Choopsie’s Brain-Vomit

Just finished reading, my eyes are super puffy from crying. This is Kill The Villainess all over again 😭 The dam broke on Tori’s death. She ended up being my surprise favorite character, I’m feral for her. She’s so, so tragic. The story is rife with soooooo much generational trauma and abuse and it’s so heartbreaking that by design Tori literally cannot grow or heal like Rupert and Laliette. She’s temporally stuck.

There’s so much to be said about her and Rupert’s relationship. The tooooooxic codependencyyyyy, the trauma bonding. Tori is the literal manifestation of Eva’s abuse. The only thing Eva has the capacity to give her son is a knife, so the only thing Tori can do is slice. Because hurt people hurt people hurt people. And damn is Tori quite possibly the messiest bitch in rofan/otome isekai 😭 what a MESS

I started reading The Villainess Lives Again again after a few months and I had to drop it after the Aubrey betrayal arc. Aubrey read to me as someone that’s extremely mentally ill and seeing the story and the readers rejoice at her death like it’s some sort of grand triumph gave me the icky ickies. Just the entire way her character was treated had me going ehhhh. Her being drawn in a way that makes her traditionally unattractive in comparison to the perfect manhwa protagonists, her garish getup when she’s about to break into the celebration— all deliberately painting her as a target for the audience’s mockery. Her only purpose is to be a laughing stock; a circus freak for self indulgent ire. She’s not really even a character.

A lot of the time, the MC’s life before getting trucked is hand-waved away. Their past doesn’t really come up much in the story unless its to show a few panels of their tragic backstory, or to justify a skill that the plot needs. Which isn’t a flaw, because these types of stories are supposed to be escapist fantasies. We’re here for romance and simpery. But a genre deconstruction would be great. Imagine a transmigration story exploring how dysphoric ending up in a new body would be. Imagine the grief of having your life ripped away from you— no more modern conveniences, no more tasting your favorite food, no more seeing the people you treasure. Who’s going to take care of your dog??? And— Imagine how horrific it would be to have a loved one’s body be hijacked by a complete stranger.

Man— the last one has so much room for inspiration. What if the person you transmigrated into had people who cared about them? How would they feel about the transmigrator? Would they resent them? Pity them? And since a lot of the time, people are transmigrated into heinous villainesses, imagine how complicated the people that the og villainess harassed would feel. The person who was so horrible to you is now replaced by a confused, and, honestly, pitiful stranger. Where’s all your hate and ire supposed to go?

Or, to get even more meta, what if someone is isekai’d into a transmigration novel? Imagine the identity crisis that the transmigrator would go through with the knowledge that they’re a fictional character as well! They’re so glad to finally be able to talk to someone from their world, only to find out that they’re the bland female lead of a mediocre transmigration novel. Not even a good one— nope, people online trash on her for having no braincells and following the original novel lmao. She finds out that there are thousands screaming at her for trying to set up the OG FL and ML. Comedy. Or angst critiquing transmigration audiences. Flip a coin.

The female lead starts to notice how blurry their memories of their past life are; how quickly and adeptly they adapted into living as a noble lady im pseudo-medieval-europe, how they’d always stumble into the main plot despite doing everything they can to live a quiet life. The mindfuckery. The gut-wrenching loss of agency. They were already despairing over not being able to follow the original plot. What are they going to do now?