#overthinking hour

It was pretty brutal but also gave me a chance to see an ending I hadn’t seen before since I’m still not strong enough to go through with some of the bad endings

Spoilers after the cut

polyam people don't never miss a partner when they're with another, that's like obvious, you don't replace someone with someone else

but i still feel like she doesn't quite get that yeah it is a little different missing each other specifically but me also missing having any attention, care, intimacy, closeness, comfort AT ALL, while she has her partner with her

i don't have another person around at home with me, i don't have the comfort of knowing my safe person is in the other room when things get too difficult to handle on my own, for most of the day i can't even get a text back because of timezones, like it's very quite lonely

and idk how to put it into words but it feels pretty shitty and like i'm being insensitive if i try to express that? like i feel like it sounds like i'm dismissing that she's missing me too, like i'm saying she doesn't consider us individually, or like it's not her specifically that i need it's just anyone who'll give me attention, idk I don't know how to express it without feeling like it comes off wrong

Sooo I started reading Love Qualia by Tamao Bebe on Ebookjapan (I had already read the spinoff Love Indulgence and wanted to check out the og story as well) and it’s just so interesting to me like. Bc on one level we’ve got this cute BL manga series about a ”boys touch bar” where stressed overworked ppl can have some drinks and hug the male workers to de-stress and heal, and it’s mostly about the romances between the staff and their customers. Then on another level, we’ve got the reader, who is also probably someone stressed and overworked and wants to be healed and de-stressed by reading about these characters touching each other (at least this one reader is).

And I just feel like this series manages to be so incredibly meta about it, because it’s constantly talking about the healing properties of human touch and how we probably touch cold smartphones and other devices a lot more than warm, living things, and how the people visiting the bar want to be healed (honestly they use 癒し so much I definitely learned that kanji for life)….. it’s like they’re commenting on the reader, who is like the fictional visitor, just seeking some healing.

I also feel like the story in Love Qualia manages to be quite meta about the tsundere uke/“I won’t admit I like you/ having sex with you” trope. While I’m not personally a big fan of pushy seme characters like Azuma, I find the conflict between him and Yuuto super interesting bc he’s been pursuing Yuuto for a long time and they’ve even had sex, but Yuuto can’t admit that he likes the sex (or Azuma) because he doesn’t want to admit that he might be into guys.

It reminded me of this video about consent in BL, which argues that the uke characters’ reluctance to have sex with the seme character can be read as internalized homophobia… and then Love Qualia explicitly links these two things together. Yuuto questioning his sexuality is very clearly one of the central themes in the story. When they’re in bed and Azuma asks him “does this feel good”, Yuuto literally answers “It doesn’t feel good, I’m not gay” and I’m just sitting here like. Okay wow thanks for giving me so much stuff to think about.

Feels... weird?? Writing Snoop sometimes??? Because I’m constantly referring back to milestone articles for her age and trying to figure out if I’m doing this quote “correctly” even though every child is different??