Your analysis is spot on, and you put it into words so well. I really like how the dynamics of this story are so real, especially because it started out framing itself like a lighthearted romance genre. Like the moment when he made her the enemy of humanity and men threatened to yanno her; but then he was like 'why didn't you ask me to save you?' It reminded me so much of other scenes in Rofan stories with the ML coming to the rescue of the FL. He's trying to set himself up in roles as someone the FL relies on, which I notice overlaps with common romance tropes (childhood friend, anyone?), but FL refuses to feel saved. Especially what you're talking about of him looking back on the abuse fondly, it's such a ML attitude, but unlike a lot of Rofan I read this time the story doesn't hesitate to frame the behavior as villainous. I kind of feel like this is a parody of the common Rofan dymanic of cold overpowered ML and ordinary FL, but here the power dynamics are taken to the extreme in order to demonstrate how fucked up it is.
Definitely!!! Almost all “fairytales” are remade Grimm stories made to be palatable to shape and influence young and impressionable girls to accept a certain narrative and a certain type of abuse. It’s so systematic and manipulative that not many people realise it. Same way most old nursery rhymes are actually about horrific historical events like ring-around-a-Rosie which is actually about dying to the plague. This author is on another level of showing us exactly what we are consuming and what it truly is. For lack of a better way to put it, she’s unmasking what we’ve been conditioned to romanticise. Even me at the start of this story was like “awhhh he’s a bit quirky but I actually really like him and they probably just had a rocky relationship because of his race and he’s trying to do better but NOPE. That one scene where he says something and it triggers a whole body freeze response followed by him laughing and then a fake apology and him telling her “come here” and her curled into a ball on his lap was sending shivers down my spine cause that’s EXACTLY what abuse looks like and not a single person clocked it! I’m convinced this author is a genius.
That's such a good take. I would correct you (or add on?) a bit and say that he doesn't try to, lore-wise he's for certain an eldritch god, straight up inspired by Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu. He doesn't try he just toys around with FL like some of us would with insects. Her world is so insignificant and unimportant to him that he doesn't care nor understand what it means to put her through all this trauma. Which bringing it back to your point, reflects on the pov of abusers. The "man" who doesn't understand the harm he causes.
Yeah. I did realise that he is just a typical eldritch being that simply lives life on a different playing field with different morals and different values than humans do. Just like it wouldn’t be right to assign morals to a lion killing zebra as “wrong” just because murder is wrong to humans, it’s also not right to assign morals to this eldritch being. That being said, I’m 87% sure the author is doing this as a social commentary. Someone else brought up the really good point about the parallel between this and other very common romantasy tropes like the childhood best friend, the guy who saves you from being hurt, the comforting ML and the husband who loves you so much that it overrides your amnesia and you fall in love again. It’s all common tropes but they pointed out how it’s a parody of them and showing how toxic they actually can be. I thought that was really interesting too.
They wanted us to like him but feel like something wasn’t quite right and now we get to see the “boys will be boys” side of him where he truly is a monster both literally and figuratively. He has a saviour complex and wants to be the one to save her so he creates fantasy worlds where others abuse her and he’s her one ticket out of hell and when he realises that won’t work, he shuts it down and restarts. The whole family thing too. It’s his obsession with her. Integrating himself into her life and her surroundings so she can’t escape. Some boys actually do this. I know I’ve experienced something similar where a boy in school would incite other kids to bully me just so he can swoop in and save me despite being the one who started it all. It’s sick and twisted but it’s a call out to the “boys will be boys” culture we have rn. When he’s all “grown up”, he’s mellowed out and he’s acting like it never happened and the times he’s forced to confront his horrible actions, he looks on them fondly because to him, it was him showing affection. When we see her POV, it’s him literally abusing her and making her feel unsafe even in her own home. The fact that he’s a shapeless monster means he could be ANYONE. Him going from classmate to childhood friend to brother and eventually husband kinda goes along with that narrative that it truly is an “every man until it’s no man” problem. Even the fact that his secretary and friend warned her but then still didn’t help her escape or the fact that the cat (a creature who is depicted as having eyes that can see the whole universe) refuses to look at her and bear witness to what she’s had to go through. Even her Stockholm syndrome and the way she laughs it off and her be try clear fawn response to whenever he scares her. It’s all there for us to see. The author really did a good job of showing all of that without making it overt.