Dear author, please stop trying to write a story. Just let them fuck.
I'm waiting here patiently, sitting by the porch like a good doggie.
Ik it's supposed to be funny, but I still just want to tell MC to just grab management, or even better the guild leader, by the throat so they hire more staff and start punishing other employees for slacking off.
This type of toxic work culture can go die, free the japanese salary/wo/men I say.
There's so many tropes in this and it's so funny.
The sci-fi is cool. Then the whole thing with animal people, their heat, and the chaebol family drama is whatever, cult classic tropes.
Then FL turns out to be a transmigrator who learned cooking on "ancient earth" before coming back from her coma, and all a sudden we're having cooking content, tropes number 3 and 4. Trope/mini-genre number 5 is live streaming where the ml is ofc the one donating the most cash. Topped off with an academy arc which makes this 6 in total so far.
Chinese manhua is on another level, I'm not even hating it's just crazy.
YO just let me sob in here for a moment, bc this started with me just finding this River guy sus. I see comments, I read SOME FEW spoilers, I go and look on the novel update forums, and jesus christ - nail me up there with him.
If you want spoilers on the specifics about Rivers and his cushy behaviour:
The guy sees the maid he grew up with in Dahlia. He grew up seperated from his family with that maid and fell in love with her, but he thought she died.
His father also pushed him to get close to Dahlia for political gains.
So yea, the guy gives his all to rizz her up but is quick to drop the act when it turns out that the maid's still alive. But he's not a bad guy, just desperate for his first crush.
And guess what? There's so much MORE to the story, holy fucking shit.
The reason why that maid is so similar to FL is bc she's really just Dahlia from another timeline. And wait that's not all, that alt timeline Dahlia is also actually O'neil the supposed novel FL. I'm speechless guys.
O'neil/og Dahlia is stuck in a timeloop bc ML made a deal with the devil in which he pays with his own happiness to fuel those time reversals (which is also why his life is so shit in this current timeline, bc it's not the first one - his family was actually pretty normal in the og timeline but got progressively worse each time FL returned). In that first timeline FL ended herself bc of the schemes of her paternal aunt and uncle who killed her parents to take the dukedom, and ML regreted not being there for her and stopping her in time.
So, og Dahlia goes a bit mad over all that dying and coming back, and eventually decides to travel to an optimal timeline (timeline of our Dahlia) where she's happy and can help from the shadows, so Dahlia can be as happy as possible - shortly whereafter she wants to just freeze time to be rid of this torture. She becomes O'neil, chills out with River and plots and waits.
But in the end the loop is broken, she won't be freezing anything and fades away peacefully (after exploring the world a bit.. and poor rivers is left to chase after her) since she can't exist that long in a timeline she doesn't belong to.
So in the end you could really say that he does love Dahlia in a very confusing ass way.
I'm not the only one who's totally overwhelmed by that, am I? Like not even in a bad way, just omg.
I'll just say it, this is kinda bad? Like it's a cute concept but way too rushed. FL got into so much heat in just 27 chapters. Sure she is proactive, but also ends up being ML's damsel in distress 99% of the time so far, it doesn't help that she's basically a Mary Sue - her elegance and purity is praised so much for no reason, always being compared to white lilies which is so... Literally the very demure meme.
Bro I felt it in my soul that poor Loraine would have to put up with pos Astana. I literally called it asap after that one scene where they were celebrating - I think it was FL's bday or some banquet at the palace, and he was just casually being like "ooga booga, Loraine's bad tho??"
It's crazy how I started reading this like a year? or so back and thought "oh, she's a stan ok then" and now we've arrived at greek mythology type shit with lore and everything and it's actually so well written holy shit
He got that nat 20 riz down and really makes this story imo. Also really love how he's slowly infecting FL with his mischief lmao.
Just to voice my complaints bc I rarely see people talk about it: I wish Sovieshit took more L's. To me it feels like he got away easy just bc he's Emperor. Like from a narrative pov, you know what I mean? His agony gets to be romantized (yearning to get back Navier) despite also being a pos and commiting some lowkey crimes for Rashta here and there. I hope he gets dethroned for whatever reason. Persecute the Emperor, eat the rich I say.
I'm here for the drama and crazy cat-curse lore but the plot has holes and is going at one heck of a speed.
The evil af countess already knows what the white-haired maid looks like. They met face-to-face, but somehow the hoe can't tell the difference between her and FL. I get that they're mother and daughter, but it's not like they're twins. If person A and person B look different, perhaps use that smooth pebble of a brain and consider that they're different people? She doesn't even consider that it could be a disguise, just defaults to "its the maid" bc of the hair.
I also do not appreciate the lack of context regarding why and how exactly FL and that priest descendant "work". Like wdym you had to bite him but now your human form is like remote controlled by his consciousness or whatever??? Stomp on those brakes and explain maybe?
There are also, also very awkward cut-offs, I believe the panels and/or chapters got messed up at around chapter 25, I don't remember exactly where but it cut from one evening to the masquerade ball. The narrative jumps so quickly from one thing to the next so at first I thought it's supposed to be like that, but no way.
There's more for sure but ngl, I lowkey indulged in the story a bit.
Oh I can already smell the ML being an ass.
Based on some serious stats (from my shoujo-stuffed lil brain), there's no way he isn't the problem here. Literally every other fictional anime husband who acts cold towards his og wife's soul has no good excuse or redemption ever. I'll bet my kidney he'll be one of them. Like, no way the og "villainess" would've felt the need to mess with og FL otherwise. Bro did not communicate with or acknowledge his love-starved wife, watch me be right.
Bro I'm so disappointed. Listen, you're allowed to call me horny on main rn, but I saw the cover (lowkey showing off her cake) and thought there was smut at some point. So I was like ok, story's trash but hey if the smut's hot I can live with it - but NO. Miss me with that, I'm not gonna keep reading this knowing she'll stay dumb af.
Ok first I didn't vibe too much with the reveal of her identity, now I get it. The scene where they hug it out made it for me.
Also, it's so very satisfying to see these hinted at secrets be exactly what they promised to be. Nicely revealed with enough remaining goodies to look forward to more.
I particularly like how the princess' (talking about the granny who ran away from the sis-con former emperor) character was set up.
We never got to meet her but there's hints of her 1 or 2 dozen chapters back already - whenever Judith enters the palace and relates to her, wondering whether she had felt as trapped by the former Emperor as she did at that point. The Duke will prob give us a beautiful flashback of her too and I can't wait. I imagine she has an elegant, joyous vibe around her with a bit of a rebellious attitude.
This whole thing with the flowers is so moronic. Just tear the whole thing out, plant entirely different plants there, plant a god damn tree if you have to, anything. Stop messing with these uselessly overpowered flowers and give the characters real autonomy.
I don't understand why MC just plays by the rules of the game instead of realizing that this system is the only reason why Alicia could gain the upper hand. Tear that shit down, you're the villainess and won't profit from it anyway.
Listen, maybe I'm just hearing about too many "pfd file" news somehow, but this title made my jaw drop just a lil bit when I first read it.