Became a Medieval Fantasy Wizard Chapter 65 Discussion

I wish it was better. The magic system is very good, and the worldbuilding is significantly more down to earth than default medieval fantasy, but there's a couple issues that really grate on me over and over the longer I read. As for strengths, the magic system's basis of "wizards are forgein language majors who can speak to the world itself" is very good. It would be a much better story if the main character actually bothered to like, use magic more, but whatever.

As for weaknesses? There are three massive, and I mean massive problems. The first? Sexism. The second? Almost every character is a cardboard cutout. The third? MC has a clear goal but just kinda gets sidetracked all the time for nonsensical reasons that are boring (because the characters are boring). Let me explain:

First, the author is just sexist. We've got stereotypical women throwing themselves at MC because he's powerful, which is whatever, but the flavor is decisively sexist. Female characters behavior change drastically scene by scene to further the plot, attractive women "like being stared at by h**ny men" (for the love of god tell me you've never spoken to a woman in your life HELLO??), men are repeatedly explained to "obviously want to r*pe every attractive women they see" which the author has the gall to claim is "simply human nature because older women are less fertile, " and we've got the classic "it's the woman's fault she almost got r*ped because she inconvenicenced all these male characters helping her not get r*ped." It's just plain weird and bad, and gets worse over time as more female characters (of "socially acceptable" "attractive ages") are added. This is weird because there are completely normally written mentor-archetype female characters, multiple of them, but no any girl between the ages of 15 and 30 is asking for it.

Secondarily, most characters are cardboard cutouts of a given archetype like "righteous night" or "as*hole night" or "rapey mercenary" etc etc. This is notably worse with female characters (see above) but isn't inherently a problem if the core of the story is adventure and discovering magic right? Wrong. It's fine for quite a while but gets really aggrevating when characters are being cycled constantly and it's implied we're supposed to care about them (or MC cares about them maybe?) except the only difference between Person We Care About and Person We Don't Care About is the amount of time they've spent with MC. Their personality doesn't matter. Idk

Finally, MC has a clear goal of adventuring the world to find more mysteries to talk to to learn more magic. What does he do instead? Get randomly jerked around by strangers over and over to do things he doesn't care about at all that barely benefit him. Examples include: going to meet a plant mage and getting dragged off on a monster hunting expedition instead of asking about plant magic. Initially traveling north to "meet the time-space wizards" before deciding to literally turn back around, go south to go to war instead (despite being very adamant about not wanting to do that or kill people) for a girl he hates for a theoretical reward that may or may not let him learn more magic. What does he do after that? Get dragged to go play doctor for a noble. Do you see the problem? That's right, there's not enough magic in this world supposedly full of magic! He basically learns spells and techniques whenever he wants to, but doesn't bother to study or put in effort unless he's literally about to die. Idk bro, maybe he doesn't have a personality either.

Despite these annoyances it's a pretty good read because the worldbuilding carries it so hard. It depends on what you're interested in. If you want characters or drama or real friendships, go somewhere else. If you just want a cool magic system? You've been warned.