FallLover

Lizel and Eleven have a whole new population to have fun with in Astarnia.

Yeah-- that's how I felt after vol 1. I read the end of vol 1, read the side stories and was super hyped for vol 2--- but it felt off? The writing was not as interesting or thought out, anymore. At some point I had to drop because Cale didn't FEEL like Cale anymore but instead like a cardboard cut out of his more basic traits.

I can kind of see that, but that's not exactly the issue I've been having. It's a problem I tend to have with "next generation" stories in general, and which a lot of people who aren't the biggest fans of them have: you spend a lot of time getting to know and love a certain group of characters, and the story then tries to convince you to leave them behind (e.g., death, retirement, the characters are just busy doing other things) and love this new cast of characters. For many (myself typically included), this is not doable. I think Star Trek, for instance, only manages this so much because each different vessel feels so uniquely itself that it works. And obviously there is audience for these stories. I just don't tend to be among them. But if those characters aren't as relevant, suddenly the story isn't interesting anymore. Suddenly you spend most of the story going, "Okay, but what is [original protagonist/supporting cast] doing?"

(Spoilery for much of Part 2, given I've read up through Chapter 440, also a bit more critical of Yu Ryeo-Han's writing)

i recall when i was finishing up part 1, i explicitly thought, 'i could read about Cale & Co. for a thousand more chapters, i won't mind if it goes on forever' and now i realize i was ignorant 😭

from the author notes from p2, it is SO clear YRH doesn't even know when the story will end--she's 'like, oh! we're at 300ch now? hahah! whoops!' and that's cute the first few times, but now i just smh. it's become insufferable, and almost like sacrilege to the art of storytelling when you are STRINGING YOUR READERS ALONG for 1400+ chs for no real artistic purpose.

i understand WHY she is reluctant to let this story go, both from an emotional and a financial standpoint. it's a found-family driven fantasy that she has cultivated for years + her magnum opus. but the found-family dynamics, which were CENTRAL to LCF's narrative, are nowhere to be found in Part 2. i don't really give a single fuck about any new character, except the fan-favorite heavenly demon, because we don't get enough time with them at all. she makes half-hearted attempts to give characters backstories and motivations so that you empathize with them in a few sentences, then the next arc begins and they're completely thrown away.

what irks the MOST is it feels like YRH is milking the LCF cash cow dry until it is literally standing on its last leg, actively dying, but we're still trying to do CPR and revive it. it ruins artistic integrity, and it makes me sad bc the fanbase WILL continue reading regardless if it's slop or not. and i say 'slop' with a lot of grief. i can't imagine keeping up with LCF updates weekly, when i already found it weird when i was binge-reading 50chs at a time.

not to completely dunk on Part 2 as a whole. i loved many moments and there's a lot of value to be appreciated (like Eden's sacrifice & rebirth), but it doesn't nearly make up for the sheer amount of nonsense you have to put up with. i swear to god the Central Plains Arc had me questioning my life + i'd never read through anything faster bc i just wanted to leave.

note: i am at ch350 of Part 2, which i assume is halfway through, but no one even KNOWS atp. when i see fans yearn for a Part 3, i just...am glad you find it enjoyable, but it's like, are you really keeping up with the plot? we're getting front-row seats to the decay of LCF's beautiful artistic creativity (take a shot every time i say 'artistic' lmao).

If this is some social media account thing, a lot of official social media have a lot of fan interaction. Many get harassed for not doing so and apparently now criticized for doing so. So it's a lose-lose situation in my experience.

I also wouldn't personally blame adaptation inconsistency on her, at least not all of it. Especially if this about the stupid, "Does Erhaven have pointed ears?" thing, as that was something Pan4 spoke to Yu Ryeo Han about (which brings to mind other author-related pointed ears controversies, such as the debate over whether elves and other races in Tolkien's Middle-earth have pointed ears or not). It's my understanding that Korean novel authors have some influence on the creative process for adaptations, but I think they're generally just pleased to let manhwa artists go and do their own thing, often in wildly different ways than happened in the novel (e.g., what happened with the manhwa adaptation for Surviving as a Player). Even outside South Korea, there is often wild inconsistency with how characters look across translation book covers, comic adaptations, and animated adaptations in particular, let alone live-action ones. Mo Dao Zu Shi in particular, and Mo Xiang Tong Xiu's other books have a lot of inconsistency there, even in translations/adaptations of the same book. And it's dubious how much actual control Mo Xiang Tong Xiu has over any of that, or how far she can push for change. That doesn't mean the changes can't be criticized, but I think tying this down to, "how YRH handles LCF" is again probably unfair.

I would also disagree that she nailed Part 1, or that it's a miracle that happened. It does a lot of great things, but it also, as I wrote, makes a lot of the same mistakes Part 2 does (and falls into a lot of pitfalls that a lot of these action adventure Korean serials do). It just does more good things than part 2 does, so it's more bearable. Obviously it's a great story in its own way or we wouldn't be talking about it out of sadness for how Part 2 is going. And it's won awards and more power to Yu Ryeo Han for it. But I don't personally put it on any pedestal.

Also, there is a niche of people who consider the "big three" to be specific things, and people who consider them to be other things, so for the sake of this, I assume you mean Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, Lout of Count's Family, and The S-Classes That I Raised/My S-Class Hunters. And to pretend that those don't suffer from similar issues is very strange. All three of them have similar issues, but are varyingly successful at different things, with, at least in my opinion, LOCF at the bottom from a writing standpoint.

ORV’s novel, in my opinion, also has been ongoing well past when it should have stopped, had arcs in its main story that were really not as great as others, and got bogged down in a lot of unnecessary things, and has been wonky with merch (though it’s been going about as long as LOCF, it only started getting a lot of merch unrelated to the physical releases within the last year or so, and I’m not sure why that doesn’t also count as “sucking the cow dry”, unless the difference is that people seem to like ORV more). And it's my understanding that more people are pissed off with how the ORV manhwa adapts things than how LOCF's manhwa does, especially because ORV's manhwa cuts out and changes a lot. And at least LOCF doesn't have a massively hated live-action adaptation, but also had a video game already (though ORV is getting one in 2027, and who knows how good that'll be). Meanwhile, Ize Press, who's doing the English translation ebook and physical release of ORV's novel and the physical release of the manhwa English translation, was retweeting generative AI accounts on twitter to promote the Solo Leveling x ORV pop-up in New York :/

It's not that surprising, because the official Solo Leveling video game accounts were sharing generative AI crap in 2024, and it maybe just splashed onto ORV due to ORV's part in the collab. But it still sucks. And I don't think that at all reflects on Chugong or singNsong. I doubt they have any say in what a twitter account they don't run does.

ORV in particular has also had a lot of controversy in regard to how it and its revisions handle its Japanese storylines (by neutering the pro-Korean and anti-Japanese elements in regard to Japan's history of colonizing Korea), which is not something LOCF had to deal with at all (at least before I stopped reading). SCTIR also had some pushback there with how Yoojin views Japanese people. I'm not sure how manhwa first readers are handling it in Korea, but there was some pushback against it in the novel, and we're right at the start of the Japanese arc now. This isn't unique to these novels, either. Solo Leveling's also had some adaptation changes for how it handles its Japanese characters and arcs, and the anime adaptation's domestic Japan release made some messy choices to be more pro-Japan. This was always a concern when a Japanese studio was given the reins to adapt the novel, and it's a concern now with ORV going to an as-yet unnamed Japanese studio, given what we've already seen of novel and manhwa modifications to the Peace Land arc.

I'll start with this. The peak of LCF's traction on the KR side was during 2018-2022, the community had a constant boom of fanwork with art and story threads hitting the thousands. Cale and the rest of the main cast would also go trending in the tab. Moments like the White Star's reveal, Raon's Growth Phase, Earth 2 arc, KRS using instant, Alver fighting in his pajamas, etc. would be filled with impressions. Fan Cafés were rampant, and there was an abundance of demand. For merch in particular, it was at an all time high, with IIRC the first ever hardcopies for LCF exceeding the printing fund goal of 15,000,000₩ by 5000%—patroned by us fans (and that's only for the books themselves).

The thought of maybe attributing LCF finally gaining investments for merchandise is popularization due to English translations is a bit... too western-centric of a perspective. Well, perhaps that's the standard of globalization for foreigners... but anyways, we're just making conjectures here; so similar with how you think the timing is out of her hands, there are also those who saw opportune moments and situations where the timing was in her hands—there was just no sense of initiative (not meant to be taken in absolution).

The basis for the latter is because, from a financial standpoint, Yu Ryeo Han makes more enough to open up that avenue for herself. Backed by a publication company, serializing on RIDI-KKP-MUNPIA-etc., international royalties for both the Webtoon adaptations and novel localizations—the money is seriously no joke (and AFAIK from a friend currently serializing on RIDI, the upfront payment alone is already staggering for a work that isn't even 1/4 of LCF's popularity). LCF also had its adaptation as a (albeit short-lived) VN game running on its own server. Knowing this much, there are those who find it odd that the rest of the main cast aren't featured in domestic merchandise. The gap of 4-5 years in finally doing so after the initial production all the more amplifies this strange feeling. Of course, even with all that—I am in no way making demands. There is no reality where I'd be grabbing Yu Ryeo Han by the collar and yelling at her to put all her money and resources into making merchandise ASAP. She has a life beyond being an author, and I wouldn't dare to be so parasocial as to contribute the ons and goings in her private time to my basis.

Her interacting with fans on an individual level is no issue either, but that's not what she's been doing. To date, she has no known SNS to even make that possible. The most we get are Author's Notes and Q&As from the official publications—which is entirely fine, and I'm neither asking for more nor less in that aspect. As to why I said "that account is ran without a sense of distance from fans", here is the OpenStoryKR account created earlier this year. It's a social media account mainly promoting something like an Amino for Webnovels, with LCF as its pioneering community. They're set on releasing merchandise as well. In this scenario, no one is getting harassed over fan interactions, but I agree that it's a lose-lose situation. How to explain it... 뭔가 백망되 공식이 저렇게 거리감 못재고 운영하니까 오히려 정떨어지는데. It's like that. Anyways, it's just some of us being sentimental and finding their LCF reference jokes corny—so tacky? Take it as the lightest of the many jabs behind why some fans are beginning to be put off.

Adaptation inconsistency does not pertain to the Erhaven ears one, how can it when Yu Ryeo Han already made a clear stance on it? If anything, that's definitely more adaptation consistency than not ^^ it makes me think about how great it would be if she included character descriptions in her bonus content. I appreciate your examples OP, and while I didn't think as far as to impose the standard of consistency in live-action adaptations—MXTX's control over how that was made isn't all too dubious when you remember the level of censorship in China. I am from Mainland myself, so I'm aware of that much. Asking for consistency over all sorts of mediums is impossible if you're thinking of it as 1:1 depictions, but that's not the case of my discontentment. If we're looking at MXTX's other works, it's true that there are "wild inconsistencies"—but the characters retain elements that make them distinct enough to recognize. This care is extended even to side characters (somewhat), but since it's a BL—it wouldn't be so odd even if all the focus and quality effort was concentrated to the main cp. However, that standard would not apply to LCF since it is not a BL. There are expectations directed not only at how Cale is portrayed, but also the rest of his found family. Am I saying LCF fails completely at making its characters distinct? Not at all, but there has been some dissatisfaction from the CN side ever since LCF's Taiwan edition dropped the cover of Alver, as well as Hannah and Jack. I'll refrain from talking about the issues in depth, adding any more personal sentiments would likely lead to more disagreements here. At the very least, Yu Ryeo Han should have established the characters' base designs before production—or that those adapting pick up the work themselves and actually try to be faithful. Good for you if you find no problems with it, but I think having thoughts like these aren't so unfair when money is/was involved. Debatably unreasonable, sure, but it's no cause for concern since Yu Ryeo Han herself will remain largely unaffected by a handful of blabbering in fairly hidden circles.

Moreover, I've read your post on LCF's writing pitfalls OP. It's the heart of this entire thread after all. When I say it's a miracle she near damn nailed part 1, it's less about putting her skills on a pedestal and more-so generously emphasizing the fact that she managed to end it in the first place. If there are issues with my wording, kindly link it to english not being my first language.

I don't know why a brief "looking at the other big 3 and back at lcf with a sigh" managed to evoke such a discussion about "pretending that those don't suffer from similar issues is very strange", but I guess brevity is a cause for a lot of clarifications. The crux of my intent is that in comparison, at least ORV and SCTIR have their main stories wrapped up—not that they are faultless saints.

For ORV, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "only getting a lot of merch unrelated to physical releases within the last year or so". If you mean goods besides the books, then I've had the pocket watch and posters since 2022.

If you mean the quantity of merch being pumped out, I'm not trying to nitpick that. ORV's been going as long as LCF, yet look at how LCF only just put out the same quality—with the golden plaque and more—this year. The timing is simply a shame because it would have made a lot more motion back in the day. I've already explained related points in the second paragraph. Anyways, it's not so impossible that there may be some people who keep up with ORV until now that call it "sucking the cow dry". Redundant but again, the difference with LCF is that their main story is completed while our main story's still stringing readers along... pretty much.

Your understanding that more people are pissed off at ORV's webtoon adaptations could be because their currently active fanbase is much larger than that of LCF's. In any case... they have their trash adaptations and they dog on it, we have our trash adaptations and we dog on it.

While ORV's AI controversy involved an English team, LCF also had a recent one with OpenStoryKR back in June just days after they started. It was an AI generation of Cale touched up based on the novel's part 2 cover that has since been deleted. If not for the immediate backlash from the active fans LCF still has on the KR side, who knows how it could have progressed... You can find the account apology here. On our end, no one's voiced that it reflects on Yu Ryeo Han—even though she's had a hand in the promotional and bonus content for OpenStoryKR. She's truly given more grace and fairness than you might think.

If we're talking controversial elements in the story—LCF has indeed never and still has not touched on Japan-based storylines the way ORV and SCTIR has, but its not without its own contentious topics. The Dark Elves and Alver's disguise, the Jungle Tribe, and Tunka have had their fair share of annually raising brows for coming off as racist caricatures at first glance. This thread's an example. I'm not pitting the novels against each other over this though, just pointing it out to match your hashing out of related contexts lol.

Bringing up the studios behind ORV's anime, I'm only aware of the pilot episode prepared in genga (honestly leaked by a friend working in the field)—which has been ready since 2024. It's hard to gauge from that alone how much ideology it perpetuates, but at the very least I can say that the production team is not limited to Japanese studios—or a Japanese team (not that this will alleviate concern much). Well, let your worries out.

I don't care for SCTIR's merchandise situation.

Thank you for the link to the twitter account! I have never seen this before, so it's nice to have context.

"but since it's a BL—it wouldn't be so odd even if all the focus and quality effort was concentrated to the main cp. However, that standard would not apply to LCF since it is not a BL. There are expectations directed not only at how Cale is portrayed, but also the rest of his found family." I find that to be a deeply strange and nonsensical double standard (and not one applied universally, even for m/m stories), especially with a cast as large of LOCF's, but it sounds like something local to certain countries (certainly there is plenty of debate in fandom over side character appearances in adaptations in and out of BL stories). I also think that's unfortunately less to do with Yu Ryeo Han's largely lacking description for things in general than again it is a hallmark of a lot of long Korean serial novels. I kind of imagine part of it is down to the rush part of the work and/or perhaps the idea of letting the audience imagine more to their heart's content, without the expectation of a visual adaptation of any kind ever materializing and needing such guidance. Perhaps descriptions like how SCTIR gets in its handful of character bios for the ebook would help, but I don't know how common that is in Korean novel serials. Also, this is a lack of knowledge issue on my part, but ORV and SCTIR have internal illustrations in their ebooks, which, in SCTIR's case, are at least a little inconsistent with character design (e.g., Yoojin's choker), and I don't even know how common that kind of inconsistency or inclusion at all is in ebooks/physical books. I don't think LOCF (in Korean) has internal illustrations at all. ORV and Solo Leveling (at least in the English release) don't have character bios, and Solo Leveling and LOCF (at least in the English releases) don't have internal illustrations. This all wouldn't matter anyway because the issue is Yu Ryeo Han not including the descriptions as much in the first place, but again I think it's down to what the standard of comparison is. I would personally be happier if there were better descriptions of the characters. But, considering cover art again, I also know what can happen to certain authors, even well-known ones like Ursula K. Le Guin, even when they give a lot of internal description and direction of what characters look like (more on her frustration with cover artists over the decades). And that's not necessarily down to the author. And I've been looking at what folks have said about how the characters in the manhwa for 괴담에 떨어져도 출근을 해야 하는구나, which is not all positive.

I'm glad you're specifying what adaptation issues you mean, specifically, because I've mainly heard about the ears one, which involved Pan4 having to explain the situation, Cale's hair length, and people who don't like the English novel covers or didn't like the game designs. I'm generally unbothered by the LOCF English novel covers. But I also never said I didn't have criticisms of what adaptations I've seen, and this is part of why I wrote, "That doesn't mean the changes can't be criticized". I've never liked Ritana's manhwa costume, and I find the way the last season (actually might have been the one before, I haven't been paying full attention lately due to lack of interest, even though I'm a manhwa-first reader) of the manhwa started making a lot of characters very square quite strange, while the manhwa has a bad tendency to same-face everyone (e.g., Cale, Albert). I just don't generally blame it on the source material author's mismanagement, because I've seen how this stuff is in other Korean serials and in different countries. I've also discussed - with friends - the way dark-skinned characters are framed in the story to be dubious, at best. It's nice to know we were not alone in having issues with that.

I'm very aware writing is an art. I'm a writer myself, have studied it in school, and enjoy well-written prose in various forms. Perhaps at least the better parts of LOCF read a lot better in Korean and/or Chinese, and I'm glad you enjoy them. More than likely, it's a subjective thing, and that's fine.

I don't personally consider the pocket watch - which was hard to obtain for a very long time, as it stopped being sold after a while - and some posters to be a lot of merch outside the physical book releases, especially in comparison to the current Star Stream store, which offers plushies, keychains, and various other merch, and only opened fairly recently.

"Bringing up the studios behind ORV's anime, I'm only aware of the pilot episode prepared in genga (honestly leaked by a friend working in the field)—which has been ready since 2024." I'm quite curious what this means, since I can't find it anywhere. If you'd be able to send the leaked pilot in DMs if you're comfortable, that'd be awesome! Or if not, that's cool, too! It's good to know there are more than Japanese studios involved in the project, but a Korean studio was also involved - at least briefly - with part of Solo Leveling's anime (as a Korean studio made the first OP), and yet didn't ultimately change how the domestic Japanese release was handled, or how the first Japan arc was still modified a bit more from how the novel and even the manhwa showed it to be less harsh to the Japanese characters.

The tag was a bit vague, to me, and seemed to imply the issues you had with LOCF - being a cash cow getting overmilked, the merch situation being too late, official social media having issues, and flawed writing - were not present in ORV and SCTIR, which I disagree with. I greatly enjoy ORV and SCTIR, and even parts of ORV's Side Stories and SCTIR's. But I still think, on the whole, they all share similar problems other similarly popular stories in the genre have, whether it's merch, social media, writing, or with adaptations. I personally enjoy SCTIR and ORV more than LOCF, but they all have their issues. SCTIR sits in an odd place in that, unlike ORV and LOCF, it is entirely over as a novel. Perhaps geunseo will pick it up again to write more, but it's an awkward comparison, to me. I think that the end of SCTIR and ORV's main story is an easier stopping point than Part 1 of LOCF, but they all have their issues.

"She's truly given more grace and fairness than you might think." I'm glad to hear that, since your reblog, and a previous reblog seemed to frame most issues as being from her. Not that she can't be criticized, but other than making a lot of money and perhaps not feeling like spending it on merch and perhaps not being the best writer because she makes a lot of characters without describing them well or perhaps making demands we don't know she hasn't made and exerting control over the copyright she might not have, I'm not sure how many problems exist that are traceable back to her.

Category: M/M

Fandom:  黄泉のツガイ | Yomi no Tsugai | Daemons of the Shadow Realm

Relationships: Yosano Ivan/Kagemori Asuma

Tags: POV Kagemori Asuma, pwp, Top Yosano Ivan, Bottom Kagemori Asuma, first time, open ending, more tags on Archive of Our Own

Summary: Asuma and Ivan meet for drinks and then go to a hotel together.

got myself one of those photocard keychains so i had to draw my boy for it

During their Q1 2026 earnings conference, Com2uS also announced that the game is an action RPG for mobile and PC, and that it will release in 2027 (as will the anime adaptation).

However, on August 12, 2026, Com2uS announced that the game and anime will release in 2028:

Category: M/M

Fandom:  とんがり帽子のアトリエ | Tongari Boushi no Atelier | Witch Hat Atelier

Relationships: Deanreldy Ezrest/Beldaruit

Tags: POV Beldaruit, spoilers, anxiety, open ending, smut, Top Deanreldy, Bottom Beldaruit, more tags on Archive of Our Own

Summary: While recovering in Ezrest, Beldaruit is still at odds with Deanreldy. A conversation with Zazamaiya further unmoors him, opening his thoughts to new possibilities in his relationship with the nation's overly charismatic king.

First Chapter