#she thinks she did something so dtupid that her friend got raped and murdered like DAMN the drama of that. re-evaluating re-evaluating

[theskyexists]

I'm reading an incredible manwha called Getting to Know Grace. And damn. mild spoilers.... Good worldbuilding for once. Almost completely seamless pseudo European worldbuilding (comparatively). But thats not whats good. What's good is that it's about a girl and her war prisoner slave.. (they really call them slaves, but the manwha has quite late modern aesthetics, so... interesting, and their phenotypical stigma/defining trait is blonde and blue eyes which i love) And especially the first few chapters where Herta navigates her fury at her helplessness and the cruelties inflicted on her and forced and faked devotion to her mistress versus Andy Grace's navigation of her fear of dying, loneliness, jealousy and thorough acknowledgement of her power over Herta, and her MISUSE of that power, and her rather constant knowledge that she cannot force Herta to love her back, even if she put in that condition for her protection and help (and then so totally reneges on that too in her efforts to reunite Herta's family and get them to safety) Anyway and then she goes absolutely fucking apeshit

This is like the best of the best. There's societal extreme power differential. Seeing the consequences of that and trying to defy that, but the narrative hits the perfect balance on titillation and dreamy love interest. My favourite scene is when - as Andy later puts it so perfectly and correctly - Herta takes herself hostage when Andy does something completely horrible and unacceptable. That SCENE, Herta literally really does the equivalent of going: you have a knife to my throat, so i cannot help but beg for forgiveness. And she basically grabs the knife and cuts herself on it to show Andy that the knife is THERE and she is wielding it against Herta, someone she claims to love

WAAAGGHHHGG