I'm also the editor-in-chief of http://shousetsubangbang.com/ , where we put out nine delightfully dirty issues of short stories and art a year! We're always looking for new participants, so if you're interested, check out the website.
I also do other things in my real life, hence the pseudonymity. But I promise I'm friendly!
My first read of the New Year and it’s a good one.
Two messed up men, who have lived different paths but are ultimately very alike. There’s a lot of talking in this rather than things happening, they discuss past behaviour while skirting around what they feel until it explodes.
There’s magic to the writing; deceptively simple delivering only basic facts but behind that is a whole storm of complicated experience and emotion. Shukyou claims writing was struggle and it fits because their story is a struggle. The Seascapes make for good analogy.
The relationships here are interesting, one of the characters is married and how everything resolves is left up to the reader while still being a satisfying conclusion –nothing behind anyone’s back-.
Wife Lydia is perhaps my favourite character in this and I can’t help feeling she must have her own story to tell, that she can see and understand so instinctively. A snippet from her pov would make a fascinating extra but as it is she shines from the page her nature and humour endearing.
It’s weather fronts and ripping away facades, I got a very strong image of the characters and loved the story. Very well done, go read it!
4.5 The alcoholism theme is just part of the story. I liked the gradual discovery of how all the MCs were the past, at the beginning one would think that only Rainer was the black sheep. Lydia was a great character as well. At times it was painful to read, but it is important that both Galen and Rainer realised . Great art by Tamago, the animated ''broken glass handshake'' is a genius strike.
Warning: violent fights, parental abuse, homophobic insults (all in the past).