The father is a genuine shitpile. As the top ranked hunter, he values people by their Hunter abilities (at least that’s how he comes off to everyone). MC is somewhat weak, so he didn’t want him to be a Hunter, so he sabotaged him at every step. By not letting him get certified, he knew MC wouldn’t be able to formally learn about his class/skills or prepare for Hunter combat. He basically watched his son constantly going the least efficient route with a lot of important skills/knowledge missing for ten years, then always made him feel like his ineffectiveness was his fault for being weak.
On top of all that he then sent his son off to the academy knowing he didn’t have the most basic information and would be way behind, but still set near impossible conditions. He would rather watch his son destroy himself physically and emotionally than just support him in his dream to see how well he could do

Witchery created a topic of She will tame the heroes

This is an obvious case of absent parenting, societal bias, and personality issues.

The prince has been abusing and torturing people for shits and gigs since he was a young child, apparently with no consequence. He’s so blatant that the parents either knew and excused it, or were so uninvolved in their children’s lives and palace affairs that they were never aware of it. Either way, they’re at fault for the gross negligence that could permit such behavior or allow it to go unnoticed. It’s clear that the prince has been violent and coercive for a long time, putting a lot of effort into harming and diminishing his sister, so it’s not surprising that she would develop an aggressive and hostile personality as a survival mechanism. If he’s that bad when they’re both powerless children, it’s pretty obvious what he would do to his only rival if he took the throne. Sitting aside while one child torments the other isn’t creating an equal playing field, it just creates a toxic dynamic

MC may have had an arrogant and abrasive personality and mannerism, but it’s nothing compared to the actual abuses committed by the prince. It seems that she is judged more harshly for superficial flaws than the prince is for sadistic and violent behaviors. There’s no way his behaviors are completely concealed seeing as how openly he says and does vile things. He is a bit better politically and the male heir, but definitely hasn’t demonstrated a better ability to lead, though her reputation doesn’t inspire much faith. Then again, it’s not like she’s had much parental guidance, and had to fight a psychopath tooth and nail for every little thing she wants to keep since she was a child.

The way the poisoning accusation went down actually makes the prince look more suspicious and it’s frankly ridiculous that everyone was fine with how it “resolved”. Sacred beasts are so sacred that they are revered as gods, so any threat or harm against them is treated with great severity. Martina was punished with stripping of her title, life imprisonment, and 100 lashes for failing to properly incubate her divine beast. That was the punishment for accidental/unintentional harm. She was never accused of deliberately hurting her divine beast, and there really wouldn’t be any motive for her to.

In this life, there was a deliberate attempt to poison a divine beast by the prince’s subordinate. A divine beast whose safe hatching is a test to determine the heir, and who happened to belong to his employers only political rival. The mage confessed, but how convenient that he immediately immolated himself. Now he can’t be questioned to investigate who else may have been involved. It makes the prince even more suspicious to anyone observing the situation objectively. The fact that not a single person raised an issue or requested a more thorough investigation shows that Martina’s original punishment had less to do with the severity of her perceived failure than it did her lack of popularity, the bias of the nobles and her parents, and the prince’s schemes to dispose of her.

Diona just blows me away with her shortsightedness. I’m not sure if she is just that blinded by jealousy or sheltered from the harsh realities of Tarkan’s position since birth.

1. Aristine is intertwined with Tarkan’s political power: He and Aristide are a political unit. Any harm to Ari’s reputation/power will also harm Tarkan’s. Any hit to their reputation is going to affect the other in kind.

2. Divorce is not an option: Tarkan entered an extremely important political marriage with the princess of an enemy state as part of a historic peace treaty. Any controversy related to Ari and her marriage could have serious political consequences between the countries. Divorce is just not possible. Like it or not, til death do they part.

3. Diona cannot replace the political power Ari provides: Diona may be from a respected and well established noble family, but she is nowhere near enough of a powerhouse to replace a foreign princess who happens to be a lynchpin of international peace. Even if she slanders and isolates Ari, it will only harm Tarkan’s likelihood of being king. Ironically, the only way she could feasibly be with him other than as a mistress is if he took the throne since only kings are allowed multiple wives. Even then, she wouldn’t be the queen, just a concubine.

4. Tarkan’s life depends on becoming king: Failure to become king will likely mean death for Tarkan once his father is no longer keeping the queen in check. it’s clear that Hamir is either unable or unwilling to prevent or hinder his mother’s schemes, so though he doesn’t show much independent hostility, it’s likely that the queen would continue to plot against him. She almost had Ari executed for a crime that never occurred. The reason the king chose Tarkan instead of Hamir to marry Aristine was to shore up his political position and create a more level playing field for the throne.

She’s just exceptionally shortsighted. She throws mud on Ari’s palace without considering the fact that it also belongs to Tarkan. Diona does/attempts to do a tremendous amount of damage just to get back at Ari for being with Tarkan which actively harms his political position and reputation. She puts an enormous degree of thought and effort into finding convoluted ways to attack Ari, but puts a fraction of that energy into wooing the man she supposedly loves to such excess. Tarkan has never loved her or been receptive to her overtures, but she is only aware of it subconsciously because her ego can’t handle it, so she makes sure nobody else can possess what she wants but can’t obtain.

While Hamir seems to have developed some feelings for her, they’re rooted in novel curiosity and desire to possess her. She was the first to befriend him in such an open and uncalculating way. Her behavior and actions are uniquely intelligent and resilient, attractive qualities. He’s only focused on his own benefit though. He let her build a friendship knowing full well she would be in an awkward position if anyone found out, and humiliated/betrayed once she found out. And once that scenario played out, his regret was not using the crisis to his benefit, not preventing the crisis in the first place.

Witchery created a topic of Talented baby squirrel

I’m just so over having the FL do all of the emotional processing for every single significant male character in the series. I have read so many stories where the FL literally has to teach the ML, her brothers, father, and any other relevant male the concepts of emotional awareness, thinking about other people’s feelings, being considerate, not being selfish, communicating the most basic things, and regulating emotions.
It’s such a common, tired trope. I’m sick of authors treating FLs like therapists. There’s a difference between making the FL carry the entire emotional burden of leading someone else through their entire cycle of self awareness/growth/healing, and making her a supportive friend/partner/family member.
I like the story, but I find developments like this really frustrating.

Witchery created a topic of Be My Baby

NGL, Sunwoos brother and lawyer friend are not sitting right with me. It’s true that Sunwoo is a frustrating and annoying person to deal with, but they gave him horrible advice both legally and socially.
1. A lot of what they told him essentially boils down to “nobody would ever want to tolerate/date/live with/marry/raise a kid with someone like you”. That assumption also informs their advice about custody. A lot of their criticisms of his behavior are valid, but some of what they said is just objectively cruel. It’s just not something you say, even if you do believe it.
2. They should know full well by now that Sunwoo is not slick, quick thinking, or even an average liar. It’s ridiculous of them to expect him to be able to pull a fast one on someone as cautious, savvy, and observant as Eungyo, no matter how well it may be planned by others. Even if he was a good liar, there’s no way Eungyo would have read/signed those papers without noticing something was off.
3. Counseling him to lie, backtrack experimental permissions, and hide the child from Eungyo only would have made everything worse when Sunwoo got caught. Once that deception came out, Eungyo would have tons of ammunition to go after him in court for custody, fraud, illegal experimentation, and probably other stuff as well.

Witchery created a topic of Plin's Love Juice

This is bullshit. So ML basically got away with saying racist, hurtful things to Flynn with zero emotional, relationship, or other consequences. Not even a spat or cooling off period. Stories like this will usually bend over backwards to make sure the ML or top get everything they want with minimal consequences, but this is the most ridiculously extreme case of the MC just glossing over such blatant harm without even registering it psychologically, even if they don’t react outwardly.

Witchery created a topic of Talented baby squirrel

I don’t know if this is just me, but I find the revelation of how the apocalypse happened to be kind of… lame? I’m not a big fan of the “power of feelings” trope when it’s used in a clumsy and nonsensical way. Atel was captured, held prisoner, and completely trapped for years, completely helpless from the sealing chains, but the second he finds out MC is dead, he magically breaks out like nothing, only to lose control and destroy the continent.
His character just doesn’t match. He’s gone through rejection trauma, forced to go to war, assassination attempts, etc… since he was young and shrugged it off with no ill effects or outbursts other than being mildly sad about it sometimes.
Idk, there was like zero setup to show that 1. He would even have intense emotional outbursts, or 2. lose control from those intense emotions, in the spectacular manner he did. I get that the death of a loved one is different, but it just felt random since the setup wasn’t there.
And the rampage isn’t even explained well. So he has shallow thoughts about destroying the world that “failed Beaty”, but that reaction makes no sense with the rest of his character because he’s destroying villages, killing civilians, etc. Is he possessed by his power, reverting to an animalistic state? Atel is shown consistently to be a just leader who cares about the country and people, so if the descent into complete abandonment of his previous character/morals doesn’t make sense in terms of his thought process, there needs to be another explanation offered.
Just feels like a shallow way to demonstrate an excessive dedication to MC to later push a romance that really doesn’t have much psychological buildup. Other than being friendly to each other and “feelings go thump” there really isn’t any romantic buildup between them, so this feels like a shallow plot forcer trying to cram the relationship down the readers’ throats without actually writing a believable/fleshed out romance, which is actually extremely common in these stories.
The entire sequence of events and character shifts is completely incoherent.

Witchery created a topic of Gale of the God
Witchery created a topic of Obscene Phone Call

Bro ╥﹏╥ (/TДT)/ this should be tagged as a horror. ML is scary as hell

Witchery created a topic of Plin's Love Juice

Not the seme acting butthurt like he isn’t using Flynn as well. He’s using Flynn and his body as medical treatment knowing full well he doesn’t have other options. Flynn only “betrayed” him to be reunited with his long lost brother, oh yeah and also PREVENT HIM FROM BEING MURDERED. Then he pulled a double hitter by attacking Flynn’s sensitive points that have a lot of trauma while saying hurtful racist stuff at the same time. Flynn risked it all to come clean and got degraded for it. When the hell is “the right timing” to tell your exploitative contract lover that you’re being blackmailed into corporate espionage against him? Seme already knew about it, but even if Flynn hadn’t admitted it, he wouldn’t gotten ripped a new one for being deceitful and in league with his brother, “why didn’t you tell me so we could handle it together” bs. Seme is a narcissist point blank. Nothing will ever be his fault and anything that ever doesn’t go to his liking will be projected onto the most convenient punching bag

Witchery created a topic of Boss Bitch Baby

Wow the Center tried to leave him high and dry so he would have to allow them to exploit him to the max only to have it explode in their faces. They could have given him a special position with better pay and benefits so they could move him around to desperate cases, but they were happier to have him scrambling to make ends meet and in physical shambles.
The way the Center commander was so fixated on making sure Hojin felt like he had no choice but to stay and put up with the mistreatment that he used a spontaneous terrorist attack as another excuse. Joke’s on them because now he’s desperate enough to take an exclusive contract with the most dangerous/hated esper in the country to escape their abuse of power.

Witchery created a topic of Fire in the whole

Wow, so Sangjin didn’t even start drugs of his own free will. He was drugged unknowingly until he developed enough of a physical dependency that he would “choose” to take them on his own. He really never had a chance…

Why is it that so many comics with a lot of romantic leads have to make one of them a family member?! I’m not touching that shit with a ten foot pole. I don’t care if its their distant cousin eight times removed or their step sibling, it’s unnecessarily fucked up and messy either way. Very creepy and out of the norm, so I tend to wonder a bit about the author’s personal interest in the topic.

Witchery created a topic of A Stepmother's Märchen

This entire situation is the dead Marquess’s fault! He chose a child to fill the role of head of household and “mother” to his children after he was dead. He knew their house would attract vultures and be attacked, and that defending their position would be a constant and difficult task. The church could have made up whatever excuse they wanted to attack them, but this particular accusation would be considered far less feasible if she wasn’t the same age as the kids

The description alone just seems boring af before we even get to the AI issues. “OP character does OP things without any struggles”.

Witchery created a topic of Talented baby squirrel

Me interviewing Atel: so you found out that your malicious and power hungry family killed the girl you liked to sell her body parts to an enemy nation that was imprisoning you and your response was…..[checks notes]…to instantly break out and start destroying random towns and uninvolved civilians?
Atel: this wretched world couldn’t protect her bla bla bla [continuous emo nonsense]
Me: ok buddy, but you didn’t do much to protect her either. If want to lay blame, try nuking the perpetrators instead of powerless citizens

Atel is a somewhat lukewarm character for me, but this is a really pathetic and annoying development. Of course he’s going to be traumatized and devastated by her death, but I fail to see ow a good person would react by randomly attacking everyone and everything as a result

If the king put 10% of the planning and resources he used to prepare for when Deon finally went apeshit into preventing the shitty Duke from having carts Blanche to ruin everyone’s lives (or just put a minimum age on mandatory army recruits) this entire situation wouldn’t exist

Can we talk about how deranged it is that the doctor (unpressured and unsolicited) declines to inform either the patient or their guardian of serious medical results, but happily spilled all to Hajin?! “Don’t tell them they’ll be stressed by it”, yeah no fucking shit buddy, and your point is!? Absolutely insane.

Ok I get that this started as a fluffy found family story, but the plot holes are getting out of hand. Sigma, one of the main villains makes an attack and runs off, but nobody tries to chase or track her? I get that they have to be careful because of the blue moon, but seriously, not even from afar? She literally just stands behind the door to the arena area, continuously peeking out to see what’s happening and nobody notices. Just moronic. The plot writing is not there. There were other ways to allow Kittia’s power to be revealed to the enemy. It just feels sloppy and nonsensical