Nah the arranged marriage are handled by both families and usually you have an interview beforehand to know your partner and decide, so if you say that he agreed to marry her without knowing her and that makes him shit, then the girl is also shit because she agreed to marry him without knowing him

But you see, the critical difference here is that only one of them is getting in the way of yuri. Him.

That's how arranged marriage works. It's all about stability, not being happy. You're supposed to learn to love your partner over time after marriage, not before it.

I don't see how this is contrary to anything I said.

What made him shitty? Please explain this to me because I seriously don't understand.

edit: Like, you don't have to feel pity for him or anything. I don't. But what do we even know about the guy? He was gonna be married to Aoi. That's literally all we ever found out.

He nearly got in the way of yuri and he's a guy. Therefore, his existence is worth less than dogshit.
My reasoning is flawless.

If you want an half-hearted attempt at a serious response, he agreed to go through with an arranged marriage with someone he knew fuck-all about without bothering to confirm whether or not she was happy about it. The dissatisfaction was plainly written on her face; someone (not him) even asked why she looked so down about it all.

Therefore, he's probably walking garbage masquerading as a human. Maybe.

last edited at Oct 18, 2019 7:13AM

I liked it.

As for the shitty guy, fuck him. I don't feel an ounce of pity, only satisfaction.

I'm now vetoing this entire conversation. It's gone on past the point where you both were going to stop, and since neither of you seem capable of doing so I'll help out.

BugDevil and Minalinsky, shaddap!

B-but he started it!

Nah, jokes aside, I think I'm done. Feel free to leave a reply in that thread but the equivalent of getting water splashed in your face kinda dampens things so I think I'm going to do something else equally unproductive.

sigh

Oh please, opening your post with that? You should have done that in the first place and saved us some time even bothering to discuss this if you're going to act like some exasperated teacher trying to correct a student. I would have just left your post be for the sake of ending this, but now I feel compelled to say something!

It's incest. Something whose negative effects we can perceive with relative ease and basic observation.

Says the person who literally just said they can't get realistic figures on consensual incestuous relationships a few posts before...? Now you're telling me that measuring the psychological aspects of consensual incestuous relationships can be done with relative ease?

Of course the genetics side of it is measurable, but if you're going to harp on that point further I'd have to assume you uh, didn't read anything I've been saying in regards to that. It can be mitigated, just as much as those with genetic disorders have their conditions mitigated. And even those with little to no risk at all like cousins don't exactly get a free pass, even in states where it's legal, it's still looked up on with a great deal of stigma. Nor does it address the stigmatization of homosexual incest, etc. which is stigmatized even by those who are accepting of homosexuality.

The rest of your post is mostly irrelevant to the main discussion so I'm not going to argue about the fallibility of modern science for the sake of brevity.

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 12:37PM

Well that's your problem then, I feel this is just repetitive now.

Sure, then I'll stop. It certainly is repetitive, but not for the reason that we are in agreement. I don't feel like it's morally justifiable to deny rights to people who commit an act whose harm can be significantly mitigated in procedures we already enact for couples that we legalize that are at greater risk, and you feel the opposite on the basis that it's harmful for our greater society with no appreciable benefit to legalize. It's more of an "us" problem, really, and I certainly don't think we're changing each other's minds any time soon.

---

Scratch that, I do want to say one thing though.

And I just literally told you modern science, which has accepted Homosexuality as normal, still considers incest bad to a certain degree. Because of facts, not ideology.

If you think modern science is completely unblemished by political and social biases, well... you sweet summer child. I'm not even talking about incest in this case. To be honest, I hesitate to say it's even gotten better at all. Nevermind something as nebulous as defining whether something is a mental illness or not, even things you'd think are hard facts and numbers are often "interpreted" to a certain end, to put it softly.

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 12:12PM

Personally I really appreciate your mega-posts of abstract cultural commentary or MPACC for short. Good job. And BugDevil too for that matter (though I don't agree with his point of view at all).

To be honest, I'm slightly surprised anyone else was reading it at all. But thanks.

alex whens the next ch and translation coming

Translation, I wouldn't know, but the author stated on their fanbox that the next chapter's coming on the 28th.

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 12:00PM

The story, folks--when was the last time one of these posts was about the story?

Hey man, I tried. lol

You worked hard. Lol

Of course I meant “these mega-posts of abstract cultural commentary.”

How unfair. I also worked hard on my mega-posts of abstract cultural commentary, thank you very much.

Psychologically speaking the birth mother always has a greater impact than a step-mother, even if you were raised by the step-mother from the start. No matter how much one tries to deny it, there is inherently a stronger bond to the birth mother by default. And such a bond has greater repercussions in incest cases.

Yes, but it has nothing to do with the genetics aspect of it and everything to do with the social perception and initial proximity aspects of it. That's why it's more damaging. Example: if a child was adopted as a baby, do you think they'd be more destroyed by their birth mother that they never knew abusing them, or their adopted mother? Of course it'd be the latter. It's a matter of influence and proximity, not % of genes shared.

Not more in danger, they get it more often percentage wise worldwide. Have you ever looked at African statistics?

Their situation is completely different. Many of those people were infected through their mothers giving birth to them. And even straight transmissions have more to do with poverty and lack of education than anything. We're talking about the situation in educated and developed countries in regards to sex, because that's the entire framework for this conversation so far.

Who was talking about benefits? I'm saying incest has only inherent detriments. By itself, without HIV or any other outside force used as a lynchpin, incest is simply bad. Therefore your HIV analogy fails.

By that reasoning, it's not incest that causes problems, it's genetic disorders!
Once again, to begin with, the act of incest itself does not necessitate procreation.

Furthermore, you were the one talking about detriments, which naturally lends to a discussion about perceived benefits for allowing certain relationships from forming as opposed to their detriments. My point is that homosexual relationships could in fact and was in fact described in the same way, as a form of relationship with "only inherent detriments" in many regards as in the first place, as it lacks the direct social benefit of reproduction, again, an argument used by many of its detractors. Fascists, for example, did not hate homosexuals because they're big meanie-faces. They hated it because there's no direct benefit to the state and society they were trying to build, and their ideology is entirely based on the individual serving the state.

On the subject of HIV specifically, yes, homosexual men are far greater at risk than other populations, and many did in fact argue that it's only detrimental to allow them to be together to our greater society as it lacks the above benefit intrinsic to heterosexual relationships. And in a sense, they're not completely wrong; as I linked earlier, it's no secret that homosexual men transmit the disease at the greatest frequency. But the point is taking away their rights on the basis of this is dumb for reasons I hope I don't need to elaborate on. The same goes for incest.

And again, don't pull literal developing countries where the context of how it's transmitted and why into this because the situation there is completely different in regards to education, poverty, and even just the cause of transmission.

It's not a stretch to call incest self-harm or abuse in many cases, because that is quite literally what it is treated as legally and in medical terms. Science is on the same level of knowledge with incest and homosexuality, but only one of them has been declared harmless and acceptable.

This is hardly absolute. The social climate in regards to this was different and you don't have to go even 50 years back when many scientists "declared" the same about homosexuality, citing it as a mental illness.

Well this is kinda missing the point though. Even consensual incest is not a good thing as I already elaborated in spades. At best it does little harm. And whether it's legal or not, it will happen anyway.

I disagree. What you elaborated on is that incestuous couples should be singled out for issues present in plenty of other couples that don't receive that same prohibition. I do agree that it will happen anyway, which in that sense, is it better not to accept and educate them to mitigate risks, instead of shun and spit on them?

Uh... ok? I said incest is first and foremost an issue because of procreation. You said then homosexual incest must be accepted. I said that's not true, because in the first place homosexuality isn't widely accepted. These are two "abnormal" things and that only mulitplies people's rejection of it. Incest isn't any less gross to people just because they like homosexuality. I'm just saying that on average you will hardly find people who will support homosexual incest, because that requires getting over yourself twice instead of once.

I'm saying the people reason don't like incest has very little to do with procreation - it's a post-hoc justification, which, well, nothing you're saying here really denies that.

People hate incest regardless of whether or not procreation is possible. Incestuous homosexuals are not accepted. Incestuous sterile couples aren't given a pass. Viability has little to do with people's perceptions beyond giving them a scientific reason to justify their gut rejection of it, and even viable incestuous couples have steps that can take that make them less at risk; to begin with, they're already objectively less at risk than many couples with genetic disorder that we allow to breed in the first place.

I don't fundamentally disagree with you after all, so unless you got some important things to add, we could end it here.

On the contrary, I fundamentally disagree with you on many things. But you're welcome to end it here and I'll stop replying to whatever you post to this, if you do.

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 11:52AM

Well, we will see how those cases will be treated in the future. If a doctor thinks it's a bad idea, I certainly would agree with that assessment. You're justifying one probematic thing with a loophole in another questionable situation here. I find it a bit crass to equate caring for the future child's health to eugenics. But slippery slope argument and all that stuff....

Eugenics is controlled breeding, not necessarily genocide and gassing. Ensuring that those with "inferior" genes such as individuals with genetic defects is in fact a form of it, not a slippery slope at all. Quite literally the definition:

eu·gen·ics
noun
the science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics. Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, it fell into disfavor only after the perversion of its doctrines by the Nazis.

If it's uncomfortable it's because it does leads to a slippery slope of other shit, because people start deciding this and that is also inferior genes and then we get into really nasty territory.

Pseudo-incest does have similar psychological consequences to standard incest sometimes, sure. But on the other hand knowing that you come from that person (additionally with the genetic issues) has a profound psychological effect.

Only in the sense that the parent has even greater authority because they're more likely to have consistently been in the child's life from the start as an authority figure. Again, this has little to do with blood relation and everything to do with being in a position of authority and abusing it. Yes, a blood related parent would often be closer with the child and exercise greater authority compared to an adopted one, but correlation and not causation and all that jazz.

But HIV is transfered by straight couples too (in fact statistically more so) and lesbians have almost zero chance of ever getting it through intercourse. Therefore, it's scientifically proven that it has no profounder consequences in homosexuals.
Incest on the other hand is scientifically proven to be only detrimental. At best it creates few issues, at worst it has great ones. The inherent act itself is the problem, not some outside force like HIV.
That is the false euquivalence.

Straight couples are statistically more in danger? I have no idea what you mean by that.
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics
Homosexual men make up over half of the new cases yearly. Obviously I wasn't speaking of lesbians in this case when I mention anal sex.
There is no direct benefit to homosexuality either. It's not a matter of being a benefit or a detriment, it's a matter of allowing the individual in question to freely choose who they wish to love and not using science to justify stripping rights away when there's steps that can be taken to alleviate the issues in question.

From all the reasearch I did on America in particular the statistics vary wildly, mostly because obviously consensual incest will never be reported (as it is illegal) and everything else that appears is sexual abuse and rape by family members. Many statistics are around the ballpark of 10-30 million incest victims across the country. One article in partiular mention Los Angeles as a particularily bad place. Alaska has some of the highest rape rates in the country and incest is part of that. Therefore states with higher rape rates have higher official incest rates.
Honestly, it's annoying to pin such things down, but it's undeniable that this is a big issue.

Well for starters, that isn't exactly what I was talking about, and Los Angeles/Alaska is hardly a southern state. We were talking about long term genetic effects on the supposedly "turn a blind eye to incest inbreeding backwards south" stereotype, no?

For what you speak of, it's not an unsurprising statistic if only because most rapes are perpetuated not by the spooky hooded man following you in the park, but by someone close to you, that you know. For many children, it can often end up being their family. But as I said above, the real issue here is the abuse of the position of authority. Blood related or not, the damage done is based on how much authority and influence the person in question has over the child,. and whether the perpetrator is blood related or not doesn't lessen or amplify the vileness of it. To conflate this with an incestuous relationship between two consenting adults as justification for taking away their rights is silly. I remember reading about one couple who was exasperated about this exact issue, feeling as though their mutual and consented love with his sister constantly gets compared to an uncle diddling his niece.

Funnily enough, hiding behind child victims as a means to justify the withholding of rights for consenting adults is exactly what they tried to do with homosexuals too.

What...? I didn't say that. There is still a huuuge bias against homosexuality as is, adding incest to it doesn't help. That's combining two minorities that are observed critically, so it's inherently a losing battle.

For what it's worth... incest between sisters is probably the least "problematic" option, aside from cousins.

I wish I could say that the people who I'm talking about just hate homosexuality in general, but they're 100% all for yuri but take up a crusade against the one yuri incest couple. (and are VERY vocal about it, since it's the most popular pairing in Japan) Believe me, it has nothing to do with a bias against homosexuality, they love homosexuality. It's just that they perpetually need to complain about the incest pairing and how horrible everyone who likes it is. Pleasant bunch, really.

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 10:31AM

Well you equated it to eugenics, but medically speaking no doctor would agree with that kind of thing. With siblings this can have completely unpredictable effects, which makes it worse. It's always better to be able to prepare for the consequences of a bad decision.
Actually a lot of people are advocating that having children despite hereditary genetic defects is child abuse... but that's just an aside. As you said, it's not outlawed.

Outlawing it is eugenics, which we do not practice with the genetically defect. That's consistent with my statement and exactly my point. We let those with genetic defects procreate, which means it's hypocrisy to outlaw even childless romance for siblings. There's nothing stopping people from enacting the same exact procedures already in place for the genetically defect, who have a higher rate of risk in the first place in many cases.

Well so in the end it's becaue of incest after all. Age gap relationships of that kind are dangerous enough, but with a parent it is indeed worse.

No, because an adoptive or foster parent that has no genetic relation to the child in question would in my eyes be just as bad as a genetic parent. A parent has a position of greater authority and influence over a child than pretty much anyone else, blood relation or not. Incest factors nothing into this, at least in my eyes.

I'm not excactly refering to power dynamics here.... it has a lot to do with the psychological background of the siblings. Aside from the fact that to the human mind incest is innately wrong, to be in a sexual relationship with someone brought up as family always takes a psychological toll. This issue would completely disappear if they were estranged siblings that were brought up separately and don't know they are related or cases like that.
This one definitely has a lot more pressure from society involved in the equation too, admittedly.

I'll be honest with you, that a lot of vague words there so I'm not sure what I'm really replying to here. Well, if you admit that it's more of society's effects on the couple rather than the actual interaction of the couple itself, I'll let it be.

Uninformed misconceptions cannot compare to actual scientific facts... please don't use false equivalencies.

It's a scientific fact that anal sex has a significantly higher transmission rate for HIV. That fact is exactly what was weaponized against gay men, as well as the statistic fact that infections were more common in gay communities, which is a natural result of the above and hardly a misconception. Facts, scientific or otherwise, are not neutral things that exist in their own vacuum, they can be weaponized against people. It's hardly false equivalency, its the same slippery shit slope of mass hysteria about how "consequences will never be the same!" if you let people do it. Heck, the solution is even the same here! Use a condom.

I'm not putting up some signs of "Incest paradise Alabama" here, I'm merely saying that the rate of genetic defects in places with lots of past incest are still visible in such areas today.

I mean, I hate to ask this, but citations please? I've never seen this supposed effect in Southern America, whether it be in real life or in studies. Only in fiction where it's treated as the joke it is so I'm gonna call bullshit on that.

The main issue anyone takes with incest is procreation. Get rid of that problem and "consenting adults" can do whatever messed up things they want as long as nobody else gets harmed. That's how society already works. Giving them the right to marry or be open about such relationships will only bring to light what is already there anyway. We already discussed the issues above, so everything else is just a matter of defining the laws.

Oh really now? So you're telling me nobody looks down on brother/brother and sister/sister couples and just consider it, you know, a weird quirk! Because they can't procreate, so everyone's totally cool with it. Please. I regularly see people trash on yuri sister incest couples (see my icon) acting like it's an affront to humanity itself. And that's a fictional couple.

Well it certainly is gross, but I'm looking at this objectively. Again, borderline for the reason that it is that low.

"Borderline" is still distorting it. It's not an appreciable difference, this is a hard fact. We're talking about moving from a 97% chance of being safe to a 96% chance. Whereas "borderline" is still attempting to paint it as potentially risky, just barely skirting on by the line of acceptable. And "gross" is a subjective judgment. Plenty of people think I'm gross because I'm gay. They can mind their own business and fuck right off.

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 5:42AM

And yet (depending on the genetic disorder) a doctor in most cases would recommend not to have a child to such a person or at least dissuade them from doing it. Preparing them for the consequences. Someone who has a genetic bone disease is basically dooming their future child to have the same. That is not good family planning.
With incest, you don't even have a guarantee for anything. It could turn out any way, so it's like the lottery.

And yet it's still not outlawed, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. You're saying that with incest, you have a lesser chance, so it's... worse? It's not like anything is stopping a doctor from "dissuading" or "highly recommending not to have a child" a brother and sister couple

It's good that you bring up psychology, because it is a far more potent point than genetics in this day and age. Parent/child incest is extremely harmful to the child (not that it really helps the parent either). Even brother/sister incest brings a slew of mental issues with it. I think disregarding those as just "cultural" is a bit rash.

I've always found the "power dynamics!" approach to arguing against incest as incredibly weak, outside of parent/child cases which I'm hardly advocating for in most cases. Except in this manga, Asuka x Ayako the best. But in reality, nah, of course parent/child isn't okay and it's not because it's incest, it's pretty much bad for the same reason an actual teacher/student relationship would be bad. And yes, that would be grossly imbalanced power dynamics, only even worse because a parent is even more significant and in an even greater position of authority.

But in regards to others like brother/sister or cousins, the reason becomes much weaker. That level of "imbalanced power dynamics" is something that can exist in nearly every relationship you can think of, whether it be born out of differences in money (rich and poor), age (older and younger), social status (senpai and kouhai), gender (the role expected to play by one's gender), among other factors. One can hardly argue that "being siblings" is a greater factor to contribute to an intrinsically imbalanced power dynamic than the aforementioned factors in every, or even most situations, and yet we hardly ban relationships from forming on the basis of those other factors - in fact, some are even idolized and romanticized.

I don't believe that if incest was legal that everyone would scramble to pounce their family, but the cases would unavoidably increase. That is literally undeniable. It's not going to tear down society or some nonsense like that, but America already shows what the countryside does when they "inofficially" turn a blind eye to that kinda thing.

The same kind of arguments were used against homosexuality. Let the homosexuals go about their way and it only will spread AIDS! was one of the latest of the tripe they had to justify it. I mean except for the part where they actually do say it will tear down society. Still, it amounts to little more than fearmongering. The southerner incest thing is a literal fucking meme, I hope you realize. It's a stereotype based on the fact that many communities were isolated before the invention of faster modes of transportation. The stereotype has some basis in truth for a small number of particularly isolated communities back a century ago when there were were little other options for them, but you're making it sound like there's mutant incest babies walking around all over the place there.

Eh, sure, there are cultural reason for everything. But often nature inspires culture in these cases. Procreating between non-related people creates a healthier gene-pool, so inherently humans want to do that and because of that it is normalized not to marry family members and that's how the entire economic strucutre even came to be the way it is. So what is the cause and the effect here, really?

Certainly, that is a possibility, and I can't prove or disprove it otherwise. But even assuming that the ban is born solely out of "wanting to better our collective gene pool," should we really be limiting personal rights between consenting adult individuals for a reason that pretty much amounts to "it's not good for the state"?

Oh really now? You're telling me 1st degree cousins are not in danger of genetical overlap? Come on.
It's certainly not all that problematic, which is why it's borderline.

I edited it to say "almost 0 disadvantage" instead precisely because i saw this coming.
It's not significant enough to really warrant discouraging.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/04/us/few-risks-seen-to-the-children-of-1st-cousins.html
Even if you tell people this, they'll still go "its weird and gross still!" so yeah. I stand by my statement.

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 5:00AM

Look, I'm not a biologist (more into Chemistry). When studies show that genetic defects and inbreeding lead to an ever increasing rate of genetic failures, I believe them. We had very famous examples of that in royal families across Europe for centuries. The first generation might not be as affected by it, but if you simply make incest something acceptable, the chances only unecessarily rise.

Letting people with genetic disorders breed also raises the chances of genetic defects in a population but telling them they can't breed gets uncomfortably close to eugenics now, doesn't it?

I'm not particularly in the mood to debate the ethics surrounding incest between consenting adults, but the genetics argument against it becomes a weaker and weaker argument as time passes. There are other options like adoption, and technology marches ever forward to assist in predicting, preventing, or even solving such issues. For most, genetics is merely a post-hoc justification for their gut rejection of incest as a concept that's much more rooted in psychology and historical traditions. People who use genetics as an argument seem to construct this imaginary scenario that everyone will be scrambling to get it on with their brother or sister for multiple generations in a row the moment it stops being outlawed, which is an imaginary fantasy scenario, to put it lightly. Frankly, half the people I meet can barely like their siblings, nevermind love.

Instead, one could argue for example, incest is commonly rejected across cultures because it was historically highly disadvantageous to a family from a business perspective. Marriage is traditionally less about love and more about business transactions and forging alliances, and an alliance with your own family is a whole lot of fucking nothing, so it was naturally discouraged by most families, with the exception of the weirdo nobles that were obsessed with bloodline purity, but that's another matter entirely because it was again, still less about love and more about marketing and strict enforcement.

There is a reason even cousins are borderline for most nations.

That has nothing to do with genetics as there's almost 0 biological disadvantage to cousin incest.
It's more or less because people in those countries that are against it are ruled by their gut reactions in this regard and not much else.

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 4:24AM

Overly cutesy kouhai falls in love with clumsy male sempai: This is trash, misogynistic and the most pathetic wish fulfillment

Overly cutesy Kouhai falls in love with clumsly female sempai: This is the highest form of art and only deserves the utmost praise

Clumsy? I think you mean "lazy but intelligent, perpetually speaking in sarcastic monologues" male senpai. Or "breaks your phone and verbally puts you down but only because he loves you so much and is misunderstood" male senpai.

Jokes aside, changing the gender itself is a big change in terms of the both direct portrayal and the more indirect context surrounding the character in question.

tkmiz put it nicely in that an end of the world scenario involving two girls in love is beautiful to him, but with a guy and a girl it's just obnoxious, in that the context of the relationship changes completely, even if they were portrayed the exact same way (which they wouldn't be anyway).

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 3:42AM

Good job. That b... bad person insulted me grossly and supported incest and rape in comics on the laughable claim that it's just fiction. She deserves to be banned. Next in line for being grossly offensive are Jeanne Mathison (^a piece of her is quoted above) and Minalinsky.

Frankly, I can't differentiate between "invested parody" and "actually serious" at this point.
For what it's worth, I don't have anything against incest in real life too! (assuming it's between two adults of course)

Just to make you more grossly offended. In case you're serious. But surely you're just joking, right?

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 3:16AM

Feast your eyes, everyone. Child abuse, incest and rape. It's so CUTE!

This but unironically.

The world needs more people like you. (‘▿’ʃʃ)

Unironically.

People who feel child abuse/incest/rape is cute??

So far I've only read a cute story about incest, not rape and abuse. I mean, unless you're talking about the nonsensical prattling of various posters that's borderline abusive to my ears - but that stuff isn't cute.

Seriously though, some of you are trying so hard to paint this as some kind of insidious story about broken and twisted people, like the poster who made the mental leap to assume that Ayako saying "it's her fault" means that she's talking about her secret drugging and raping of her unconscious daughter rather than her lack of presence in her daughter's life due to being a single working mom away from home all the time, a theme that's already been brought up multiple times in the story. As opposed to sekrit drug-induced rape shenanigans, I mean.

I wish I could say I'm making this shit up. Actually, I take back what I said. It's cute how ridiculously tone-deaf to the writing of the story this idea is. Only ironically cute though.

---

Let me explain one thing further as to why it's tone deaf, since I realize now I'm pretty much saying it's dumb without really explaining why. What people should understand about stories like these is the intent of the people writing or drawing it: what they seek is not to depict some 1:1 version of the average (not even all!) taboo relationship in question, whether it be incest, or loli age gap, or polygamy, or whatever some posters here and elsewhere feel the need to morally police about every so often. What they want to do is strip away all or at least most of the most harmful negatives, only depicting the potential good or appealing sides - yes, there are always sides that are appealing or good - of the relationship in question. An idealized form of it. So people coming charging in on their crusade announcing that real life versions of said relationship are not necessarily like this, or even worse, trying to apply real life conventions to said relationship, are pretty much assuming everyone else is fucking stupid and are attempting to bring enlightenment to us uncivilized savages, and I can't say I appreciate that much. I mean the theory Arcane cooked up is harmless enough, if completely implausible, but in the greater context of this discussion, it's getting pretty old, seeing people constantly trying to twist the story to fit the "muh abusive" lens some other people are absolutely demanding everyone else see the story through

last edited at Jun 23, 2019 1:23AM

Feast your eyes, everyone. Child abuse, incest and rape. It's so CUTE!

This but unironically.

The only other Marina I know of is in Bang Dream and is a girl.
Maybe it's a last name?

last edited at Jun 22, 2019 11:07AM

Thing is, lots of yuri manga has undefined characters in part because a lot of the audience thinks it's gauche and rude when a woman says something like that out loud about herself. The purity is the point. And I'm never gonna get behind that... good to see this author isn't doing it.

That isn't really why I don't like it. It's just more romantic to me if you love someone and because of that you are gay, rather than being gay and because of that you love someone.

To put it another way, I don't want to read about, or think about myself as someone who would stop loving my partner if they got a sex change, or magically woke up as the opposite gender, all else held equal. In fact, It's actually one of the biggest annoyances I have with protagonists of otokonoko/trap manga even if I like that type of character a lot too, but the non-crossdressing protagonists usually have this whole "nooo but he's a guy" tripe that just goes on and on until the end of the manga even if they like everything about the other person; sometimes most of the time the entire conflict of the manga is predicated on this and nothing else - Prunus Girl being one example, and I don't even dislike that one. Yeah there's the typical "but we're GIRLS" line in yuri manga but usually that gets solved quickly and then it goes into other drama so it's more endearing than anything like that. So it's not really a woman or a man thing for me, it's obnoxious either way.

That isn't to say people who define themselves by their identity that way don't exist nor am I saying they're necessarily bad people or anything, but I don't really want to read about them.

last edited at Jun 21, 2019 1:15AM

My original complaint was that yuri manga has a tendency to not want anyone to speak out loud about the gay part of a gay relationship, even within the own characters' heads.

It came to my mind for this manga not because it's especially bad in this regard, but because it apparently has a main character driven by normative pressure to marry, but who is attracted to women (or at least is attracted to one now)... and there's no textual acknowledgement on her part of the non-normativeness of that! It's like, the pressure to have a normal life is her driving psychological force, but meanwhile she has a "love is love; sometimes gender doesn't matter!" orientation toward gayness at the same time, and it's baffling.

It might sound weird to you but that's exactly how I feel about my own shit and its primarily why I read yuri and not western lesbian fiction. I don't want yuri to resemble the latter, it's foreign to me and I don't really like reading it usually, so people pushing for yuri to be more like that is pretty off-putting.

For me, it's like that oneshot that was posted a while back, Rainbow. Not taken to that extreme of a level where I see myself asking my partner when we're 80 "HM ARE WE GAY," but I understood the sentiment being preached by the author. I teach and I have kids that ask me "When did you find out your were gay?" and I always tell them I never really just woke up one day and found out, I just happened to fall in love with someone and they happened to be the same sex.

If you define your relationship on the basis of your identity first and partner second that's fine and all, but some people (like me) prefer to define it by our partner first and identity second.

last edited at Jun 20, 2019 11:12PM

I didn't choose teaching as a profession for nothing. Probably.

It doesn't need to be a quote from the author because it's pretty obvious what the joke is.

1. Hino and Koguma have discussed previously that being held back would result in less consistent visits from Koguma as she would not know when Hino is cutting classes, thereby establishing that being held back is a bad end for the manga and their relationship.
2. Koguma says that tests are coming soon, and that HIno would need to pass all the subjects or she'll be held back.
3. Hino says "Sure, when hell freezes over" thereby implying that it's impossible to do so, fating herself to being held back.
4. The series reaches its bad end, hence the message saying that the manga is over, and to look forward to the next author's work, a fairly common message at the end of various serialized manga.
5. Koguma tsukkomis with a "Wait a second!" because it's obviously a silly way to end the manga and just a joke.

last edited at May 22, 2019 1:08AM

aren't we ever gonna accept the fact that characters in fictional works aren't supposed to be perfect?

Hino and Koguma are perfect though.
For each other.

last edited at May 19, 2019 8:18PM

the way some of you sound like you'd think Hino held up a fucking knife to Koguma's throat to force her into the toilet rather than "threatening" to stop holding hands. It's like calling it physical abuse when someone says they'll bop someone on the head for keeping a secret.

At this point I think some of you should just stop reading this.

last edited at May 19, 2019 8:01PM