medeva's Topics (94)

I think it’s the designs that’s making them look worse… I hate to say it (I don’t) but there aren’t many cool characters designs in this genre of shoujo isekai anymore and it’s really disappointing

Like genuinely such a gorgeous FL and most of her outfits look great and aren’t gaudy… I really liked the potential of her trying to be good but the OG Chersina was always tempting her to that volatile nature… Just for them to dampen that angle completely smh.

And her man??? By god is he mid. It hurts to say because he could’ve at least looked and behaved more like the ML in I Tamed My Ex-Husband's Mad Dog I would’ve been tapped IN but alas. He’s not really selling it for me and the lovey dovey stuff is boring me if I’m not moved by one part of the relationship. Booooooooo what a waste because there’s so much potential here

Hilarious that the ML fell for the FL when she retired her audacious baddie attire and started dawning on cute tiktok tradwife looks, and I happened to really like those baddie looks.

I like them as a couple they’re sweet I’m a bit disappointed on the direction of Lize, it feels stagnant that she’s always pretending to reject her inner misogyny and hatred for Edith when people like Cliff are willing to do anything for her.

I would’ve appreciated some more inner turmoil if it’s more like Lize is a good person but just hates Edith. Which doesn’t seem to be the case tbh.

This is also why her and Cliff doesn’t really do much for me, it feels like he’s proactive and she’s reactive. The fact the story doesn’t frame this as a toxic dynamic or anything tells me they’re supposed to be a duo yet it feels like Cliff does all the work while Lize just sits there pretty lol. Very boring duo. In that sense, I can agree with the comment that found Cliff and Edith’s relationship more interesting. There’s a lot of tension, distrust, and manipulation playing around them that would make for a good enemies to lovers pairing or a corruption couple. But alas!

Anyway I enjoyed my catch up

I read the comments and changed my mind abot this first paragraph lmao.

Anyway, I hope she doesn’t end up with any of them they are all genuinely awful and do not value your humanity outside of chattle or objectification. There’s also no real progression here, I get that this is Enemies to Lovers but you’re not allowing an avenue that allows each party to be viewed as an equal and that makes it harder for us readers to believe the progression of any relationship here.

It’s so frustrating how she is ultimately trapped in every angle here by people who proclaim they would rather have her dead but then keep her alive. Of course, I understand the politics here and how she can’t do much but narratively we are going in circles with this torture. It doesn’t have to be a revenge fantasy but we need things to pick up.

This can be a problem if the story has no narrative progression and she’s still in this loop of house-hopping while being whipped. At some point, it can become stagnant. Also, I feel like it flattens the characters— everyone here is awful and toxic but it’s not nuanced as one would like and you don’t get every’s pov so you ultimately have to chalk up a lot of their hatred for Just Because. Awful people don’t need a reason to be awful but Awful characters need the story to eventually justify their awfulness in any capacity.

Anyway, interesting story— I heard the father becomes the ML and honestly outside of the Sylvian he’s the best looking to me. I just can’t believe he’s that much of a hoe to sleep with his daughter. Men are so easy and disgusting lol.

It sounds like he’s punished for being a terrible person by becoming a zombie and I would understand this direction but clearly seeing how most comments are now against this direction, I fear this webtoon might have made an error they didn’t expect.

If you want to narratively and thematically punish an antagonist for their actions and ultimately doom them then it’s not a good idea to have the audience invested in their story and relationships from a relatively positive angle. Along with that, we get a lot of moments from his P.O.V and he’s often given a comical light too. That can really confuse a reader on what the writer wants to say about their character.

I for one, think there’s still potential for him to be punished and have the audience side with that but I can also see a redemption. After all, if he gets punished then surely the FL has to face the brunt of consequences that she afflicted while sinking into his trap. What’s her consequence of taking a life? Even if he’s taken more, are not all lives equal? What about how ends up being sucked up into his machinations and how she is ultimately comfortable about her set up? Questions like these are important to think about but ultimately I will have to wait for webtoon to be finished to make a decision.

For the most part, I enjoyed this!

but they’re so messy it just can’t love these two Peak Romance

That’s how I felt reading Age of Arrogance. On surface, this concept is exciting as it introduces a lot of things that aren’t taken seriously in this genre of manhwa. However, it is exactly for that reason that when I feel it could’ve been executed better in different aspects I notice it more.

I’m going to be comparing this webtoon to Emperor And The Female Knight. A webtoon that has its issues but I think accomplishes far better what Age of Arrogance does. However, that webtoon has the benefit of being finished so keep that in mind.

For one, there’s an obvious angle of class and gender commentary here that I think is sorely ignored in most shoujo isekai set in these time periods simply because it would shatter escapism. It’s a lot more interesting reading these female characters and understanding that the way society is set up forces them to maneuver through this feudal patriarchy in different ways. Especially ones not so lucky as Asha, and while that might seem like a stretch.

These aspects reflect the real modern periods of their time, how nobility often uses its noble women like social currency (chattle) and the forced marriages upkeep the status and illusion of nobility. These women cannot rule through any means but their sons and thus are valued solely by what their wombs can produce, which makes the king’s decision to force Asha into a marriage in order to provide for her land far from just being a liar but rather a cruel essentialist punishment that devalues her efforts in order to put her in place (Because heterosexual marriage as it’s traditionally been practiced in this time period was not compatible with women’s social equality.)

The treatment of women here and how the women internalize that for themselves becomes glaringly obvious, from the Empress mother— to the ambitious blonde — to the mistress who is desperately trying to conceive in order to secure her life and longevity. In many ways, Asha, although unable to escape this, is considerably luckier than them.

Her situation and family had given her avenue to seek solace in violence and warfare and those are aspects men not only idolize but romanticize for themselves. It allows Asha to hold a level of agency that the others cannot have. However, this is not all glittering gold as Asha is scoffed and dehumanized by nobility solely for not adhering to the patriarchal standards here, not practicing high femininity as the others and thus lost in the middle of not being womanly enough nor manly enough.

And it is this aspect that conceptually I do like but executed I cannot hide my dissatisfaction. While all these aspects are present in the story, it’s hard to say with how much sincerity the narrative takes these issues. It’s not finished so my opinion can change but from what I’ve seen so far is a bit tepid.

For example, in appearance, I would’ve loved that if this commentary of Asha being so different was true then visually that would match. Asha for the most part doesn’t look much different from the women of the cast outside of attire and I would’ve loved if there was more distinctive traits. She’s a warrior so a bigger, toned build would’ve been amazing, maybe some scars light or deep that show her strength and resilience, and maybe less grace when it came to being feminine— she picks that up quite easily.

There are multiple moments in the story so far where Asha is feminized far more than her usual preferences and the story treats it as either her being stunning, a diamond in the rough, or comical— which goes against Asha’s own preferences. It would be one thing if Asha was fine with all this and actually enjoyed switching back and forth between high and low maintenance femininity but she makes it vocal multiple times that she actually dislikes it and finds it uncomfortable. So for the narrative to insist upon it means there’s going to be an obvious progression of Asha being more feminine assimilation.

This is something the FL in The Emperor and The Female Knight experienced as well but the approach was different. The FL isn’t continuously forced into femininity and she doesn’t assimilate fully, she is proud of how she looks and the ML who is the emperor finds that when she’s in that element to be her most beautiful. There is a specific scene about how Lucius the Emperor dislikes how the painter beautifies Paulina the FL because it’s not accurate to what she looks like, and it’s not the woman he is marrying. That’s such a small but significant statement. Paulina is not opposed to femininity as she does wear dresses but there’s a comfortability to it because she is not forced by the cast nor the narrative. It is all about her agency and I wish Asha could be afforded that same step. Instead, a lot of it feels like she’s forced into performing high femininity, because that’s what a lot of this is for women of that period— performing. If you sit in a seat spending hours putting on makeup and clothes how is that not laborious?

The scene of Asha at war is obviously her in her element and it entices the prince just as much. I would’ve loved more of that angle.

Asha reminds me a lot like Brienne and I would’ve loved to see that angle with her character more from her.

Another aspect is class commentary here, and it does go hand in hand with gender commentary. I think I’ll wait to make any comments on that until we get more chapters!

Unfortunately, I’m running out of time here but read The Emperor and The Female Knight if you want to see this done more faithfully!

First off, whoever is doing these scanlations is terrible. I usually wouldn’t insult something like that as I appreciate scanlators in any form but you can tell this group is half-assing it. Which only makes so much of this story so ineligible to read and understand.

What can be understood is just a hot mess of typical SI shlock. It’s so disappointing because the art and character designs look nice but you have some irritable plot choices and a FL that just annoys me personally. I cannot stand characters who are regarded as smart and intelligent but then are sorely lacking in social cues and smartness when it comes to romance.

It’s fine when it’s actually taken seriously but the narrative clearly takes it more comically like most of these shoujo isekai’s than run the same trope. I think by chapter 4 I was irritated by the fact that someone who supposedly works in customer service and is a pro at it wouldn’t be able to applicate that for her own life. I’m saying this as someone who WORKED in customer service before.

It was also annoying when it became so painfully obvious that her ass kissing to not die (I hate when authors do this it’s a cheap cut out from character progression) she inadvertently allows him to walk all over her and use her as a vessel to bully the others. I’m not saying the nobles don’t deserve it or that she could fight back on the emperor but someone as pragmatic as her would have had to have realize that a scenario like what happened in Chapter 4 was clearly the emperor fucking with her in order to antagonize his dinner guests.

That’s the whole thing, it’s so obvious the type of guy the emperor but she and the narrative insist that he’s just too hard to figure out until we see his p.o.v. Just sooooo


I kept reading and was so annoyed I thought it would get better but the comments here are telling me it doesn’t.

#OverIt

I like both Noah and Leo but Leo’s actually charming and Noah is just pining with no advancing. This is going to be a love square slow burn and I don’t know if I’ll have the patience for it but I guess congratulations to Noah and Lucy being endgame I guess

I wish I could send this personally to the author. Her leaving doesn’t even hold strong emotional weight and tension because it’s been dragged out for so long and we all know she’s going back. This story became so bloated it abandoned so many established things before to bring new conflicts that aren’t nearly as interesting.

Also she’s such a shit villainess. It’s hilarious how they gave up on that like halfway but then had the nerve to have her say shit like “it’s so hard being a villainess.” Well yeah? Because you’re not one. You can’t do heroic things that defeat the purpose of being a villainess because your morals get in the way, at most that’s an Anti Villain.

That’s what was most frustrating to me end of the day. These Villainess stories can never commit because they’re scared of their leads being unlikable yet it’s by the stagnation and wishy-washy characterization that ends up making them unlikable. It’s not even like these are villainess who are morally grey and complex, it’s just a waste all over.

I’d kill for FL who is an ACTUAL villainess, none of that fake nice or fake mean bullshit. An Actual evil, smart and ambitious woman who still wins at the end of the day. More Cersei like than anything. Ugh, these manhwas drop the ball every damn time.