#syl asks

I believe it’s mentioned that Imperial Mana was a special mana only the royal family owned which they’ve had since founding, so as long as you had the gene you would have the eyes and mana. How strong the jeweled eyes are, are seemingly indicative of how strong the individual will be or how strong the Obelian genes are supposedly given that Aeternitas’ eyes and mana were so weak that Lucas in irritation questioned and insulted his birth and origins (fueled by his Master’s recent passing, but I digress).

In regards to inbreeding, I personally don’t think it was heavily practiced though there’s definitely a possibility—less for the gene, and more for trying to keep imperial secrets, or possibly generations where Obelian Royals were experimenting thinking wizards could be stronger via inbreeding—as from what I understood, the Obelian gene is very dominant meaning any child sired would almost definitely have jeweled eyes (which honestly makes me wonder about why Claude and Ana’s father had an affair—he didn’t make her/take an official concubine until Claude was revealed/born. She remained a servant until Claude existed, meaning he risked an Obelian bastard on a whim and only acknowledged her existence after Claude was born instead of anticipating a jeweled eyed child’s birth. Additionally, the existence of the Ruby Palace practically confirms that every child born from an Obelian will almost definitely have jeweled eyes—that is why you must keep every concubine close, in the chance a jeweled eyed child is born and you can see to them quickly). However, the royal family had an incredible number of secrets, such as the knowledge of mana beasts that weren’t passed down to every child, where realistically, had mana beasts been so common in Obelian children like they were made out to be, nobles must’ve suspected or found some pattern (which means there definitely must’ve been assassination plans involving young bastards/the fight for the throne and mana beasts as mana beasts are connected to their owner and affect their owner’s health. Perhaps that was why the Empress hurt/killed Claude’s mana beast—as a last resort to kill Claude).

However, to ask me specifically about mana, I don’t actually know much because of how absolutely horrible wmmap’s lore magic-wise is, especially in the novel sobs. The topic of black mana/magic vs normal mana/magic vs imperial mana/magic is INCREDIBLY vague—what exactly is even the difference between imperial mana and normal mana? Is it just aesthetics? Then why make such a big deal about it? Is there a reason mana beasts only seem to manifest from Obelian wizards? Or is it in reality that mana beasts are very common, it’s just that the Royal Family keeps it a secret which results in normal wizards premature deaths due to being in the dark about their mana beasts?

And don’t get me started on the ambiguity of black magic. At least in the manhwa, you can tell what black magic probably is due to the dark aura vs the varied colors of other people’s mana. But in the novel, there is no real explanation or described difference in appearance or even usage in terms of black mana vs every other mana—and it only gets more stupidly confusing and vague at the topic of ancient magic, which is worse than black magic supposedly which is what Lucas used on himself. Hell, despite everyone being born with mana according to Lucas, why is it that black mana and ancient magic are things that aren’t natural? That you must learn and research in order to use it—yet Jennette exists. A girl whom has both imperial mana and black mana, as her jewel eyes are made from imperial mana. Rather, this almost implies that imperial mana, black mana, and ancient mana/magic(?) are additives to the natural normal mana since all three can be taken away from you. With black mana and ancient magic being learned and taken away from you, this THEN should imply that the outlier of imperial mana which can also be removed, is actually learned—yet it’s genetic and natural? Then what exactly does Jen have then—if her black magic is sealed and can be subdued by normal magic (seen via the SINGLE instance of Lee Jihye seemingly purifying the effects of black mana on the nobles it affected + what Lucas does to clean up Athy’s mana), and her imperial mana is taken, does that not just make her a normal girl with normal mana? Since when it’s taken from her/sealed, the black magic effects on the people it were still on completely disappeared like a line being cut, it implies she has no black magic to use anymore. But you need mana to live it seems, so she can only have normal mana left. Yet why is she still treated like a monster and an abomination?

I'm looking for some good Henry Cavill fanfictions! One schots/imagines/ Henry x reader/ multiple chapters,....

Specifically;

FNF

Madness Combat

Genuinely, at least manhwa-wise, I don’t think it’s possible sobs

Hell, when Claude’s mom speaks to him before passing away, she still refers to him as “Prince”, rather than “Emperor” or “Your Majesty”.

As Aeternitas had successfully wrapped himself in Ana’s head at the time, this would’ve been right before the coup I imagine, since Claude’s Mother’s death was what made Claude rebel in the first place. I’ve started to think that the “previous tyrant emperor” could possibly have been their father, rather than Ana. Disregarding how quick Ana’s empirical reign would’ve been, Ana never seemed to show the same cruelty Claude had when it came to those beneath him. When given the opportunity to kill (even while being goaded on by his supporter/ally), he turns away from it. The one who makes the final decision to brainwash/mind break Roger in ch.84 is Aeternitas, shown via the red eyes and red lighting vs Ana’s blue eyes and blue lighting.

Aetti even goes on to say Ana is prone to hesitation, and being soft. Cruelty doesn’t come naturally to Ana (his behavior and actions toward Athy and Claude are a result of him genuinely believing they are shrewd and nefarious (as a byproduct of Aeternitas’ grooming and influence), seen with the image below in Ana’s POV), and if done is always the last resort (in the sidestories, he’s even the one to tell Claude to hold back/go easy on the criminal commoners—which doesn’t fit the narrative put out that he was supposed to be a tyrant towards the people, and Claude was the ‘just’ Emperor who was ‘kind’ to the people). I just can’t see this person as someone who can be such a horrible tyrant enough to be renowned as one for the maybe 1-2 years he could’ve realistically been an emperor.

But their father—who betrayed his legal wife’s trust, the wife who seemed to have been the reason and aided his ascendancy to the throne in the first place, slept and neglected/mistreated a maid and seemed to pit his children against each other while turning a blind eye to further neglect and abuse toward the son he had just accepted and acknowledged in the fight for the throne—seems much more likely for tyrant and abusive behavior, instead of Ana. So I’m much more partial to the idea of the “previous tyrant emperor” in the history books referring to their father, or the classic old “the winner writes history” and Claude just recorded the series of events as such.

After all, in Claude’s perspective, since he doesn’t do anything to commoners (yet) and does the bare minimum of paperwork while mistreating and threatening nobles (yet is still aware of and does nothing about the human trafficking(?) between nobles, as brought up by @sharper-than-a-serpents-tooth…), coupled with his innate distrust and resentment towards nobility and royalty in general, he must think he’s a saint compared to the previous ones despite all evidence pointing otherwise, as he immediately assumes the commoner dancer he invited into the palace for his birthday banquet was a spy and he should kill her…

It’s the way that the outrage is so overblown! It’s a whole other world! A what-if situation! People and I’m not gonna say who are taking it way too seriously sobs

You seem to be new. Sorry, I don’t think my blog is for you.

I enjoy analyzing and diving into canon elements the story presents its readers, especially in regard to wmmap—which I’ve gone on to do this with for six years. Not once did I try or mean to change the genre, nor did I suggest the story or events change in any major way that wasn’t already revealed or implied to us in canon. (Even if I did, shoujomanga is notoriously very varied in subject matter and progression—flawed yet heartwarming found families with darker undertones is quite common and popular in shoujosei, seen with AkaYona and Furuba. Ashita no Nadja also contained darker elements and found family if memory serves, in your provided examples. Hell, the most popular rofans in the recent years have been dark and nuanced with elements of found family straying from blood relations—from The Fantasie of a Stepmother/A Stepmother’s Märchen, Roxana, My Mother’s Contract Marriage, more recently with How to Win My Husband Over, The Count’s Secret Maid, etc.)

LP is still a novel in the perspective/focus of Jennette, who in the end becomes beloved by all after trials and tribulations and melting the cold frozen heart of the tyrant emperor that ends in a ‘happy ending’ for the female lead. Except now, I was trying to figure out the true LP story that both the manhwa and novel haphazardly wrote with inconsistency, because LP wasn’t a novel. It was real, and it continued to live on somewhere sometime. And what we canonically know about LP (which, Manhwa Athy even acknowledges herself at one point) is that it wasn’t actually a perfect happy lighthearted ‘novel’, and that there were things going on behind the scenes which led to unhappiness after the ‘happy ending’.

The whole point presented by WMMAP and the novel, was that their stories aren’t fairytales or perfect. That everyone was a real, nuanced person, and that affection isn’t instinctual or guaranteed, but built upon and earned. The climax/ending of the novel has Lee Jihye forcibly confronted with the fact that she’s been dehumanizing people close to her by seeing them as romance-fantasy characters and tropes while they were suffering, and that not everyone will be happy because they’re living in ‘reality’.

Which, I’m criticizing because if the point of wmmap is as you claim, that it’s supposed to be a ‘classic, lighthearted and feel good shoujo/rofan’, these messages and story elements completely go against that intent. Wmmap’s setup itself is already dark: starting with death and bloodshed, debauchery, depression, the protagonist’s implied suicide, rebellion, human experimentation via black magic to a degree (which, Athy and Lee Jihye brings up from reading LP—and not to mention the sapping and decline of wizards and magic due to a one-note-last-minute villain who dies peacefully in the novel after being single-handedly the cause of Novel Jen’s spiraling), and later on clear signs of mental deterioration and another suicide attempt via the secondary female lead. My frustrations with the novel stem from the obvious darker story elements that should’ve added depth and intrigue to the story, yet the author uses them as convenient excuses written without the proper weight or intent—which reflects on the halfhearted depiction of LP that is barely explored nor explained even in the sidestory that actually takes place within that setting. Intriguing concepts hinted at with solid clues and foundations already set, yet nothing is done with them.

Since it’s the only one I’m really familiar with, let’s take Ashita no Nadja for example. The story starts off with Nadja leaving the orphanage full of hope to seek out her family who she comes to the knowledge of is possibly alive out there, and along the way finding a found family in her new friends and meeting new people and experiencing the world while also witnessing corruption by those rich and in power. In the end, she chooses not to be with her mother or live as an aristocrat, choosing her found family. She starts off naive and unaware, kept in the dark, and full of hope and determination that keeps her head up high, even among trivial adversity—yet what we see in the world of LP, and the snippets of LP spread through the main story of the novel, is that LP Jennette is the opposite. Because LP Jennette knows things already, things her ex-guardian Duke Alpheus doesn’t even know, and is acting specifically based off of what she knows (being that, she’s pretending to be Claude’s daughter because he took away her real parents from her, so he has to take responsibility by taking care of her which ISN’T THAT DARK AT ALL. I WAS SAYING THAT IT MADE HER LP CHARACTER INTRIGUING YET NOTHING WAS EXPANDED UPON OR DONE WITH IT). I was also deducing how she would respond to events via her characterization in the main story—being that she reacted awkwardly and uncomfortably silent and at a loss of words whenever noble ladies would question or make snide remarks to and about her. And then we have consistent canon information presented about Claude across all worlds and media that I wove into my previous post, being that he knows Jennette’s identity the moment he sees her every single time across both medias (coupled with his canonical character traits of being bloodthirsty, apathetic, yet also paranoid and unafraid to act on his paranoia if he’s unsatisfied).

Like what I present isn’t trying to change the genre or characters or anything—it’s trying to collect together, analyze, and make sense of the little story and characterization the author has ALREADY fed to us. The original story that makes more sense, given what Lee Jihye seemed to know as a fan and parrot back to the reader, being darker specific details pertaining to Claude’s past and Jennette’s origins that realistically the novel wouldn’t have explored if it was following “The Perfect Lovely Princess’ Shoujo Journey on Being Beloved By All”.

You’re right about how LP was setup by Athy/Lee Jihye as something that’s “supposed to be like an old fashioned romantic shoujo”. But you know what else is true? That the novel and manhwa both DIRECTLY twist and oppose that as the story goes on. Let’s analyze WMMAP’s protagonist for a moment, to set this up. Lee Jihye and Athy are biased narrators who fall victim to their impulsive thought and immediate emotion, and are prone to claim things that aren’t necessarily true. She already romanticizes the real people in her life as such—the same would go with LP. Hell, her dehumanization STEMMED from her romanticization of LP. Of course the sappy and corny romance novel for middle schoolers, so she claims, isn’t actually sappy and corny and meant for middle schoolers (she was literally a fully grown adult, claiming it was a crappy book for kids, yet read it in its entirety and got invested in it when it was only left behind one random day at her job/a cafe(?),,, you don’t have to be a genius to figure out she’s exaggerating or being dishonest about something, especially when coupled with the fact she became so obsessed over the ‘crappy and cliche’ romance novel enough to affect the way she perceives every living person she meets). And the careless scraps I’ve pieced together I’ve concluded are much more interesting than what our biased protagonist claims it was, as well as what the author is lazily trying to convince you of. Other than Lee Jihye’s initial claim about the story in the first about five chapters describing it as a corny and cliche book for middle schoolers, there has never been any actual evidence to assume it’s actually what she says it is. (Also,,, you can totally read into and take middle school-grade novels seriously. Even the supposedly lighthearted and simple ones have layers of depth and meaning if you actually allow yourself to look past the surface.)

And this isn’t the first or last time I talk about things like this. So if my perception and interest and criticism isn’t lining up with your perception, then feel free to ignore and leave me be. As I said at the beginning, I’ve been talking and exploring this stuff in this manner for years. I’m quite assured in my view, and I’m sure you are as well. I don’t need anons in my ask to imply that I’m misunderstanding and basically wasting my time. I enjoy expanding upon and reading deeper into media I consume, digging past the surface and trying to make sense of it, even after the fandom and media has died. That’s how you keep these things alive, by continuing to read into, draw conclusions from, and question the author’s writing choices—whether they’re intentional or not—and creating things anew while provoking further thought and discussion. And you clearly aren’t looking for discussion, so this isn’t the place for you. (I honestly didn’t even know how to respond at first because I couldn’t figure out what you wanted or were trying to achieve, in addition to,,, being completely confused as I had no idea what your point was and how you came to the conclusions you brought up).

I do!

A lot of people think she’d be vegetarian, but to be honest I don’t think so just because she seems to enjoy street food a lot (via her and Athy’s excursion in season 2 + sidestory market excursion) so I feel like she’d enjoy meat quite a bit. I know she really loves animals and plants, but a lot of meat eaters also love these things but can still eat meat just fine which is why it doesn’t 100% convince me (especially when the eggs hatched and became chick-central mainly because Jen felt bad taking away eggs from their mothers/family—not because she was averse to eating eggs, or averse to eating meat).

Especially given novel information, that she eats a lot when she’s around people she’s comfortable with (ie, Ijekiel being confused when Athy mentions that Jen likes eating/eats a lot because she only pecks at her food politely in front of him).

She has a dainty appearance and an almost delicate disposition, but she’s also quite bright and unafraid to express herself when she’s comfortable. I see Jen as someone who’s super open and typically enjoys a variety of food and cuisines (she eats an octopus skewer in the sidestories, which some people tend to be afraid of or reluctant to try when they first encounter them) due to her stifled upbringing, meat included. I think the only things she seems to have a preference on are sweets/deserts, as they’re the main things she seems to have experience in enough to have a preference for (also through @jeweled-blue-eyes’s analysis throughout the story of kinds of deserts Jen seems to be drawn to whenever she’s seen eating, which I agree with wholeheartedly!).

To be honest, when it comes to fashion I am,,, one of the last people to ask LOL

I feel like she’d be a knit-sweaters and cute overalls/suspenders girl, things simple and comfy yet cute because I also see her as someone unafraid to get dirty or do something abnormal/odd which isn’t the best in super put together clothes—in opposition, in my head Athy will either go all out (as stylish and flashy as she can, even if she knows she’ll get dirty and etc) or no effort (lounging in pajamas, wavy hair messy and tangled, etc). Basically, Jen more cute and casual on the simpler side because she doesn’t particularly care about details unless she’s going to events (ie, she knew palace maids were neglecting her/messing up but she didn’t care enough to make a fuss about it) vs Athy who is either completely lazy casual or hyper attentive to detail depending on her mood (a perfectionist and noticed a bunch of little things about Jen’s appearance that were weird and pointed them out immediately).