Responses
She is Inez and she’s sharp as a whip and incredibly traumatized but she’s still Inez… she’s a person who still has random likes and dislikes, quirks, sayings, habits, random interests, and favorite forms of entertainment that she has no reason to hide even if she’s reserved. Those are all things to fall in love with… (And Carcel is like “Her smile with her friends is giving me a hard on : ]!” )
I think Inez could’ve been characterized a bit better too now that I’m writing this.
Surely she didn’t spend every single waking hour of her life to work on the plan… that’s not realistic no matter how big the stakes are.
Unpopular opinion: I wish this was an even slower burn and that we didn’t proceed with a madly in love ML plotline so quickly. In the beginning I saw two people who had been with eachother from childhood— and although Carcel disliked her he also never imagined a life without Inez on the simple principle that he’s just known her forever (same for her.) I think if he were jealous in that weird co-dependent/betrothed since childhood way and not in a “I love Inez so much!” way it would be much more compelling.
That complex balance of disliking someone but also seeing them as intrinsically part of your life is so interesting… I would’ve liked to see a story where he and Inez have reasons not to like eachother very much but since they’re both nice people they still keep up their responsibilities to eachother, try to help eachother, and work as a team for this arranged marriage and then actually fall for each other little by little from this camaraderie. I feel like it’s more authentic that way.
Right now it feels like Carcel literally just likes her body. He barely talks about anything else and to be fair he has nothing else to go by except a fake smile she gives people.
I think there were opportunities to get her to HAVE to open up that just haven’t been explored either… like in her past life she was constantly worried about her figure— maybe she always refuses desserts in this life but Carcel notices she really likes them when she can have them and gets her something nice or finds a low calorie dessert that won’t be too triggering to enjoy until she can get out of that mindset altogether.