What Happens When the Second Male Lead Powers Up Chapter 117 Discussion

Long review because I'm upset. I started to get a stuffy feeling in my chest around chapter 98, and I finally decided to not finish this. I didn't mind his default character setting being a kind person, but the way he acts... he's nearly in his 30s. There's something extremely frustrating about his behavior while reading the entire story, and I first I thought that the comments simply didn't understand the appeal of having a softer male lead, but it's the way that he does not effectively assert boundaries or leverage what he has in order to support healthy dynamics with others. (And SN it makes it way less plausible that he's an older sibling.)

First off, Spoiler

when dealing with Sadie as a regular child, he never refuses or sets limits on ether absorption despite making all that fuss about proper education. A child attacks you with a knife and you don't get upset or even assert boundaries? Nothing about "I will help you, but if you continue to do XYZ I will behave ABC"? Anything? Even after when he finds out that prince Cedric is "Sadie", and the prince deliberately depletes his ether and uses his child appearance to force Jesse's hand out of pity, he doesn't even half-heal him in order to stand on principle and get a proper apology. You KNOW that's Cedric, and you know what he's up to, but you don't stand on it for some forced and half-assed he's so nice 🥺 reason! He gives in every time.

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That's not kind with a soft spot, it's a lack of backbone. As a matter of fact, he's like this with Christelle and the rest as well. He forgives and gives in too easily, so half the story is him being taken advantage of by others until some external factor forces them to reflect on their actions which are forgiven anyway. It's so annoying. It feels like everything is just happening to him, which I would be sympathetic to if it felt like he still took a stance and stuck to it despite getting beat up by life. He's always getting pushed around by the MC and the ML, despite being older or of comparative age. The MC as well is fully aware of how she should be acting, but is unnaturally immature—same with the ML who does not get enough pushback. (Jesse if your little sister has let you know he has a sh*t personality, you've seen his personality, why are you not standing your ground as much as possible to try and change at least how he treats you. You literally have what he needs, and you're the adult here. And why hadn't the Cardinal at least tried to rein him in or teach him proper communication or SOMETHING.) But again!! Initially the premise of someone not immediately knowing the information or skills and thus having to blindly fumble around to figure out what's going on was really original. But it just started to really get to me with how his resourcefulness and information gathering steeply dropped off.

I don't know how to list everything that's happened up until now, and the situation with Spoiler

Sir Geens' hostage situation

[collapse] is like oh that's tragic whatever, I get it. For some reason he's saving an enemy again, but okay he's a kind guy. (SN: no one has a real qualitative conversation that really addresses grievances with lasting change. Where is the character development. It's apologize, status quo, rinse repeat for over a hundred chapters, and according to other reviews here there's hundreds more to go through).

What's really the last straw is Spoiler

the way he treated Elise. Clearly she loves him and cares for him, and he knows this, and we hear sooo much about how he can't do anything to make things difficult for the real Jesse, but he avoids her and sides against her for MC+ML way too obviously, and clearly hurts her feelings. It cannot be that difficult to say a quick "after I was attacked on the border, I hurt my head lost many of my memories and I can't really recall everything. They've treated me well here so please don't worry. I know you care about me and I worry about the situation back home, what is going on?" etc! You can't make something up? He's not s*upid, so???

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The decline from awww to AW COME ON is jarring. It's really frustrating to watch him just be so dumb on purpose and have that be hand-waved under "he's being kind", there's a limit to kindness before it becomes enablement and the author refuses to make that acknowledgment! There's no balance between frustrating moments and cathartic moments in TWSB. I'm not even going into the microscopic detail that I could be. I'm just tired and I'm out. Whoever compared him to Kim Dokja or Cale Henituse is off the mark because while superficially they're all kind people, KDJ and Cale at least have a back bone. They're dense, but not s*upid, they have a goal they're working towards, and they don't let themselves be used without gaining something from it. But! They are still kind. Imagine that. 3/5, WNR.