As much as I love your recommends I also want to know your anti recommends and why. You mentioned before lady wants to rest and your hatred to villainess lives twice I’m curious about others and Reasons
Wtf did i mention Lady Wants to Rest on here? I know I said I don't recommend it in the tags off the maid slap post, but I don't remember going in on it. In case I didn't, my dumb habit of high hopes for what is largely a genre about being a pretty princess rescued by a handsome, stoic knight/prince/duke and my habit of finding kernels of edgy potential mean I'm disappointed frequently, and that happened hard with The Lady Wants to Rest.
The premise is that this person has been reincarnating for over a thousand years for some inexplicable reason and they are just. Tired. They don't remember who they were in the beginning, but they've seen all there is to see, done everything there is to do, experienced every caste. They've been a tyrant, a slave, a teacher, a prostitute, a soldier, a man, a woman, everything except someone who can relax for five seconds.
I don't think it's fair to ding a story for not giving me what I wanted - a rightfully jaded inhuman who just wants to die, but has to settle for speedrunning human interaction - but it is fair to ding it for being boring. I don't understand how this setup lead to the most generic, paint by numbers, princess spam I've seen this year. You can't even blame it on being a shitty adaptation - the novel it's based on is a disappointment for the exact same reasons.
We've got OP mary sue powers protect the story from things like tension. We've got the myladymyladylaaaaady sidekick-cheerleader- less attractive best friend-maid. We've got various skillsets the author thinks is cultured/refined but clearly doesn't know a whole lot about used to show how cool the MC is. She's the number 1 poker player and the number 1 harp player and the number 1 teacher and none of this means anything, none of this has impact, you're just watching a character be better than everyone in one scene into the next.
When i said I wanted this to be about speedrunning human interactions, I meant I wanted this girl's brain to work like || Interpersonal Conflict Speedrun Any% (WR) ||
Like maid slap thing - 9 times out of 10, such scenes are about standing up for yourself, recognizing your worth, putting bullies in their place.
But her variant of this staple scene is detached, impersonal. "There's 20 ways to handle this. Given the known variables, inflicting fear offers the quickest resolution. On the off chance I need her later, I can ape a manipulative kindness."
THAT'S what I wanted the whole story to be. Over a thousand years, I'm sure you learn what gets people to do what you want. Over a thousand years, blatant disrespect would feel like an Oblivion npc guard. The level of human alienation immortality would warrant could have been sooo fun and sooo interesting. I wanted a sociopath, not a bored Mary Sue.
