I fucking hate the ML. The ONLY reason their dynamic works is because the author made FL as dense as a brick and wrote her to be someone who can’t contain negative emotions for more than a second. It makes her hard to connect with, and makes the ML a total asshole who happens to have some trauma as a write off for his actions.
This could have been very easily fixed by the FL getting fed up with his horrible treatment and deciding to NOT be in competition with him any longer. Hell, give her some horrific self esteem issues and a sub plot about not being good enough! Yeah that’s touched on lightly but not nearly enough to make it impactful.
What could have been emotionally impactful is a scene where she actually breaks down much earlier in the plot/is harmed in some kind of way, and the ML realizes that all this time he’s been bullying a girl who is just trying to prove to herself that she’s not worthless compared to him. Instead of “I gotta beat him!!”, a more compelling feeling would have been “Why can’t I do this even though I work so hard?”. Maybe a scene or two of her studying for days straight, pushing herself to the limit to better her magic, and then the ML bullying her while not realizing how hard she’s trying.
TLDR: The characters are poorly written and had a lot more potential of being interesting. I wish she had some kind of character arc besides just being competitive, and IMO the ML is completely irredeemable no matter what the plot pulls out of it’s ass to make him likeable.
I fucking hate the ML. The ONLY reason their dynamic works is because the author made FL as dense as a brick and wrote her to be someone who can’t contain negative emotions for more than a second. It makes her hard to connect with, and makes the ML a total asshole who happens to have some trauma as a write off for his actions.
This could have been very easily fixed by the FL getting fed up with his horrible treatment and deciding to NOT be in competition with him any longer. Hell, give her some horrific self esteem issues and a sub plot about not being good enough! Yeah that’s touched on lightly but not nearly enough to make it impactful.
What could have been emotionally impactful is a scene where she actually breaks down much earlier in the plot/is harmed in some kind of way, and the ML realizes that all this time he’s been bullying a girl who is just trying to prove to herself that she’s not worthless compared to him. Instead of “I gotta beat him!!”, a more compelling feeling would have been “Why can’t I do this even though I work so hard?”. Maybe a scene or two of her studying for days straight, pushing herself to the limit to better her magic, and then the ML bullying her while not realizing how hard she’s trying.
TLDR: The characters are poorly written and had a lot more potential of being interesting. I wish she had some kind of character arc besides just being competitive, and IMO the ML is completely irredeemable no matter what the plot pulls out of it’s ass to make him likeable.