#seduced and Abandoned

[gameraboy2]

Seduced and Abandoned (1964)

[dare-g]

Seduced and Abandoned (1964)

[blended-ice]

What if they made it a pair skate?

[missisjoker]

[faunandfloraas]

The Nobleman or 양반 (yangban): The smiling face represents the bluff and composure that an aristocrat is often known to have. The chin is a separate piece from the top of the mask, and the actors can lean forward and back to make the mask smile or frown as needed.

This monk who abandons his doctrines, or 취발이 (chwibari): Chwibari was originally a monk, but he had no intention of joining the monastic order, so he came down to the world and wanders. Represented with a forehead full of wrinkles and spots.

The widow or, 부네 (Punae/bune): represented to be a widow, or a kisaeng ( a woman who sang, danced, or played an instrument to provide entertainment for company at a drinking party), or a mistress of the Yangban. She has a very small mouth, round cheeks and forehead- giving a general look of happiness good-humor.

[pruneunfair]

Ranking all the OI I read. Part 1: the lesser.

It'll be like my tier list except with added stories from the haven't read yet section and of course my opinions.

Since Tumblr only allows 30 images per post and a daily pass based on how many pictures can be posted at all. I'll be posting this list through multiple parts starting with the worst. Get ready because there's gonna be a lot of negativity right now.

Starting with the tier I like to call "Absolute dog shit." Terrible plots, gross content being glamourized and little to no potential at all.

honestly picking the worst of the worst was hard cause there's so many to choose from.. and I think the title of the absolute worst doesn't go to Remarried empress or Today the villainess has fun again..

Its this one: beware of the brothers

I really can't say I was surprised 😭. I mean.. look at the damn title. The FL gets adopted into the family because she looks like the ML's dead sister and it just.. escalates into step-bro love. "But it's not related by blood-" still incest and even if they didn't grow up together, WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO FUCK SOMEONE WHO LOOKS LIKE YOUR DEAD SIBLING!?

The order of slave breeding

Yes this is an actual manhwa.. I genuinely wanna know why the author just looked at themselves in the mirror and said "Yes this is a good idea." As the title suggests.. it's about a slave merchant for a FL and her slaves falling in love with her and as if it couldn't be uncomfortable enough it is one of the few manhwa with a dark skinned ML. I don't care how many times they'll offer excues for the lead I don't fw slavery being used as a romance device in media.

I belong to house Castillo

Technically I didn't read all of it, I just read the spoilers for the rest of the chapters but to be fair, I just got finished cursing myself by reading stepbro fantasies and master/slave ships, I'm not trying to give my FBI agent a reason to search my hard drives. It's a basic and cliché found family where the FL Estelle is sold by her mother to her father and the ML is a 17 year old who basically grooms her..why? Because raising your love interest is the "only" way to make a story stand out amongst the other generic found family tales.

I tamed my ex husband's mad dog.

More cases of grooming except this time it's the FL as the perpetrator. ML looks like he's 8 but he's apparently 16.. so we got a groomer protagonist in the form of Reinhardt who also neglects her first child and favors her second child she had with her victim with the excuse of not wanting to care for her son being that he looks like her toxic ex. Lady what? That boy deserves his own villain arc holy shit.

No more turning a blind eye.

This one really dissapointed me 😔. The cover looked stunning, the artstyle while a little off was still eye catching and the title sounded promising. Nah this is a hunk of junk that had a gentrification plot for some reason.. and you were supposed to sympathize with the guy who wanted to render hundreds of people homeless to make room for art galleries or whatever it was they wanted?

The dragon kings bride

I already knew this one was probably gonna suck judging by the title. First off it treats dark skinned people like barbarians, the ML Hakan meets Lucina when she's a child, Lucina is threatened with death if she doesn't marry him and you can probably guess where it goes. Like I said I don't really have a right to be shocked but it still goes on the list for its weird obsession with Lucina being so tiny that having sex with Hakan could kill her along with a not so hidden pregnancy fetish.

I became the tyrants secretary.

Its just workplace sexual harassment, theres not much to it. Cannot stand the ML who is a basic garbage human and Rosalyn is a block of wood when it comes to personality. She wants to do all these things but she has no spine and no will to actually do them but at the same time shes so good at everything on a whim. I usually don't mind a clueless FL but Jesus christ! She makes Adrien Agreste look smarter!

The villains savior

Gotta say the artstyle is really pretty and the FLs design is so cute. Everything else though is pretty bad. The point is basically the lead Ezlay is trying to essentially "fix" the ML as the title suggest. A lot of people dislike this one because Ezlay is very emotional and cries too much but that's honestly the least of the issues here. Now to be fair, Aseph is a villain so it's expected that he's gonna suck but that doesn't mean Ezlay needs to have the personality of a rock either, it's not that she cries a lot that annoys me, she's literally just a male fantasy personified. All she is absolute patience and acceptance for what Aseph does to point of enabling that toxic behavior.

Now we enter manhwas that are horrificly awful, not much difference except these ones have a bigger grain of potential

Lucia

This one got a lot of hate tiktok so naturally I had to read it and yeah, it was pretty bad. The artstyle though just.. I'm sorry but Lucia's face is literally just 👁 👄 👁 and thats not even mentioning the ML Hugo. It's really crinegy and it tries to fill that void with poorly made smut. The plot is also really and I mean REALLY dead set on 1950s values for women and the relationship between Lucia's and Hugo is downright toxic. In fact I don't even think there's a plot.. it's just porn. The only reason it's not in dogshit tier is that it's so iconic for being awful that it deserves to be higher up.

When the villainess is in love.

Okay all I can give this one is that Libertia has a better character design than Lucia. She's a mary sue but at this point that's a lot of leads nowadays so it's not a total shock but this is definitely a case where the story would be so much better if it was the actual Libertia as the protagonist instead of a carbon copy of the ogfl taking over. The worst part though is the fashion and I normally do not care about how dresses look in OI as long as they at least look good and fit the setting.. and dear God a lot of those dresses are nightmares to look at. Thankfully I had heard the novel was better.

Today the villainess has fun again

not a fan of the protagonist. Reilynn is really insufferable to follow since she's basically just an entitled asshole who thinks that just because she got transmigrated as the wealthiest woman in the land that she must be in the right because she's not like Iris who is a basic pick me girl. Beyond the fact that watching her throw money at people to get past an obstacle without effort she's also heavily written as a pedo because out of her options which had 2 green flags her age, she chooses the slave she bought who acts and looks like a 10 year old boy with attachment issues.

Try begging

what is with Solche and their weird obsession with rapist male leads? It's somehow worse then cry or better yet beg. Basically the FL Sally/Grace is a spy and when the ML Leon finds out.. he basically tortures her and SA's her multiple times and somehow they fall in love. Do with that what you will, the only slack I will kind of give Try begging is that it at least warns you of what your getting into beforehand. I really hate that Solches writing actually has so much potential to be amazing yet they use their talents to make rape fetish content. I want to know why manhwa tiktok likes this so much, they're all about girl code until a rapist looks hot (Leon isn't even hot, hes mad ugly)

Abandoned empress

Ah yes, good ol abandoned empress, the manhwa communities favorite punching bag so it's only right it lands here. For all the writers out there if your making a character you'd want the readers to support as the love interest you typically would give them an interesting personality and to tone down anything you think is too much for a healthy relationship. Abandoned empress decides to do the opposite of that and even after scenes of Ruve abusing his wife Aristia by cheating on her, beating her, SA'ing her, killing her dad, and causing her to miscarry so you would naturally think "okay clearly Ruve is the antagonist." But instead they pulled some bullshit "but he's not doing it anymore because he was poisoned in the last timeline!"... what!? Were there any new writers by any chance because how did we go from a abusive monster to a misunderstood Lil guy? I would say more but I think everyone already agreed a long time ago Abandoned empress is ass.

Revenge on the real one

the protag is essentially those villainesses in regression stories that cause the heroines initial downfall. I was already aware of what would happen before I even read and let me tell you it was accurate. The protagonist Helga is AWFUL. The torture she puts Hillian through is overkill and at this point Hillian deserves her own regression story to stand up to Helga because my girl was not that bad for her sister to ruin her life because of a stupid tragic origin story. The worst part is the Helga fans I see on places like tiktok who just don't want to admit their FL is a bad person. "Oh but Helga past was so sad! It's not her fault she's like this." Don't mean she has to banish her sister from her own nation when Hillian was innocent.

Villain Dukes precious one.

I really dislike the reincarnated as a baby trope and I can only ever tolerate it when it's just for a few little chapters. They always feel like those weird ass Elsagate videos with embarrassing humor to come across as funny and this one is no different. Even after the FL grows up the plot is still bland and cringe inducing. I don't have a lot to say about this one other then it is weird as hell. Apparently it also got a little incest-y so no thanks!

Poisonous Lily

While the characters looked basic in terms of design the title sounded intriguing. Unfortunately the translation is horrible, they can't even get the whole Lily flower theme right on the tapas version by giving her tulips to carry on her wedding. The dialog is..interesting to say the least. I won't lose it too much though on this one though since I'm pretty sure this is a lower level book trying to make it out in a sea of over advertised manhwa

I thought my time was up.

You know those porn/no plot tags on ao3? That's basically ITMTWU in a nutshell. Within only 20 chapters, the male lead Asrahan is already obsessed with Lariette after chapters of her violating his personal space to force a relationship between them. The whole magic plot is pushed to the side, Asrahans curse isn't allowed to be an actual rotting flesh curse like it's described as cause he's still gotta be pretty, and the rest of the plot is basically just soft core porn and fanservice that does little to actually move whatever is left of the plot.

For my derelict favorite.

The. Hypocrisy. How is this book gonna make the entire message about deconstructing main character centered morality and then almost immediately backpeddaling with justifying Hestia for attacking a woman who doesn't know her for rejecting her favorite man and proceeding to just ruin her day whenever she can. Hestia would say "im not like other girls." Hestia would be an avid fan of those trust fund baby GMV. Hestia would put her hair in a messy bun, shit on whatever is popular and act like she's making a statement . Even calling her Hestia feels like straight up disrespectful to the real goddess of the hearth who funnily enough is known as one of the most chill Greek gods.

Marry my husband

now Marry my husband is not insanely problematic wheras it's just cliché, predictable and in general pretty bad. It is a fast food manhwa designed to fulfill the classic top boss takes good care of you fantasy so naturally a lot is put on hold to showcase the sweet relationship between the central characters and almost everyone needs to have a lover. It's so bad it's actually kinda funny because the villains are so cartoonishly evil for office workers. Sumin is out here speaking in 3rd person, dressing in clothes found in the little kid section of Walmart and makes comical comments about her desire to ruin Jiwons life, Minhwan is basically a borderline discord mod who casually killed jiwon in the first timeline and goes "Oh well." and there's this random ugly old man who's name I can't remember who's the only one interested in Sumin till the end because he basically wants em younger without the risk of going to federal prison.

Remarried empress

I don't think i need to explain much at this point, if you know my account then you already know how I feel about remarried empress. Season 1 was pretty good though.

Divorcing my tyrant husband

I think we all know at this point that's whenever a title has the word "divorce" 9/10 of the time there is never going to be divorce and it'll devolve into the FL changing her mind and staying with her trashy ex husband because he now decided that Robelia wasn't like other girls and left his mistress in the dust. The plot kinda started getting out of hand when Robelias love interests expanded to one of her obsessed slaves and a Duke to prove that Alexandros was the better option. The villian Aisha is a joke who gets her ass handed to her over and over because "damsel woman always bad." and the art starts to lose its touch. I usually don't mind when artstyle changes but dear God do some of these characters look a Lil fugly.

Cry or better yet beg.

The final story that is in the awful section, why? Because it has the most lost potential. As terrible as this CoHo equivalent is, it details the very realistic parts of being a mistress to a nobleman. In most other stories, the mistress is an evil wench who could easily back out but in cry or better yet beg, Layla is unable to escape Matthias's abuse because it could risk her uncles job. There's a lot to this manhwa and novel that could've made a tragic story about a girl trapped in an abusive relationship with little help, the art is gorgeous and the characters for the most part were well written. It's a real shame that it turned out to be a rape apologist work instead.

next up are the mediocre manhwas, finally there will a little more positivity.

The villainess is a marionette

its.so.boring! This one was hyped up all over the place on Instagram and tiktok and the art looked stunning so I gave it a shot. This is definitely one of those stories that only got popular because of its art in my opinion because the plot is so confusing. Events are happening left and right, the pacing goes from too fast to too slow, characters personalities and traits keep warping, and while this might just be the result of poor adaptation her brother comes across as incestuous a couple of times. while Cayena isn't the worst FL, she's a mary sue by all definitions. Sorry but it's a bunch of jumbled wires. The reason it earns a spot in "it's okay" is because I heard the novel like usual is better so it might not be the fault of the original author

I was the male leads ex

It wasn't bad just boring but a little less boring then the former I'll give it that. The artstyle looked prettier in the beginning so that was kind of sad to see it change in later chapters. What drew me to keep reading was the chance that the ogfl Julianna may not be evil but even a potential love interest. So I got excited and apparently there's the idea that Julianna is actually her brother in disguise which.. would just ruin it tbh, there goes any chance at a ogfl being a human being and not a plot device. Not a huge fan of Erica or really any of the love interests.

From maid to queen

This is the newest of the lineup I read and it was actually interesting for once to see a new story where the MC was the concubine. First off the maids feel less like women employed to do the chores of the palace and more like the cartel 😭, in early chapters whenever Urania is aiming to be the concubine, being lazy with her job or getting comfortable with a powerful man in general they're already out with sticks ready to ruin her day and they even try to kill her. Lot of people don't like that Urania isn't a girls girl but honestly I can't blame her for wanting more out of life then poverty, where she comes across as stupid is that she's still wanting that role even after it got her killed last time. I think that it could work though since it shows that urania is more human and not a perfect goddess of a woman however that does not make up for the shit world building (like what the hell was that mushroom that could turn into a perfect still corpse of you 💀)

The villainess maker.

Ill admit I'm a little harsh on this one on my tier list. The plot still isn't great but there are so much worse out there so it ended up moving up on the list due to default. The plot is mostly just bland and generic down to all the characters and the tropes. Ayla is a girlboss in the villainesses body, Charlotte is a super "revolutionary" kind girl turned wicked wench and the ML is another "touch her and I'll kill you" type. What i will give the Villainess maker is the distinct artstyle. It's not as stylized and while it does get lazy at the end it still is very recognizable.

Abellas dessert shop.

Its another extremely underrated manhwa that's another isekai about a wronged woman looking to move on from her shitty fiancé and start a dessert shop. Ngl the moments where Abella is forced to put on a kind face despite her cheating fiancé or her ex friend popping in is definitely relatable especially in the workforce. Still a little bland but wholesome.

I didn't mean to seduce the male lead.

Eleanor is the FL hired to convince the ML to accept women into his life with the hopes that he will fall in love with the ogfl Irene. Tbh this one can get very icky with how it tries to force the notion that you must fall in love but the guy just instantly falls in love with Eleanor so.. I guess that's a little better? Regardless though i will not fault this manhwa too much because unfortunately the author died before the story was over so it deserves a little slack since it never got the chance to be more. Rest in peace author.

Who made me a princess.

Ill be straight with this now: it's Mid. Objectively the story isn't too terrible and I do find Athy a good protagonist not to mention my love for Jennete but everything else is pretty "meh." Not a huge fan of Claude from his design to his personality, the ML is another case of a grown as immortal meeting his wife when she's still a child (theres a little credit ill admit for Athy being mentally a grown woman but that doesnt stop me from thinking its uncomfortable to acknowledge) It can be cute sometimes and I'll give it that but I don't think I'll ever reread it, just not for me.

Actually I was the real one

Good god this was such a bastardization of the original novel. With that said I'll admit i was still entertained reading it since you could say that the novel wouldn't be an instant cheat sheet to learn what was gonna happen. Still it could've at least tried to be a loyal adaptation. They give Keira 2 options to choose as a love interest when she had none in the source material, Zeke is pushed to the side and the maids honestly get on my nerves with their one note personalities. They also seem to forget that Cosette is literally being possessed by a demon he'll bent on destroying humanity (which she succeeded in the first time) because what was built up as an amazing antagonist is just a joke now. The only other redeeming factors are that in the Manhwa Cosette is still alive and the whole elemental plot stays constant. Despite my complaints on the adaptation it is still a interesting read but the novel will always beat it no matter what.

I know it sounds like I'm just being a negative Nancy with all of these and I'm sorry for being so negative but the next part will be more positive.

Next time on part 2 will be the decent stories.

[tidetower]

Your hand to mine; My heart to yours

Artist: douxxess

[sharper-than-a-serpents-tooth]

have we considered that "Lucas was sired by the world tree" and "Lucas had a human parent" can both be true at the same time? What if one of his parents fucked a tree?

[winepresswrath]

am I to understand that Louis and Armand are competing over who had the more intense relationship with Lestat? they need to stand up. armand it has been one hundred years you are admittedly not one of god's stronger and more independent vampires but still! still.

however yes I did clock that princess carry that was very smooth.

[littlesparklight]

Also, Paris' "rebuke" of Helen insulting and berating him in Book 3 amounting to "stop that, that hurts my feelings 🥺" is---

ok, aside from making me cackle because it's funny, in comparison to Hektor's much longer, and gently firm rebuke of Andromache "overstepping" her bounds as a wife and a grieving Priam being pissy with Hecuba after he asked her opinion on whether he should leave for the Achaean camp or not, it's interesting, you know?

His response is so brief and barely a rebuke at all. The contrast, all right!!

[scratchzane]

man if anyone thought louis' narration of lestat was a little skewed...............

[katian13]

[a-koschyei]

this is going to sound insane of me, but bear with me because the most galaxy brain idea i got out of winter night trilogy is that koschei was a nickname. why would a mother call her son "bony" "slave" "miser" "skeleton"? and a villain being born with a villain name is too convenient and uninteresting. consider also, his dying and rising trope, how his story relates to dazhbog but also how the slavs considered him as a dual natured god who lived in buyan but also in the underworld, and that dual nature is represented with two names for one entity.

"we can notice in dazbog the cycle of dying and rebirth that is frequently found in many pagan creeds, including slavic paganism. the serbs mention dazbog, and folklore preserved a lame daba, who was almost always presented as an evil spirit, which probably indicates dazbog’s nature when being a part of the underworld, that is the world of the dead. the serbs more than any other people imagined dazbog as a lame old man, dressed in animal skins, usually bear skin, accompanied by a wolf. the wolf actually stands for his animal incarnation, or his primary shape"

lame daba was named dazhbog before his fall; the christianized version is how the devil was named lucifer before the fall. so naturally, i want to say koschei was named his antithesis, ivan before his fall. which makes so much sense for his portrayal in deathless (and also winter night) where him and ivan really are described as two halves of a coin. ivan is the innocence of the sun and warmth and at odds with koschei who is the seduction & temptation of the dark and cold. but as marya pointed out in the yaichka chapter when koschei finally allowed himself to be whole again, that version of him looked like koschei the deathless and ivan combined, and that version was human and could finally die & be redeemed

[racke7]

Roleplaying in DOS2

As is known by now, I have a lot of opinions about Divinity 2. Both its story and its combat-mechanics.

But it occurred to me today that one of the big reasons I just can't get into the roleplaying-part of this game is that... it's romance-based.

Oh, you don't have to seduce your companions, but it's still working on that same affection-meter you might expect from a dating-sim. Except now it's set in a world where there are way more important things to worry about.

See, when a VN you play has romance in it? That's not between "you" and the "target", it's between the "main-character" and the "target". They often already have a long and complicated history together, and at best you're just kind of there as a peeping-tom and an excellent wing-man.

The main-character is so clearly defined in the text, that projecting yourself onto them is a bit like projecting yourself onto a random rock you found on the ground. You can maybe do it, but like... why.

In a more open-world RPG? This isn't really the case anymore. You're a blank-slate (even if you play an origin-character, the complete freedom from their "original" selves just sends you back to being a blank-slate).

You create this character, and you decide on what it should be considering "important".

(This is a lot harder in DOS2 than Skyrim, because it's a lot more rail-roaded. So you can't just "opt out" of interacting with things that "don't apply" to your character.)

And you do this by playing the game and picking dialogue-options that don't contradict them too much. Except, with how Divinity works as an open-world game where you're basically doing all of the quests and then murdering all of the quest-givers for a few more slivers of EXP?

It's blatantly obvious to anyone that the main thing on the main-character's mind? It's murder.

They might be delighting in it, or they might just be trying to murder people for money and loot, or you might be trying to help people out a bit on your way to divinity. But at the end of the day, the character you're playing as is mostly concerned about killing or not-killing people.

Romance? The world is under siege, people are dying every minute, you need to figure out if this person is more useful to you dead or alive, how can you get strong enough to survive the onslaught-...

You have priorities, is what I'm saying. And then the game wants you to listen to the emotional opinions about a bunch of people whose opinions of you is the only thing keeping them from becoming an active obstacle to you.

It's a fucking dating-sim, is what I'm saying. And even if it's simplistic, the result is that your companions are always teetering on the edge of becoming inconvenient, in a world and situation where you're actively murdering everyone who isn't convenient.

So, whereas in Skyrim I can roleplay as a mercenary, or a thief, or a mage almost entirely through gameplay alone? In DOS2 I'm mainly limited in roleplaying about if I want to fuck a skeleton, or an elf, or if I want to be a racist-lizard's side-piece.

Now, this isn't true if you discard the origin-characters and play with a friend (or friends), because then your main goal can be about saving the world, or claiming the power of Divinity all to yourself, or about trying to scam your friends out of as much cash as you can manage, or even something patently ridiculous like "collect all cheese in the world" (because your friends will be the one forcing the story to progress, and you're just following them around for more cheese-opportunities).

But for recruiting a bunch of origin-characters? It always circles back to romance, and it's-...

Look, I get that this is fine for a lot of people? DOS2 comes from a culture where "I roll to seduce" is a common approach, but like... there's a reason that I've only ever gotten married once in all of my Skyrim-playthroughs (and I immediately went from "married" to "settled down enough that there's no point in playing as them anymore").

Romance in an RPG? Miss me with that shit, let me be a crazy roving band of murder-hobos in peace.

So yeah, these feelings? I'm pretty sure that this plays a very big part in why I find it so difficult to actually get deep into this game. I don't want to seduce anyone, I don't want to sit back and watch from a distance how an origin-character has a deep character-evolving chat with some quest-npc.

I just want to make decisions about life-or-death in an endless quest for power.

[fightaers]

also on a more ( perhaps ) controversial note : i really, really, really dislike the over-sex*alisation of s.akura. i, in fact, do not think she's suave [in terms of flirting] or particularly wanton. s.akura has canonically ever liked one (1) man*, and even then, it didn't go well. ( she was rejected multiple times and s.asuke did try to kill her, like twice, while she tried to kill him one time. ) which meant her frame of reference for romance at all sucks ass. she struggles with self-esteem issue ( canonically referenced multiple time when it came to her inferiority complex in team 7 ) and she is a workaholic!! if s.akura ever tried to flirt with anyone, it'll probably be super awkward and she'll probably come across as extreeeemely nerdy and/or work-obsessed!!

[kabsey]

so lucanis is canonically mid-thirties, right? so at the end of the fifth blight, he was most likely a young teenager

can you imagine small romantic bean lucanis hearing about the crow from house arainai who fell in love with the hero of ferelden? of course the talons are furious. and even the older crows are annoyed (because now their targets are going to try to seduce them and they'll probably be terrible at it and it will just be embarrassing for everyone). illario calls aranai a sucker and a sap and possibly tells lucanis about the rumors that house arainai buys children from whorehouses for next to nothing and "you get what you pay for"

but while lying in bed late at night after a brutal day of training (i.e., abuse), maybe lucanis finds himself thinking about the stories and songs. arainai fell in love with a hero. he helped saved the world. he had friends. maybe he even saw a wyvern. it doesn't sound so bad to lucanis

but of course, he would never abandon a contract. he would never leave the crows. he would never turn his back on his house and leave caterina and illario behind

so imagine his surprise two decades later when he gets his chance. he falls in love with a hero. he helps save the world. he has friends. (and after the veil is guarded, rook absolutely took him out wyvern watching)

and he didn't even have to leave his old life behind. he doesn't have to live in exile away from treviso. he doesn't have to turn his back on caterina and illario and teia and viago. for once there is no price to pay or sacrifice to be made

for once he can just be happy

(all he has to do is share his body with a demon. but the demon is not so bad really. most of the time, lucanis thinks he's not any worse than illario)