woah thats a long ass essay
Spoiler
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Eclise will betray Penelope.
...uhmmm, longer spoiler please?
aw damn...
Lol. I know. I’ve addressed it in a round about manner as I didn’t really want to spoil it for people who don’t know yet, and who didn’t read the title where I mention that this is a spoiler. I’m just amazed at how expertly this is set up. So when it finally happens it won’t feel like it came out of nowhere. The writing is just superb and I’m gushing ヾ(☆▽☆)
Honestly I feel you. I don’t tend to reply to comments or such but everything you just said was true. I think that’s one the reasons this story is so interesting. The royal life” cliche has become popular since last year and the concept of villains/villainess reincarnating, duchess/princess living happily ever after and such are common stories. However a lot of the time the backstory of the heroine and how she was reincarnated in the novel is almost non existant. I understand stories where the heroine died in her previous life but the question of why she was reincarnated is always a mystery. Other times normal everyday people just randomly reincarnate into novels and it doesn’t always make sense.
Penelope has a grasp of both fantasy and reality which I just love about her. She’s always thinking about how to survive and get out of the game. She’s cunning and her personality doesn’t change because of the male love interests. At the end of the day, I hope she completes the story with a good ending and returns home. I’d love to see how she handles the situation when she arrives back home in Korea.
Also yeah basically Eclis is sus and has been since the beginning. He was extremely obedient for a man who could slaughter people with his bare hands. Penelope herself even knew that he cared more about the ring she had that could electrocute him than Penelope herself. Penelope is showing signs of warming up to Eclis which hopefully is a facade. If not, then she has grown to trust Eclis too much when the fact is he could stab her in the back anytime despite his pledge of loyalty. He’s just extremely sus overall and he gives me yandere vibes. I honestly think out of everyone: her two brothers(assholes btw), the mysterious bunny guy(who she can’t trust despite looking like a gentlemen), Eclis(the sus knight who gives me yandere vibes), and the crown prince, the crown prince seems like the best choice honestly, I think if her plan of fooling the crown prince into thinking she’s in love with him works, she has a possibility of completing the game. Also we never know, they could fall for each other and end up together
Nooo.
love your essay anyway which chapter does he accidently hurts her. I forgot so i wanna see it again.
Yes! I love transmigration stories, especially with a villainess but it’s always more or less the same set up, with the same stale tropes. So this story is refreshing. Especially because you can empathize with the “original” Penelope. It’s all laid out why she became such a vitriolic person.
And I love how the MC also empathizes with her as she had the same kind of life. What gives me live is that she was actually flung into this world after Penelope was already established as a mad dog, so the only thing to be done was damage control. I’m so sick of stories where the MC is flung into the villainess while still being a child. So all the interesting backstories and relationship dynamics between characters that we see in a first chapter are non existent. And it’s so annoying how a MC just easily makes everyone love and pine for her by merely breathing. As fantastical as the setup for this story about an otome game is, it treats the psychology of the characters in a really realistic manner. The brothers don’t just suddenly love her because the MC acts differently to preset expectations a couple of times. They distrust her, continue to dislike her and are more motivated by guilt because “Penelope” subtly holds up a mirror to their faces that forces them to look at their own ghastly behavior in the past and present. And not because they love her for her acting differently . The MC also doesn’t go all Disney princess in trying to make them like her or her liking and fawning over them. She dislikes them and is scared to death of them. But she also doesn’t come off as genuinely apologetic because she knows that Penelope is not a villainess but an abused and mistreated person. She is angry for Penelope. The MC is as damaged by the abuse she endured as Penelope but developed differently. She has hope to get out of there. Hope that Penelope never had. So her snapping at the younger brother was so raw and righteous, it gave me life. It felt justified and realistic. She was careful not to step on anyone’s feet but couldn’t take it anymore after the younger brother just snapped at her with vile insults. It was amazing how he just tried to bait her because of his own anger and resentment. Gave me quite the fright about what would happen after she gave as good as she got. This is quite uncommon in stories like this. Normally, after the MC establishes a more neutral/positive relationship with another character, resentments are suddenly forgotten and never brought up again. The relationship just continues to go smoothly. Not here where the brother was just consumed by anger over the past and him viewing her as an interloper. The approval rating actually dropped. It was glorious and so realistic, I couldn’t believe it. The rabbit magician also doesn’t fall all over her. With a setup like this and realistic relationship development, Eclise just doesn’t fit into this picture. He’s the odd one out. And yes, I definitely get yandere vibes from him.
The prince is just extremely interesting and I can’t wait until we finally get more of him. I wonder if he continues to actually think Penelope is in love with him or if he’s aware that she actually just lied to get out of the situation. Just by rereading that chapter it looks like he actually knows she was lying about it.
I understand why you want her not to bond with anyone romantically as it’s so refreshing to read about a MC who is not getting all gooey. But honestly I want her to fall in love and I don’t think it would ruin the story because of how realistically the characters behave. I think she would be in denial and fight against it. I really want to see her falling in love because I think it would be interesting to see how she would handle it. I would also like to see a romance being approached in a way how every other aspect has been approached in this story so far. Realistically and surprising.
The MC is a quite disenchanted and somber young person, so seeing her experiencing new emotions for the first time would be fascinating to read about.
It’s in chapter 30 where he almost hurts her and she thinks about his behavior and how she knows he would kill her if given the opportunity. But she also is desperate so decides she can’t stop now. It’s quite chilling. I love it!
thx
Hi can I copy and paste this?? Don’t worry I will will give a credit(⌒▽⌒)
Go ahead (づ￣ ³￣)づ
..subtly the author shows how mentally messed up Eclise actually is without having to spell it out. We see some glimpses like the time he almost “accidentally” killed her on the training grounds that one time. And from what I remember, Penelope could tell he was lying when he told her it was an accident. And his approval was relatively high at that time already which makes this action seem even more strange when you look back on it. And that leads me to actually talk about the approval rating that is just skyrocketing with Eclise for really no reason whatsoever. She bought him and started showing dominance towards him and his approval just went up out of nowhere like something is not quite right with Eclise. It’s just obvious that a normal person wouldn’t instantly warm up to the person that bought them just because they throw some fair sounding commands at them. Unless one is a masochist who gets off on that. The brothers are more or less assholes and we can kind of measure how their behavior changes with the approval rating. They tolerate her and I rather see their “nicer” actions guided by feelings of guilt over their own past behavior against Penelope and less real feelings of affection. So for Eclise to fall on his knees from the beginning in a show of “genuine” devotion seems fake. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not about him bowing down to her, as she is his master and has to act obedient, but it’s him making such a show of this fake devotion from so early on that rubs me the wrong way. Especially looking at the approval before it rose up to 40%.
And I live for this. Penelope is extremely careful with the people around her but because Eclise seems to bring the least amount of trouble, and because she wants to go home to her own life where she was finally able to reach independence, she ignores the warning signs. And she’s aware of something being not quite right already, as proven by her purposefully ignoring her being aware that Eclise wanted to kill her in that one moment and lied about it being accidental.
I also think many readers ignore the danger and weirdness of Eclise’s rising approval rating like he’s a Mercury thermometer sitting in a pot of boiling water, because this is a webtoon and we are so accustomed to love interests falling all over themselves to be with the MC for no good reason in similar stories. His vibe is just off in comparison to other characters and that rising obsession creeps me out. I unfortunately learned months ago about a certain spoiler pertaining Eclise but I’m in awe of how amazingly subtle this is already being foreshadowed.
And I love that Penelope has this flaw in still being emotionally distant to the world she was flung into. She wants to get out of there and not even once has seen the people around her as real people but mere game characters. And that’s why I think she ignores the red flags about Eclise and his creepy approval rise. She still views it as a game, so it makes sense to her that Eclise’s approval is rising up so fast for not too much reason. It’s game logic and her actions are guided by that logic. Which makes her unwittingly cruel in that aspect. Those people don’t really exist to her, so she doesn’t feel bad for making a “game” character fall in love with her and planning to leave them behind. I adore this story!!