r/joseistories

Only time ao3 ever uses it's report system is apperently Palestine fiction that's what I heard I don't use there so take my words for this with a grain of salt I personally don't like using there. I use it a few times because I wanted to grow my novel but it didn't work out for me so I stopped.

My best advice would be for Wattpad and Ao3 users should stay away from each other nothing comes out with fighting them. They'll just call you an anti for not liking rape, instead and child abuse fics.

Major spoilers for the entirety of Firefly Wedding.

I've seen this manga get a lot of glaze for its writing that I honestly don't think is warranted. Especially the main character, Satoko is mostly just a self insert.

She has 0 personality. Satoko has no interests or hobbies other than pleasing men. She's supposedly good at dancing and music, but she literally only does that to reel in guys and never thinks about it again. She has no relevant female friendships or relationships with women. No passions or goals in life other than making men happy, either her father or one of the love interests. In fact there's not a single thought in her head that doesn't relate to them. The manga epically fails the Bechdel test. That's what makes her such a perfect blank slate for people to project onto, because she's this supposedly super beautiful and talented person and yet she lacks any specific standout traits. You could easily replace Satokos role in the story with any other character and the plot would barely change, because it's mostly driven by other characters being active and her being reactive. Satoko is mostly just described as beautiful, but looking good isn't a personality trait. and even when there's an attempt to associate her with a trait, its always more narrative glaze and characters telling us shes xyz, with no acts to back it up. For example Satoko is called strong willed - but the entire latter arc of the manga is about how she was unable to choose between two conflicting wishes and always ends up instantly bowing down to the men in her life. There's not a single instance in the manga where she actually proves herself to be strong willed on her own without male supporters to fall back on. Satokos "strong willedness" only goes as far as finding a new man she can attach herself to, to serve and protect her.

All the male characters instantly love her (I'm talking falling in love within seconds) and all the women are insanely jealous of her. In general every character just instantly has this extreme love or hate reaction to her even if she barely does anything. Like she'll say 5 words and some guy will be asking her to marry him because she's supposedly that fascinating and awesome. And all the women who are jealous of her are portrayed as evil and stupid and their only redemption is by coming around to worshipping Satoko like the men do. Seems like wish fulfilment to me.

She's unrealistically persuasive. Its a repeating pattern in the manga that Satoko will enter into a situation of conflict with some other character, and in the end the conclusion is always the same: Satoko was right all along and the other person starts crying and apologising to her. Satoko will lecture them, and even though her argumentation is flimsy the other character is not only instantly convinced but also starts humiliatingly crying to show how superior Satoko is, which ends in her magnanimously forgiving them for not recognising her wisdom sooner. The conflict with Aoi drove me crazy because it was basically Satoko being condescending and rude to a suicidal woman (not to mention hypocritical). Or the Yukari conflict, which gave me the vibe of the author making up some "and then everyone clapped" power fantasy scenario. Like Yukaris friends instantly turn on her just because Satoko said they should, and then ml shows up to protect her and humiliates Yukari until she starts crying. Or Satoko lecturing Shinpei, an assassin since childhood about how killing is bad one time and he's just instantly a changed person. Every other character is just wayyy too easily converted to her opinion, and of course she never has to learn anything because she already knows everything! Every antagonist turns into a bumbling idiot straw man as soon as Satoko begins lecturing them.

The manga jerks itself off with Satokos supposed generosity of heart in forgiving all of the antagonists for doing her wrong, and how noble and self sacrificing she is, but in spite of her angelic portrayal, we never see her speaking out against the obvious injustice of the island system that her family benefits from. On the contrary, she protects pedophile Mitsuharu with her life and scapegoats and exploits Shinpei, who was harmed by this very system. So my point with this is basically that the amount of praise she receives for being such a good person is disproportional to her actual acts and thus unearned.

She's soo pure. This is basically *Madonna Whore complex: The Manga*. Satoko is constantly juxtaposed with the prostitute characters to show how cutesy and virginal she is. While other women throw their panties at ml in an unrealistically undignified fashion, Satoko rejects his advances. You can even see this in the way she vs other female characters are drawn. Satoko is shown as petite, and she actually looks more and more childlike as the manga goes on. I'm talking massive bug eyes, absolutely absurd size differences with the male leads, undefined babyish facial features, plus shes usually depicted with her hair down wearing simple clothes. This is especially grating because the way the prostitute characters are drawn is pretty much the exact opposites: eyes are A LOT narrower, faces way less rounded, more defined features, curvy body types, and of course, elaborate clothing hair and makeup. And with the way these prostitutes are disparaged in comparison to Satoko, that does send a message. The author makes these other girls humiliate themselves for the sake of this guy just to then praise Satoko for "preserving her virtue" around him and show how he prefers her over them because she's not "easy". Belgh.

She's such a poor little bean. This manga is chock full of characters with a tragic past, yet the narrative trips over itself to throw Satoko a pity party for having a bad family life. Meanwhile other characters are literal slaves with no family but get 0 sympathy. Aoi for example is extremely depressed due to having to endure rape and abuse day by day, but is basically told by Satoko to suck it up, quit whining and work harder. And then her depression is just never brought up again. Later on though Satoko says things like "I don't deserve to live" when faced by Kotaro with the reality that her two dreams are fundamentally incompatible (which he wasn't wrong about) even though she basically implied that Aoi was being melodramatic and attention seeking with her suicide attempt. And she even tries to kill herself later on and is stopped by Asagiri. There's countless instances in this manga of a lack of empathy being shown to other characters who are often in much worse circumstances, only to uncritically coddle and pity Satoko.

All her flaws are fake. The only flaw to her character after that the narrative will acknowledge is her being "too kind and self sacrificing for her own good". But that's obviously not a real flaw, nor is it taken seriously because she gets praised and rewarded for it. So clearly not a true shortcoming.

She treats other like shit without consequences. I could talk all day about this, but basically, the author tries to write Satoko as a cool girl boss, but due to internalised misogyny she can only show it through her talking down to other women. Like the suicidal Aoi. Or lecturing literal sex slaves about freedom. Or trying to make the conversation about herself when Asagiris scars from a customers abuse comes up. If she wasn't the mc, she would at least be considered a very rude, ignorant and self centred person. But because she's the protagonist, she gets praise. Later in the manga, we also see Satoko hatching a plan to imprison Shinpei and marry another man behind his back, and she continues to lie to him about this for the entire rest of the story. Again, she's treating others like crap with 0 consequences. Not to mention the fact that she openly supports the island system, which is quite literally slavery, and she enables Mitsuharu, who is a literal pedophile.

Her illness doesn't negatively affect her and is just there for cute moments where the male leads pamper her. There's some scenes in this manga where, due to how childlike Satoko is drawn and how overly subservient the male leads are to her it looks more like two gay dads parenting their 6yo daughter than a love triangle. In the end she's cured off screen and lives a long life with 0 issues. Her heart condition essentially only serves as pity bait and to prevent people from holding her accountable.

And last but certainly not least: she receives so much wish fulfilment its ridiculous. Her supposed yincurable heart disease is cured. Her family is made non threatening by outside forces (not before her dad breaks down crying for not treating her right and saying he loves her of course), and her male leads all dedicate their entire lives to her without her having to choose. She gets every little thing served to her on a silver platter without doing shit to earn it.

I'm open to discussion, but if you're gonna come in my comment section and say shes a perfect good person and anyone who dares criticise her is an evil bully or whatever go skedaddling because that girl is a literal slave owner and pedophile enabler.

As a Korean I resonated so hard when reading this comic. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve noticed a disparity between what Westerners view as queer versus East Asians, especially when it comes to shipping, which is why I think leads to a lot of discourse when it comes to anime. And I don’t think it occurs to a lot of people just how big a cultural difference this is and I wish it was talked about more.

Here’s a link to the original instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMNXO0AtCeX/?igsh=MWRtdm11ZnlpNXFseQ==

In a sea of just okay wlw yuri works Ami Uozumi's work in Pink Candy Kiss, published in Josei magazine Cocohana, is one that stands head and shoulders, with some of the best, and it means a lot to me as a lesbian and quite possibly my favourite manga book series I own(and I own a lot of yuri, let me tell you that). I didn't really have to deal with strong comphet myself growing up, but a lot of my girlfriends and friends have, and seeing such a beautiful, respectful depiction in a manga that truly loves women is something I value, especially as someone with a different experience.

There are these passages in the physical volumes, at least, that talk about what she loves in women, and they honestly watered my eyes. Reading it and looking at the various outfits Ami draws, you can figure out before she even tells you (which she does with cute little inserts between the pages attached in the pictures above which made me double down on getting all the volumes because this woman deserves to be able to afford beautiful things) that she clearly loves fashion; she loves drawing beautiful, diverse outfits, accessories, and even make-up on the women.

The story itself depicts in a fairly realistic way self-exploration and how easy in a society that tells you, 'you must like men, ' for women to often end up in unfulfilling relationships by going through the motions and even the work it can take to work through that and your identity as a queer woman. The manga starts with Takara's boyfriend breaking up with her because he can feel her heart's not in it on some level, and to be fair, it likely wasn't. There's a moment where (bi-curious? 'het') best friend takes one of our main characters, Takara, to a lesbian bar where experienced elder queer women do get a laugh at the cute 30-year-old baby gay who is experiencing her first true love. But also, that scene depicted a beautiful butch woman, and the manga itself didnt turn her into a joke, nor did it shy away from calling her "fine-looking" and showing a woman who has a preference for masc presentation being obviously attracted to her.

We find Ema in a loveless marriage to a guy who's actually surprisingly, for a yuri, not comically evil and abusive. Now I have had enough experience with random men, and have heard horror stories from friends in my life to know dating men isn't necessarily better than just randos, to know thats not necessarily a bad/unrealistic depiction, but. I genuinely believe him being a pretty decent guy adds a lot in terms of saying that it's not her being mistreated by men; she just has a natural romantic and sexual inclination towards other women. It's not really anyone's fault that their marriage will not work out. He pursued her, and she agreed because at the time she didnt believe she could be with the one she loved(Takara). Their reconnection was not something she planned or expected, but judging by her taste in wlw literature, she has never really been unaware of this compromise.

Pink Candy Kiss feels less like a typical yuri trope checklist(as much as I do myself love them) and more like an authentic love letter to queer women at every stage of self-discovery. Ami Uozumi treats late bloomers, butch presentation, and the disastrous results of comphet with profound respect.

I also personally just love stories about adult women compared to the more high school centric settings, do you have any of your own that are favourites? I also really like How do we relationship, The two of them are pretty much like this, Pulse, Run Away with me girl, Even though we're adults and my cute little kitten but Pink Candy Kiss is quite possibly my absolute favourite? What are yours?

What are your favourite Josei or Yuri titles that handle adult comphet or portray queerness this respectfully? Also ones where you know the author adores fashion?

Should I make a webtoon out of this?

I may delete the game and go back to 2ds again