Chocolate Mountain's Topics (163)

too early for that :/
covid really became a worldwide problem (as in it was recognized more seriously and more precautions were put in place by the majority of the world) around march and it takes at least half a year to compose, get approved (by editors, accepted by publishers etc.), marketed, and then published. back in december when the first cases were being discovered, it was still more of an epidemic (infection at a national level) rather than a pandemic (worldwide infection) and people weren't really concerned about it back then especially outside china.

Now this story is by a chinese artist and i can't really speak about china, but for japan they didn't really have very strict covid policies in the first place and when they finally put it in place (i.e. country lockdown) at the end of march, they kept it for pretty much only a month or two and by the end of may they started loosing up (schools were reopened for one thing). if you're looking for stories about pandemics in general there are probably some up but if its covid in specific you might find mini comics like one shots that people made for fun (like as a hobby not as a job) on twitter but if you mean properly made comics (the author is paid for their comics) like this one sorry you'd have to wait at least until around november/december for anything completely new.

that being said it might be in bad taste to write a story about covid especially when its still really fresh in people's minds because you have to remember a lot of people died from the disease and there's probably a lot of people who don't want to think about it. there's also a large number of people around the world (cough cough america) that don't see the dangers of covid and by writing a fictional story (whether it be a love story or even adventure) people may feel like the author is romanticizing the serious disease and making it seem less serious then it actually is. that's why a lot of stories that deal with pandemics don't use diseases that actually exist or they use diseases that very few people have and just make more people have it. this way the majority of the audience can enjoy the story as completely fictional and not have to think about the disease actually affected people in real life compared to the story. when something unpleasant hits too close to home it just makes the readers uncomfortable. there are already people who complain bl romanticizes gay relationships so why add more fuel to the fire? there are some stories i've seen in the past where success stories in real pandemics on a global scale (for example someone living during the SARS pandemic until it was contained and no longer a global threat), but we haven't reached that stage for covid yet so it's too early to expect any fictional stories based off of covid in specific.

that being said, if you're wondering about this manhua in specific which seems really related to the current pandemic (even though it never specified this was covid but maybe it is maybe it isn't), the link to where you can buy this manhua to support the author (which is on the credit pages in every chapter, but here it is https://shopee.tw/mnnn0411) is one of those websites that lets you host your own online store like ebay or booth.pm rather than a publisher like renta or chil-chil (for BL specifically) or amazon which i believe you have to fill out a proper business form or something like that in order to sell something (in other words, it's not easy for any random person to just put something up for sale. you don't really find short doujinshi on amazon often right?). the author of this manhua sells quite a few doujin goods (like promare i saw a few) so it doesn't count as an "official comic" because outside of their shop or doujin conventions you wouldn't be able to purchase this in an average bookstore

You're right for the most part, it's gonna be hard to find a serialized comic about covid for a while (if ever), esp while the pandemic's going on ^^; there are def lots of self-published manga/hua/hwa with covid themes if you look around on pixiv or twitter though!
wrt this manhua, it's actually not serialized, it's a taiwanese comic self-pubbed by the author on social media. taiwan was p successful at containing the virus (7 deaths out of like 20m population I think) so their outlook on the pandemic is a bit diff than the rest of the world, which is prob why this comic was created in the first place. I don't think the author ever meant for it to reach overseas audiences, but I translated it in hopes that ppl would find it to be a nice break from our current covid reality. if you found this unpleasant or in bad taste I apologize ^^

you're taking this comic way too seriously bud ╮(￣▽￣)╭

Honestly (づ￣ ³￣)づ

exactly me HAHAHAH

Fuck I meant to up vote