#i've had so many discussions about dating and relationships lately ahaha

[purgatoryandme]

ramble to me about something you’re enjoying lately, I just love hearing your thoughts

Aw, this ask is really sweet <3 I’ve been binge reading basically every cheesy isekai (falling into a different world) manhwa in existence these past few weeks in an attempt to rediscover everything I love about cliches (and everything I love about time travel...)! I feel like a lot of the new media I’ve been consuming tries too hard to avoid slowburn emotional tension and time travel is my favourite trope, so isekai????? Is excellent?????  I LOVE future knowledge scenarios because they’re just !!! so ripe with emotional conflict! You can totally change the story by having a SLIGHTLY different take on how your protagonist takes falling into a novel - do they try to stick to the story? Change their fate? Do they want to be completely uninvolved? Do they try to die and go home? Can they even remember the plot properly? Do they get characters mixed up? Was there a subplot they didn’t know about??? Will the novel mechanics prevent them from doing certain things???? Do any of the characters figure them out?????? The POTENTIAL.  The villainess plotlines really remind me of what’s lovable in shoujo - women with the power to drive their own stories, male leads with actual emotions, women being able to reject men without being ridiculed by the narrative or hated by the man, watching somebody crawl their way up from the bottom while dodging death in a way that’s FUN - it’s a blast! I love me a good female power fantasy, hahaha. Especially when it includes a lady being like :) annul our engagement, scum :). Also the art is usually a pretty big plus... Anyway, despite the plots getting played out within 100ish chapters, it’s been good inspo fuel for fresh takes on old tropes and amusing lampshading that is easy to digest. I really want to look at more webnovels and light reading to improve the accessibility of the things I write! Also, as much as I like my current projects, I really want to do some work with a more lighthearted romance eventually (I think Charybdis gets into this a bit, so maybe I can use this there) - everyone I know is trying to enter a serious relationship due to us being old and also pandemic fears, and it’s really brought to mind the fact that I think many young femme aligned people don’t get to experience the fun of flirtation without any concern of consequences or hurting people’s feelings, y’know? There’s such a strong social narrative of “making the right choices” about who you date to avoid pain or wasted time, and it’s really odd considering that dating in and of itself used to be pretty lighthearted until you decided to take things a step further. Online dating really seems to widen that gap (where people either aren’t serious at all or are looking for a life partner) and it’s really created an itch to make content wherein the characters are just !!! enjoying themselves without thinking too much about it while still being emotionally rich!  I tell my buddies that everyone deserves a “summer fling” and I want to encapsulate that feeling in something in a similar way to multi male lead shoujo stories, if that makes sense. I think I do my best writing with a base concept/lesson in mind, so hopefully this kickstarts more than just writing a few sentences here and there.  Signing off with this lovely novel art from Kill the Villainess: