I’m not a super try hard so I refuse to touch impossible on principle. But I have reached a point where medium starts to feel lax. Also, I still need to full combo the hard burger minigame but it sucks and is the last one left.
So I read HDWR last year near the end of a semester and wanted to share this.
There were these times I was reading How Do We Relationship? Man is it brutally realistic in “that’s just how relationships go, humans are dumb sometimes”. Mired in the middle of “doomed yuri arcs”, you have to read through the most compelling slogs of confusion, malaise, sadness, and copium. But uh oh! I have college exams and I’m sad now! I need to take a 2-day break from the HWDR journey just to study and take the exams with a clear mind.
Boy was that tough and weird, but at least it’s over now. … And it happened again: Uh oh! I have a Thanksgiving feast with my family coming up! I gotta put HDWR down for ANOTHER 2 days just so I don’t carry that angst with me to a social gathering with my brother, parents, aunt, uncle, and cousin all there. Absolutely wild. I don’t even wanna imagine how it would have gone if i had that depressive aura with me.
Has anyone ever done this? You begrudgingly set it down because you know it won’t just distract you if it’s still fresh on the mind, but actively affect you even while you’re doing something else? Or maybe it just distracts you. Or maybe you didn’t set it down and you had the joy of carrying story angst into real life? I’m curious either way, if you’d like to share.
Hello all,
I talk for a bit, so if you want the part where I actually ask for specific advice, go down to the bolded text. Advice in other matters is also welcome, I just say this so as to not waste your time.
I am new here but I have been deaf all my life thanks to a genetic condition. Thankfully, hearing aids and speech therapy from a very young age secured my ability to function in this world. But anyway, down to brass tacks.
I am currently using some Phonak Naida hearing aids that I received in 2022, so they’re about 4 years old. For over 100 days now, I have been working out very intensively with a buddy over 100 days now. I have always been aware that moisture is a pretty big nemesis for hearing tech. My current problem isn’t new, per se, just more persistent than any I have seen so far. (Aside from a travel horror story I can talk about later if curious.).
Basically, moisture only bothers so much as clogging up the tube itself. This is annoying but quite harmless, and gently blowing in the tube always fixes it up for me. No, the tube is clear and yet the sound is still muffled. I can tell it works because the audio balance buttons for the hearing aid still work and affect the synchronized hearing aids’ “volume”. I can tell it turns on, off, and charges just fine.
Something like this has happened before, and the tech clinic said that the “marshmallow” (think the name is acoustic dampener?) in the ear hook before the actual hearing aid was full of moisture.
Now, I am pretty confident the problem is moisture. In my case, it is ALWAYS moisture. The problem is where the moisture is and how severe it may be. I guess what I actually mean to ask is this: I have a very old dehumidifier meant for hearing aids that has sat in storage for over a decade. This humidifier was safe for my past models, but I am scared of putting my modern hearing aids in there, should it overheat them and make the problem worse? … Now, this problem actually resolved itself as I was getting pictures for this post (volume and hearing in left HA now works fine!), but I would still like to ask for advice because I may want to start taking moisture maintenance more seriously. If you have knowledge on the hearing aid shown or anything about what is likely less-used dehumidifier, insight would be appreciated.
This one should be a lot tamer than the last I sought out. It is an office romance that I scoured for online but because I can’t remember the name, I only found other office yuris (good news, though, office yuri is a mine I have not tapped and will soon do so).
Anyway, description time. Not good memory of main characters, I think one may have been blond and the other brunette (black hair) (no, not Ayaka is In Love with Hiroko, which IS peak tho). I’ll call them by placeholders: X & Y. They work at rival companies and met by literally bumping into each other at a park (either on way to work or on lunch break). After the collision, X recognizes Y is from a rival company while helping Y pick up her personal effect, while Y is clueless that X is a corporate rival and just sees a cute lady. (If it helps jog your memory, one of the characters was wearing a face mask). Anyway, Y is now seeking out X during every lunch break and that is how they usually meet. X is confused/cautious around Y because she doesn’t want corporate drama.
All the same, Y manages to keep having lunch/dinner with X. They also sleep at each other’s place a couple times. There should also be a brother character who sees the budding romance from a mile away and works to be a wingman.
My memory is clearly a little more spotty, but I’m hoping to come back to it.
So, I keep a list of manga I have read and enjoyed, under the chance that i want to re-read it. This post, which I hope fits this community’s guidelines, is to ask for help finding it, since my list of manga names has been corrupted and I have to retrace the ones I liked best.
(Disclaimer: This post is labeled NSFW because the sex scenes are ABUNDANT. And while that is absolutely an incentive for me to find it, I also really enjoyed the story. If you don’t do NSFW stuff, I get it.)
TL;DR of plot at the bottom
Manga’s descriptors: colored, long-strip, not a one-shot, at least 20 chapters
Okay, let’s get down to brass tacks. There are two main characters, whose names I have forgotten. The first, who I will call X, is brown-haired woman (mid-to-late 20s?) wears glasses, has a possessive younger sister, and is living separately from family while studying for a doctorate (if not a doctorate, some form of study and research at a university). She is not a professor, but her senior position among the students and experience as an adult earning money from this institution leads to her serving as a research guide for younger students. (I believe the studies are medical/pre-med in nature). The other character, who I will call Y, is a college student living alone who does lesbian sex work (to protect herself from men) to pay for tuition in the same school as X. Them going to the same school is a coincidence, but X recognizes Y (a pre-med student under X) as the lesbian prostitute she hired to lose her virginity with and is now faced withe being the TA and senior of Y and her fellow students. Y does not want to broach the subject, keeping work and person lives (and personas) separate. Since Y won’t let X bring it up, X instead keeps paying to lay with Y, but they would also use the time to go on dates or just cuddle on certain days. This leads to the development of mutual romantic and sexual feelings.
If you want a description of personal motives/arc: X started off with curiosity, then an inexplicable crush on this fellow student leading this double life, before becoming love after using her semi-maternal, comforting habits (might not be the best way to say it, but it is a short way) to break down some of Y’s defenses and learn more about her. Y, ln the other hands, remains pretty uninterested and even annoyed/confused as to why X (a woman who had previously used her services to lose her V card and satisfy curiosity) is still perusing her as a lay and as a person. In all fairness, she doesn’t want to have these talks at school nor when she is at work where she pretends to be a different person, but X’s persistence and lack of judgement slowly leads to Y letting X in and they became a couple.
The possessive sister bit at the beginning was because, as always, there is a character who temporarily separates the couple. X’s sister is this manga’s staple “separator” who: A) wants her sister to herself (platonically, thank goodness), B) knew Y in the past and I think bullied her, and C) I believe blackmails Y’s status as a sex worker so that Y breaks up with X. She relents when she sees her sister, X, crying and stops obstructing the relationship.
I should say that the frequent sex scenes remain consensual, and the drama/angst of the romance comes from Y eventually become anxious that the relationship is physical only, so she becomes scared to stop acting like her persona because at least the pretext of “paid service” will keep them together longer while making that leap into the unknown of “romance” could break this little routine that has bonded them so far. (this is before the love was properly confessed).
There is, of course, a lot more little things I could divulge, but this should lay out the main plot quite thoroughly.
TL;DR Female senior college student/researcher living away from home (no family drama, just independent) loses her v-card to a lesbian sex worker, meets the same woman at school, and pursues her romantically. She courts both personas of the woman as a sex worker and as a student, waiting for Y to become comfortable enough to let her in. The story has an impressive balance of wholesome and explicit scenes that never seem to detract from the story.
P.S. This is just me talking about it now, there are times where the story is somewhat comical, because X definitely recognizes Y when she is a student. They have a “I know”, “I know you know”, “I know you know I know” type situation. It’s usually played for angst, but the story gave its fair due to how that “elephant in the room” dynamic affects regular interactions, such as when X tutors Y for better grades or offers guidance on Y’s research projects. Not to mention when they start dating, where Y, lacking the confidence of her persona, struggles to initiate or maintain the mood of a top/lead.