The Kouhai who Went from Introvert to Influencer - Ch. 2

[Doutorfunga]

Very much this. Jim Butcher, the author of The Dresden Files, has said that he starts every book with "How can I make Harry suffer this time?"

Spoiler: As semi-brief rundown...

In the first book, he gets a cute girlfriend; in the third book, she gets turned into a vampire and breaks up with him (he also goes against direct orders from basically everyone and starts a war against the Red Court that lasts eight books.

Book 5-6, girlfriend shows back up, they get drunk, and have sweaty, BDSM-lite sex. Lot of pain and trauma later, including finding out his best friend's daughter became a mind controlling witch and had to save her from execution, girlfriend calls him up in book 11 and starts the conversation with "they kidnapped our daughter", which is a great way to let someone know they have a kid.

Throughout the book, pretty much every facet of Harry's life is destroyed: his home is burned down, his car is blown up, he finds out a special brown-nosing asshole with a vendetta against him is now FBI and is keeping track of him, he gets paralyzed, makes a deal with the devil (well, Mab, the Winter Queen, but close enough), and kills his girlfriend to rescue their daughter (and, ya know, genocide the Red Court).

Epilogue comes and he's decided to go on a date with Karen Murphy, the cop who's been by his side since the beginning (not always enthusiastically, though) and with whom he's had metric fuckloads of sexual tension. Before that can happen, though, he gets murdered.

He doesn't stay dead, obviously, and comes back after a stint as a ghost where he finds out his protege (the aforementioned friend's daughter) has gone crazy out of guilt because he asked her to mindwipe him so he wouldn't remember putting out a hit on himself so he could welch on his deal with Mab.

Then his protege's father gets crippled, protege gets turned into the next Winter Queen (which fucks her mentality up even more).

After that, he gets forced to work with old enemies to rob Hades and Murphy gets crippled trying to stop them; they decide to say to hell with their different lifespans and give a relationship a serious shot.

The very next book, which got split into two and took 5-6 years to come out, Murphy gets shot in the throat by that brown-nosing asshole and dies and while Harry makes a solid attempt to choke the life out of the fucker, he's forced to spare him because reasons.

All that to say, I would be genuinely shocked if Harry gets anything resembling a happy ending because of Butcher's hard on for torturing him, so yeah, that's just one series that has conditioned me to expect the worst whenever something even mildly happy happens to the protagonist of a series.

Which is probably why I like Zyugoya's stuff, because they do get the happy ending, no matter how fucked up their backstory.

That would bust my suspension of disbelief by the second chapter. Kudos for handling all that until this point

 

[Vincentius]

That would bust my suspension of disbelief by the second chapter. Kudos for handling all that until this point

Well, like I said, all of those events take place over the course of 17 books, so, when combined with the insanity that is the rest of the series, it doesn't really stand out until you really stop and lay it all out like I did.

That said, the events of the last book have seriously damaged my desire for keeping up with the series. It feels like I'd only be reading to see who dies next in Butcher's quest to torture Harry, rather than the actual story.

 

[ChaoYang]

I hope they give a good reason why senpai wasn't there for her.

Pretty sure he graduated.

 

[animan095]

Tactical Hugs shall be deployed

 

[Remocracy]

Zyugoya hit me with the feels again.

Someone needs to let this man stop cooking so fucking hard

 

[animetuber2199]

Dude ngl i could see her backstory as my future (not the influencer part lol). i got lucky 'cause my high school community is small and filled with my old friends, and I had gained a reputation as the math kid in the advanced/gifted/whatever program, so I never really had the chance to be bullied. But I'm going off to college soon and I'm scared that this will happen to me.

 

[Angelonius]

She should propose to her senpai~

 

[SpudWumper]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[InsidiousIntent]

Well, like I said, all of those events take place over the course of 17 books, so, when combined with the insanity that is the rest of the series, it doesn't really stand out until you really stop and lay it all out like I did.

That said, the events of the last book have seriously damaged my desire for keeping up with the series. It feels like I'd only be reading to see who dies next in Butcher's quest to torture Harry, rather than the actual story.

Yeah, I think I said enough after Battle Ground, no intention of continuing the series. It has some interesting elements, and Butcher isn't a terrible writer, I guess I just don't enjoy his misery/suffering fetish that much; I find it diminishes the overall story in its repetition and persistence. Kind of like the person that tells the same joke over and over, finding it funny, but it just becomes tiresome and bland for others.

 

[Elandriel]

This chapter works almost like a one-shot in itself.

 

[MonsieurQuack]

Zyugoyer has dropped a new series?! Sign me the fuck up.

 

[eviljackspicer]

4 children

Rookie numbers.

Home grown Soccer team

 

[Wolvenworks]

 

[wallsg]

This is just my opinion, but the dark Backstories Zyugoya puts in their stories is always the low point for me. Like in "My Childhood friend is Broken", showing her being drugged and date raped left a bad taste I couldn't wash out.

In comments on that series some guy was arguing hard that she was only "assaulted" and not "sexually assaulted". I couldn't believe it.

 

[Average-Manga-Enthusiast]

Zyugoya... You don't always have to have them be so broken.

This is just my opinion, but the dark Backstories Zyugoya puts in their stories is always the low point for me. Like in "My Childhood friend is Broken", showing her being drugged and date raped left a bad taste I couldn't wash out.

But that's just one example out of a hundred, and I know it's Zyugoya's "Thing", everything always has this darkness and bleakness to it... but I still argue it's the weakest part at least for me, and I had to stop reading stuff like Demon Mother because it just feels unrelenting. I wasn't enjoying the happy moments because I always expected some horrible tragedy right around the corner.

Coming back to "My Childhood Friend is Broken", even at the very end of the series when they are married and have a baby, everyone in the comments is expecting either the dad or baby to die a horrible death and ruin everything. That expectation is not a good thing IMO.

It wasn't daterape. Her seniors forced themselves on her in form of ragging and then took advantage(sex. assault/rape) of her.

 

[Jackist]

It wasn't daterape. Her seniors forced themselves on her in form of ragging and then took advantage(sex. assault/rape) of her.

I took it she was drugged/roofied in that scene. It's a first person perspective of her looking at her beer, she drinks some of it, then the panel next cuts to black. I never took it as she was just "ragged" into it. I took that as her drink was spiked and i am sticking to it.