ARGH

My roommate, having once more temporarily returned, was of course cleaning earlier. I go into the kitchen to get something, and find that she has opened the window, presumably because of the bleach-y smell of whatever she was using.

People. It is snowing, windy, and 19 degrees. Why, why, WHY would you ever open the window in such conditions? No wonder I was thinking it felt colder than normal in here.

Gorgeous Carat, 1-4

I mentioned in my last post that I was at Kinokuniya this weekend. While I was there, wandering around and considering if I wanted anything, given that I cannot read Japanese, I ended up in the translated-to-English manga section, trying to remember if I'd heard of anything recently that I wanted to read, and looking at the pictures on the covers.

(By the way, you have to love a bookstore with an entire set of shelves labeled 'yaoi'.)

I picked up a shounen-ai series called Gorgeous Carat, because hey: turn-of-the-century Paris, jewel thieves, an arrogant aristocratic guy fallen to ruin... I figured that it wasn't possible for me to actually hate it, and so I went ahead and bought the first volume.

Oh my god, people. This is simultaneously the best and worst thing I have ever read. It is so on crack; it features every single yaoi trope, all the things I absolutely loathe, and yet it does it so shamelessly and over-the-top that I am somehow amused and enthralled instead of annoyed. Like, someone is bought when his family goes into debt. There are constant reiterations of the 'you belong to me'/'I will break your spirit' thing, done by various characters. The uke (and oh, this is very much a series in which the characters are clearly meant to fill the uke and seme roles, which in and of itself is a thing I usually can't stand) bursts into tears every ten pages. Everyone has jewel-colored eyes, of course, and they are repeatedly referred to as "those precious amethysts" or some similar epithet. One character has another whipped into unconsciousness and then this is never mentioned again. Because that is the sort of thing easily forgotten, I suppose.

And that is the first volume alone. But the whole thing is still somehow gleefully addictive, and has nearly as many of the tropes I like as the ones I hate (Morocco! Backstories involving gangs of child thieves! Ancient ruins! The one time when the seme was being typically bossy and the uke hauled off and punched him in the face!), that I immediately returned to Kinokuniya to buy the whole series- which is only four volumes long- and have read the whole thing. It is terrible. It is so cheesy. It caused to make noises halfway between laughter and shrieks of horror multiple times, mainly involving me telling the pictures, "He had you held in shackles and Whipped! Into! Unconsciousness! Quit being romantic!"

I'm not sure if I'm even recommending this. Certainly I have since found out there is a sequel, or spinoff, or something, called Gorgeous Carat Galaxy, which I will be buying promptly, but I cannot in good faith encourage anyone else to buy any of this. If I believed it was possible for a work of fiction to actually be bad for you, it would be this. It's the equivalent of violently-colored candy made entirely of unnatural chemicals with names involving many, many syllables, which doesn't even taste that good, and yet which you can't stop eating. Um. if you would like to share my pain, or have been looking for insanely cracky shounen-ai which makes you simultaneously want to see the guys escape from each other and yet also hook up, check out Gorgeous Carat! It's like the bad drugs.

Also, apparently the mangaka has a series about Cesare Borgia. ...what's my manga budget for this month, again?