Reading the spoilers i'm like wtf like, sure, go get with the father after being abandoned by your ex, if that's what you want, but why tf would you get back together with your cheating ex who quite literally left you to be with his dad's ex-fuckbuddy solely out of spite? And a 3P on top of that? Man, have some selfrespect, pls
So I just finished chapter 9, and started chapter 10, and I nearly lost my eyes the way I was rolling them. Of course, OF FUCKING COURSE it's the priest/whole damn church that's the bad guy of the story. A religious entity that isn't somehow corrupt and evil and just root of all that is bad in the world?? Wow, that's just unthinkable.
I get it, a church and it's leaders can be corrupt and wrong, like in any organisation. But ffs, do you have to make them the bad guys of every single story where religion is mentioned?? ISTG, I've never seen a manga/manhwa so far, where there was a religious entity based on christianity, that wasn't evil. Or at the very least, a prominent member of it was the bad guy. It's always the barbarians with their savage gods, the cults with their evil gods, and christianity-inspired churches like, go make your hindu/shinto/buddhist/whatever churches into the bad guys for a change, please and thank you
I mean you are reading a story set in the west or atleast following the customs of the west
If you read more asian based stories then they will show you a different angle
Plus Christianity is one of the main religions of South Korea
And as far is it comes to being the bad guy it's the crown and the church who are bad so it's basically just showing the two main pillars of the society are bad hence the rebellion
And barbarians with their savage god is usually refered to the eastern religion as they were seen as barbaric and savage by the church and still is at times
And in a lot of stories the church as whole isn't shown as bad just like in this instance it's just one guy who thinks of himself as a Messiah
They don't condemn the church as whole but usually the person in power b who is the bad guy again mostly because so that they can draw a clear distinction between good and evil (amongst people not amongst organisations)
I get wanting more variety which is fair but like, when have you seen a church in history books that has been good from start to finish. In almost all cases the church is or was corrupted and used it's influence to control... So can we really place the manhwas using this specifically when cults are a huge thing in korea
Damn. The royal family needs to burn. It's disgusting, that they would rape and torture a living being for 3 years straight, just so he could use some magic mirror once. Not to mention, that that I bet, they know the whole truth. It's one thing, that the other nobles probably didn't, considering ML had no idea, but the royal family has to know.
The worst part is, that human ugliness and greed is so rampart, that I would have zero doubts, that if dragons existed in rl, humans would do the exact same thing to them. Maybe even worse.
As for the ML...I have conflicting feelings about him. On one hand, he clearly knows nothing, and grew up being brainwashed into beliving a legend that is a great point of pride for his whole lineage, but on the other hand he just murdered in cold blood many people without even trying to find out, why the hell they would believe that the dragon was abused after finding an ancient ruin....like that's got to be very sus, but he didn't even think for a second, he immidiatly just decided to execute them when he was told about the situation, and even when he arrived, he didn't even look around or anything, just went in swinging his sword.
Like, there are mistakes, and then there is murdering a bunch of people in cold blood without getting the facts straight.
I will be honest, I really don't like Bice. Her personality just disagrees with me. Maybe I've missed it, or we haven't been yet told why MC self-hypnotised, but still, despite raising him up, Bice really did not show an ounce of concern for him this whole time. She just left him to be alone for many years, with no communication between them, not a single word of encouragement or care, nothing. MC missed her this whole time, unaware if she is alive or dead, and she couldn't drop a single letter or a call, just vibing with her horses, not giving a damn.
But I also hate how she insists on being called Little Bice by MC. Like, damn, you are like a mother to that kid, and you threathen violence if he dares to not call you his junior? Kids just want family and being able to call their caretakes by names that show off their family bond, not freaking "little", as if a fucking grown adult woman is younger than a child not even in his teens, and being threatened with a violent outburst at that. Great fucking parenting.
Tbh, her whole characters seems wholly redundant so far. You could replace her with Villager A, and they would contribute just as much to the plot. I really hope, that future chapters give her more value than her bullshit "call me Little Bice or I will go hysterical on you".
Ngl, the baby is lowkey freaky. He gives off "man-eating animal monster baby"-vibes, and tbh, he isn't that far off, considering he tried to eat his father for a while, lmao.
For a moment there I thought that the author went with the worst female lead tropes that plague books: 1)unplanned pregnancy, that the female lead never wanted, but now that she is pregnant, she is suddenly, and for no explainable reason, ready to give up everything and die for it, and 2) she has strong powers throughout the story that she spent a long time learning/cultivating, but in the end she loses them for whatever reason, and gets stuck being ordinary. At the very least, MC got his cultivation back, so he didn't get cursed with the second trope, but he still went through the bullshit cliché FL pregnancy trope. I mean, honestly, it was just bullshit. In the first place, he didn't even want it. He was just like "well, my master wants it, so I guess", but the moment he learned that his master wanted to get rid of the fetus, because, y'know, it will murder him and eat his corpse too, he suddenly went berserk and now couldn't live without the child? Get out of here with that bull. I understand, that he was massively upset over ML unilaterally deciding to get him pregnant, and then do the abortion, it's never okay to do that without talking things through, and he had all the reason to be pissed. But to suddenly decide that he just has to have the child, when it's a no brainer, that death is pretty much guaranteed, especially since he never previously wanted one, is just one massive plothole. Yeah, sure, in the end they got the baby out before it went into a feeding frenzy, but it was clear, that it was dangerous, and never done before in such situation.
Another moment that I wanted to point out, is that this is clearly a major red flag relationship. I mean, I liked the story, since it's only a story, but their relationship is never okay. MC was a little child (around 10), who was emotionally neglected by his father, and then went through the trauma of watching his father throw his older brother into a dangerous place for selfish reasons, where he proceeded to die, and then just days after that, he was told to die or suceed in the same place and was summarily abandoned by his father. So, a neglected, traumatised child gets picked up by an adult man (and lord only knows how many decades he lived), and gets treated lovingly. Suddenly, this child gets a traumabond due to the trauma, AND unhealthy attachment due to previous neglect. It's a double whammy. Suddenly, he has an adult man fullfilling all of his needs for fatherly love, while he is perfectly conscious of the fact, that his actual still doesn't give two fucks about him, and never will, and that eventually, the child will have to leave the person that fulfills all his emotional needs, and return to his shit father. Which means, that he grows up never experiencing stability, since his situation is supposed to be only temporary, and so has no chances of healing since he is always hopped up on anxiety. And I do have to say, that the author showed MC's desperation in keeping their bond quite well. MC's fawning expressions, words, actions are just *chef's kiss*. On top of it all, the poor guy went through puberty with no real chances of getting a crush on anyone really, since 99% of his time he spends attached at the hip to the man he is traumabonded with. It's no surprise that he ended up horny for him. Especially after ML started drinking his blood. (Actually, seeing that event through both of their pov gave me major lolita-vibes. I have not read the book, but someone said that the reason why the little girl seems to always act sensual, sexual, is because it's the pedo's pov. So he sees things through his pedo filter. Here, MC was eager for the ML to drink his blood, because in his eyes it was another way to tie his master to himself, to make their bond even stronger. For the ML, though? He says that MC absolved him of the sin of drinking blood. As if MC told him that he can drink his fill to show that it's perfectly okay. Even though MC didn't give two fucks about doing that, he was aware that this is fucking weird, and he specifically liked that it's fucking weird, because it means that ML is unlikely to be doing it with others. MC quite literally saw benefit of not absolving ML of his sin. So yeah. Pov changes everything.)
Anyway, so he gets horny for the person he has unhealthy attachment to, and spends all his time with, no surprises here. What was actually a pleasant surprise, is that he was aware enough to know, that this wasn't actually okay. He was completely onboard on staying platonic, until ML pushed things with him, and slept with the then 20y.o. kid (again, who knows how many decades younger than him) as soon as he blurted out that he is in love with his master while half-conscious. I mean, he never even said it again until much later, even though ML kept pushing for it, and regularly engaged in sexual acts with him.
I think, that ML was majorly wrong here. He never should have pushed for anything sexual. Especially since he himself commented several times that he sees MC as very young, and even reconfirmed that he is 20, because he quite literally still didn't see him as an adult. If you need to remind yourself that your partner is technically an adult, because they look/act like a child in your eyes, then that's not a good sexual partner for you. But anyway, ML still did it. And MC, on top of the huge shitpile resting on his mental health, got his first sexual experiences taken by the father figure who raised him, with whom he has a traumabond, and to whom he has an unhealthy attachment.
You know what, I retract my bashing on MC for his weird reaction to the abortion. Now that I think about it, poor kid's mental health was in such shambles at this point (what with ML sleeping with another man while fucking MC, then abandoning him for years, then kidnapping him home suddenly, getting him pregnant, I mean, Jesus Fucking Christ), that it shouldn't surprise me, that he immidiatly latched on to their shared child. Like, fuck, that actually makes a lot of sense.
Btw, while I liked the art, it's really pretty, but it threw me off, just how much it changed all the time. It seems like the artist can't draw the same face from different angles, since every side was basically a whole new person. It didn't help, that they constantly went from thin and delicate to rugged and manly, lmao.
Forgot to add
PSA: do not consume any alcohol at all while pregnant.
MC mentions drinking a cup of wine during pregnancy, and insinuating, that it is perfectly fine. It's not. Even 1 cup/glass of wine can give the fetus fetal alcohol syndrome, or FAS for short. Anyone who tells you that a bit of alcohol once in a while is okay, is dead wrong. A lifetime of struggle for your child is not worth it for that bit of alcohol. If you can't put down your drink during pregnancy and breastfeeding, don't get pregnant.
Holy shit man, I applaud u for reading all of this and writing an in depth analysis despite having ur issues with the plot. I rlly like it when people still give a story a shot till the end then deciding how they feel about it and that's exactly what u did. The dedication is real lollll- seriously though I agree with ml being majorly in the wrong throughout the story and how u expressed that was peak lolll. Great analysis!
I'm crying with all these horny comments