Do... people only want sickly sweet wholesome stories? There's so much anger in this thread
Is there? Not really that much IMO, and to the extent that there is, practically NONE of it is complaining about the story not being wholesome. Mostly there have been complaints about the characterization being unrealistic. Which, despite all the stuff since the early chapters making excuses for why the characters have been behaving in certain ways, is in my opinion still basically the case, but I never really minded--they were being portrayed in an exaggerated way for comic effect, and it WAS fairly funny. But still, whether I agreed with people being upset about that or not, it was not upset about the story not being wholesome enough.
Since then, there has been criticism of the personality and actions of the characters, but again, that does not in my opinion equate to criticism of the STORY for having imperfect people in it. It's like soap operas, people watch them SO THAT they can cut up the characters--it's part of the fun. It's fine to like stories about characters that do irrational or unethical things, but there remains a distinction between characters doing bad things and characters doing good things. Is there some compact I don't know about that requires people who like stories about train wrecks to PRETEND they're wholesome when they talk about them?
"Wholesome" is the wrong word, I think.
If you surf Amazon's romance e-book section, and read the blurbs of all the various self-published romance e-books, an awful lot of them will specifically mention "HEA" in the description. "HEA" stands for "Happily Ever After", and is a way for the author of the work to let prospective readers know that, whatever acrimony the author happens to stir up between the two protagonists, there will be a happy ending.
So why are they literally spoiling the ending of their book to prospective buyers who haven't read the book yet? Because there are an awful lot of romance consumers who really just want that "romantic catharsis" (for lack of a better phrase). That feeling you get when all the awkward will-they-won't-they is finally resolved and the protagonists get a relationship upgrade and become an official couple, and then we can watch them be a couple for however much longer the story lasts. That moment when the reader can say "FUCKING FINALLY" because the protagonists just cleared the table of all the bullshit that was keeping them apart.
Speaking for myself, I certainly enjoy those moments. When Hana finally confessed to Hina. When Kase gave Yamada her first kiss. When Taiga told Ryuji "moichido" (though, granted, they'd confessed earlier). That's the payoff for reading a romance in the first place.
And I think there are a lot of readers of romance fiction who want just that. That's why they bother reading these stories in the first place. And they want it relatively quickly. And that's fine, right? One should not argue matters of taste, as the old saying goes. However, for folks like that, Hiroko is absolutely anathema, because as a protagonist in a romance story she is (so far) purely an obstacle to "romantic catharsis". Instead of clearing the table of all the bullshit, she just keeps adding more bullshit to the table. And doing so in a definitive way very different from the usual sorts of will-they-won't-they complications that pop up in other stories that don't draw as much ire. (Like, think how long it took Mari and Akko to finally confess.)
For me, that's fine, as I like the way the author is handling it so far. But it seems that many folks find it more frustrating than enjoyable, which has led to folks directing their frustration towards Hiroko and hoping Ayaka ends up with, well, anybody else.
.jpg?1714760148)