Trope: Tragic Backstory

  • Would You Like to Be a Family

    Would You Like to Be a Family

    This is actually a collection of a couple stories, all of which are pretty cute one shots. I picked this one up because I’m a sucker for dark hair/dark eye mean lookin’ types. And family stuff. It’s cute. Look how petty he is. It’s so funny. That said, there are some, uh. Style drawbacks… In…

  • A Beast’s Descent into Love

    A Beast’s Descent into Love

    When thief Karim sneaks into a clandestine auction, he finds Asena, a beautiful young man with animal ears and a tail. On impulse, Karim steals him from the bidder who bought him for a hefty sum and decides to take responsibility, making arrangements to live with him for a month while he waits for the…

  • The Descent

    The Descent

    I’ve seen this one a few times, actually, so I rewatched it because I don’t think I ever saw the Descent 2 and wanted to revisit it. I remember young me, 12 years old, thinking, oh god. Juno is hot. It’s a good movie, led by an all-female cast. I love cave creature movies and…

  • To Your Eternity 1-21

    To Your Eternity 1-21

    I’ve always been somewhat in love with this series. And recently I’ve had the joy to get my digital collection up to date— for a long time I only had the ten volumes from a Humble Bundle—and since I was sick, I figured I would slam it back. And my god, did I weep exactly…

  • The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party, Is, in Fact, the Strongest

    The Healer Who Was Banished From His Party, Is, in Fact, the Strongest

    So I only made it through 6 episodes. Usually when I drop anything, it’s because it’s offensively bad. This is not the case. I dropped this because… it’s not… great. It’s not bad, either. It’s mediocre. Middle of the road. It sure does exist and it sure does sit comfortably in the tropes. It doesn’t…

  • How I Swapped Places with the Villainess, Beat Up Her Fiancé, and Found True Love 1

    How I Swapped Places with the Villainess, Beat Up Her Fiancé, and Found True Love 1

    ISEKAI’D BY: Truck-Kun! I’m The Villainess, So I’ll Just Beat Up My Problems! After dying in a traffic accident, I wound up in an otome game world. What’s more, I swapped places with a girl named Alexandra. The so-called heroine had already bewitched Alexandra’s fiancé–the second prince–and set her up as the villainess. To make…

  • Kenka Bancho Otome: Girl Beats Boys

    Kenka Bancho Otome: Girl Beats Boys

    Harem Scale H: MC has a lot of empathy and is the type to defend A: MC is not angling for it. She’s in an all-boy’s school, so being surrounded by men is par for the course. R: It’s a companion anime to an otome game, so… there’s the kinda romantic and yet masculine relationships.…

  • Lady Devil

    Lady Devil

    PLEASE BE MINDFUL OF THE TRIGGER WARNINGS. Finally. I finally finished this story. Once, eons ago, I started reading this while it was updating. It was one of those services where you need to unlock chapters with money each time so I (as usual) fell off the horse. Now I have finally read the whole…

  • A Silent Voice #1-7

    A Silent Voice #1-7

    Shouya Ishida, a mischievous elementary school student, finds himself troubled by deaf transfer student Shouko Nishimiya. Despite her genuine attempts to befriend her new classmates, Shouko only proves herself to be an annoyance for Shouya and his friends, provoking them to ridicule her at any possible chance. Soon enough, their taunts turn into constant assault—yet…

  • The Witchstone

    The Witchstone

    An unforgettable, high-stakes, laugh-out-loud funny novel, The Witchstone blends the merciless humor of The Good Place with the spellbinding fantasy of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Meet Laszlo, eight-hundred-year-old demon and Hell’s least productive Curse Keeper. From his office beneath Midtown, he oversees the Drakeford Curse, which involves a pathetic family upstate and a mysterious black…