Good God but she is just insufferable. I keep reading to see if she ever grows a fucking spine but nooope. Every time--Every. Single. Time.--the male lead mocks her, insults her, shames her, and/or all three at once, she reacts in exactly the wrong way, which is precisely the way he wants, so he wins every damned time. Which is not just boring, it's plain old bad writing--unless you're writing for the 'please step on me master' crowd, which this author clearly is not. This is written for the 'strong FL-enemies to lovers-Takahashi Couple' crowd. And I'm telling you right now that as a genre piece, it is a complete and utter failure. It's legit a hate read for me at this point. "Betrayal of Dignity", eh? What dignity??!? The main character has none to speak of, and apparently no pride, either. She's such an easy, disappointing conquest it makes zero sense that the spoiled, narcissistic man-child of a male lead takes continued interest in her, yet we're *somehow* supposed to believe that her prudery and feeble, lip-biting attempts to clap back are enough to keep him interested for more than five minutes (let alone long enough to get them married)? DOUBT. He's as boring as she is; toxic, but not toxic enough to be scary or truly threatening, and too petty and spiteful to genuinely root for. We're supposed to accept that he's fallen for her because She's Not Like the Other Girls (yeah.. ugh) and she's a True Challenge and he Really Loves Her Deep Down but just can't be honest with himself and blah blah blah whatever.
It's not that I dislike all of these tropes--I came here hoping for a good 'antagonists slowly fall for each other during satisfying battles of wit and complex emotional chess' story, after all--but they aren't put to good use here. In fact, they're abused so soundly I want to call Trope Protective Services and report this story for grievous enemies-to-lovers harm. The heroine *isn't* a challenge. The male lead is a pampered baby without a backstory tragic enough to justify his plain old nasty temperament. I tried to root for her, at least, but she let me down so often and so consistently I found myself thinking, 'if you're not even going to fucking TRY, you deserve to get your ass handed to you by a guy who wouldn't survive an exchange of insults between third-graders'. Seriously. If I were ever to let myself get humiliated by this level of male lead, I would never be able to hold my head up again.
During every single one of their excruciating interactions. I would get my increasingly small and battered hopes up and think, 'now, here's what she should say or do to totally destroy him. yeah, get him, girl!'. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me through dozens of chapters in a row... yeah, I know. Trust me, I am ashamed of myself. I should have been protecting my poor little hopes instead of willfully putting them in situations where they'd be dashed to bits every single time. Because she Never. Even. Once. puts up anything resembling a real fight. Or anything resembling a poor fight. Or much of anything at all. My God, woman, it's not even hard to make assholes like this guy cry. You could have him on his knees in a heartbeat if you put in the merest modicum of effort. A wee bit of battle. A soupcon of struggle, even. Fuck earning his respect. Make that waste of space hate you so much he chews holes in his own pillow every night gnashing his teeth as he relives the scorching hot shame you put him through when he tried it on. Now, that shit is fun to read AND write! But no. She puts up about as much resistance as a coma patient, so the ML doesn't have to try, either. All he has to do is pop a couple of buttons on his blouse and she's reduced to a trembling, simpering pile of wet-pantied jelly. I'm trying to remember if we even get a 'How dare you speak to me that way?' out of her, but I'm coming up empty. Maybe it happened once. Half-heartedly. She even has a handy weapon with her at all times, but disappointment that she is, she neither beats the shit out of him with her cane handle nor sticks it up his ass to reduce HIM to a trembling, simpering pile of jelly. What's worse, she never even seems *tempted* to do so. We don't even get black thoughts out of this woman, she is straight up wimp through and through. She should just use her amazing embroidery skills to sew her tongue to the sole of his boot and be done with it.
Are we supposed to stick around for the bland-as-its-heroine smut? Are we supposed to be thinking, "Oh, but it's worth sitting through all the crushing humiliation the female lead lets a totally unworthy opponent inflict upon her, because their erotic encounters are simply smokin'!" If so, this is another complete failure. Because if anything is guaranteed to make my excitables dry out, shrivel up, and retract as far as anatomy will allow, it's being expected to tolerate a garbage-tier male lead's embarrassingly easy victories over the character I'm intended to identify with. This comic could have the most volcanically hot sex scenes of all time (it doesn't) in full uncensored glory every other chapter but it's too late. My libido fell asleep the first time she let the cardboard standee of a male lead make a fool of her, and more of the same certainly isn't going to wake it up. Seriously, though, the caliber of this guy! The author evidently thinks he's such a diabolical genius that it's no shame for the heroine to put her ego in the blender along with her self respect whenever he so much as sends a pixar smirk in her direction, but the author is incorrect. He's yawnsville and the FL's true shame should come from letting a level one dung beetle blast her level 75 legendary armor right off her tits.
I can just picture the author lying in bed, kicking her feet and giggling to herself: "I'm thinking of writing one of those bickering enemies-to-lovers stories, a la 'Much Ado About Nothing'. I'm gonna knock everybody's socks off with my witty character interactions and trademark Strong Female Lead! Tee hee! Don't tell anybody but my heroine? Total self insert I'm so clever!!" Ohhhhhh my god. Beatrice would literally wipe the floor with this damp fucking paper towel of a strong female lead and I would really, really enjoy watching her do it. She'd also put this arrogant mama's boy smirkenheimer of a male lead in the fucking ground and I would 100% hold her shovel for her while she tamped down the earth over his corpse.
I'm going to keep reading a bit (even though I've done nothing to deserve such punishment), because A.) I'm a fucking idiot and B.) to see if that lovely spirited lass Alice (now there's a gal worth writing and reading about! why didn't we get a comic about her??) or that whackado serial killer Prince show up for some shits and giggles. Don't spoil me, if I never get to see them again, I don't want to know yet LOL
she's so bland and weak it's super frustrating. At least Alice would have stabbed him with a fork and pushed him down the stairs often enough to keep him in line. I'd much rather have a story about her!
The art is really pretty tho