I can identify with this. I come off as pretty high-functioning and presentable while secretly dwelling in squalor. Right now, I can only dream of being able to invite people home without shame.

I do like the acknowledgement of how much effort beauty can take. Once you aspire to a certain ideal, it becomes an expensive full time job, which grows only harder as you get older.

it would have been more fun to actually have pages of the drunken flirty-ness tho

Yes, I'm always up for more of that.

Emmeline Burns is far gentler and 'purer' than Asphyxia, but so are most things. You should have a much easier time with it.

EDIT: to answer your question more accurately, there's no het, alcohol or smoking that I recall in Emmeline Burns. A pity, I'd make every fictional character drink and smoke if I could.

last edited at Jun 2, 2016 9:55AM

Might I recommend 'Loren The Amazon Princess' off the 'Hella Yuri' list? That's one of my go to games when I'm feeling down. It's an RPG, but it uses Ren'Py and the mechanics are light enough that it feels close to a VN. It's not 100% yuri. You can pick your character's gender and also choose het and yaoi routes. It's quite fanservice-y but in a universal way (men and women get the same treatment) that I found almost sweet. It had me giggling rather than cringing, though of course, your mileage may vary. There are happy endings pretty much all over if you're worried about that.

The main reason I love it is that there are few characters I've enjoyed being as much as Elenor. She's the vulnerable party in most relationships, yet stubborn and prideful. I especially liked her romance with the older love interest, Karen. I believe the dev hosts a free demo on their website if you're unsure about what you're getting into.

Glad to have this back. I'm a total sucker for the 'high concept speculative fiction as a metaphor for adolescence' trope. I swear I've read a million stories where the protagonist has to lose magic to become an adult or find love but the conceit has yet to grow old on me. That sweet, sad loss of innocence and invulnerability just maps perfectly onto my experience of being human.

Murakami's emptiness is heartbreaking. I almost wish I were Moritani so I could reach out to her myself.

I really enjoyed this, especially the crazy push/pull tsundere antics of Lavinia, and the flawed, flighty, yet sympathetic Jessie.

And that proposal at the end of Becky's route might be the best thing I've ever seen!

Most of it's low-key. It has a similar flavour to Marimite but the yuri's more blatant. Jessie's explicitly gay, rather than Sara-sexual, and says as much.

My ears pricked up at the scheduling music during the second act. It really heightened the sense of drama. Once that theme kicked in, I had to play straight through to the end.

I can imagine revisiting this one. I can't say that about every VN.

After that, I began to feel a bit uncharitable, wielding my metaphorical red pen, so if there were more, I subconsciously turned a blind eye for the sake of actually reading.

I'm sorry that I felt good about myself for writing this.

My apologies if that were insensitive. I meant to convey that I'd reached a point where I really wanted to engage with the content rather than focus on details that amount to the stray button presses which all of us make. For example, I've just had to edit this post to include that "us".

I try to point these things out for a couple of reasons. I personally stress about leaving errors and I'm glad when I can eradicate them. Also, I use it to indicate that I'm paying close attention and taking someone's effort seriously. Unfortunately, being in 'proofread' mode can sort of overtake my aesthetic appreciation, and if I do too much focusing on individual words, then I worry that I'm not paying adequate attention to the feelings that are being conveyed, which is giving the writer short shrift. That's where I felt I was being uncharitable. It wasn't a comment on finding excessive typos - of which there aren't, I've done far worse myself, believe me - and I apologise again if I implied that.

I'll be honest the whole thing was a blow to my confidence, and I felt blind-sided by the unsolicited critique. I did make the typo fixes, but you seriously did leave me feeling like I was unprepared, not good at the craft and generally released a story that was little but mistakes.

I'll try to get better in the future, but after that I'm not really up to much today.

Noted. I honestly just wanted to make an effort to match yours, but I'll inquire next time before reading too closely. Sorry for the confidence blow and misjudging what was appropriate. I felt sick, thinking I'd done harm.

You're doing fine. Typesetting errors are no measure of ability, just easily removed obstacles to a deserved audience. Your writing's got a sense of purpose and momentum some people never acquire. I appreciate that.

If it's any consolation, I never graduated from scribbling trash, so you could rightly dismiss anything I say as uninformed. Just imagine that I'm a dog or a snail. And it goes without saying that you're well within your rights to assert your own opinion and judgement over mine if I'm being unfair or just plain wrong.

After that, I began to feel a bit uncharitable, wielding my metaphorical red pen, so if there were more, I subconsciously turned a blind eye for the sake of actually reading.

I'm sorry that I felt good about myself for writing this.

My apologies if that were insensitive. I meant to convey that I'd reached a point where I really wanted to engage with the content rather than focus on details that amount to the stray button presses which all of us make. For example, I've just had to edit this post to include that "us".

I try to point these things out for a couple of reasons. I personally stress about leaving errors and I'm glad when I can eradicate them. Also, I use it to indicate that I'm paying close attention and taking someone's effort seriously. Unfortunately, being in 'proofread' mode can sort of overtake my aesthetic appreciation, and if I do too much focusing on individual words, then I worry that I'm not paying adequate attention to the feelings that are being conveyed, which is giving the writer short shrift. That's where I felt I was being uncharitable. It wasn't a comment on finding excessive typos - of which there aren't, I've done far worse myself, believe me - and I apologise again if I implied that.

last edited at May 18, 2016 4:33PM

I feel the strongest part of this may be the overriding structure and plot. It's careful with the details, revealing them piece by piece to keep momentum. I don't know if 'classical' is the word I'm looking for, but the form is very familiar, stable and successful. I found myself reading on to know more, and I found out more.

I'm unsure if the neat ending was entirely to my taste, I might have preferred something a little more ambiguous. Well, really, I was only bothered by a couple of sentences: "The previous night had left me drained, but somehow I felt cleansed. Finally breaking down all the way and being forgiven made me accept what happened." I feel it's perhaps robbing the reader of their own interpretation of what's happened. We don't have to take anything at a narrator's word, obviously, but it does feel a bit like sudden cauterisation. I would have been quite happy with the point made by, "Melyssa had faith I’d be able to move on. To heal. All I could do was justify that faith. She deserved as much." which is optimistic without being final.

I did enjoy the theme a lot. I felt it was something Nishi Uko or maybe Takemiya Jin would cover. There's also another point of comparison. Have you come across the VN 'Asphyxia'? It's a very gloomy, Marimite flavoured VN, mostly subtextual, and based on gender-flipped verions of the Romantic poets. There are echoes of the relationship between Samantha and Roberta, where Roberta feels closed-off by Samantha's bipolar disorder and obsession with her sort-of-ex Lillian.

There's perhaps a touch of excessive qualification here and there, words that I'd excise, but I hinted at my biases before, so if no one else has commented, you can dismiss that. If I can pick an example of what I'm on about, so you know how trivial I'm being... erm...

Eleventh paragraph. "I wouldn’t want to see this date out of them all was ruined. This is a special occasion, after all." I feel this could be expressed in fewer words. Perhaps: "I wouldn’t want to see this date ruined. This is a special occasion, after all." would convey the narrator's grasp of the event's uniqueness adequately without repetition?

There are a couple of typos, if you're bothered by such things. I appreciate you can't catch all of them without going cross-eyed.

First paragraph, 'unable control' should be 'unable to control'.

Third paragraph, I'm guessing it should read, 'Her plan was a bookend' rather than 'Her plan as a bookend'.

Ninth paragraph. I feel, 'Melyssa has asked', should be 'Melyssa had asked'. You could make an argument for the first, but I feel the second is more consistent.

Fifteenth paragraph. '*an* comforting feeling' should be 'a comforting feeling'. If I might overstep my bounds, I feel 'ambience' or 'atmosphere' may be better words than 'feeling', but your own discretion is Queen, of course.

Fifty-second paragraph. 'chatting in pairs or small groups' has a missing full stop/period at the end.

After that, I began to feel a bit uncharitable, wielding my metaphorical red pen, so if there were more, I subconsciously turned a blind eye for the sake of actually reading.

If I'm perhaps sounding a little negative, I thought this section was particularly good. "I could smell coffee poured from Thermoses mixed with the usual scent of flowers and trees, and the steady murmur of light conversation around us overtook the usual sound of wind among the leaves." It scans and flows very nicely. My ears pricked up when I read it. The rhyme actually works, when rhymes in prose are often like bombs, loud and obtrusive.

I do feel for Melyssa. Having to repeatedly pull a depressed partner out of the gloom to no lasting effect is pretty horrible. Eventually, you see no choice but to pull the plug. I've been of both sides of that dynamic. I was the depressed one before, and now I'm the functioning one. I don't know which is worse, though I like myself more now.

My apologies if I'm being too picky. If you're getting detailed feedback elsewhere then I understand if you're posting here for a more general response. I generally come here to forget about my cares and be a mindless cheerleader, but prose conjures another persona for some reason.

Eh... enough of my hedging. Keep it up. I hope you stay motivated and productive.

I've been eyeing this one up. It's Hanako Games, isn't it? I'm expecting great things after Black Closet.

I suspect Meiko's played into Reo's hands here by repaying the damage, providing catharsis through irreversible punishment and freeing her from obligation. Meiko's still damaged. I'm unsure whether Reo's observation of that implies that she's giving up on trying or doomed to persist.

I found it all hotter than a decent person should have. The idea of attaining absolution, and orgasm, by giving up your purity to "deserved" retribution makes me go all shivery. Lord, I have issues. I think I'll have to blame my lapsed Catholicism.

I really liked Meiko's fantasies of crossing gender boundaries as well. I've had a few of those thoughts regarding myself and partners, from time to time.

last edited at May 8, 2016 8:00PM

I entirely forgot about that series. I was...not a fan of Fueko as ace representation just because she kinda fell into that stereotype of ace people as like detached and noncontributory when it comes to relationships.

To be honest, I always saw Fueko as depressed more than anything else, but without any confirmation, it's all in the eye of the beholder so I'm likely projecting. We've no explanation from Amano Shuninta apart from Fueko being the representation of Sloth.

Also I'm kinda hoping that they make Sol asexual/aro. She sure seems like it right now and it's a great set up to make her aro. I doubt it will go that direction though.

Sol strikes me as uncomfortable with the role people are placing her in. Having to fulfil someone's need as a romantic object can feel oppressive and unwelcome. I can sympathise with that. I prefer to be the one who's head over heels, rather than the one in control. I think Sol's comfortable with Soo because there's no clear intent. It would be interesting to see how Sol changes when she gets clued up.

Oh yeah more Sol/Soo that's what I'm here for :\

Yeah, I'm here for Gayoon and Soha, it's what makes the manga unique, but chapter 20's thawed me on Sol a bit, and it's nice for Gayoon to have an ally.

Ooh, I step out for a bit and come back to two more chapters of this, very nice. I like how it's deepening the set up, with extra reasons for Reo's guilt and Meiko's obsession, rather than marching onward with the plot. It already feels a bit more efficent and controlled than Netsuzou Trap, which always struck me as bit woolly, lurching in a zig-zag rather than a straight line. Meiko's behaviour feels both crazier and more understandable than Hotaru's.

Obviously there's still time for this to go off the rails, for good or ill.

Takase's setting herself up for a lot of hurt. Intervening directly in somebody's relationship when you suspect abuse - especially by confronting the aggressor - rarely goes well. I can understand the urge to meddle and punish the wicked, but sometimes all you can do is offer somebody a safe haven if they want to make the leap. When a couple is threatened by an outside force, they can pull up the drawbridges and unite against you. Sometimes the abuse can even intensify, which I suppose is what might happen here, though I'm not getting full-yan vibes just yet.

It is horrible to watch, and there are few things that leave you feeling more powerless. If you're really close friends with someone, you have the knowledge to take more risks, but even then you have to navigate a minefield and likely recruit outside help. I'd also be extremely wary, to the point of prohibition, of interfering when you're romantically invested.

This manga's reminding me of Renaissance or Greek tragedy, where every misunderstanding and transgression is repaid a thousand times over. I guess if you think of it as inhabiting the same world as "The Duchess of Malfi" or "Oedipus Rex", its more lurid turns may be a little easier to swallow. Still, I'm surprised this isn't tagged for the confirmed rape. Am I missing something? Is it only used for direct portrayal of the incident? I'd suggest it myself using the form but I'm new so I don't want to make any presumptions.

I'm actually less worried about the psychopaths who commit murders and more worried about the ones who become investment bankers or government policymakers

I can broadly sympathise with this. Physical violence put me in hospital for a night, but workplace backstabbing put me on anti-depressants for much longer, and it affected more people than just me.

I think the point is that psychopathic investment bankers and their ilk are able to do much more damage than a serial killer ever could. There is no telling how much long term damage Exxon's climate change disinformation strategy did, for example but it's definitely more than the equivalence of a couple human lives.

That was the point I took away. I just felt more comfortable using personal experience to demonstrate my understanding, rather than complex global affairs, about which I may be wrong.

Also, I've perhaps undersold the scale I was describing. I've seen toxic workplaces chew up and spit out hundreds of people, no exaggeration. I've done my time in several busy distribution centres, and I've seen the knock-on effects of such mayhem on families, communities, contractors and other businesses. Around the turn of the millennium, shenanigans destroyed several workplaces that were the lifeblood of my area. The fallout was ugly, sometimes fatal.

Anyhow, I've proven myself a liar once by posting when I said I wouldn't. Put it down to my vain panic over not expressing myself clearly. I'll try not to prove myself a liar again.

Of course, they were christened 'Ristelle' by a fellow named 'Yuri'. Doesn't get any more canon than that.

That drama CD was totally worth it. I always knew Nena was a dark horse! I want even more of her now.

Idk if Nena's really a dark horse, the moment she proved that she was perceptive af and basically low key trying to wingman her friends half the time, I think people tended to be really impressed with her.

I never doubted Nena's perception but I never expected her to be a killer seductress, pulling those moves on Ano! I don't care if it were a joke. I would have been just as tongue tied. Nena's levelled up her hotness attribute several tiers after that.

Ugh, I feel an addiction coming on. I demand more of this pairing!

That drama CD was totally worth it. I always knew Nena was a dark horse! I want even more of her now.

I'm actually less worried about the psychopaths who commit murders and more worried about the ones who become investment bankers or government policymakers

I can broadly sympathise with this. Physical violence put me in hospital for a night, but workplace backstabbing put me on anti-depressants for much longer, and it affected more people than just me.

I try not to demonise anyone whose politics oppose mine, or people in the financial industry, but it is disturbing when systems openly select for dangerous traits. It's hard not to feel that something has to change, even if I'm ill-equipped to say what.

But basically, I'm a tit-for-tat kind of person.

I'm more the stoic, yielding type, both by temperament and upbringing, though I have limits like any functioning adult. I guess this may account for some differences in our perspective that we can't easily resolve, not that we should want to, of course.

Caring about psychopaths, whether the murderous kind or not is a good way to get hosed.

Perhaps, but one can practise empathy while managing one's boundaries. It's very much a requirement for some jobs. In fact, if you're consistently dealing with the wobblier side of humanity, it might be the sole means of staying sane.

And we have no real way of knowing what they are truly bothered by--they'd lie.

I feel you could say that about most people, and they'd lie for plenty of reasons other than self-interest or malice. You may find this interesting. It's an article by an apparently typical person, who has the brain profile of a psychopath. I don't feel their personal account is any more self-serving or unreliable than many.

As a rather key for-instance, the acquisition of wealth seems to foster psychopathic traits.

I suspect we're on the same side of an ideological fence.

I'll have to check out of the discussion for now because I'll either begin to sprawl beyond my scope or chase my own tail, if I'm not doing so already. I think we've clocked each other's angles without eating each other alive. That will do for me.

Good to hear from you. I appreciated your decision to broaden your pallette beyond 8-bit. I'm a little sad there's a whole generation of synths and samples that have been swept under the rug because of how they've dated, but I feel the tide's turning a little. The Saturn/PS1, and the Soundblaster 16 eras are personal favourites.

I do like your composition style, with all those wandering, fragile melodies, free from stressful dynamics. It's very romantic and intimate, a welcome staple of a lot of RPGs. There's a pianist called Harold Budd who all but specialises in a comparable style. I'm starting to regret having only one album of his.

Thanks for your response, and good luck with any future projects.

I always enjoy this kind of story. I know Meiko is manipulative and really laying on the emotional abuse, but sometimes I get bored of how sugary-sweet and innocent so many characters are in yuri works.

Sometimes I just want to root for a 'bad girl' without them being clearly overshadowed by the couple that's 'meant' to win out in the end.

Same here, I sometimes get that itch, and this manga is scratching it. Reo's punishing sense of obligation is very sympathetic, while Meiko's damaged, selfish and intriguing. She's possibly stewing with betrayal and resentment... or deeply insecure, convinced that guilt is the only way she can ensure Reo's attention. Chances are, the truth lies in between, but either way, I'm eager to see how Meiko's character develops.

I've also got a bit of a soft spot for Kodama Naoko as 'Encounter Effect' is one of my favourite one-shots.

While I'm not advocating the psychopath diagnosis, I don't really see this argument. Being a psychopath does not imply being a genius--it's perfectly plausible for a psychopath to try to manipulate people and not do a good job of it.

One of the more common tropes of psychopathy is superficial charisma, an ability to emulate acceptable social norms. Psychopaths often say the right things, and dress the right ways. Kaoru's being actively disruptive, where the stereotype of a psychopath is somebody who's almost creepily compliant and easy-going, which requires a base level of observation and mimicry, but not necessarily intelligence. Her lack of subtlety is not a knockout blow, true, but I'd call it a strike against. Also, the self-harm really doesn't fit the pattern.

I'll split the difference with you and quite happily sign up to the less medicalised term 'sociopath'. That's a label I can't really dispute.

I'd have to say that in the case of psychopathy, I wouldn't be too terribly contrite if someone "suffering from the disorder" called me out for trivializing them.

There are people who have been diagnosed with psychopathy, yet done nothing all that heinous. They can end up institutionalised indefinitely while society figures out what to do with them. My memory might be faulty, but I'm sure Jon Ronson covered a petty white collar criminal who wound up detained far past his sentence had ended and left in a kind of limbo because of a psychopathy diagnosis, because nobody knew what to do with him. I'd say that's suffering enough to not warrant the scare quotes.

I can't remember if that anecdote was in the actual book, 'The Psychopath Test' or used while Ronson was touring various news outlets - or maybe it was someone other than Ronson, but I'm pretty sure it was.

There are also people with clinical psychopathy who lead perfectly normal lives despite it, and some of them are truly bothered by how their brain sets them apart and below others. I don't envy them.

It wasn't interpretation that Nezchan was advising against, it was diagnosis. Diagnosing a mental illness can take months, even years of therapy, hypnosis, perscriptions, tests and referrals. Unless somebody's the walking archetype of a sickness or is described as such in the text, it's normally quite a stretch to diagnose a character based on very limited information. At most you can point out matching symptoms.

You can, of course, draw whatever conclusions you like, but others may think you're overshooting, especially if they've been through the mental health system and think you're trivialising their disorder by reducing it to a few lines of dialogue. If you have personal experience that matches what's happening in the story, then you can draw parallels, but even that's not the same as diagnosis.

Mea Culpa: I've played the armchair analyst game myself before - too many episodes of House and Frasier - but I don't expect anyone to take me seriously. Half of the time, I'm simply projecting my own hang-ups.

last edited at Apr 23, 2016 5:51PM

Starving yourself isn't a good way to rouse sympathy. It's more an act of aggression, a way of lashing out. You hurt yourself to hurt someone else who cares about you. It's the kind of behaviour that, even if it forces your target to respond, leaves massive scars in your relationship. Like a lot of self-harm, it's regarded as naked blackmail, even if you're doing it for totally personal reasons.

You could call it manipulative, and it would be accurate, as she's acting to effect people around her, but the psychopath diagnosis implies that she's coldly furthering herself, when she's choosing a very bad way of going about it. She's being cruel and destructive, which is awful, obviously, but it's more likely to be indicative of genuine pain, especially when coupled with self-harm. That potential depth of emotion and feeling is likely what's drawing sympathy from some of the readership here, and the idea that one could be the sole recipient of hidden passion, strong enough to turn someone to the dark side, is very, very sexy.

In practice, of course, I'd tell Shizuka to keep away, or make their relationship, romantic or otherwise, contingent on Kaoru seeing a therapist and getting her screws tightened. As it's fiction, though, I'm just going to be selfish and enjoy this.

I'm not really getting psychopathic vibes. Kaoru's behaviour seems too self-defeating and outlandish, and she's not so much manipulative as she is forceful. I think she'd achieve her (presumed) goals better by courting sympathy and feigning contrition.

I'd tag her as narcissistic, if we're casting about for personality disorders, which I'd rather not.

I had a bully like Kaoru when I was in school, with all the roaming hands and invasion of space that entailed. It went at a slow burn for a while, then escalated rapidly with the addition of alcohol. After an incident which left me temporarily catatonic, she backed off for good. Strangely, I think I came out of the ordeal feeling better than she did. She wasn't evil, just a hormonal teenager.

I heard from others that she spent a lot of time apologising for past sins when she became a young adult, so she's likely a better person than I am now (not a high bar to clear).

I haven't seen her myself. I think well of her, strangely. She gave me a kind of validation, however painful.

Story time aside, I'm not really hoping for Shizuka x Kaoru. I'm hoping Ichinose goes all 'Corruption's Finale' on us and learns to give Shizuka what she truly wants... but I somehow doubt that will happen. I can dream.

EDIT: I can't type. Silly phone keyboard.

last edited at Apr 22, 2016 11:18PM

I feel the whole point of this chapter is to put yourself in Shizuka's place and secretly, thoroughly enjoy what's happening to you, while protesting your virtue. That's not everyone's bag, I'm sure, but life's rich tapestry etc.

(edited for sense)

last edited at Apr 22, 2016 4:53PM

Would anyone have the remotest shred of sympathy for her or be making excuses for her if she were a guy?

Perhaps you wouldn't see that here, but if you go to message boards regarding het romance for straight women, you'd see a lot of apologetics, and lionisation of the godawful behaviour of hot, dominant men. I think we're inclined to look favourably on dubious actions if they're getting us off, or fulfilling an emotional need, or positioning us in a certain role, regardless of whether our paramour is male or female.

I'm not going to claim that such desires are totally safe and don't need control or compartmentalisation, but I like to think they can be aired when discussing fictional characters and circumstances. What I'd want from a lover isn't what I'd want from a boss, and what I'd want from a man isn't what I'd want from a woman (basic humanity aside). A lot of the charitable judgements of female aggression aren't so much expressing hypocrisy, as they are expressing desire and identity.

At least that's where I'm coming from when I'm gushing about bad
behaviour. Perhaps I should include more disclaimers when I'm talking outside certain contexts. I'm not eager to normalise unwelcome predatory behaviour outside my sick little fantasies.

last edited at Apr 23, 2016 5:58PM