Except Me, Everyone Else Is the Protagonist Chapter 41 part3 Discussion

"She understands me so well!" -protagonists

"She couldn't help but think that they were also people who could cry and laugh, full of life, not just paper characters representing symbols in a book." -mc

These two statements really sum up what MC brings to story and why she's so important to/for the OG protagonists. In most cultivation novels, the protagonists have to be cool, aloof, and perpetually dignified; but real humans aren't flawless and can't be perfect at all times. Our MC, Nanshi, helps the OG protagonists and villain embrace their human sides. Partly by creating space and confidence for them to reveal their less-than-dignified aspects. Partly by being able to use modern concepts to make more complex psychological states understandable to themselves and others. And partly by diffusing melodrama with her pragmatism and sense-of-humor, turning dark situations into lighter ones.

The main characters, again thanks in part to MC's lens and interactions, feel like fully fleshed out individuals all with their own unique strengths, weaknesses, quirks, and growth. I also appreciate that, with or without the MC, none of the OG protagonists are undeserving of their hero/heroine title. It's not that they would have been "bad" people without the MC, it's just that they would have been very generic cookie cutter cultivation novel leads. MC turned them from charicatures to humans.

Most of all, I love the dynamics between the main characters. Not just the relationship between the OGs and the MC, but the OGs with each other. They really feel like a quirky group of siblings and they all sincerely care about each other.

The relationship between MC and the OG villain ML is also uniquely fantastic. They really like each other, which seems like it should be a given for the MC & ML in any novel, but isn't. In so many stories, the romance between the leads is based on (a) MC being "different" from other women and ML being the uber-handsome wealthy alpha male or (b) MC saves/heals the ML and their affection is essentially a trauma bond. Not to say that those things are unrealistic motives for a romance to sprout, but it does make one wonder whether the MC & ML would still be together if they were poor and ugly or if ML would have loved a different woman if she were the one who just happened to save/heal him.

In this story, it really is the MC's personality that hooks ML and it makes sense. After experiencing so much pressure and expectation, followed by so much much betrayal and pain that he became a demon in the OG story, it makes sense that he would fall in love with a person who could make him laugh and banter in the middle of seemingly hopeless situation.

Speaking of laughter, this novel is laugh-out-loud hilarious. There were several times when I had to put my phone down because I was laughing too hard. One of the funniest scenes so far was when Spoiler

MC, ML, and MC's Senior Brother (one of the OG protagonists) were trapped in an illusion space. The illusion space had latched onto MC's psyche so anything she imagined came to life there. MC couldn't stop thinking about dumb modern things. First she imagined Sadako from The Ring complete with horror movie music, then she turned Sadako into a hula dancer. But the peak of that scene was when she went to sleep and ended up dreaming about the show Inuyasha and the ML was so interested that he stayed up all night watching the illusion and she woke up the next morning to him asking "is Kagome really Kikyo's reincarnation?" I lost it. I have tears of laughter in my eyes just remembering it.

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I highly recommend this novel. It's a gem.