they are behind it and has done precisely nothing to try and thwart their efforts before serious injuries and major violence occurred.

I am not saying it would have worked, but with a prospect as bloody as a revolution looming ahead, she could have at least tried. Yet all she seems interested in is keeping Claire safe. Kind of like "fuck everything, I just want my waifu here".

It is obvious she is not on board with the nobles' perspective. While she is refusing to declare her stances openly, there are more than enough hints showing how she feels. So with her disagreeing with the order of things, could it be that she actually wants the revolution to happen? I kind of have a hard time seeing that. She knows the violence it would unleash, and she does not strike me as someone who condones violence. At the same time she undoubtedly also knows that an armed uprising is not the only way to reform the system, as there are plenty of real world examples of countries abandoning feudalism without going through the Reign of Terror.

Is this perhaps a "I must not interfere with history" kind of deal? I also have a hard time seeing that, she never brought up such concepts, and besides, this reality is based on an otome game which presumably ends without exploring the further history of this setting and how the events in the game impacted it. For all she knows, the continuation of history past the game's time framework will lead to utter misery and chaos. Essentially, she has no idea what the timeline will look like and thus has no concrete reason to protect said timeline.

I am kind of wondering, does she actually see this reality as, well... reality? Is she perhaps subconsciously still treating this as a game, only now she actually gets to romance her preferred character as opposed to those the game used to steer her towards by default? Is that why she seems to have next to no motives except keeping Claire safe?

Talking about the upload request page, would it be possible to make the title not be mandatory?
I understand it for series suggestions, but I don't always know what to use when I'm just suggesting images.

Whenever I suggest images, I usually just put the pairing tag name as the title, ie "Ganyu x Keqing picture", which works fine. If it's an artist's OC's I just put "Original yuri picture". The title doesn't have to be anything specific really, as long as it lets the uploader (or whoever sees the requests) know what you're requesting.

Essentially this. You put in the name of the franchise and the pairing (Genshin Impact, Ganyu/Keqing), it helps the staffer in charge of the image section to easily and more speedily sift through the requests.

Once in a while, I have this weird realization of how big the Dynasty community actually is. It feels like there's just a few dozen people who regularly comment, to the point that unfamiliar user names jump out. But then I look at the list of Most Popular on the landing page, where some have over 20K views, and it makes me realize how many "silent" users there must be on this site. Makes me wonder what the ratio is for lurkers to active community participants.

Well, we can only guess, because the numbers are not really all that straightforward. For example, let us use the January of 2019; there were over 600 000 unique visitors passing through the site that month. We can safely assume that 20% to 50% of that traffic were bots. We can also safely assume that most visitors were actually counted twice, once for the PC connection and once for the mobile one, as the PC/mobile divide in the numbers is roughly equal. But the problem is that some users use only one or the other and there is essentially no way to tell any of this apart.

Basically, it is guesswork, and it depends on what you think how many users utilise both the mobile and PC connection to get here, and how many use only one of these avenues. But it is likely the site gets a few hundred thousand individual people passing through it on a monthly basis.

At that time (2019) there were also around 55 000 registered users (people with Dynasty accounts). The Forum received around 7000 unique visits monthly (same caveats apply, up to 50% of this are likely bots and some users are counted twice).

So the active Forum community really represents only a tiny percentage of the overall mass of people who use this site. Hell, the majority of people who visit the Forum itself are lurkers (as it is plainly evident we do not have active posters counted in 4-digit figures).

Also, these are all 2019 numbers, the site is significantly bigger now than it was back then.

Honestly, I was surprised that some of the nobles even acknowledged that the common class both contributes taxes and that they could be educated. Seems like a pretty tame picture of aristocracy compared to real life; I would've assumed more of them to have Claire's attitude.

Oh, there have been a few nobles who sided with the French Revolution (see: Marquis de Lafayette, Count of Mirabeau), so it's not as unlikely as you think.

Even better example is Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans. Cousin of King Louis XVI and the highest ranking aristocrat in France after the members of the royal family, and also one of the wealthiest men in the country at the time of the Revolution.

Spent large sums of money on providing food and shelter for commoners who lost their homes; opened his palace to people of all classes to be admitted in, which the revolutionaries used as a safe haven to discuss political theory and future actions (because the royal police did not have the authority to enter the Duke's palace); was a Jacobin; was in favour of democracy, limiting the powers of the monarchy, and separation of Church and state; was opposed to institutions of feudalism and slavery; represented the Second Estate (the nobility) in the Estates-General but sided with the Third Estate (the commoners) in 1789; was one of the key figures of the early stages of the Revolution; renounced his titles; and in the end as a member of the National Convention even voted for the death of his cousin, the King.

Was arrested after his son (the future King Louis Philippe) betrayed the Revolution and was guillotined soon thereafter, even though there was no evidence he even knew of his son's intentions.

Also, is it just me, or did the tone of this series become somewhat darker with all this social conflict? It has been pretty light-hearted until now, but with the boiling anger presented amongst the commoners and the seriousness with which the issue is treated in the story, I can definitely see this going dark places... then again, this actually reminded me that the title of the game Rei got isekai'd into is literally "Revolution".

...why are y'all even engaging with some obvious drive-by disposable troll acc's provo bullshit in the first place tho?

It has been a slow day, alright?! That said, we spurred Nevri to provide a decent hentai recommendation (also a somewhat sweet story), so it was not all bad.