Under the Greenlight - Reviews

An interesting story that takes your breath away. The art style is great and the characters are mysterious but likable.

Since on going  i cant really give a comprehensive review but soo far i like it. The art is different from other reads. The story touches alot of dangerous topics like drug abuse, gangs and sex with familiarity. It makes u sympathise with the characters and make them more real. I hope it gets finished soon then illl update the review. 

A friend of mine was telling me about how this one is a classic case of false advertising, so I decided to check it out for myself. From the framing, you might come into this hoping blindly for a powerbottom D/s BDSM story, something weighty and interesting like Twittering Birds Never Fly but it's really not. This thing's got more in common with rapey 00s BL than anything genuinely kinky, to be honest. There's no power exchange here, and I should be used to seeing it by now, but honestly the disappointment is fresh every time.

I've seen some people claim that the big, bad mafia guy bottoming for the art student is some kind of twist, but it's such a simple inversion of the tropes that I struggle to see what, if anything, it's subverting. If Jin was actually a powerbottom, as I've seen fans claim, that would be a genuine subversion, because when do you ever see a dominant man who takes cock in BL, hm? It's vanishingly rare. Now, regarding the 'powerbottom' thing, the framing in the early chapters does give the impression that Jin is trying to set up a BDSM power dynamic, but sadly his love interest Matthew is one of those cringelords who enjoys 'turning the tables' on doms without communicating to them that he's into that. There's a good reason irl BDSM communities are so fastidious about keeping people like him out. His runaway sense of entitlement makes him a danger to himself and others, and he's going to rape someone who thought they were going to be consensually dominating him. Probably almost immediately.

Basically, it's no fun tying someone up if they just let themselves out of the restraints and try to fuck you immediately. Especially if it's a restraint that's symbolic, like a tie, because busting out of that isn't even an accomplishment, it's just like... yeah, ofc you could get out of it if you wanted to, thanks for ruining the moment, dickhead. That's the kind of thing, among others, that places this as a pushy, possessive alphahole story, like roughly 60% of straight romance, but this time they're both huge, uncanny yaoi-handed men with maybe three distinct facial expressions split between the two of them. And then they fuck, in the same position, for like 6hrs straight, because sex is all about who can shove the other one over and pound them harder, right? That's what makes someone a sexy dominant... according to (what feels like) all romance fans at this point. If you enjoy that kind of story, and somebody must because we've been fucking inundated with them since well before I was old enough to be interested in romance, then you'll enjoy this one, because it's literally just more of the same. You guys, whoever you are, eat like kings. Just hope you know that lol.

Sorry to sound so sour about it, but it's stuff like this that makes trying to find stories with actual BDSM so frustrating. It feels like all people want to write about is the hollow aethetic of kink in order to sell it on to vanilla audiences; a topcoat of fuzzy handcuffs over the same familiar, unthreatening story of 'his shitty behavior is actually super romantic and you can fix him' we've been retreading since The Flame and the Flower(1972). Anyway, if you had any hope of this highly rated story doing anything new or interesting, go reread Sekaichi Hatsukoi and think about what you've done.

Great artwork and interesting plot. The story moves slower than I'd personally prefer, but the detail put into the characters makes up for it. Jin is a switch, and Matthew's a virgin (I think). 

Sysnopsis w/ spoilers: 

It's a childhood friends trope, which I consider a bad choice. It was plenty good, there was no need to make them know one another as kids. Jin is a drug addict and Matthew's a psycho. You only learn this as time goes on.

As much as Jin is a pretty pushy seme to Matthew, their interactions and sex scenes were pretty much intriguing if you ask me…