Welcome back and congrats on finishing the chapter!
How are you feeling about going back to familiar land of the dialogue after all the history setup?
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I don’t trust you… 
ask me again when I finish this vol 
I was really close to finishing Ch4 and planned on doing it last week but… some not so great things happened and felt like the entire world was paused for a week or so… things finally settled down tues/wed…but couldn’t really focus/concentrate and then finally got the stuff done I wanted to a week ago…
fingers crossed 2026 actually starts tues (lunar near year) instead and the year improves… 
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Yeah, sometimes life happens in a way that we really, really don’t need it to 
God yes please. Same hopes, really…
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Apologies for popping into the Cyril discussion 2 weeks later. I just finished chapter 9, and was reading through everything here.
Cyril/actors
In Japan women were barred from kabuki because it was being used a means of prostitution. Men would see how beautiful the performers were on stage, and would be willing to pay to have a night with the actresses. Young men then took up the female roles…aaaaand the exact same thing started to happen, so young men were eventually banned too, lol. Maybe England was similar, minus the young men bans? If I recall correctly, performing art careers (acting, opera) were a bit scandolous at the time because they were synonymous with sex work.
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still reading but at the pace of the original club… finished ch5 tonight…
finally soon… setting sail (at least I hope so) 
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Awesome, thanks for checking in shuly~ Have you felt like the book’s becoming a bit more manageable since the info dumps?
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still not easy… but a bit 
it’s more surprising to me, even with having been deathly ill and other stuff going on around here with a couple of weeks off reading been able to keep to the original schedule…
looking forward to finishing this vol so can see how good or bad the reading is for other shousetu that I know are easier… I have bingo cards to fill out after all…
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finished ch6 tonight… this one got me pretty upset… grrrr… 
but at least a week ahead of the original schedule
won’t finish this by/during readathon but on schedule to finish early /mid april at this pace … 
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You mean, February 2027? 
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the post was not edited (ignore the 
)
wasn’t at all tired when i posted that LOL … swear that said april 
… haven’t read tonight yet…that’s next…gonna start ch7… but prediction is early april
don’t usually track like this but wanted to really see how things were going and at what pace i could sustain with something this difficult…
slow and steady is getting it done…
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That looks pretty cool though 
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it’s nothing fancy really… im an engineer so building something simple like this in a spreadsheet program is pretty easy… it’s just a daily thing and the char count plotted with a linear curve fit prediction …
super basic thing that looks fancy but really isn’t…
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I lately came across something like “oneself might not recognize one own’s skill because it became too easy what was troubling in the beginning” 
(I definitely would struggle with setting up the correct visualization here)
What’s also cool is that you put in the effort of daily updating and stuff. And was thinking how motivating it might be to get a visualization of this
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finished ch7 today… whew!!! still ahead of the original reading schedule… but not gonna press this for readathon…
will read a little more tomorrow (maybe or maybe not during readathon)… instead…onto more fun things for now…
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finally finished ch8… slowly progressing…
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Chapter 8 - q for shuly
My feeling from this chapter apparently was this:
How does their dynamic looks to you as of this chapter?
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Keep it up, shuly! You’re doing great! It’s so inspiring to see your steady progress!
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response to Kroki
I haven’t read all the previous posts … but I have mixed feelings about this whole thing…
Not related to this book but in general, a pet peeve is how people will often judge something from history by the current standard - which is a very human thing to do…however it also skews things and doesn’t quite give a good overall picture of the times…
Personally wish people would learn more from the mistakes from history instead of trying to wipe them out or gloss over them… there are a lot of political examples but one that’s not quite as political is…
.. the environment...
realize it is still somewhat political, but not necessarily as polarizing as other topics …
If you look back at some of the US history, it’s still a very young country vs the rest of the world. There are no 800-1000 year old castles 
here
With so much land and natural resources people in the early 1900s thought nothing of using up resources as they were plentiful. It was only one or two people thought crazy at the time might make statements about preservation…
One example is the Hetch Hetchy Dam that was built in the early 1900s in Cali. Supposedly the beauty rivaled that of Yosemite. By today’s standards this would be unthinkable but in the early 1900s only a handful of people would have tried to prevent it…and any of them would be the earliest “tree huggers” but at the time they would be seen as crazy.
Mulholland’s water project for LA was ambitious and would never get off the ground with today’s rules… can’t even imagine what the EIR would have looked like 
Environmentalism isn’t new but as a whole idea it is more recently widely accepted than some other things…
A lot of these things are relatively recent history… interracial marriage was still banned in some places in the US up until the 1960s…that’s like practically yesterday…
The US has a lot of problems but even Hollywood was forced to cast all white actors for so long the because racism is still a huge stupid problem… and sponsors with the money controlling the funding… (worried about boycotts) There were some very talented non white actors and actresses that while might have put on a great performance but couldn’t have them “mixed” on screen heaven forbid… the insanity of it all…
It wasn’t that long ago a female having her own bank account or credit account was unheard of… had to be in her husbands name… sexual harassment training wasn’t a big thing until the 80s/90s…
Safety is another one - 50 years ago… a few deaths during construction … meh oh well…it happens… now much less so… things still go wrong and all but still…
anyway… in general, we often forget to consider public opinion/views/customs as a whole in different timelines …
So stepping back from that trying to take an objective view of the times along with the current… not sure what the norm would be… by today’s standards it’s easy to say … I do not approve… he’s innocent, confused, venerable, lonely, scared, etc… back off a bit… let him get settled (realize Geoffrey doesn’t have the whole picture but still)… also given everything happening so fast, he is immediately codependent for survival.
But then given the time this is taking place… and the fact that women (realize he’s not a woman) but they had basically no rights and it wasn’t considered wrong at that time… where is the line… beats me… from one perspective it’s “normalized” from the other it’s “not ok”. People also got married earlier, didn’t live as long…so the age differences weren’t as extreme deltas like they would be now…
He’s also a virgin. Has he even figured out if he likes men/women/both?.. (again todays thinking) and I also forget how old Geoffrey is… but then again… if pirates and rules don’t really matter too much… It seems right now this last bit more like Kaito is a cat playing with it’s food not realizing the food is much bigger than the cat …this isn’t tsundere… he’s playing a very dangerous game…
Geoffrey could easily do whatever he wanted if he chose to… that being the case if he just wanted one thing he would have had it by now…but since he probably wants more than one thing… he’s doing his best to control his desires… still a very dangerous game to play with him IMO.
…but this is storybook land thankfully…
How’s that for a really round about convoluted I don’t know how I feel about this … 
:
I do think things could change but so far nothing about this is healthy…
…then again … we shouldn’t let reality ruin a good pirate story!
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A bit more :D
In the meantime, the furthest I got in the historical thought process was “well, he’s gonna provide Kaito with living conditions and food and whatnot while also not torturing the guy for being a suspicious alien, and… what’s in it for him? A man like that can have anything he wants - entertaining him and hoping he doesn’t get bored might be Kaito’s chance to survive”.
Though it might be that I’m thinking in a still very modern way - possibly comparing to a sugar baby relationship for like a broke, desperate student - but I liked how the book switches perspectives sharply, making me go from “what! poor baby” to “well… I guess so” to chapter 9.
Isn’t it great that this is a work of fiction, the point of which is to make it entertaining and exciting and not depressing? 
THIS! Rolling back from his perspective to Kaito’s is like "maybe uh yeah, maybe you be nice? "
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yeah....
If Kaito big and strong and/or knew enough to defend himself might be different …
but dude… you are playing with fire… if Geoffrey was drunk and unless rufus or someone was around to save you… you’re in danger girl LOL
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