I Became the Obsessive Male Lead’s Ex-Wife Chapter -- Discussion

I take it back. Everyone in this story can go eff themselves and the servants can die in a house fire.

I just got angrier and angrier, reading how everyone spoke and acted around the FL. No wonder she spent four years hating them all and being a sarcastic, angry person! If anyone spoke about me around me like these people do, I would purposefully vomit in their hair and shove them out the window. Awwwe, is your war tribute bride sarcastic, unhappy, and resistant to adopting your ways with a smile and a "thank you, kind savior, for destroying my home country and essentially making me your captive"? How dare she! Whatever shall you do? I know! Vilify her as unreasonable, unfeminine, and isolate her, while treating her like a literal vessel whose sole purpose is producing babies! To her face! Damn, that didn't make her like you and now she's cussing at you like a hellcat? It's a mystery how anyone could be so unfeminine. Why can't she be more grateful and at least pop out some babies to abandon here when we boot her out once the contract is up?

Seriously, they can all go eff themselves.

As for our MC and ML, it's like watching "the Mating Dance of the Super Hot Garbage People."

ML just wants to f*** something. He's salty the hottest girl he ever saw (OG FL) refused to put out when his brilliant plan to deluge her with gifts, (but never actually speak to her until their wedding night,) didn't pan out. He tried nothing else and he's been a prickly, blue-balled, sourpuss ever since. He is randier than a tomcat on cialis, and just as awkward.

The MC is that special sort of attentionwho*e who wants to be thought of as ideal and angelic. (Think personal wellness social media influencer type. The kind who says she's raw vegan and exclaims how "delicious!" her instagram-staged watermelon "pizza" recipe is, then cries for sympathy points that she's got health struggles when she's caught sneaking fish. That sort of commitment to public fake.) She loves the attention her "sweetly feminine and kind" persona gets her, and is absolutely eating up her new face, social status, and bevy of built-in followers, (aka, the servants and suck ups). She has a shocking absence of empathy for the person whose body she took over, and has expended zero effort to understand her, or figure out why she had behaved the way she did. The most mental effort she's expended is to think the OG FL was a moron for wearing so much make-up.

She's vaguely plotting to use her duchess position to launch the singing career she never got to have in her previous life, and enjoy the celebrity, the parties, and the hot, hot husband. They're both dumb as bricks, as she bleats that she just wants to fulfill her duties as Duchess! Which her h**ny husband interprets as "bedtime duties", which she token protests wasn't her meaning, while artfully sticking her bu*t out, or whatever. So cringe. The garbage people are perfectly matched and deserve each other.

My original review is below, which is a bit more even-handed:

Spoiler

This is a fairly classic "enemies to lovers" "this man is obsessed with me having his babies!" set up, used as an excuse for extremely high s*xual tension they probably aren't going to deliver on in gritty detail (I don't believe this is an 18+ fic) but, by god, they are going to milk for all it's worth, like teenagers who just learned how to make out.

I have Feelings about this story, and not all good ones. We'll be diplomatic and say complicated ones.

First, I feel for the OG wife. She was an abandoned, illegitimate daughter scrounged up solely for the purpose of offering her as tribute. She had received no proper education or guidance as a "lady", so she has no idea about dress, decorum, behavior. She had never even been accepted by her father's prestigious family before they decided to marry her off and make absolutely ridiculous demands on her, like providing funds for them illegally. To make matters worse, her entre country had just been completely ravaged and destroyed, and the one she was expected to marry is the man responsible for doing it all. So, some resentment there. There's also cultural differences to contend with on top of that. She was a very wounded, angry person, for very good reasons.

And it seems like her husband didn't know how to approach a relationship on Hard mode. He gave up far too early, after using all of the wrong tactics (when he tried at all. For ****'s sake, they didn't even get her a tutor for the new country/ role, or a social guide to help her meet people) He spent four YEARS making things worse and not realizing his role in doing so. I think she deserved some kindness and understanding, and to get her happy ending. Rather than finding herself alone and snapping at everyone like a trapped animal, only to ultimately be abandoned in the og plot by the man who claimed he loved her, yet is super happy to have her replaced by a new person in the same body whom everyone likes better in the new story.

Next, I do not understand the point of a story claiming to be a grand romance, if the man who supposedly loves so grandly ends up being perfectly ok when his isekaid Stepford wife replaces the person he claims to love. That is not romantic or endearing. That makes him shallow and indicates he never knew her at all, ever.

Do not get me started about how what everyone seems to like about the new girl in the wife's body is that she's suddenly so demure and obedient and tractable (it nearly gives me hives, how they praise her new "submissiveness").

Were none of you ever nice to the og wife, and tried to be friends? JFC.

And hubby, if she's saying "I'll kill you if you touch me!" on your wedding night (Because, y'know, she doesn't know you, you tried to go for a homerun right from the first night, after never having spoken a single word to her before, and you personally destroyed her home) Maybe don't touch her, take it slow, and try to be kind first? Instead of immediately writing her off in disgust and letting everyone and their uncle gossip about how unreasonable it is she won't let you f*** her and get her pregnant already?

Overall, this would have worked far, far better if it was an amnesia story, not a transmigrator tale. Then we could respect our ML as honestly loving his wife, and the wife would be able to break from her terrible, burdensome past. It would have been a great tool to allow them to fix what went so wrong.

It's still readable, sensual, and enjoyable, and the art in each chapter is truly, truly stunning. I am definitely going to read this entire thing. But yeah, I am also pretending she isn't a completely new person, but instead the same one with amnesia in order to like it more as I do so.

Though, maybe she's better off in modern Korea, away from these people who hurt her, the role which seemed to be like sandpaper to her skin, and back in common jobs she understands and missed, and that's the best fate for her. That's kind of a lovely thought. Let the idol-wannabe enjoy sucking up and putting on a persona for everyone to love her, as she adores her new face and the built-in fame from her duchess role, and the shallow, super hot guy s*avering after her looks enjoy each other and have uncomplicated smexy times.

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