thoughts on 只要彼此爱过一次

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ITS SO GOODDDDDDDDD

now that we've got that out of the way, i just wanna post sum details

so there r sum nice recurring themes (motifs ig?) in the story that i love love loveeee


1. hair (my personal fav)
even tho only guan tang's hair is mentioned directly, i think hair is a rly nice repeated symbol in the comic.  a v cool pt abt the end is that heng's hair is long and guan tang's hair is short.  in the beginning, it was the opposite and in her head, heng mentioned loving guan tang's long, red hair.

personally, i think that the switch kinda represents guan tang moving on from her crush on heng and heng being unable to do the same and its so aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!

also, i think that the fact that heng hasn't moved on and the probable reason why is so sad.  like her family, teachers and classmates are homophobic and china isn't the most socially progressive country so her first love probs meant the world to her.  she pushed away sum1 she loved bc she couldn't get herself to b as bold and brave as guan tang was (which is not her fault at all).  she probs would've moved on like guan tang if she was able to b as open as her.  i think she only subconsciously held onto that crush so hard bc of the fact that she was/is so deeply closeted and she regretted not being more open abt her feelings at the time.


2. the poem
even tho it's never directly mentioned in dialogue and only shown in passing during the whole comic, i think its a rly rly special part of the comic.  it's a bit hard to read bc my reading isn't the greatest and some of the characters r rly small and guan tang's handwriting (the lil message on the side) is rly grainy in the chinese ver i was reading, so im going off the english ver.

the most obvious part is that the title of the poem and the comic are the same.  a lot of types of literature in general do this and i just rly rly like it.

another thing, although not a part of the poem itself, is guan tang's note.  it references the last line of the poem and its so darn sweet i can'ttt

also i just found the chinese ver of the poem im just not gonna edit what i said b4 bc it still makes sense either way (the translators did a fantastic job imo)


3. queer themes (obvi)
i love stories like this bc i feel like they're such great representation for both those inside and outside the community.  its short and digestible and most of all, it's rly touching and realistic.  not that all representation has to b realistic, but the portrayal of how a lotta queer ppl may feel should b realistic.  ik a lot of queer representation seems to b just constant sob stories abt the hardships queer ppl face, but i still think good queer sad stories r v important.  especially bc this was originally chinese and china is v socially conservative.  in china, most of the queer "representation" is literally porn.  mostly mlm porn written by straight women and wlw porn written by straight men =>=  my point is that it's great to see actually decent representation in china.


overall thoughts
all in all, i think this was a fantastic story.  the art was gorgeous, the writing was great, and the overall structure n delivery was so effective in terms of story telling ^w^