THE DONUT PUN WAS MADE. I'm out. Nothing can top that euphoria I felt.

Yeaaaaah, get in!

^ Just because it's fiction doesn't mean you can completely ignore reality, though? Like if a character was shot in the head with an RPG and survived it, people would be justified in complaining about it, even though ~it's fiction~.

People can accept a ridiculous premise, because the whole point of a premise is what drives the story, and they make sense within the setting that's been constructed. Lots of premises sound ridiculous, like the concept of a ring being able to turn you into an invisible wraith and can only be destroyed by being thrown into a very specific volcano, but the point is that it's not out of place in the world Tolkien created.

This series mimics real life, except what if they were kidnapped and forced to fight each other? Incredibly obvious and glaring flaws in the realism are going to be more noticeable, because the setting is more realistic.

Characters dying before anybody even knows who they are? Gr8 writing.

don't underestimate us ;)

I just feel uncontrollably horny whenever I see anything alive at all, tbh. It's like a super power.

As for the rest of this discussion, it makes me sad that people are exerting this much effort trying to categorize and psychoanalyze the main character based on very little evidence. Leaving aside the problem of deciding a character is incapable of romance or sexual attraction simply because she doesn't obviously display the signals of it (yet), this is a yuri manga, and the ultimate result seems eminently predictable.

I think they can believe MC is ace/aro if they want to identify with the protagonist; I'm not one to deny anybody headcanons, as long as it makes sense, and it certainly makes sense to interpret it that way. However! I also don't think anybody really has the right to be surprised/upset/betrayed/whatever if that headcanon doesn't turn out to be true.

I feel like this is just a subversion of "love at first sight" rather than anything deeper - one character not feeling enamoured with another upon meeting them and being confessed to, and those feelings having to grow naturally instead of just appearing suddenly when the plot demands it.

tbh I'm kind of a little surprised at the assumptions going on in the thread? Just because a character doesn't immediately feel sexually attracted to another doesn't mean they're ace/aro and incapable of it; it just means that those feelings might not develop. Non-ace/aro people can't just summon up feelings of love or lust on a whim.

Guilty as charged.
I do consider it as a possible (and likely) interpretation that Ran is happy about the gift she received from Keiko, but if we put our heads together I guess we could create dozens of other possible interpretations too. And we might even then not be in the vicinity of what the author had in mind when that page was created.

Absolutely. Part of what makes reading a piece of fiction so much fun is the subjective fan interaction that goes on with the work.

If the note Ran is reading is the manufacturer's instructions, and those instructions were contained inside of the box - then it might also be an option that Keiko doesn't even know about them. Impossible to know, unless the author intervenes and reveal an explicit answer.

But she still picked out that type of flower as opposed to any other. She was probably shopping for longevity.

Well, regardless of how we chose to interpret such details, I guess we both are eagerly looking forward to the next chapter of Stretch.

It's also 3:30am. So that's my excuse. :p

Interesting ideas, but...

It might simply be that the intent of the last page is to show how Ran enjoyed the nice gift she received from Keiko.

You're doing the exact same thing as the people you're "but"ing, though? You're viewing the work the way you think it was intended, extrapolating from what little we've been given in the same way others are. You think the page shows that Ran appreciated the gift, but you're still using your own subjective interpretation to decide that.

Shou doesn't explicitly tell you that Ran is pleased - you've deduced that on your own through contextual clues in the scene. Ran might hate the gift, and is staring at it wistfully in a kind of bemused "oh, Keiko" way.

The card she reads might be a standard note of instructions from the producer, included with every such display of dried flowers, to inform the receiver about how to properly take care of the content.

Yeah, but Keiko read them. She chose a gift that requires care to maintain and would last a long time with that maintenance. Getting Ran some dried flowers still says something, because she could've gotten Ran some chocolate, or gotten Ran some live flowers, but she didn't. Shou made the choice to have Keiko get her this specific type of flower.

last edited at Aug 12, 2015 1:18PM

I can see eye-to-eye with you as a writer myself, but I will say that there are often times that I don't put deeper meaning in some things I have written. You don't see anyone dissecting the color of the bedsheets in Madoka or the color of the wallpaper in Toradora, and those two shows are so overflowing with symbols and greater meaning you could write a 50-page thesis on the first 6 episodes alone, each.

Oh, yeah, definitely. A user already said (might've been you, but my intertubes is being wonky and not loading some posts properly) that there's a bit more leeway with interpreting literature than animation, considering animation does need to fill empty space, whereas a writer can simply choose to not describe something they feel is unimportant or doesn't contribute to the scene.

I do think you might be able to say, "I like that the chosen decor for the backdrops is tonally consistent with the scene", though. It is important that the setting of a scene is designed with a certain impression or feel in mind, even if it's not "symbolic" per se. That's why camera angles/costuming/etc. are so important for the perceptions of certain things in cinema and television shows.

Part of that is why I liked Madoka's visuals so much, even if I thought the actual narrative was sub-par. The contrast between the often colourful/simplistic artistic design and the attempted gravity of what was happening made what was happening that much more jarring, because of how dissonant the events were with the surroundings.

In this case, Shou explicitly called to attention the words Keiko had written rather than having her say it herself, or just briefly showing them in passing. There was an allotted upper third given a hefty amount of space in a panel where nothing much else was going on. Enough reason to believe he did want us to notice some meaning in the descriptions.

I agree! We can debate about what it was, but Shou definitely tried to communicate something to us with it, especially with how flustered Keiko was over it.

I'm not implying that there are't writers who do think about this sort of stuff, just saying I don't like making assumptions without fact. I'm not a fan of assumptions I guess would be my whole point here.
And I'm pretty sure any decent writer pays attention what they're writing. Don't imply that having hidden layers of symbolism and meaning somehow makes a story better.

It's not about claiming your assumptions are fact, it's about appreciating the quality of a narrative, or having fun guessing about what might happen next. It's cool that you don't like to do that--it's not for everyone--but I also don't see the point in joining a conversation about it specifically to say "I don't like this!!!". Can't you just not reply to those posts, or skim over them?

I do think having hidden layers of depth does make your writing better, though, simply because you can say more with less words, and in better ways. It doesn't have to be elaborate symbolism, but creating vivid imagery and emotions in your writing is always going to be better than writing something one-note and bland.

Poetry especially benefits from this kind of symbolism, especially when the poets are trying for both brevity and complexity.

Actually the author I had in mind specifically was J.R.R. Tolkien, who was rather annoyed with people assuming The Lord of the Rings was an allegory for his experiences in World War I when in actuality he had merely created the fictional realm so he had an excuse to make up his own languages

Well, I mean, ascribing a motivation to the author is a bit different from examining the effects a certain word can have in-context. There's a lot of psychological evidence for word-choice being incredibly important to how a person perceives a certain situation--that's why leading questions are a thing and why Loftus and Palmer's study into how they can affect eyewitness testimony is so important--so why would that be any different from authors whose entire purpose in crafting a story is to make the reader get a certain impression?

This "the curtains were fucking blue" argument is more or less the same; people assume the color of the curtains is important or meaningful or allegorical, when in actuality the author just felt that, for one reason or another, the room in question needed to be described to the reader and when they got to the curtains, they went with blue. Maybe blue was the author's favourite color or maybe they chose it randomly, maybe they had blue curtains themselves or maybe they were aware of the "the curtains were fucking blue" meme and decided to throw in some blue curtains to fuck with us; we will likely never know, unless you feel like pestering the author over they're choice in interior decorating.

But "the curtains were fucking blue" ignores the fact that the author did make that choice to describe the room, and there was a reason for it, even if that reason isn't something monumental.

I said this already in my original post. "Whether that reason is that it fits the character who was decorating, or whether it fits the atmosphere they're trying to create."

Point is, don't over think this stuff. The simplest answer is usually the correct one and its a bad idea to make wild guesses like "the blue curtains represent the protagonists immense depression" when there is no evidence to support that idea beyond the fact that people sometimes associate the color blue with sadness.

That people think of blue as a sad colour is reason enough for a writer to choose to use it to give something an impression of sadness. Plenty of words have colloquial associations, and plenty of visual stimuli have the same.

Take the movie Inside Out. Why do you think Joy is a bright orange, and Sadness is a deep blue, whilst Anger is a strong red? Because those emotions are visually linked with those colours. The animators deliberately chose those colours for the characters because they know audiences would think it made sense. It would be wrong to ignore the colours because the colours are a fundamental part of the design.

A well-crafted description is one that doesn't waste words on describing something superfluous for pointless reasons. What a writer chooses to include and what they choose to omit does say something about what they wanted to emphasise. It doesn't have to be transcendental, but the writer took the choice for a reason.

Besides, what's wrong with looking for symbolism? I, personally, get a lot of pleasure out of seeing how certain metaphors fit within a narrative, or respecting how well a certain turn of phrase fits with the emotions evoked by the overall prose.

tl;dr You don't know that they're trying to be simplistic anymore than we know they're trying to be layered. Plenty of writers do think about this stuff, and do pay attention to what they're writing.

I have conflicting feelings about this series.

The art is incredible and the characters are very expressive. The tone of the series is wonderfully fluffy and heartwarming but the writing itself feels like it lacks a focus, we go from set piece to set piece without a clear thread connecting them and our protagonists are awfully underdeveloped,

I take the series is still going on Japan? With the last arc the writing seemed to improve (even if it cranked the drama unecessarily)

Yeah, I agree. I've taken to reading the arcs of one couple in one, instead of going from one couple to another completely new one, and then another completely new one, and then back to the "main" one again.

I wish they'd have one introductory chapter, showing all the characters, and then focused on one couple and everything else would either be a background focus in extra chapters instead of several sudden main ones, or focus on one "main" couple at a time and then moving onto another one as soon as that arc is concluded, with the characters with completed arcs existing as secondary characters that never take the focus off of the newer ones.

Or maybe I'm dissecting why the curtain was colored blue when Shou is like "It's because I decided to make it fucking blue".

I used to joke about this a lot, too, but ever since I started writing, I was surprised how much I think about little details like that. Chances are, if a writer takes the time to emphasise something -- e.g., noting within the narrative that the curtains were blue, and even noting that there were curtains at all -- they're doing so for a reason, whether that reason is that it fits the character who was decorating, or whether it fits the atmosphere they're trying to create.

I don't particularly find this story interesting? From the trite "I'm the nerdy girl" trope to the "insanely beautiful and randomly interested in you lesbian" that pops outta nowhere. It's cute, and sorta funny, but it's not really my thing. I'm alright with Mew, but Donut is so incredibly boring that I just don't care for her struggles anymore.

Maybe it's me just expecting too much from this story, but at least it has... good art...

I loved at the start where Donut was like "i'm so fat and ugly" as the art highlighted her skinny legs and exactly-as-pretty face as P'Mew. I'm mostly just reading it because it has nice art and it's updating regularly.

Meh, lathering on the GAYAAAAAAAAAANGST is so trite by this point, it doesn't strike me as much fun to write or read. I'm quite happy to read a series that dispenses with it, like Lily Love or Kase-san and actually deals with other relationship issues instead.

I agree with this. It doesn't feel like there's many new shoes to tread that ground with, and I'd rather read something different than something cliche, even if the cliche is more logical.

last edited at Aug 2, 2015 10:54AM

Omg a LiS player! The hype is real, only 2 more days... hang in there!

New chapter comes out on my birthday. Chloe baby come to me.

Chapters feel so short in the time it takes to get updates. I always get so hyped and forget how short they are, kind of like with Life is Strange episodes. :(

Still, I'm glad it's at least maintaining an interesting pace. Will be glad to see how it ends.

Cannot wait for an update. Anybody know when it's happening?

Not sure how I feel about the fast development, and if anything that kiss made me feel more awkward than having the doki doki feelings. Ah well, at least the MC isn't totally on board with the yuri yet, so that might keep it still interesting.

I like how it's being treated that way in-universe, though. Senpai has no idea how to fall in love, and she's being a huge awkward moron about it, which everybody is taking note of & commenting on.

I'm just glad there was no faffing about or needless drama. I don't think I could deal with 6 chapters of "but it's impossible for a girl to like a girl!" or "we can't be together!" nonsense. Realistic, perhaps, but also tedious to read about when the conclusion is foregone anyway. :v

Also "I pimp people you see"...ok

Any good story needs a bit of cheeky sex trafficking.

^
I kinda get your points, but I'll disagree on the "pretty well told" part. While I don't exactly dislike stories on the cynical side of things (and I evidently didn't expect the story to end on the fluffier side), I think that last chapter was poorly executed and, as Kobalos said, pointless. Even with foreshadowings.

I've seen this in other areas as well, but there seems to be a habit of people dismissing criticisms because "the person just doesn't like this kind of story", or "just don't like this character", thus attempting to discredit the criticism as arising only from personal dislike of the genre.

I love cynical stories (if there isn't a straight up genocide of my favourite characters and their feelings, is it truly worth my time?!), but I regardless think that this ending was weak. Things occurred in the story, but nothing actually changed - Tomo was depressed, Ai was distant. The story ends, and Tomo was still depressed but now is dead, and Ai is still distant. In effect, it's the same as if nothing happened at all.

People say that this is "realistic", and I'd contest that. Is it really "realistic" to have a person who doesn't change at all in about 40 or so years, with the only event that had an effect on them being a person whom they knew for a few weeks at best, before dying on a plane crash? It's not impossible, sure, but I would hardly call that "realistic", and I definitely wouldn't say that this complete lack of progression and static character development made a good story.

I feel like nothing really was accomplished with this narrative. Tomo dies and doesn't progress as a character, and Ai doesn't really progress as a character either. She started off bored and disinterested, and she's just as bored and disinterested when the story ends, only with a different excuse.

The idea itself isn't terrible, but I do wish more was done with it.

wat

What did you say? "Short"? I can't hear you from down here at 163cm.