Super excited to get this chapter posted! I wish this part of the story had gotten more time in the manga, especially for as much characterization as Diode gets here. The scene where she talks to Terra about marriage is especially sweet, my brain felt a bit melty at how fast Terra's gay awakening seems to be moving in this.

Thanks for catching those typos! I've updated the website to correct those. I think only the one in chapter 4 is present in the version posted on Dynasty, so I'll reupload that chapter once we get around to posting chapter 8.

Misa had no idea who Io was and Io is famous, albeit more recently. We've also never seen Misa show any interest in celebrities. It seems like the kind of thing Misa wouldn't know. Speaking as someone who has no idea who the vast majority of celebrities (especially actors) are, for me it's a believable level of ignorance.

Or in her own words, women she can't have sex with are boring. Misa has her priorities and it's not pop culture. She even claims to only sleep and eat in her apartment. That could be an exaggeration, but it's not clear how much media she consumes in the first place.

Edit: Also, she hasn't seen this person in around a decade, so not recognizing her while googling would also be believable for me. People look different after that long while memory gets foggy.

I'm on the fence about that woman being Marei, but to add to these reasons, Misa was visiting that woman in a very different context than you would associate with a film star. Seeing someone waiting wistfully in a run-down apartment does not scream "about to be/is famous". The only picture Misa's seen of Marei is also a promotional shot, with all sorts of reasons (lighting, makeup, aging) that she wouldn't recognize her. Same way she had trouble initially had trouble recognizing Io as "Ai" from a photo, but instantly figured it out the moment she saw her in person.

Looks like it's Misa's turn to become a stalker. It was nice getting a little bit of her backstory, it sort of makes sense that she's as emotionally distant as she is if she got her heart crushed back in high school. I can't help but wonder if the woman she was hooking up with is Io's mom (Marei and this mystery woman are the only ones with eyes drawn like this). Wouldn't totally put it past Flowerchild to pull a twist like this, especially since there's already that scene of Io calling out Hase for using her as a replacement for Marei.

The conversation in the W.E.B. in chapter 4 was so good! Here, Terra gets almost completely looped into Diode's misadventures before they met, so I wonder when that will happen in the manga version. Knowing more about what Diode has been through makes the argument and fishing duel with Xeon feel even more important.

And wow, Terra hugging Diode when she was crying, and later before their second trip noting that even climbing into the boat with Diode feels so much better than it has with anyone else? I suspect Diode fancies Terra too and is aware of it, but if only she knew how Terra sees her...

I think my favorite little thing with the hug in the W.E.B. scene was the little callback to Sivi and Magiri in the prologue section, where they sort of echo the "sorry about this" "it's okay" way of providing consolation. Terra's casually able to take the step that Sivi was never able to bring herself to take, and I think it gives Diode a little bit of confidence to lean into her strengths going forward. It's such a lovely, intimate moment.

Apologies for the delay on getting this out, I had a fall a few weeks ago and hurt my hip and tailbone badly enough that I've had a hard time sitting long enough to do the SFX cleaning on this. On the mend now, so hopefully we'll have chapter 13 out in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, this chapter did a great job building a sense of dread for the coming story arc...

Good god, get it together Iori

Congratulations to Terra for realize that lesbian couples are a thing!

It does beg the question: What exactly happened in the past that seemingly erased their existence and installed a strict patriarchy?

I'm hoping the story gets more into it, but I'm not sure there needs to be a single event for things to get this way. It's been three centuries since the Circs arrived at FBB, and there are a couple of points that suggest the strict patriarchy is the result of steady backsliding over generations.

One factor is probably the relatively limited population, since the clans are only about 20,000 strong (and probably smaller in the past). There are going to be the same small town pressures towards conformity in play, and the severe isolation only strengthens that power. Given that the Circs were highly multicultural to begin with, gender/sexual minorities would probably be the most visibly non-conforming parties, and be among the first nail in need of a hammer.

Chief Xeon also says some stuff hinting that gender relations are generally constructed to facilitate population/capital growth. This might be related to the Circs' resource curse, in that any AMC clay obtained beyond meeting the Circs' needs is a valuable export. This economic structure would incentivize overdevelopment of the fishing industry, while other sectors of the economy become underinvested. In a lot of places, this gives industrial representatives a lot of power, and their response to obtaining that power is to crack down on civil liberties, education, and public funding to make it difficult to organize opposition.

At Endeavor clan, this structure seems to have evolved to a point where it has semi-independently invented something resembling Umberto Eco's description of an ur-fascist ideology. Xeon's monologue in chapter 8 explicitly touches on that since it mentions will-to-power, the cult of motherhood, and a subtle disdain towards cultural production over economic production.

At any rate, a necessary component of generating productive labor worldview is compelling women to bear children, and to do so requires reducing/stripping them of their agency to refuse. This structure is definitely baked into the twister/decompa dynamic — comphet only, strict gendered division of labor, framing it nominally as a partnership but making the Twister the voice of authority, and loosely treating women/decomping as an irrational force to be controlled. Given fishing is a prestige job among the Circs, it is likely that this worldview filters down to the rest of society as an ideal to emulate.

Both of these factors alone would probably gravitate towards a cisheteronormative worldview over a few generations, regardless of how progressive the initial founders may have been. Whatever upheaval scrambled the Idaho's fan media repository and resulted in the collapse/destruction of eight clans probably just accelerated (or marked accelerations of) those trends.

Sorry to make this post even longer, but a couple of extra tidbits from the novel's prologue (it's good, read it!) but the fact that Magiri essentially performed a lovers' suicide, followed by the implication her subordinate Sivi Endeavor (a woman) subsequently received credit for Eda and Magiri's accomplishments under the less obviously gendered name C.B. probably speaks to how lesbianism might have been viewed following that event. The fact that Magiri and Eda also led a revolution against more conservative/less visionary leadership likely further complicates things.

The prologue also notes that the Circ society has been in a state of cultural stagnation/economic recession since the invention of the pillar boat shortly after Magiri's death. This probably has to do with the resource curse mentioned above, the lack of incentive for further innovation once basic needs are easily met, and an extremely strong desire to maintain social stability. Circs are often described as "unimaginative", and Terra's active imagination is treated as really freaky by everyone around her (including Diode, at first).

At any rate, the setting sucks as a place to live. Back when we first started scanlating this, I recall coming across some Ogawa tweets about feminist theory he had been reading back when developing the series, and I'm really impressed by how seamlessly he seems to have integrated it into the work.

last edited at Dec 26, 2024 11:28AM

Terra thought some gay thoughts, pulled out a shotgun, and upgraded the close relationship of roommates to the even closer relationship of accomplices.

Volume 2 of the manga came out on the 6th, we've updated the QR code link in the credits in case you'd like to support Tanaka-sensei. The next chapter is due to release on Jan 17. And in case you're following the novels in Japanese, the 4th and final volume in the series will be releasing on Jan 22.

It's been a little busy here, but I am hoping to have chapters 3 and 4 up here in the next couple of days. Our output is getting a little more polished with practice, so not quite as many formatting bugs to track down and squash from here.

By the way, I think I've successfully gotten an RSS feed up and running on the dedicated website, so subscribe if you want an automatic update when we post a new chapter there! There will be a short delay before we post here just to make sure we've gotten any big mistakes ironed out.

Little weird to not want to be thought less of, then spill out that you're a masochistic bottom right after. Way to go luxi lol.

It's a little odd but I feel like the two concepts are disconnected from each other. Like she wants to be degraded and controlled for sex, but day to day she doesn't want to be thought less of for having a past as a complete pushover dog.

Yeah, it's this. Two different contexts. A bedroom scene where she's a masochistic dog has the security of knowing it's part of the emotional intimacy of the relationship. Revealing she's been a masochistic dog to get someone to look her way and asking for it in the bedroom are both things that have the risk of destroying that intimacy.

man... i never liked that whole "i'm kind of rejecting you right now but please keep loving me in case i change my mind" shebang. after so much buildup just for that... i think it would be easier to stomach if this wasn't a bi-monthly release.
regardless, it was a really sweet scene and i'm glad to see them back together

The "please keep loving me" thing doesn't read like a rejection here at all to me. Instead it feels like a response to Michiru's "this is hurting us both" comment - Kiki is trying to tell Michiru that her feelings aren't a burden.

Her struggles with self-esteem and ability to receive affection come off as being behind the mumbled "maybe something like that". When you're down on yourself that hard, it's very easy to view your own affection as something that can make another person happy, or whether you're giving enough in return. But at the very least, Kiki seems to be taking pains here to make it clear she considers Michiru to be a special presence in her life, the person she wants to be with most.

So I guess my read of it is more like "please don't feel like your love is a burden, I want to be someone who doesn't become a burden to you because you're special to me." It's less that Kiki has to change her mind on Michiru, so much as she has to find the confidence to match her lead.

woah, lesbian pontypool

I also like how everyone's fetishistic hangups seem to revolve around obsession and possession. I assumed the title just referred to having weird fetishes, but maybe it's referring to the toxic possessive "love" that these characters have for each other? It makes the choice to have fetishes centered around malleable clay figurines all the more thematically resonant.

The clay figurine thing is a good point. These characters are so hung up on their "ideal" love that they're unable to see the real people in front of them, to the point of making selfish, shitty decisions. They're all attempting to mold other people into what they want them to be: Meguru into Azuki's lover, Azuki into Yakou's figurine maker, Yakou into Niji's fanfic girlfriend, and everyone into a safe, non-sexual plush for Meguru to cuddle.

The first chapter doesn't have a whole lot more than the manga, but the details of the pillar boat are absolutely wild. Flying around with a 360 degree view and multiwavelength video being beamed directly into your visual cortex has gotta be disorienting as hell.

Nah, she's chickening out because she's a softie. She knows what her GF is thinking and she's not ready to spend the night alone with her lol

Makes Shizuku telling Iori that she's already slept together with Saori a few chapters back even funnier. Just saying shit to get a rise out of her.

Huge thanks to girlswhokiss, who has been busting ass to translate this novel! I am still working out the fine details of uploading the translation as images, so please lmk if there are any issues with readability with the current formatting before I get around to uploading ch 1-4. Those should be forthcoming in the next few days. We will also have a "bonus" chapter to handle a setting glossary and TL notes.

Chapters here probably won't be updated much unless we uncover major translation errors - the most up to date versions will be found on the neocities page we've set up.

Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have been!

At the rate her grades keep falling she's bound to find success with an underflow error

Bummer, no chapter this month - the next release date was punted until 12/20.

If you're having fishing yuri withdrawals, definitely be sure to check out the novel translation girlswhokiss is putting together! IMO the yuri aspects land even harder in the narration. We just posted chapter 2 this evening.

Not just that, she's an unreliable narrator for narrating any feeling. A lot of the time she seems trustworthy but then even for basic stuff like fear, her ability to describe the degree of feelings or any sort of nuance is very shaky. For example, she describes the beach at the end of the world in a way that sounds relatively "standard" for Otherside encounters, but they ended up so traumatized that they stayed in Okinawa until they stopped having very literal PTSD attacks. She explicitly claims to have no real problem with shooting threats that look and act completely like real humans, and then goes on to have nightmares about them for a week.

My favorite subtle thing about this story is the Otherside appearing whenever Sorawo starts to get intense feelings. There's the Otherside appearing the moment Toriko drops the bombshell in this chapter, but there's stuff like wandering into the interstitial space when Toriko leaves, or attacked by a Self-blinding monster right after wondering whether she told Toriko about her history, or having the ghosts of her dad and grandma appear right after she has an emotional moment about her future with Toriko. The Otherside seems very much related to Sorawo's terror at encountering normal parts of life she doesn't have a script for. It's almost like she's generally un-selfaware, with anti-cult mode being a comforting state where she's purely acting in self-preservation, and Otherside mode being slammed with too much information about herself at once. Cringe is also a form of continuous attachment.

The mannequins here are a nice symbolic thing. What better to complement the feeling of your body being objectified than a tool to sell clothes. What better way to highlight being kinda okay with Toriko being the one to ogle her than contrasting her against a faceless crowd doing the same?

I really liked this chapter, excellent combo of cohabitation and lore dump. The visual gag of "Diode is literally a stray cat" at the bottom of page 9 was wonderful. The next chapter is scheduled for release on November 15. The volume 2 tankobon is also scheduled for release on December 6, so if you've got a bit of money to kick towards supporting the serialization, please do!

I think that this page way back on chapter 1 has a small mistranslation, Terra isn't saying that the besshu are in "the backs of four female spot-billed ducks" but that they were "on the back of the fourth (female) duckling"

カルガモの四女の背中

Thanks! I've updated the chapter.

last edited at Oct 19, 2024 11:22PM

I'll admit I'm a little puzzled by Misa's reaction in this chapter, but I don't think it's totally OOC for her. Re-reading the chapter I'm not entirely sure Misa grasps the extent of what happened. I think she suspects Io of cheating as soon as the phone hangs up ("Or is something else going on behind the scenes"), and seeing two hickeys (implying Io didn't push Hase away after the first one) on Io's neck just confirms that suspicion to her.

From that point Misa's having a full-on jealous reaction to the situation and she's interpreting everything Io says through that lens. It's maybe not the smoothest execution, but I think that's how we got from here to there.

What I've appreciated about this story is that it's sort of looking at the gray space between abusive relationships and informal bdsm relationships (Misa's not a dom or otherwise involved in the scene, Io struggles to set boundaries), and what distinguishes one from the other. So far Io has gone along with Misa's shittier behavior, and seems to have found some form of personal liberation and empowerment from it. Chapters like this are signalling that allowing things to continue as they have been might just end up with Io trading one abuser for another. I'm content to let Flowrchild keep cooking with this for a bit.

Why does this author only write unlikeable characters that have no redeeming qualities? The issue with doing that is the ending always acts like it's romantic and ok to be this messed up. Sure people can be crazy and toxic in real life but fiction shouldn't glorify it. Imagine someone that was assaulted reads this. Their biggest take away is if you get assaulted and tell your lover they'll just see you as a cheater. This story feels toxic just for the sake of it.

I mean, this is a work of fiction exploring abusive relationship dynamics, not a manual for understanding the correct way to handle an assault. Fiction can be an avenue for processing a traumatic experience, but that doesn't mean all stories have to adapt themselves to that purpose. Also, Misa being a protagonist is not an authorial endorsement or glorification of her behavior.

Misa having a normal and well-adjusted reaction to sexual assault this chapter...

thanks for not projecting your personal opinion as objective fact, kuran. i know it must have been hard

That row of panels with Adachi getting flustered is sooo good