I feel the same about a lot of those things, especially her relationship with her family. As you said at first she plays up her charm to appeal to them to get them to see her as something precious, which basically implies and confirms that they only like her for the person she pretends to be and wouldn't love her as a brat (which is like every 2nd school aged girl istg). Not a good excuse to ignore and condemn your own child, call me radical for this opinion.
Same goes for the prince. His love now means so little when we were clearly told that he probably only chose the step-sister in the first life because he felt entertained by her. It took a whole lot of trauma for FL to become this interesting person "for him". To make her accept that this is the basis for their relationship is kinda disrespectful to her own character. Like oh wow, now that I'm pretty AND smart you're not gonna condemn me? Thanks? You can argue all day how it's different now and how love is built with time or whatever, but FL knows what he was like and has insight into this alternative reality if you will.
It would've been better if they had stayed in this ambigious friendship where they're pushing and pulling to see what the other one's all about, negotiating to help each other while also trying to pull off each others mask. Maybe some romance way later when FL figures out what ML's deal really is. But no FL goes straight to blushing, forgetting this guy probably knowingly let her half-sis get away with her bs (in her first life).
And for some reason we get a 2nd ML after her relationship with the crown prince is welded into, what is in the romance genre, reinforced titanium plating. My guy Raul was one of the few people FL had fond memories of and you're telling me he's a simple plot device and side piece? That sucks.
It all exposes how 2D the writing here is, because the author only cared to show how FL grows and becomes loved without analysing the implications of what it means when a person is so easily swayed into either neglecting or truly loving another family member/person based on something so superficial. The story rushes too much in certain aspects and it erases any real character depth or moments of self-reflection. Everyone has 1 or 2 main quirks, and after those are dealt with don't really come up again and slot into the help FL faction. Honestly if this was released in one go in 2022 on here reactions would've been way more positive, but with how overcooked this genre is there is nothing to hold onto here besides the superficial drama.
I'm kinda disappointed. I suppose it's a bit of a spoiler for those who didn't read in that deep yet so...
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I honestly don't understand why or how she decided to enter a relationship with the prince. The prince, brother, dad, that random one chick, stephoe, and stepmom were the cause of her death. Ik, the stepmom is adorable. But she knew the true nature of her hoe daughter and did nothing.
Fl had to act a certain way, which is being innocent victim type, to have the brother and father act a certain way. To me, it shows that it was never a genuine relationship and was a bit on the deception side. The brother is just a kid. And in her past life, she was mean so it shows being kind allows relationships to deepen. But idk.... knowing that her own brother was the one who contributed to sending her to the brothel and resulted in her death would prevent me from having a brother-sister relationship in the next life. I get that the brother was not at fault but he fell for the innocent victim shit that stephoe did without digging in deeper. I get that he was a teenage at the time when this all happened, but these type of mangas tend to make them act and think like adults at a young age , so if I went to that logic, he should have known.
The father can go kick the bucket. He failed as a father and let two of his daughters go wild, in the previous life, and only focused on one without seeing any behavioral issues. And fuck step mom too bc she knew but didn't mention it bc she loves her daughter and was prob too scared to act.
As for the prince, Idk why she entered the relationship. He likes to be in people's business bc he's bored so he was probably the same in the past life. Not only that, he seems to see through people's bs. I also assume he's the same in the past life. Why? Bc when they met when they were younger, waayyy before the influence of the stephoe, he was already inspecting ppl.
For me, if I known all of this, I would have made sure that stephoe never made it out for sure, made sure the maid had a good life and then left. Sure , they never fucked her over in this life so why would they recieve punishment of losing her (beside stephoe)? Well bc the memories of being betrayed hurt. The current relationships were built on deception and she put on a behavior on where she had to survive. Perhaps she was genuine later on but it wasn't at first. But I could never continue with them base on that and with the memories of betrayal. It even shows thay she was afraid that whatever she built up could come crumbling down. She was hurt by the betrayal. She was hurt by what they did and the situation she was put in. So how can she forget all of that? The author basically just made her go through it and made her do an 180 on her trauma. There was no internal fight on her struggles. The author puts in situations where she did struggle and it made sense, but s/he just dropped it randomly and it never came back. Like bro , she had to sell her body at age 16. She had to learn the arts of deception. Her only comrades were the maid the the ladies who were beside her and lived through the same situation. How can she forget all of that? And how can the author do such.... dumb planning on that?
The idea is great. But if the author wants to ship fl with the prince, s/he gotta do better than that. How I see it, it's bc of his status is why he was forgiven.
Ik some of ya disagree. But I really don't like how she had trauma and difficulties and the author just yeeted that out the window just so she can be in a relationship with the prince. The brother, I'm more inclined to give that a shot but nah. And The father can get his butt whooped.
Oh and I forgot. Yeah, mc was a fucking bully and a stuck up her ass in her past life. It's her stupid fault for falling for tricks to bully others. Idk what ya would suggest she should do to redeem that bc I wouldn't know either. Due to her being a bully and not being aware of what was really happening, she ended up in a bad situation. No one ever deserves that. I'm not saying she deserves that. But don't be a bully.