The Sponsored Heroines Are Coming for Me Chapter 109 Discussion

This novel's story progression is kinda weird and the summary isn't accurate in capturing the outline.

I think Korean academies are sort of formulaic. They follow a certain structure to maintain their audience, like transmigrating to become a munchkin MC, or MC-raising-munchkins, munchkin something something, solving this and that. This novel tries to be different and is a pretty good attempt to break away from the normal.

MC's a guy who plays a gacha game in an academy setting, and this time he's transmigrating to... a stalker?

It starts off with the MC criticizing the developer for including Ian in a Gacha academy game, a seemingly nasty stalker character who tries to chase heroines by gifting them his XP and items, and then confessing to them. Because of Ian's poorly groomed self and stalker-like behavior, the heroines are repulsed by his appearance and actions. Why would you confess to four different people in quick succession if you're sincere in pursuing them and even NTR the player along the way? MC's response is understandably disgusted with Ian, and so are the heroines.

But the game developer's reactions to MC's criticism are instant anger and hatred, tossing him straight into the game. He shows the MC that Ian nearly got mu*dered by one of the confessed heroines, then throws off the line "The culprit is the non-v*rgin!" and leaves with a fake 'good luck'.

Let me be clear. This is some next-level incel nonsense, and fortunately the author had the MC denouncing the developer as clearly insane.

The next question would be... do the heroines need to get beaten up? While the developer is a crazy criminal, and Ian is extremely shady and weird (is the dev actually Ian in disguise?), the latter isn't even remotely close to evil to warrant a death sentence. This means Ian's killer need to get punished for attempted mu*der, but what about the remaining three? This is where things might get insanely cringey if the author doesn't write it properly and make it "I'm sorry for being horrible to my stalker!". I personally thought it was at best passable and at worst painful cringe.

Even before I read up to c109, I thought it's almost concluded that the girls are going to 'repent' for their actions on Ian, and indeed, 2/4 heroines expressed their contrition, even though there was nothing to be sorry about on Ian's past behavior. It was a really weird feeling and generally unpleasant because the MC is the one who made efforts to change Ian in a very presentable manner. No more stalking nonsense, nearly no burdensome behavior of being a 'nice guy', and helping the mostly unlikable heroines for the sake of saving the world.

Note that I used the word 'nearly'. Since mu*der attempt #1 on Ian failed, mu*der attempt #2 might happen, and these heroines are actually mu*der-machines capable, MC literally asked the first heroine "Are you a v*rgin?" in an unnaturally forced way to find out whodunnit, making me think that the author wanted to add this line in his novel no matter what for sh*t and giggles. I'm not sure if this is going to be some kind of toilet humor where he's going to ask every heroine this.

Finally, I find MC's reactions to be lacking. Ian is still shady and weird even up to c109. If only he expressed more emotions into wanting to beat the dev up each time he had to ask a s*upid line about v*rgins, or stopping the heroines' weird misunderstanding about Ian's past and current (MC) actions, I would have added some bonus points. All the original in-game heroines are so terribly flawed that it makes me wonder if Ian had a thing for disappointing girls.

3.0 stars.