Inkblot's Topics (85)

When animals get into trouble, it’s cute because they literally don’t know better so they’re all confused as to why what they did is a bad thing. Not this cat. She knew exactly what she was doing and why it was illegal, and is smug as fuck that she got away with it.

And even if the character was a person and not an animal, I still wouldn’t care very much for her. The story starts with her being ungrateful, belligerent, and spoiled. Not even her owner/family has anything good to say about her. Drugging a rich guy into falling in love with her, just for his money? If this was a human character, she would unquestionably be the villainess of the story.

I’m assuming the cat gains better character traits as the story goes on, but I already want to strangle this animal by chapter 2 so there’s no point.

This comment section makes it so clear that not enough people are aware of restorative justice. Rotting in hell is not the only punishment, and neither is it the best one.

Believe it or not, people are allowed to change. They’re allowed to hit rock bottom and then try to do better. No it cannot erase what bad they did, but preventing them from doing good only increases the net bad in the world. And if we punish those who are trying to turn their lives around, fewer individuals have incentive to be a better person.

Lydia understands the weight of her previous actions. She carries that guilt and grief every day. If she had given up and drowned in that hopelessness, believing she was a fundamentally broken person unable to do good, then Lyrica would still be in the slums and Alterres would never know love and so many people in the opera house would have died. Her belief that she is capable of change DID change the world.

I prefer characters who are not fundamentally good or evil, because people aren’t either. And I do have mixed feelings about Lydia (perpetrator) but IMO past-life Lyrica (victim) would be happy with how her mom has redeemed herself. That’s enough for me to believe justice has been achieved.

I love when the greatest form of defeat is bringing an “emotionless” man down to his knees with feeling. Sure, a lack of empathy and compassion can drive a man to do great things. It IS the idealized form of toxic masculinity.

But then to turn it on them? Open their hearts to all the beautiful things in the world and let this new knowledge drive them mad (even though their logic tells them it shouldn’t matter)? An attack which they have no defense against, due to their own choices?

I just can’t get enough of it. (▰˘◡˘▰)

Someone get me into this kind of bookclub lmao

Ugh I can’t tell whether that Vinka girl is trying to become a princess by pretending to be Win’s sister or if she’s trying to seduce him.

Either way, I wish they hadn’t introduced her quite yet. The whole shadowy figure seems separate from Elia and her fake dad, so I honestly don’t care at this point about Vinka. She just icks me the hell out, and if she gets worse I might have to drop this title for a while so I can binge past her parts.

I believe in true love, I really do, but this man thinks what he has is “true”? If it were the case, he would either have given up his title to be a commoner or figured out a way to have Aria titled as a noble so he could marry her.

The fact is he took the coward’s way out. It’s not true love, it’s selfishness. I’m betting he likes the class difference between him and his lover, either to stoke his own ego or to “preserve her innocence”.

The side characters are all really interesting. Seira must have clung to the duke as her only support after the genocide, and hence become obsessed with earning a rightful (stable) place by his side. Lara has a complicated relationship with her coddling family, and Niobe has lofty ambitions even if she’s a creep. Even Gerard is not just an innocent kid, blindly trusting his master, but is someone with a sense of righteousness.

It just sucks that the story doesn’t spend much time on any of it! My only hope they’ll do side stories at the end to really explore what it was like for these characters to face their unique problems.

Of course as soon as the prince “swears” he won’t tell, he blurts out the secret. This goes beyond “golden retriever energy”, he’s just stupid. Like, buddy, you couldn’t even come up with a decent lie? You folded like a tower of cards at the slightest pressure.

Honestly, if this is how he handles national affairs, he deserves whatever bad ending comes his way.

I don’t know if it’s better or worse that the servants are talking about the duke (not) marrying his sister, instead of the people involved.

And it’s. It’s not a joke, or at least doesn’t feel like one. The writing is not comical or show that the characters feel the idea is absurd. So what is happening here.

I understand that equality is important inside the academy, but the crown prince’s health isn’t just confined to inside the academy. If he fell ill and died of overwork, that has political ramifications beyond any school council’s authority.

And Eldegarde is clearly taking advantage of that. The school is trying to be a bubble, a small world where monarchy doesn’t exist. But it’s all fake. What they do at school HAS to impact those outside it, otherwise the school actually has no purpose. So Eldegarde uses this false pretense of a world where he has more authority than the crown prince to affect the real world where the crown prince has more authority than him.

Overall it’s a stupid system and the ML should have contacted his parents the moment official duties were being delayed.