Cleopatra's Topics (811)

I like how well written and interesting this story is but I really feel they should not be trying to solve deep trauma surrounding sex...with more sex. also tamaki is in like. a very emotionally vulnerable position right now and it just rubs me the wrong way that shii is presenting his personal agenda as “the cure”. plsss speak to a professional about how to cope with the trauma

regarding second part of your post ~ author is driving a point that no matter what timeline the real raeliana would have been in her end would have been sh*tty - not because of fate but bc she's always defaulting to playing the victim. rae (the isekai one) tells her before shooting the gun that her family is actually quite nice and look at how she turned everything around for herself despite having the same initial circumstances.

really interesting to consider ٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶

I mean yeah but... she is also not the real realiana in terms of character and started with 0 attachment to this world. Also she knew about her on coming death beforehand and could plan against it, unlike the real Raeliana who was given no other options since she was told it was her body's "fate". The isekai Raeliana lived in our own world where gods and fate are not real and values are different.

I do believe that the point was a lot about real Raeliana reveling in victimhood and not trying to see beyond that, but I also feel like that's a weak point to make. So if you see it as you say, that's like saying Raeliana committed all this shit and died in the end because she was weak, and isekai Raeliana didn't because she was a stronger person..? Idk... I need to let the story see where it goes next and marinade everything to make any conclusions..

"that's like saying Raeliana committed all this shit and died in the end because she was weak, and isekai Raeliana didn't because she was a stronger person..?"
that's exactly what i meant. we attract what we think we deserve. but i get that you feel bad for her. personally, i do (bc i'm not a cold b*tch lol) but i also don't bc i see how she's always had choices. the isekae rae proves this. just because someone tells you something is fate doesn't mean you have to believe it. YOU choose what holds in your reality. real rae believed the words from the horrid sorcerer witch, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. ise rae did not and has done everything to forge a new path ...and it paid off. she has a fulfilling life despite every murder attempt she went through.

i totally understand your need to marinate on this because this point the author is making goes beyond mere fiction. if you believe in alternate realities and/or reincarnation (which i do), what the author is saying via their manhwa rings true.

totally agree with you!

well I don't wanna get all philosophical, but what I meant to say was that the two of them had different upbringings and circumstances which cultivated their characters, so how is it fair to find fault in a character's strength and blame their undoing on that?

"isekai Rae is also not the real realiana in terms of character and started with 0 attachment to this world. Also she knew about her on coming death beforehand and could plan against it, unlike the real Raeliana who was given no other options since she was told it was her body's "fate". The isekai Raeliana lived in our own world where gods and fate are not real and values are different. " especially the last part I think is important.

If you live in a world where magic, witches and fate and monsters and gods are real, where you have been raised into a shy and timid person and are really sheltered, yet at the same time don't feel comfortable confiding in your family, you become a vastly different person than someone in a world like ours, in a society that's for the most part godless and the supernatural is absent, where because of your family circumstances you were used to fend for yourself and make your own path like isekai-Rae.

Anyway this has more to do with philosophic interpretations of the illusion of choice humans have, and what having supernatural elements in a story does to characters' beliefs and morals in it. Honestly I don't think the author thought about this, they just applied our own societies' illusion of freedom of choice to their story; even though probably people in a world where god is a confirmed being and magic and fate exists are very different than a world like ours, so it's probably not really a part of the story and thus not fair of me to judge the characters based on that. It's just something that personally irks me.

I don't like the idea that because someone is "weaker mentally" they deserve punishment, because in real world terms that would imply that someone who suffers from mental trauma, or a physical impediment, or comes from poverty, or any sort of problem that is bigger than they were equipped and has trouble overcoming is "making a choice" not to overcome it, which is simply not true and not how the world works. If someone has mind-numbing depression for example they can't just "choose" not to, it takes a lot of effort and external change for them to even know things can get better.

A really good example of a well built story where people in a different world have different morals because their world is different is 12 Kingdoms, where people don't pray, because they don't "believe" in Gods, Gods just "are", and the way they navigate their lives around that changes vastly compared to what the main character who is thrown into that world from ours is used to. But that one's a real old series haha I think it's from the 90's?

In that sense, I guess I think the moral and philosophical aspects of this story are actually a bit shallow, though I don't normally find it a problem (not every story can or should have those components), but here it is a bit weird since it's the part that the author chose to make isekai-Rae look "superior" to her in-world counterpart. In that sense, I guess it's a plothole, but eeeh I do know that I'm being nitpicky haha.

Maybe if I was religious in anyway as you claim it would make more sense to me, but to me this has to do more with philosophy and authorial intent. I guess that's a difference stemming from our different backgrounds haha.

i'm not religious, but I am attuned to the spiritual/metaphysical.

anyways, make of it what you will. what we focus on, expands. this isn't about punishment, it's about getting exactly what you dish out mentally. if a person/mc thinks they're a loser and that they are convinced that they are fated for a horrible death, that's most likely what they'll get. her personality is just so incredibly pathetic because we also see everything she has done to other people, including the death of the future queen, and i simply cannot understand why you're writing essays in her defense.

also, you make it sound that the isekai raeliana is having/had an easy time in her new world - have you forgotten how many times she's been tried to get killed?! did you also forget her beginning in that world?
isekai rae had nothing to lose so she said fu to the "prophecy" and did what she could to manipulate her initially sh*tty circumstances in order for her to survive. see the difference in attitude? pitiful og raeliana is doomed to be pitiful because SHE chooses to think the way she does. had she had more courage, belief in HERself, and being ok with dealing with backlash to her rising up, then her end would have certainly been different regardless of the environment she's in - her fantasy home world, or modern times.

typo fix: how many times she's *almost been killed*
just noticed how awkward the og sentence was lol, too bad we can't edit replies!

anyways, i guess i just don't believe in fate ╮(￣▽￣)╭ since we make our own realities. but yessss good on Beatrice-Realiana for killing Realiana-Beatrice, that was so unexpected (⊙…⊙ )

I agree with you, I also don't believe in fate and the etc. That was partially my point.

I guess the difference in our outlook is that I don't see the characters as actual people, but as characters, components in a story; I'm more interested in reading the author's intent and philosophy behind them. I was not defending "Raeliana", I found fault with the author's logic behind her condemnation. I don't look at her as a person, she isn't. Same goes for isekai-Rae. I can't defend the choices of someone who is not real, I am critical of the author's choices, the person behind the story. Isekai-rae sure "went through" a lot, but I was talking about how differently the author established their background to be and what kind of morals and worldviews they came from. Even though the author made it clear their worldviews, standings and character are very different, they still gave real-Rae judgement and justifications for her actions through the lens of our own-world (even though this made up universe's views and values should be vastly different) and even a justification that is pretty harmful to think about if we reflect it back in our society.

Of course I agree that if you wallow in self-pity your outcome is decided for, but that's beside the point. It wasn't her "being weak and not standing up to fate" that got her a tragic end, she had no choice in believing that, that was set up by the author as part of her worldview and upbringing. It was her harming and killing people in her path that led her to her end. That was her hubris, what makes the audience -us- dislike her and want her gone. Two different things that intersect.

My point was that it's shitty that the author is moralizing the character's innate weakness against her, when she should be judging her harmful actions towards others. It just seemed like a weird way to elevate her heroine as superior, and it showed that the author did not think through her universe's inner logic. An anachronistic detail that normally in these mass produced isekai novels and webtoons is often overlooked, but that wasn't obvious in this one up till this point.

(For example the only other anachronistic elements in this novel up till now were the dialogue, and the characters' code of conduct and lack of etiquette, but those are very fun, and if it's an alternative universe are they even anachronisms? Hmm...)

Perhaps it got confusing because I wasn't being critical of the author in my original comment, but your comment got me to analyze why I felt bad for her, which then prompted me to analyze the story's themes. Thanks for being a sport in the discussion ^^ even if we don't agree with everything it certainly helped me articulate what bothered me better! Have a good New Year haha!!