goes into seclusion to train herself

the new character, Mel, gets introduced as some kind of quirky, half-crazy servant of Duke

she wakes up in his bed and he is lying next to her, shirtless. Then she gets all hot because of his closeness and whatnot. Yuck. Mind you she is still 13yo, even if she is reincarnated and whatnot, modern sensibilities don't really like it

MC is actually asked by the King and other nobles to keep an eye on the Saintess and guide her, but she can't do it directly (I guess it's political reasons, etc.) so she must guide her in an unconventional manner. Since the Saintess is supposed to make important decisions regarding the country, she is suppose to posses some levels of wisdom. While the Saintess here has good grades, she is s*upid in other matters. She is way too idealistic. She is so far out of reach from reality. ("Living under such idealism will forever prevent her from becoming a pillar of strength for this nation.") Thus, MC must "guide" her by giving her criticism and the likes, which would make her a villainess in the eyes of outsiders. (MC is really smart and possesses great wisdom from a very young age about economics, politics, etc. which the King had discovered by testing her over the years--she was basically a genius, thus they asked her for help.) In a way, you could see this as her following the main storyline. It makes you think whether in the real plot of the otome game the villainess was really just trying to guide the Saintess.... Far fetched, but it's still pretty interesting how the villainess is pushed to become one with an interesting goal.

The heroine here is rly a typical flower brained character and MC wants to fight against it lololol

So its more like

Damsel in distress VS Strong independent whamen who need no man

and also the fckn heartless king and other 4 aristocrats who treated her like a discarded piece.

I alrdy smelled something weird from uncle Will since the beginning lol. Hoping he'll be the trump card to flip over this fcked up country.

The thing that bothers me about this is that Alicia has that attitude of 'I'm not like other girls'. In regards to being a villainess, she says herself that she's 'not like other girls' because she doesn't want to be the heroine and instead wants to be the villainess. And then the story starts and though she believes she's doing her best to become a villainess, her natural personality/ethics/morality is totally that of a heroine. Not being self aware enough to realise that is okay, really, but then I got to the part about Duke.

I'm pretty sure he's the ML, and it's pretty obvious that he likes Alicia (this isn't about the weird five year age gap but I also don't like it... ten and fifteen is way too different for me to consider even being comfortable with this). Even Alicia suspects this herself, though she thinks 'surely it's just platonic...' she also has this moment where she says 'I'm not naive about these things like other girls' and then just... is? She's like 'I'm not blind I know he likes me... but just as friends haha surely not romantically' and it's just... annoying. The lack of self awareness really started to bug me at that point, especially because she seems to think she's different and not like the other girls when in actuality she is.

This kind of ignorance/naivety is like kinda cute in the beginning I guess... and then the more I read the more it started to tick me off. Now I've decided to just drop this all together... it's cute and fun most of the time but not good enough to make me want to stick it out and sit through more of this nonsense skldgjsdg.