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tsukiyadori · 6 months ago

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Reading Log 2024.05 - May

Previous: Reading Log 2024.04 - April

Trying to grasp the moon. Wonder if anyone would ever want to come over to my moon? Maybe we can try grasping it together?

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Reading languages: German, English, French, Japanese, not listing which was what. (There's also been some feeble attempts at Chinese.)

Titles are as I’ve read them either first or most and thus remember it for that title mostly

Not going to bother putting in the original titles of translated reads unless there is something worthy of note to it

Cursive titles have been completed

If it says a volume number it may mean it has been finished or is still in progress

Some notes’ content may be subject to repetition here and there, as I also copied some older notes from casual conversations over and didn’t go through any rounds of cutting things down.

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MAY

JNC (English) puts A Pale Moon Reverie into this month' Catchup Lineup, so there goes a subscription. You gotta make most use the buffet, do you?

I still failed to finish trying out all that was in the catchup...

Also struggled with the JNC Nina deadlines

The JNC quota of my monthly reads have not been counted, but they must make a notable percentage.

What does that tell me again? I get the most things done with a deadline leash.

The distinction between LN/WN regular novels is a bit fuzzy this time due to the potion of Rosmei previews...

Light Novels/Web Novels/Novels:

A Pale Moon Reverie v1-2

At the World’s Mercy Rosmei Preview

Brunhild v3p1

By the Grace of Gods LN v14

Chillin’ in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers v1ch1-2

Don't You Like Me Rosmei Preview

Fushi no Kami v1

Hell Mode v3p4-6

How to Survive as a Villain Novel Rosmei preview ch1-5

How to Survive as a Villain Novel ch137-235

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? v10

Kaleidoscope of Death Rosmei Preview

Marriage, Divorce, and Beyond: The White Mage and Black Knight's Romance Reignited v1p1-v2p1-6

Mushoku Tensei v1p7-8

Nanchan Rosmei Preview

The Defectives Rosmei Preview

The Earth Is Online Rosmei Preview

The Killer of Killers Rosmei Preview

The Rebirth Of The General Who Always Sees Himself As A Replacement ch1

The Saint's Magic Power is Omipotent LN v3p7-8

Unnamed Memory LN v1p2-5

Wolf and Parchment v5-6

Zilbagias the Demon Prince: How the Seventh Prince Brought Down the Kingdom v1p1-5

Manga:

12 Jahre v18

A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even: How I Crushed My Homeland with My Mighty Grimoires (Manga) v2ch7-11

An Archdemon's (Friend's) Dilemma: How to Babysit a Crybaby Knight ch1-5

An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride v1-10, ch52-54, ch60-63

Are You Okay with a Slightly Older Girlfriend? ch16.3-21

Arte ch86-87

Bibi & Miyu v1ch5

Buta no Liver wa Kanetsushiro ch36.1-2

Daijuukou to Unicornis no Otome ch15.2

Dead Mount Death Play v6

Dekiru Neko wa Kyou mo Yuuutsu ch109, ch88-91

Domestic na Kanojo v9-11

Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte (Manga) ch1, ch6, ch10, ch14, ch18, v5ch23-26

Everyday Escape v1-4

Fragtime v1-2

Girl Crush ch85-87

Hari to Hitsuji no Fune ch10.2

Heart Gear ch4-10

How I Attended an All-Guy's Mixer ch5-16

I'm a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic (Manga) ch1-5

Is Love the Answer? ch1

Isekai de Ane ni Namae wo Ubawaremashita ch18.2-4

Just Because I Love You

Kakan no Oukoku no Hanagirai Hime ch13.2-13.3

Knitter's High ch27.3-4

Living With My Brother's Wife ch49-65

Loop 7-kaime no Akuyaku Reijou wa, Moto Tekikoku de Jiyuu Kimama na Hanayome Seikatsu wo Mankitsusuru ch32

My Not-So-Fair Lady is Doomed! (But Not If I Can Help It) ch4.2-9.2

My Unexpected Marriage ch10.3-14

Nagiko no Hanashi (re-read)

Okazari Ouhi ni Nattanode, Kossori Hataraki ni deru koto ni Shimashita ~Usagi ga Iru no de Hitorine mo Sabishiku Arimasen!~ ch26.5-6

Oshi no Ko ch145-147

Shinde Miro to Iwareta no de Shinimashita. ch11-12

Shuumatsu Touring ch38.1-3

Sleeping Moon v1

Solange wir zusammen sind v8

Sonna Kazoku nara Sutechaeba? ch68sample, ch69sample, ch70sample, ch70-71

Suicide Notes Laid on the Table ch35.2-50

The 6th Loop: I'm Finally Free of Auto Mode in this Otome Game ch3.3-10

The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses ch81-99

Unnamed Memory ch37.1

With the Light v1

Webtoons:

Closer Heartbeat ch0-1

Fall in the Night with You ch74-101

Ice Lamp: The Chronicles of Kira ch49-51

Taberare Usa ch102-105

The Goddess of Healing ch80-92

The Silent Concubine ch1-32

To be or not be ch95-101

Notes:

A Pale Moon Reverie v1-2: What a gob smack disappointment. I really (really) do like Unnamed Memory, but this thing from the same author is just… doing everything UN does right, not all that right. I'm kind of… just astonished. And makes me a bit wary of the rest of the author, which I had planned to buy and read in JP if it doesn't get licensed.

A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even: How I Crushed My Homeland with My Mighty Grimoires (Light Novel) v1: It's interesting how the hook is basically identical to 7th Time Loop, but the route it goes down is already so completely Anti-Fluff as can be. The hook is easily the least interesting thing, as it's a complete dumpster trope by now, but so far MC doesn't feel like a bad person per se, or more like not even really a person, but more like a completely OP mirror. She does not set out to do evil, but if you do her bad, she will reflect it, as she would honor you doing her good. And then the world is full of evil and incompetence, so it just winds up her mirroring all the mud and dirt of it. Which creates all the more of it in the process.

That's very much an Anti-Fluff spiral and kinda somewhat uncomfortable…. Tho, she remains a badass female MC with some brains and guts at least.

I think another issue probably is. This whole revenge objective. It's not even really feeling like it's genuinely her own. It came from her servant, who had a moment of being passionately full of hate. And she was like "oh you're right" and just adapted it. So she really just feels like a mirror, absorbing and reflecting what crosses her path. And she's unlucky that apparently she's not granted the blessing of meeting anything fluff on her way.

I suppose another bit that makes her very different to Rishe from 7th Time Loop is that Rishe got her OP cheat skills over time though effort and maturity, and she got it all through teachers who were nice enough to take her in. In this one's case, she is simply a prodigy, and it all came from herself. She knows modesty by advantage/disadvantage calculation, etiquette not really having any real innate greed and pride, but there is also a sense of natural condescension that comes out of it towards anyone else, even if she can honor people doing things for her.

German first impressions:

Uffz. Das Inciting Incident ist praktisch 1:1 identisch zu 7th Time Loop, aber die Route, die das hier einschlägt ist so Anti-Fluff wie es nur irgendwie sein kann. :NotLikeThis:

Es ist dabei nicht nur "nicht fluff" sondern geradewegs anti-fluff.

Die MC, mal abgesehen, dass sie viel zu OP ist, sie wirkt ein bisschen wie nicht wirklich wie ein Mensch, sondern eher eine Art gut geölte Maschine + ein Spiegel. Sie reflektiert quasi alles, was ihr widerfährt irgendwie in gleicher Art, und offenkundig hat sie nie was Fluff oder wirklich emotional Gutes erfahren, jenseits von Loyalität, die sie erfährt, weil sie es sich irgendwie erarbeitet hat. Und sie reflektiert das irgendwie und dabei verstärkt sie es noch mehr, was am Ende zu einer Spirale von evil begets evil führt. Und dann ist sie dabei auch noch vollkommen methodisch, effizient, ohne jedes Mitleid oder Verständnis für irgendwelche Motivationen, die dazu geführt haben, dass ihr widerfuhr was ihr widerfuhr (obwohl sie es z.T. auch genau weiß) und das wäre noch eine Sache, aber ihre ganze Rache fühlt sich nicht mal richtig emotional an (so wie bei Brundhild oder so), sondern geradezu Secondhand übernommen, nachdem die Dienerin einen emotionalen Rant voller Hass ob der Ungerechtigkeit (und auch Mitgefühl) abgelassen hat. Buchstäblich quasi "oh you're right" und dann zieht sie, ohne mit der Wimpern zu zucken ihre Konsequenz daraus und alle, die ihr im Weg stehen, kümmert sie nicht, egal was.

KA, irgendwie wirkt sie wie ein leeres Gefäß voller Skills, Wissen, Etikette und Macht. Sie hatte ihren Job, den hat sie wunderbar gemacht, wurde dafür aber nie honoriert und dann wurde der infrage gestellt und sie hat die Rache zu ihrem neuen Job gemacht und das ist irgendwie alles, was sie ausmacht und sie scheint auch nicht das geringste Interesse zu haben daran, großartig was zu ändern.

Am Ende vom Band ist sie geradezu teuflisch, aber irgendwie auch, das Teuflische wurde erst erweckt durch Missetaten und irgendwie ist das so eine Dynamik, die nur das Schlechte vom und im Menschen weiter propagiert.

Fushi no Kami v1: The Maika side of things are still extraordinary uninteresting. Unfortunately, you can't exactly skip them. Probably.

Marriage, Divorce, and Beyond: The White Mage and Black Knight's Romance Reignited v1p1, v2p1-6: Maybe skipping the rest of v1 because streaming has expired was not the most bright thing there, but it somehow worked out still decently fine??

Mushoku Tensei v1 finished: Aaand somehow there's now yet another pervy guy.

Side character: "He reminds me a lot of you [….] like stealing underwear or watching me while changing […] Maybe all heroes are just sex-addicted?"

This series is really…..

How to have some good moments and then just throw of pervy curveball to ruin it, and then it gets better again and yet another curveball….

It's kind of interesting how at first I thought it structurally was very much Hell Mode, but now I was thinking structurally it's a lot like Fushi no Kami, but obviously both are younger so much rather they got inspired the other way round.

Fushi no Kami's switches of PoV are definitely more obnoxious, tho. Cheese striken Maika is for the trash bin, but here there's a strange comicalness to it in MT.

The Rebirth Of The General Who Always Sees Himself As A Replacement ch1: From the same author of How to Survive as a Villain. I had read the beginning of the webtoon, but wasn't exactly wowed, but the novel is coming around with poetry, idioms and literature and everything, and I'm already liking it a hundred-fold more just because of this and how it's used to depict the MC's inner turmoil.

An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride v1-10, ch52-54, ch60-63: Sooo, this was also in the JNC May Catchup list.

Me, before reading: Nothing but a doubtful stare.

But I was being told it it would have fluff, and that came from the same one who made me read Otonari, so....

Me, upon noticing I've been binging this rather fast:

Me upon finding out, I'm liking this, despite, let's say a bit of a wacky beginning: (It screams cheese! It screams it!!)

If A Pale Moon Reverie was a complete flop, reading this directly afterwards immediately amortized the JNC subscription all on its already. And then it was pwoerful enough that sorta everything else tasted staler and worse than it actually was so I needed several days of a reading break to avoid souring me on the other stuff.

The series' primary draw definitely are the masses of good faces (especially Chastille is Lady Good Faces), but even behind that it has a really strong going Found Family aspect to it and while the romance bit is there from the beginning and a central part to it all, it considerably overlaps with found family in its most foundational aspects, which makes it that much less just your ordinary cheese. (And they are kinda doing things backwards, that's also a nice pattern I vastly prefer, but is seen all too rarely.) I also like it how the series has the girl coming from the slave trope, but quickly ties over all the apparent submission into a deeper going characterization and turns it all on its head. She is definitely not your a naive innocent something, not an obedient, subservient damsel in distress, if she exhibits it, it's out of self-loathing and self-punishment and there is a component of active choice and agency to it. And that conversation between her and Chastille about how she refuses to stand at the frontline (despite actually being more than qualified to be there), because she has decided upon which role she considers to be most needed by her and therefore leaves the frontline part to Chastille was such a great way to avoid the trap of both Damsel in Distress or OP Mary Sue. How she's fairly wary of her powers also implies an additional reason why she chooses to continue wearing the mana-sealing neck-chocker (and thus not engage with sorcery on top of her mysticism) aside it from being basically their the engagement ring-replacement. (Altho, her wearing it while confronting an unknown demon alone that turned out to be an archdemon may have been a bit silly.) Chastille's holding it somewhat together while on clock vs. a bit of a hopeless idiot when clocked out is also a streak I find, uhm, hitting a bit too home. She is a great dork in any case. The only thing that did me more in were the good question mark faces. Like, they are glorious. And despite all the dorks, fluff and compf, the thing also has an actual plot to follow, that is both having acute stakes (due to danger baring it fangs already), but also not (because no one knows about any sort of concrete time limit beyond it's coming). And there is a whole mystery component surrounding not only that, but characters themselves as well. The romance aspect comes off as downright simple in comparison, and that also makes for a decent balancing off the scales that gives even the more regular simpleton romance elements more flavor.

But in any case:

Question mark faces ftw!

And Chastille

is just adorkable.

Also this is such a mood, aside from the question marks:

An Archdemon's (Friend's) Dilemma: How to Babysit a Crybaby Knight ch1-5: This guy's dense, an airhead and a tsundere. Also, he's already very much done for. The spin-off is also having a fine amount of good faces, but beyond that I still find it a bit lacking. In part because the side characters aren't as engaging and the two MCs don't exactly have as much freedom for development due to constraints in the main plot (where still nothing much as happened). And kinda, it lacks a proper plot of its own to draw you in.

But it also has Lady Good Faces. And maybe it needs not be more. (It just makes me not so sure about its re-read value.)

"Erm, I'm... not here to listen to your lovey-dovey talk, am I?"

Domestic na Kanojo v9-11: I still do not know what I am reading, beyond that it is definitely a series about a bunch of idiots.

Reactions per volume as they were being read:

Volume 9: Somebody please isekai them to a place where bigamy is legal already…

While at Volume 10: This author really seems to have a thing for lingerie… The ecchi situations are a bit much atm, I'm stuck with this book for 3 days already :NotLikeThis:

As in the sense of them being extraordinarily dumb and feeling artificial. Like if Rui goes to undress herself while telling the guy to not look and then withdraws without him ever knowing that's kinda fine, it's clearly for the reader, but it's still making sense in character.

But like the whole thing around Rui's father's new daughter-in-law with the tripping and everything is just =_=

(Also the hell you go to shower yourself without preparing towels and change of cloth, or if you were dumb enough to forget, then just tell them to leave the room and get it yourself, instead of screaming kyaaa and hitting the other for being a pervert, draahhhh)

Across v11: [An assortment of screaming idiot at just about any of them one after another]

Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte (Manga) ch1, ch6, ch10, ch14, ch18, v5ch23-26: Good Faces and lots of tsundere tsun tsun, and I'll probably complete reading this (will it drop in a catchup maybe?), but I worry about its re-read value or general amount of being memorable. Considering how I could jump all those gaps and not feel too much like I missed out on a lot of plot, so there is that…

I still laughed at this.

Everyday Escape v1-4: It has nice covers. The art is decent and pretty at places. Its content for me, however, is kinda for the garbage trash bin. (Right, you can't get the feels of winter in summer, so turn the air conditioning on to freeze, and then turn on a heater, because it's too cold? Excuse me?) Also, I feel like I picked it up thinking it was GL, but if anything it's just GL-bait.

Fragtime v1-2: I didn't know anything about it beyond the Anime movie key illustration used as the Blu-ray cover, so kinda read into this blindly. From the manga covers I did not expect anything too great, but it was to a surprising level kinda garbage yet again. (What up witht eh GL grabs this month being bad ones?) Peeking panties in any case was not something I expected…

Girl Crush ch85-87: Tenka is great, but now there are even more clear signs of a budding potential romance and between her and that guy, that may get to be a male lead or not, there's now a very interesting dynamic: She's kinda tsundere to him and only him and part of it is she can't help it because his character's obnoxiousness just provokes it and in part because he's a total tsundere himself hiding behind arrogance (which has substance to it, as he is capable however) and she just does him the favor to be just like that in turn. He clearly enjoys it. And to her, it in a way widens her horizon as well as being silly like that just puts away the tension she tends to build up herself. This is a pretty interesting dynamic.

Is Love the Answer? ch1: Read the German sample as it came out, which is ch1. It's still good and authentic, but also just makes my face muscles go rather grumpy.

Isekai de Ane ni Namae wo Ubawaremashita ch18.2-4: These two totally are going openly dorks from now on, now that the cat is out of the sack.

Loop 7-kaime no Akuyaku Reijou wa, Moto Tekikoku de Jiyuu Kimama na Hanayome Seikatsu wo Mankitsusuru ch32: Pouts. Pouty Pouts!!

My Unexpected Marriage ch10.3-14: This… could have been so much more interesting. It had all the good ingredients, but in the end it just served up a decent, but nevertheless rather standard narrative dish, tho I am not particularly surprised, as it seemed more simple from the get-go. The court intrigue was still decently wrapped up, although it does feel a little bit anticlimactic. (And to have a fortune-teller have actual supernatural abilities was rather unneeded, especially as he was kinda painted and implied as a gross pedophile at first.) The entire supernatural bit at the end was kinda weird, but oh well.

To have a tsundere mother-in-law was definitely a kinda very interesting dynamic and the thing I'll probably remember from it most.

Nagiko no Hanashi (re-read): It's still just great, but this time I realized, having read Archdemon right before it: It also has the sort of good cute question mark faces! Apparently that latent preference has been there since forever, I just didn't notice??

Sonna Kazoku nara Sutechaeba? ch68sample, ch69sample, ch70sample, ch70-71: Ok, me messing up the time limited free reading deadlines yeet again and the gaps are not going it any good, but it's rather interesting where this has gone. The initial hook and premise is solved, for the time being at least, but the arc that is now ongoing is kinda dark in its own different way. I unfortunately missed the chapters where the new teacher characters explained themselves, but it really now has a plot surrounding someone nonbinary who has a few issues about that, while there's also somebody else with some entirely different issues herself, will be interesting where this is going.

Suicide Notes Laid on the Table ch35.2-50: finished. The ending twist reminds me a bit of Be My Slave in its mood, it has a sense of something quietly sinister but at the same time still being really human in its own way on the character, who turns out to be quite different from what was painted and then overturned twice.

The lesson it comes out with is still a nice thing, while also not and somehow it leaves me with a similar feeling Piece ~Kanojo no Kioku~ left me as well: That inconspicuous character has kinda ruined somebody else's life with their lack of care and manipulations, but also it was the ruined persons own choice as well to a good extent, and to a considerable number of people the learnings coming from the incident probably may stick and improve their life, although, you definitely can't do anything about human nature in itself either. And that's also interesting to just observe.

With the Light v1: The English omnibus vols are definitely bricks. I had read v1 in JP before, and it has been on the back of my mind from time to time, but I can see that this series will take a while to read. While it's informative and interesting in a learning something you maybe didn't know already way, it's also kinda just so very unpleasant to read, too. So far, at least.

How to Survive as a Villain Novel ch137-235: How to just shy away of reading the last chapter, because you don't want it to end, but then also you've long since read it anyway, because while reading you read out of order. So technically I had finished it already at ch223. In any case, everything I blurbed about it last month still holds. Xiao YuAn really is about as aroace as you can be at the beginning and even after he notices how important Yan HeQing is to him, he's just approaching the things is more directed by his rather misguided ideas of being that tyrannical president (that he never wanted to be, that is against his nature, but he still is proficient enough to be… until Yan HeQin who naturally is the real thing takes over). Like, aside from suggesting they could just have sex for him to "find out", he's also talking about it like "And then we do the things we should be doing". Should be doing? And there is this bit in the fan translation that has him consider him "attractive", but the Chinese word is more like dazzling. And it still just feels all too aesthetic whenever he looks at him and has his eyes stolen, because he's just, well, so dazzling. And then he also seems to jump at doing things spicy for reasons like, he knows Yan HeQing is weak to his seductions, so it seemed like a go to way for him for distracting from the thing at hand or a means of reconciliation, or later it sounds more like it's just become a habitual activity, and he feels "nostalgic" about it, and then maybe because he doesn't have this hunger and appetite he goes and does all the strange ideas he has about it and a playful way. It just comes off very different to Yan HeQing who really is very horny, knows it and therefore keeps trying to restrain himself. What, in the end, I find most interesting: it works out regardless. So at the end of the day: Same difference. And the series makes a good case just how much it complements each other's flaws or gives them what they need most in their life, even if some other aspects they may have liked as well may fall short of it. The novel also has none of the things I felt like were lacking when I finished the webtoon. I still find myself wanting more of it, the characters and the world, even as the main plot is over. And if the extra bonus stories prove, the characters alone are engaging even without an overarching big main story plot hanging around.

Also in terms of Isekai: I find is very pleasant that the narrative never flaunts Xiao YuAn's modern life knowledge as cheat skills. Something that gets frequently used to drive the plots forward in the genre otherwise. The extras do shortly reveal that he makes use of them, like suggesting the imperial exam system ancient has had, but other than that, the only modern knowledge ever gets to be shown is his first aid for saving Xiao Fengyue. Usually it's just his songs and weird words nobody understands that make him a oddball for the rest, but as for the narrative, trying to blend in bits of modern civilization does not drive it whatsoever, but character relationships and politics.

Speaking of him singing, the amount of poetry and idioms or also contemporal slang and tropes just needs another mention. I really do like how every single emotionally tangent thing is expressed in classic literature quotes. You have trouble to express things in your own words? Maybe just let the masters of old do it for you. It's not a new thing, is it? (And they still talk and act on their own, too.) Xiao YuAn's self realization and the nature of his love and how it was just there, there never was a start proper, but simply has sunk into his bones to notice some when just seems even more plausible with there not being any sort of Love at First sight for him, or any of the overtly deep infatuation and cravings that otherwise usually get sung and talked about over and over.

I am also quite interested how this will be translated officially:

Also, I finally found all the footnotes together, well, bar one, which I know on my own I think. (The Internet Archive ftw. Why didn't I think about this from the beginning?)

Anyway, Rosmei's official Singapore English one is coming next month or so, will be fun to have another re-read.

To be or not be/How to Survive as a Villain Webtoon ch95-101: Uh, well, this is a case of you read something liked it quite well enough, then read another version, and then it just falls from your graces a bit… And one of the scenes I found hilarious (the bit about Zhang Changson caughing because he knows they were doing the spicy stuff last night), suddenly makes no sense whatsoever. Yan HeQing wouldn't have done that and then even go to overtly humiliate him by spanking his butt, or like running away from him, leaving him alone all night while knowing he can't sleep without the breathing sounds. And them having done it already before he came back in his new body being all like he wants to sleep with him, also comes off considerably more different. (Like one is, he just comes off as irresponsibly unreasonably horny. While the other is he'd otherwise he'd regret it, especially if he considers it something that he should be doing. And then he's using the entire speech to mentally torment the guards and just generally he as a habit of elevating his anxiety of talking distracting nonsense.) Or like he realized his feelings, because he couldn't imagine Yan HeQing being with a woman? Oh come on, after all the shipping attempts and thinking it to be the natural state of things for him to have his harem? Mere jealousy as a realization trigger makes no sense at all here and more than that it really comes off as trite compared to how he realized it only in the cave in a life and death situation and the prospect of maybe loosing him for good and really really not wanting it.

It's still good when it's good tho, some other bits were just cut in a too bad way and I reaaaaalllly would have preferred the other extras over the AU arc, but oh well. The first third is still good and on the whole also what got me to the novel and that one has opened some gates to getting interested in Chinese stuff generally, something that has lingered in the back of my mind behind a bit of a blockade, so just that alone is a pretty enormous thing.

The Goddess of Healing ch80-92: The two MCs are just such nice fluffy dorks.

The Silent Concubine ch1-32: I saw this on the Monogatari Novels webpage (the publisher that licensed up How to Survive a Villain's webtoon for English release, but still has yet to release anything in English.) Then I noticed it's also up on Comikey, to trying it out it be. Uuuuh. So the premise is kinda the same as The Male Bride (aka Lala no Kekkon), but unlike The Male Bride which has ostensibly the MC make his own choices only to then get drugged, sexually assaulted, kinda confined only to then reveal his agency was fake, because he was being all kinda manipulated in it, while the other guy ostensibly is also a good guy at heart, just the other one is way to seductive to him so he's frequently out of his mind (i.e. your usual questionable BL tropes), this one……….. has all that, but it doesn't even try to put things in a better light. Things are happening to MC Shen Yu, because he's mute and thus disabled, because he's poor and at the mercy of those in power. He never had a real choice in the matter. And so his being all subservient is a literal matter of survival rather than just the trope. Even his winding up going all happy and romanticizing both the guy and his circumstances seems more like Stockholm Syndrome proper and desperately trying to find the silver lining in the hell he's stuck in, and it's delusive, and the plot never even tries to paint it differently.

And the other guy is a cruel, controlling, violent man and he stays it. He just finds out, that if he stays as cruel, his gonna break his latest concubine whom he finds himself drawn to, so he goes and does a few uncharacteristic nice things to keep him safe or humor him, but quickly enough the narrative makes it very clear: He did that with expectations. Nothing about it changes his fundamental nature. Of him looking down on everyone else, of him thinking that MC being subservient is what is to be expected. Ultimately, the romanticized dream pops as exactly that, just a dream. And Shen Yu actually goes to set out finding real agency using everything he can use, despite his handicaps. Which makes things interesting, because the plot is a power struggle between the Male Lead and the emperor, but at the same time it's also a power struggle between him and MC Shen Yu and also an internal conflict inside the latter, because of lingering attachment to the man that doesn't exactly do him good, but still gave him a few things he needed and wanted most in his life for the first time (and still isn't really getting from anyone). At the beginning I thought this was going to go terrible things happen, but the oh so holy grail of love is gonna reform the heinously cruel Male Lead and then everything's good afterward despite all the terror inflicted in the beginning. It put that one on its head, at least so far. It's quite an interesting read, but it's also rather very toxic in all the ways that be.

But then it also wrecks pouts like these:

Which looks almost like an entirely different series. Well, I suppose it's a scene from the middle of the delusive dream era.

Artwise it's solid, but it does seem to take 'shortcuts' by using real life images thrown through some filter and sometimes not even that, which at times feels a bit weird, because those and the drawings themselves don't always blend too well.

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