Living As the Villainess Queen Chapter 206 Discussion

Due to the second translator giving this a different title, I started it twice and—I just noticed—dropped it again at almost the same chapter (206 and 198).

It's fine, really. There's nothing too wrong with it or bad about it. But there's not much good about it, either, except for the fact that the FL and ML spend plenty of time together and the ML is an okay bloke. The setting and hints of world-building had some interest for me, too.

But unfortunately, the pace is plodding and slightly repetitive. The characters don't really come alive in any way for me. Nor do their interactions give me enough of the secondhand butterflies I look for in a romance. I find the FL vaguely annoying and find most of the characters' thinking feels weird/contrived. So I ended up bored enough to quit at almost exactly the same moment twice.

I can say that some reviews' complaints about plot holes seem exaggerated to me. There are some smaller contradictions, but they could be due to slightly awkward translations.

Spoiler

There is a clear explanation early on about why the FL doesn't know things even though it's "her book." Her book was set a few years later, in a different part of the world, and was more focused on different characters. What makes it an issue is the annoying and repetitive way the FL thinks! She realizes this herself, but then keeps acting surprised and confused about really trivial things.

My favorite example of this so far is about "the beasts." She knows that they are able to shape-shift. She wrote about it in her book. But she gets quite distressed when she sees the ML's beast shape-shift from a horse into a panther and realizes it's the one she wrote about. Because she wrote that the beast was a panther and (gasp dun dun dun) it's different. Darlin', that is a panther. That's how come you just recognized it. It shape-shifts into a panther most of the time he's "using" it. Which is the only time it showed up in the book. That's NOT DIFFERENT from the book! It's THE SAME. I do not see the issue here. 💀

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I'd say give it a try and see how it takes you, because I don't think it's bad, I think it just doesn't appeal to me personally.

BTW, repeat after me. Having "a setting" is not the same as having "world-building." A setting is a basic, world-building is advanced. You probably mean "the setting" not "the world-building."