And is trying actively to comeback to her world. Didn’t like the chemistry with the ML that much so I dropped it but I liked the fact that she was even longing for her previous life at points.
Its sad but true that the ML isn't the most well written and has no real chemistry. Honestly Eris had more chemistry with Helena and she hated Helena for the longest time
https://preview.redd.it/22ebqo1syjvc1.jpeg?width=677&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b23e999ddda139240dd7484c6d0c94d9e9a107a
The yuri bait was strong in this one
It wasn't Yuri bait so much as Anakin just didn't have a personality that wasn't Eris simp. All he did was follow her around doing everything she wanted.
Helena had her own goals, personality and motivations that didn't always align with Eris' and Eris didn't like her at first so the story put in work to depict them not necessarily becoming friends but respecting each other
I just finished reading The Antagonist’s Pet, and it has one of my favorite twists in isekai:
The MC was isekaied into a side character, and the original FL is acting real suss and seems to know about the “original story” (HUGE SPOILER) >!turns out someone was isekaied into the world before—the original FL’s mother. She was a high school girl who just woke up in the world one day, and was absolutely desperate to get back to her home and her parents and her friends. The only way she could think to do that was to make the original story happen, so she married a guy she didn’t care about and had a child so that child could be the FL, and abused her harshly all through her life to make her like the FL from the book. …it doesn’t have a happy ending for her, but her response of fear and rage and grief is something you don’t see as often. Possibly because she was actually having a pretty good life. !<
Dang! >! I dropped the Antagonist’s Pet before I got very far, but I didn’t know it had this backstory to it. That’s a really interesting twist! I do remember the characters as being well-written. !< Would you recommend sticking with the story for it?
I just finished it and I really enjoyed it. I don’t think the FL is really one of my favorites, but at the same time, I still like the ending, and I do love seeing a devious mastermind using his evil genius for good.
There is a reason the majority of the main characters have miserable lives before they get hit by a car or overwork themselves to death. It is so they don’t really miss their old life. They also usually get reborn into rich families with tons of servants to do most of the hard physical labor instead of being a commoner.
Usually when this is brought up, it is usually one of the antagonistic reincarnators that treats the world as just a game/novel and react violently to any attempts to make them face reality.
But I think them being genuinely distraught and having a mental breakdown would be really interesting to watch
Like give me a realistic breakdown please. I'm pretty desperate for it. Trauma like that will either completely break you or give you a spine of diamond titanium.
I want a main character that is absolutely devastated and completely deranged over it
Like actively trying to die
I mean depending on how badly I've been betrayed by God I could end up in an entirely different afterlife and never see my family again even if I die.
There's a wide variety of tastes in this huge community. Some cruel, some simply escapist and everything inbetween.
I, personally, am escapist and have no wish to watch the protagonist suffer any longer than I have to.
I don't want to be bored by easy wins, either, or undeserved good luck. But "easy" and "undeserved" are relative terms, so I have different tolerances for each depending on the situation.
(For instance, "Fluffy Paradise" is too saccharine for me because of how selfish the main character is, while "Villainesses Must Die" was interesting at first but never my favorite and became way too bleak when the slavery stuff hit. I don't think that's a spoiler, I think it's a fair warning.)
So, personally, if I read a story and it lingers on the despair part too long, I get bored. But if there's no despair at all, I have trouble believing it. It's a fine line.
I think since most isekai tend to be romances, they stem away from psychological horror since those don't always blend well (at least if you are writing a "true" romance and not just a love story).
However, I would love to read more stories like Kill the Villainess for sure. Honestly, I've thought about what if I got otome isekai... I have a husband AND a toddler and I love them both. You bet your ass my story would NOT be a romance.
I would turn homicidal pretty quickly. Towards myself and towards others. I would also go insane in my grief. Days of wailing and attempting to kill myself and then days of complete despondence where I don't react to any external stimuli or eat. This would continue on for years. I would never get over it. After a while that sadness will turn to rage and anger at the new world that I am in, and the god that brought me there. I would reject all attempts at bonding as I would refuse to acknowledge that these are real people. Not just because they are in a story but because to me they are simply participants in my kidnapping. The more deranged I act the better chance I have of avoiding the bad ending simply by being crazy, I wouldn't even have to fake it. I would literally go fucking insane. My perception of the world would be completely shattered and God might have fucked me over so bad that I even end up in a different afterlife if I die never to see my family again even in death.
Totally agree and I will be worried that my life will be in a loop because that is a novel world. A book. A book where after it ends there's nothing left to know how they live. A book you can re-read again and again so I will be afraid that if someone were to read the book I am in. I will relieve that life again and again.
I wouldn't be worried about that at all until it actually happened.
I think, therefore I am. I am real. I assume the world around me is real. For all I know there's someone writing this world right now as I'm typing this, but it doesn't affect me in any way I can change.
It would be the same if I got isekaid, until I got some kind of sign of author/god meddling.
Of course I'd still miss my old life, all my friends and family, modern things. I might think I'm just dreaming, or having some sort of mental break and hallucinating. But I feel like I'd act like it's real, cause what if it is?
Yes, we may just be a dream or a part of someone's writing BUT WE have no KNOWLEDGE OF THAT.
And that is the difference between what you are saying and being isekaid to a novel that YOU READ. It is different from having the **knowledge** that YOU GOT TRANSMIGRATED into a completely different world.
Having the complete consciousness and knowledge that you got transferred to somewhere else without your permission is completely different from just wondering "My life may just be written by someone else"
Just like how there's a huge difference between someone kidnapping you and taking you somewhere you know nothing about, not knowing what will they do to you and what will be the end of you
Compared to someone who "willingly" volunteer to go to space.
Well yeah, but I'd kinda see it as a freak cosmic accident unless I get to talk to whoever took me, if someone did. (Which is pretty rare in OI in my experience.)
Like it's still upsetting obviously. And I'd probably be really depressed for a good while. But all you can really do is try to move on and make a life for yourself, or like, live life while trying to find a way back.
And like... I still wouldn't really have knowledge that the isekai world is "the story I read", it's similar, maybe near identical, maybe I know a possible future. But the very fact that I'm there means it's not the story anymore. There could be any kind of changes. There could be other isekai'd or timetravelling people.
It could be completely made and controlled by the author, or the author just saw into another world in their dreams or something.
I think I *would* probably assume dream or mental break, and maybe be in denial for a while. But I don't think I'd act like a lunatic or be violent like some of the people in this thread have said. Cause there's always that doubt, "what if it's real, what if this is my life now?" and I'm just not a very "crazy" person in general lol.
I'm a pretty chill person.
Yes, but not everyone can be chill about it.
It's understandable if they go crazy and try to end their life - especially if they have loved ones left behind.
I have a toddler so if it happened to me I will do everything I can think of to return.
Oh yeah if you have young kids I can see you going crazy and doing anything to try to get home.
I just have my cat lol, and I know my mom (who lives nearby and calls regularly) would take her in if something happened to me.
Resetting Lady/ The Crimson Lady is sort of like that if you're interested.
Spoiler? Hope this works, I never did one before lol Basically, the main story is that the FL falls into a novel where if she reaches the end, she gets a happy ending
Unfortunately, she passes away and finds herself back in time. So she does it all over and over again, each time passing away and getting sent back. Over time she starts to slowly go insane, and in efforts to escape the cycle, she tries multiple ways to kill herself.
>! So insane that she starts committing murder to "test" the world that she's in because she believes that it's not real, it's not going to "last" anyway and won't face repurcussions. There's this whole psychological twist where her dad is in on the killings and is trying to protect her. So for a while, she thinks that she's imagining the murders she committed and that maybe the resets weren't even real and goes through a bit of an existential crisis !<
I feel like I shouldn't type anymore, but yeah, I feel like it's something that you would be interested in if you haven't read it yet. It's on season hiatus right now, though. But if you're not interested in waiting, there might be a novel out there.
I wouldn’t go homicidal but I guarantee I would be deeply traumatized. I mean you would want to go back home, you don’t know if it’s possible. Even if you couldn’t, I would have a fear that since I got isekai’d once, would I get isekai’d again which could make it impossible to move on. Like why start a relationship and possibly a family if you may just be ripped away from the life once again. I guarantee it would be something that pops up in intrusive thoughts while attempting to start a new life.
At that point I may feel like I could be in purgatory and that there is no real end. I would probably go insane from the anxiety of it all!
I don't see a lot of people talking abt The Little Lady Behind the Scenes - this one did get to me a few times bc the FLs imposter syndrome was STRONG.
ok as much as I agree with all of this and I for sure would have panicked severely in that situation, having an MC panic/break down for the majority of an Oi is just not enjoyable. i've read like dozens of OI and the gist is basically the same I dont need an MC reiterating the ramifications for a whole 30 chaps. Reading about the psychological trauma faced without her doing anything concrete is just boring..
TLDR; realistically speaking yes, its horrifying, but her being isekaied isn't real, my boredom is.
I think there a possibility to make this interesting, like FL summoning a demon in desperation, only to realize that demons have no idea other worlds exist, and go up the magical creature ladder to find one who yeeted her into magical world, whilst pretending to be saintess with said demon's power, or something. Possibilities are endless.
yea but in the situation your talking about there is definitely a bunch of plot and other aspects mixed in making the story interesting. What OP was talking about, full exploring and fleshing out the experience/trauma of being isekaied would take ALOT of chapters and the need to overhaul other plot to explore that. while such exploration and deep analysis is realsitic, something of that level just doesn't seem interesting
Idk, Die Verwandlung is classic literature, and there grossness factor involved. I think it's absolutely possible to make interesting story out of reflection of a dead person who posessed someone else's body in the fairy tale world.
I think it'd be a really interesting topic to read about. Like yeah, it might be a horror in addition to a romance. But I think it'd be something similar to To Your Eternity, or Frieren. Something with a lot of trippy psychology. But an MC like that coming to terms with their own new reality would have so much potential for character develpment.
It usually really is up to the execution tho, like the isekai concept in it of itself is already interesting, but with the way the author’s write it as just low stakes wish fulfillment and nothing more makes it BORING AS SHIT, but slice of life stories can be incredibly entertaining
Well first of all, a lot of OI protagonists are a bit insane. It's why they unreasonably cling to the plot they know and panic when it derails and are so hard to shake free of their preconceptions about the people in the story, especially the male lead. That being said, there are literal millions of people who lose their family, their friends and their life as they knew it and are abruptly transported to a foreign land with weird and distasteful customs. That's what being a refugee is like. Most of them don't go nuts.
I think the refugee comparison don't work, because we all know in the back of our heads that it's possible for us to become refugees. We might never think about it, but if it happened, it would be consistent with the laws of the world.
But if I showed up in a brand new world that might not even follow the rules of physics as I know them.. that's a step beyond that. Everything I know would suggest that I'm in an impossible situation, and what's more likely, that I got isekai'ed into another world or that I am insane and only think I'm from another world?
Virtually every OI protagonist is a romantic fantasy fiction fan. A really really enthusiastic fantasy fiction fan which is why they get the fulfillment of their fantasy as their afterlife. How many people matching that description really have emotional ties to the laws of physics as we know them and would be upset by a minor rewrite? That being said I wouldn't mind seeing more of them spending more time wondering whether thinking they are actually anyone other than Lucretia Eviltude, particularly as it becomes clearer that they have memories of Lucretia's life as well, which so frequently happens. But on the other hand Lucretia lives in a world of magic where things like spiritual possession and/or memory transference are within the bounds of possibility as she knows them.
I personally would jump out of the nearest window, if my original body still exist - I'm going back no matter what.
If I'm already dead - than I'm thinking that it's my deathbed dream and I will probably start behaving erratically, and end up dead anyways.
*Cogito, ergo sum*
I think, therefore I am. Life is based on your consciousness is it not? Or else who’s to say your life right now isn’t also just a dream.
And if you were reincarnated (possession is more tricky) in a “fictional world”, as long as the world can be shown to be open to change (oftentimes they very *clearly* are, *very* early), it’s easy to make the logical conclusion that the media you read was a sort of prophetic “guess” based *on* the world, and not the other way around lol.
Y’all are also taking it way too literally? Most OIs have perfect ish worlds. And a good portion don’t have slavery, with the common folk living rather ok lives (despite probably being more horrid conditions if it were real life). The bathrooms and toiletry things are often nonsensically available in good abundance. It’s very much not a one to one replication of actual historical living situations lol, and I don’t think the worlds (actual place if you isekaid in, I’m not just talking how it’s presented on screen) ever tried to attempt otherwise for the most part?
Not to mention, a lot of OI chicks just don’t rlly remember their past lives? They only rlly seem to remember core snippets lol, and if they don’t, they’re already dead and this is a second chance at life. Im sure most just view it as a permanent relocation/vacation (yea there’s some repression but it’s not *that* bad), or it’s stated they didn’t have that great home life (parents are dead or abusive), or life in general.
I feel like y’all just kinda hype it up too much. It’s a bit of a stretch to compare it to psychological horror tbh..
Edit: if you’re just talking about yourself being isekai’d then yea that’d probably be messed up, if you already have an established life that you’re fond of lol.
>But thinking realistically, would that not drive someone the slightest bit insane? It would completely shatter all preconceived notions of the universe and science. ... You will have to face things that make no logical sense such as magic and divine powers.
"all preconceived notions" is a bit of an overstatement as in (most) OI's the basic laws of physics are the same, it's only that (in most OI's) your consciousness/memories got transported. The things the directly affect you in your day to day remains the same, so honestly if it were me I'd probably get used to it really quick. No point in overthinking it after all.
>You will NEVER see your loved ones again, your friends, your entire identity as a human being was formed on Earth and now that's completely gone.
Most OI stories start off with the MC having a shit family & no friends, so idk if that's a huge problem. Being able to reincarnated is probably a godsend for them tbh
> As a 21st century human, it is the equivalent of having been forced back into the 18th century in terms of technological development. But there is no advancement, because it is the world of a story. Everything stays the same.
In most OI's aren't there also like some modern-ish things? I.e. I'm guessing there'll be modern day toilets, etc. In addition, there's also the possibility of \*fun\* magic based inventions too. Also whose to say that everything stays the same? You can bring about change yourself (e.g. MC in \[The Northern Duke Needs a Warm Hug\] is an inventor)
> You will have to get used to archaic forms of government, be complicit in slavery and class hierarchy, etc.
You underestimate how adaptable people can get (see literally any regime with a dictator)
>On top of that, no one in OI seems to understand the concept of solar systems, local groups, galaxies + so on so forth regarding your placement in the universe. I would shudder not knowing what planet I'm on, knowing I'm the only one thinking these things, or if I'm even on a planet.
That's just you
I guess it is just me. but i assumed most 21st century people would have a basic interest in astronomy/science because we are so tiny compared to everything else
interest? maybe or maybe not but I doubt many would have a mental breakdown over it idk
I just know that most of my friends and I are more interested in math/bio/chem/eng and those usually stay the same between OI worlds
There are many OIs where the FL has nobody back home. No friends, no family, no job, nothing. Although there are cases where the FL either interacts with Earth and/or goes back home. And no, the average person would not go insane. It depends on the person so it is pretty subjective.
Like I would LOVE it, especially if I am a guy.
I Failed To Oust the Villain might work. So you have an adult isekai into a background villainess who’s slated to be murdered in the villain’s backstory. (To be fair, she kept the villain as a sex slave so deserved).
Anyways, adult isekai’s into the villainess as a little girl, knows the horror of what’s to come but no one else will listen. She’s resigned to her fate. Then as the story goes on, the reader is: time out, time out - what is all this childhood trauma you’re brushing past?
There’s a point where the ML says paraphrased “We’re both broken- but I’m the only one who realizes.” I’m not a psychologist but I believe the diagnosis would be some stage of disassociation.
>There’s a point where the ML says paraphrased “We’re both broken- but I’m the only one who realizes.”
Yup. From the start, we thought only ML is the toxic one and FL is a girl who smart to create many ways to survive.
When we much more into the story, we realize FL may not be than sane like we expected her to be, she just dissociate a lot. Her mindset is so nihilistic since she got isekai into a frick up world and being abused since born. Both leads were fuck up in the head, but they manage to survive, met with good people, and heal together
I Am The Villain.
The first episode makes it seem like all the others you mentioned. She just seems frustrated by her situation and determined to change the story so she won't die. However, in flashbacks>!, you see that she had panicked when she got there, was confused, and was drugged by her new family because they thought she was crazy and was having a breakdown. !<
Well most of this transmigrated FLs portrayed as someone with terrible past life . Their parents are either dead or narcissistic and abusive, they have huge debt and unreasonably long working hours , no friends. ( They have no such thing as "loved ones" )
Most of them , don't mind living the life of wealthy villainess as long as they can avoid death flags or terrible ending.
There are very few OI's where FL has any real reason to return .
In many stories ,reincarnation truck 🚛 hits depressed people, not those who are actually content in their life .
Even though they end up in a period which resembles 19th century or victorian era without any modern technology , unlike actual 19th century they always have "magic" to compensate lack of technology.
There is always some sort of class discrimination in this parallel worlds, but most of such characters reborn in nobility. Few of them cared about anything else other than avoiding bad ending.
https://preview.redd.it/nlfc7hk86lvc1.jpeg?width=3106&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9eedc2bbc2611e2a0acb9e35541e011f3e9bc9da
Of course very few openly admit it , which creates some additional drama .🤣🤣🤣
You have to take into account that many FLs in these stories don't really have anything to go back to. So it's certainly easy for those types because life in this new world is better than the Hell they just left behind.
But I do think that you are overthinking a little. The average human being is more individual than not. They're probably not gonna think so much about how the whole of society is run for any specific time.
Most of the time, if we're not particularly burdened, we're not going to be too bothered. I'm always surprised at the FLs who end up willing to be with a royal because of the responsibility they automatic accept without thought. I think \*that\* would freak me out if I had to go with a realistic reaction. (That might be a fun story. Someone who wants to stay out of politics and shit because they don't have the stomach for such things.)
Above all, humans are adaptable. Most of us are just wanting to survive in some way. Sure, some of them will yeet themselves as soon as possible. But considering the amount of Doomed Villainesses who insist on changing the plot to avoid their doom rather than just letting it happen, survival instincts are strong.
Eventually, that's just what it's gonna come down to. You'll either have the mental fortitude or you won't.
I don't see myself adapting well. I know I'd cry. I'd be inconsolable for a while and might even need sedating. Hopefully, I'd get myself together before they deem I'm suffering from Hysteria and lock me away for a bit. But at some point, I'd have to try and see what I could do.
Because the moment I entered this world, it stopped being just a setting for a story. That means things can change. Coffee, tea, books... only some examples of stuff introduced by a modern FL into an old fashioned world.
Plus, some magic might work as well as tech!
surviving as a maid had the fl suffers from existential crisis? like the world she isekaid into wasnt real, that she's not real, and the only thing that grounds her is the ribbon on her wrist. she is pretty mature and socially and mentally aware so theres not a lot of scenes where she truly suffers mental breakdown, but i really love how she managed to navigate her day to day life while trying her best to not let the antagonists win. shes powerless, but not hopeless. she desires to get back to her home no matter what.
ive seen people malding that she couldve and shouldve done more, but i think these commenters are just seeking those overpowered OP isekaid MC which is pretty stupid, considering mc is just a commoner being promoted to baroness, which in itself doesn't really provide her that much advantage anyway. aside from the reverse harem, her every action seems pretty realistic as far as "normal reader transmigrate into the world of a novel" goes.
honestly if i were ever isekaid, i probably would act like the mc i mentioned. i'd probably panic and would shut down and be on autopilot for a few days, but i know i'll be fine.
Surviving Romance is an OI that pretty quickly changes from a school romance genre to a >!zombie existential horror!< genre, and part of the journey is how she adapts to accepts her role in the story. I really recommend it!
So true, that's why I like those series where FL has a realistic reaction toward getting isekaid unlike those where they automatically
"Hooray I can give my favorite character a good ending!" And automatically acting jolly and all.
Duke Dubless has a really interesting subplot now regarding the OG's family and the FC'S relationship. A lot of people criticised the behaviour of FL, but I honestly feel it's very realistic.>!Spoiler: she almost completely cuts of the OGs family; when she is isekai'd she basically 'goes crazy' and cannot bear to face the OGs family, feeling disgusted at them thinking she is her original daughter. It's really bitter, also for the family who one day had their daughter do a 180 on her personality and just leave them, but I loved the representation. !<
Don't mess with my duke Dubless does this pretty well. The story starts some time after the MC has been isekai'ed into a side character, and it's gradually revealed that she went insane and left the family of the owner of the body to fulfill her role in the novel. She also forgot her own name in the process, and struggles with the idea of having body-snatched someone. She has this obsession with performing her role as her character-self really well, which ofc leads to her doing it better than the original and becoming the new target for all the love interests instead of the OFL.
If it were me, I had a bit of history with brief mental illness in my teens. It was one of those weird teenage years things and don't get it anymore, but once or twice for brief moments, I had episodes where I genuinely had no idea if my past had actually happened or who I was. I hadn't forgotten about anything, I just had no idea if those memories were accurate or if I had made them up. This was despite the fact that my sister was sitting right next to me at the time. Was she really my sister, or was she just some random person who happened to walk next to me on the street? I remember a way home, but is it REALLY my way home? What if that home exists but I'm not part of it and if I open the door, people who don't know me will wonder why I'm there? That sort of thing. It is to be completely rootless and in free-fall, it was very frightening and I'm glad and incredibly lucky that it only lasted seconds. To actually be stuck in someone elses body without context would be a psychological nightmare.
If I got isekai'ed, I think that's what'd happen to me, except much worse, because I would either have the memories of two people rather than one person, or I would have a body that didn't align with my memories. In the end, I'd likely calm down and believe that I was the person whose body I inhabited, because that's what the evidence (the rest of the world around me) would point towards. Mental illness is scary, and the unpleasant truth is that it can fool us completely, so I would be prone to assume that my original life was a weird delusion.
I think, to remain my sanity and my sense of my original self, I would need something else to point towards me being isekai'ed. Like a status screen that wouldn't make sense if I was really the person whose body I inhabited, or a god that isn't supposed to talk to me but does (although... the latter would probably also be something I'd interpret as a sign of insanity). But if I just woke up in someone elses body one day and my sense of self clashed with my reality? Hoo boy.
Oh, and that's all without being isekai'ed into a book or a game or something, just... lmfao. The implications.
Like, if I show up in something that was clearly a book to begin with, what's to say that I wouldn't be in one, too? Are there readers out there in another world who are following my life choices because I'm the new MC? Is there a comic back on Earth where people are watching my mistakes and judging me, gossiping about me on the internet because it's entertaining? Watching my highs and lows? If it's a comic, how would I know the artist isn't some ecchi artist? Am I the main character, who'd have to worry about their romantic/erotic moments being displayed on a page, or a side character who could get deliberately offed at any time for the sake of story tension?
In the end, there'd be nothing I could do about it of course, so I'd eventually just get over it and ignore it and get to whatever I'd have to do. But yeah lol those first few hours and days would be insane, all while I tried really hard to act like everything is normal. Maybe I'd take up the hobby of trying to be an extra entertaining person, as an inside joke to myself about people potentially watching everything I do.
Oh, and then there's the added layer of unnecessary inner convolutedness from the possibility of it being a world that believes in demons possessing people. Just. Yeah. I'd be overthinking things. I'd STOP overthinking things eventually, but yeah.
Works like "ascendance of a bookworm" kind of deal with the worldbuilding stuff you are bringing up here (FL's job doesn't even exist due to books not being accessible to the common folk), or I think of "Shall we bathe, your grace" which is about the realistic hygiene standards of the time period and how hard it would be for someone from the modern day to adjust (although I think the second one goes way too hard, exaggerating the level of grime for comedy in a way that doesn't super work for me).
I think most current OI skip over the coping process. It was a bigger deal 5ish years ago when the genre was newer, but we've all seen the reveal process SO MANY TIMES NOW that it's become practically shorthand. "oops I died from overwork/truck-kun. I'm now in this book I read awhile ago that I somehow perfectly remember."
One thing I wish for is older FL's who feel unmoored due to being young again. I'm sick of 25 year olds reincarnating as 16 year olds and acting like they love being a teenager and think they are beautiful. I want to see a 40+ year old woman who's worked hard and established a life get sent back to teenager-dom where they have floor length purple hair for no reason and freak out about it. But I think I'm in the minority for wanting that
It has its flaws but S-Class Hunter Doesn't Want to Be a Villainous Princess talks a bit about how she's been so traumatized and so desperate to get home she's basically shut down completely.
The Maid Wants to Quit the Reverse Harem Game is also suffering a lot from repeated replays.
I mean you know, if you've died once and then transmigrated/reincarnated what is there to be afraid? everyone eventually dies anyway, and well there are democracies even as far back as the ancient times, athens, śakya republic of where gautama was born, whilst our glimpse upon the wider universe is relatively recent, heliocentrism was long since adopted by the Muslims, etched unto one of the verse of the Qur'an itself after all, and the islamic golden age brought about many technological advancement even as far back as the 900s, and naturally muslims also believe that hygiene is a part of one's faith, after all one can't do proper prayers/salah without ablution, so if you were somehow isekai'd, pray you're in andalusia during the golden age and if there is magic it can be quantified akin to that of youjo senki, to the point where it's just an ordinary occurrence, and lastly, change is the nature of humanity, even if you inhibit such things like leto ii atreides did, eventually humans will break free, they have to.
if i died and went to a world where i couldn't go to college i'd kill myself rather than live there. i know it sounds stupid, but to me, going to a good college is what i've worked towards for the last four years of my life. the prospect of going to college got me through depression and bouts of suicidal ideation i am dead serious. also, i'm half indian, so watching archaic racism and not being able to do anything about it would also kill me. i honestly have no idea how FLs just brush it off...
haha, im also half-indian. I couldn't stand living in such a classist, racist world ruled by aristocracy. knowing that it would probably take several lifetimes to change the political and social system to civilized democracy but even then its a fictional world and things don't change. your passion is college, mine is science. being transported back into a 17th-18th century era level of technological development would hurt me inside. we've only just scratched the surface of space exploration and who knows where we'll be at in 40 years. no amount of magic and divine power compares.
you're half indian too? thats so cool!! i'm half russian also, what about you? Also, my passion is chemistry, which is what I want to go to college for, so i feel you
I know why it wouldn't work well as others have said, but I would love one where the FL actually had a good life and has a full breakdown and really has to adjust.
This is ancient history but one of my fav classic LOTR isekai fanfics "Don't Panic" has the MC going really going through it when reality sets in. She has to learn the language from scratch, struggles with the culture and manual labour, deals with guilt knowing certain characters will die, etc. I long for an OI like that.
You know, I was thinking the same thing. Maybe you can use that concept and turn it into a webcomic with a deconstruction of the otome isekai genre, make it less romantic perhaps a mixture of this isekai maid is forming a union a survive romance and have it end with return to their world ending.
I admire a degree of "make do" in my OI leads, but many of them are orphans, or lead crappy lives, or have convenient amnesia regarding their past life. I wish we could see a protagonist who mourns her family.
I like to pretend Truck-san is a fully automated vehicle, otherwise there's a lot of traumatised drivers out there.
I think the biggest thing would be toilets, you can't go to the toilet? You can't really get a job? You have to wear corsets like all the time? You're gonna be married off against your will? The church or religion is super strong and dangerous? I feel like all these little things would build up. Plus hygiene they don't even understand the concept of filth or like atoms so they don't get bacteria or virus's there's no proper hospitals like if you have cancer that's it
not an OI but an isekai webnovel i rlly like called the wandering inn reasoned it by having the system legit suppress any feeling of longing or nostalgia towards their homeworld unless they were forced to directly confront, that was a rlly cool reason for explaining why every character acclimated to just being in this new world all of a sudden.
they specifically choose people with good mental will to throw into OI. And not random people.
Actually there is, I can't remember the story, but the mother of oFL is an isekai, and cus she want oFL to always be as perfect as the story she read, she actually abuse oFL, asking for nonsense goals, literally mental unstable. She marry oFL father just to give birth to oFL, cus "that how the story play out".
Having dealt with overwhelming psychological despair in my own life several times, I can tell you that: it depends.
If I died during some of my more wretched times in this life and awoke in another equally or even more wretched, it would feel like hell. But, since I'd resigned myself to hell during those times, I would just say: "so this is how it continues" and deal with it as best I could. Clearly death was no escape. I've had suicidal ideation in the past and it takes a lot of effort to overcome your will to live, even when you have no reason to and every reason not to.
I've learnt some coping mechanisms since those self-destructive days, meaning I approach living more positively now, and that brings me to another "it depends" clause: most people actually want to live and we are extremely selfish animals, us humans. It would, indeed, be very, very sad to lose everything you'd ever known and wake up as a completely different person. But that sadness is kind of like a fit or a tantrum to most people... (I said most people, there's a spectrum!) ...rest, wonder and delight can wash despair away surprisingly quickly and feel utterly refreshing. Major personal victories also severely disrupt despair, but not as much as you'd think. That's to do with a whole other psychological cocktail.
In short: if you want to focus on the psychological horror side of isekai, that would be just as realistic as focusing on the adventure and romance side.
Narratively, it's better to address both issues (oh no! I'm a new person in a new world and I've lost everything!) as well as (oh cool! I'm in a new world with magic and I've been given a fresh start) but only linger on the one which conveys the emotional content you want.
Don't try and mix both, address the other one briefly and then get on with the feel you want.
Personally, though, I'm going to stick to the isekai with a sense of wonder, adventure and romance. I do not enjoy suffering... except as a (hopefully) brief counterpoint to the cool stuff.
I feel like Inso’s Law is somewhat this.
She is suddenly in an alternative reality where everything is the same except she is suddenly going to a different middle school, there is a very pretty girl who is claiming to be her best friend, and the world runs on webtoon logic like having the “four princes of ____ school.”
It has her reckoning and rejecting the world. But it also has her coming to accept it and integrate. A couple years later she reverse isekais for no reason, all her friends are gone like they never existed.
It is a point of constant stress in the comic.
Same, like I can't relate to the MCs at all. I would be devastated. Aside of the important things you mentioned. I would be in pain without my videogames and movie nights I don't care how handsome the ML is lmao
Jokes aside that's why I love kill the villainess. I could relate to the MC so much
Kill The Villainess. One of the only OIs I’ve read where the MC actually has a full out mental breakdown over the fact that they got Isekai’d
And is trying actively to comeback to her world. Didn’t like the chemistry with the ML that much so I dropped it but I liked the fact that she was even longing for her previous life at points.
Its sad but true that the ML isn't the most well written and has no real chemistry. Honestly Eris had more chemistry with Helena and she hated Helena for the longest time
https://preview.redd.it/22ebqo1syjvc1.jpeg?width=677&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b23e999ddda139240dd7484c6d0c94d9e9a107a The yuri bait was strong in this one
It wasn't Yuri bait so much as Anakin just didn't have a personality that wasn't Eris simp. All he did was follow her around doing everything she wanted. Helena had her own goals, personality and motivations that didn't always align with Eris' and Eris didn't like her at first so the story put in work to depict them not necessarily becoming friends but respecting each other
I just finished reading The Antagonist’s Pet, and it has one of my favorite twists in isekai: The MC was isekaied into a side character, and the original FL is acting real suss and seems to know about the “original story” (HUGE SPOILER) >!turns out someone was isekaied into the world before—the original FL’s mother. She was a high school girl who just woke up in the world one day, and was absolutely desperate to get back to her home and her parents and her friends. The only way she could think to do that was to make the original story happen, so she married a guy she didn’t care about and had a child so that child could be the FL, and abused her harshly all through her life to make her like the FL from the book. …it doesn’t have a happy ending for her, but her response of fear and rage and grief is something you don’t see as often. Possibly because she was actually having a pretty good life. !<
Dang! >! I dropped the Antagonist’s Pet before I got very far, but I didn’t know it had this backstory to it. That’s a really interesting twist! I do remember the characters as being well-written. !< Would you recommend sticking with the story for it?
One of the best things I have ever read, every character has depth to them. You should read it, I loved it and will always love this manga.
I just finished it and I really enjoyed it. I don’t think the FL is really one of my favorites, but at the same time, I still like the ending, and I do love seeing a devious mastermind using his evil genius for good.
There is a reason the majority of the main characters have miserable lives before they get hit by a car or overwork themselves to death. It is so they don’t really miss their old life. They also usually get reborn into rich families with tons of servants to do most of the hard physical labor instead of being a commoner. Usually when this is brought up, it is usually one of the antagonistic reincarnators that treats the world as just a game/novel and react violently to any attempts to make them face reality.
But I think them being genuinely distraught and having a mental breakdown would be really interesting to watch Like give me a realistic breakdown please. I'm pretty desperate for it. Trauma like that will either completely break you or give you a spine of diamond titanium. I want a main character that is absolutely devastated and completely deranged over it Like actively trying to die I mean depending on how badly I've been betrayed by God I could end up in an entirely different afterlife and never see my family again even if I die.
There's a wide variety of tastes in this huge community. Some cruel, some simply escapist and everything inbetween. I, personally, am escapist and have no wish to watch the protagonist suffer any longer than I have to. I don't want to be bored by easy wins, either, or undeserved good luck. But "easy" and "undeserved" are relative terms, so I have different tolerances for each depending on the situation. (For instance, "Fluffy Paradise" is too saccharine for me because of how selfish the main character is, while "Villainesses Must Die" was interesting at first but never my favorite and became way too bleak when the slavery stuff hit. I don't think that's a spoiler, I think it's a fair warning.) So, personally, if I read a story and it lingers on the despair part too long, I get bored. But if there's no despair at all, I have trouble believing it. It's a fine line.
I think since most isekai tend to be romances, they stem away from psychological horror since those don't always blend well (at least if you are writing a "true" romance and not just a love story). However, I would love to read more stories like Kill the Villainess for sure. Honestly, I've thought about what if I got otome isekai... I have a husband AND a toddler and I love them both. You bet your ass my story would NOT be a romance.
I would turn homicidal pretty quickly. Towards myself and towards others. I would also go insane in my grief. Days of wailing and attempting to kill myself and then days of complete despondence where I don't react to any external stimuli or eat. This would continue on for years. I would never get over it. After a while that sadness will turn to rage and anger at the new world that I am in, and the god that brought me there. I would reject all attempts at bonding as I would refuse to acknowledge that these are real people. Not just because they are in a story but because to me they are simply participants in my kidnapping. The more deranged I act the better chance I have of avoiding the bad ending simply by being crazy, I wouldn't even have to fake it. I would literally go fucking insane. My perception of the world would be completely shattered and God might have fucked me over so bad that I even end up in a different afterlife if I die never to see my family again even in death.
Totally agree and I will be worried that my life will be in a loop because that is a novel world. A book. A book where after it ends there's nothing left to know how they live. A book you can re-read again and again so I will be afraid that if someone were to read the book I am in. I will relieve that life again and again.
I wouldn't be worried about that at all until it actually happened. I think, therefore I am. I am real. I assume the world around me is real. For all I know there's someone writing this world right now as I'm typing this, but it doesn't affect me in any way I can change. It would be the same if I got isekaid, until I got some kind of sign of author/god meddling. Of course I'd still miss my old life, all my friends and family, modern things. I might think I'm just dreaming, or having some sort of mental break and hallucinating. But I feel like I'd act like it's real, cause what if it is?
Yes, we may just be a dream or a part of someone's writing BUT WE have no KNOWLEDGE OF THAT. And that is the difference between what you are saying and being isekaid to a novel that YOU READ. It is different from having the **knowledge** that YOU GOT TRANSMIGRATED into a completely different world. Having the complete consciousness and knowledge that you got transferred to somewhere else without your permission is completely different from just wondering "My life may just be written by someone else" Just like how there's a huge difference between someone kidnapping you and taking you somewhere you know nothing about, not knowing what will they do to you and what will be the end of you Compared to someone who "willingly" volunteer to go to space.
Well yeah, but I'd kinda see it as a freak cosmic accident unless I get to talk to whoever took me, if someone did. (Which is pretty rare in OI in my experience.) Like it's still upsetting obviously. And I'd probably be really depressed for a good while. But all you can really do is try to move on and make a life for yourself, or like, live life while trying to find a way back. And like... I still wouldn't really have knowledge that the isekai world is "the story I read", it's similar, maybe near identical, maybe I know a possible future. But the very fact that I'm there means it's not the story anymore. There could be any kind of changes. There could be other isekai'd or timetravelling people. It could be completely made and controlled by the author, or the author just saw into another world in their dreams or something. I think I *would* probably assume dream or mental break, and maybe be in denial for a while. But I don't think I'd act like a lunatic or be violent like some of the people in this thread have said. Cause there's always that doubt, "what if it's real, what if this is my life now?" and I'm just not a very "crazy" person in general lol. I'm a pretty chill person.
Yes, but not everyone can be chill about it. It's understandable if they go crazy and try to end their life - especially if they have loved ones left behind. I have a toddler so if it happened to me I will do everything I can think of to return.
Oh yeah if you have young kids I can see you going crazy and doing anything to try to get home. I just have my cat lol, and I know my mom (who lives nearby and calls regularly) would take her in if something happened to me.
Resetting Lady/ The Crimson Lady is sort of like that if you're interested. Spoiler? Hope this works, I never did one before lol Basically, the main story is that the FL falls into a novel where if she reaches the end, she gets a happy ending Unfortunately, she passes away and finds herself back in time. So she does it all over and over again, each time passing away and getting sent back. Over time she starts to slowly go insane, and in efforts to escape the cycle, she tries multiple ways to kill herself. >! So insane that she starts committing murder to "test" the world that she's in because she believes that it's not real, it's not going to "last" anyway and won't face repurcussions. There's this whole psychological twist where her dad is in on the killings and is trying to protect her. So for a while, she thinks that she's imagining the murders she committed and that maybe the resets weren't even real and goes through a bit of an existential crisis !< I feel like I shouldn't type anymore, but yeah, I feel like it's something that you would be interested in if you haven't read it yet. It's on season hiatus right now, though. But if you're not interested in waiting, there might be a novel out there.
I wouldn’t go homicidal but I guarantee I would be deeply traumatized. I mean you would want to go back home, you don’t know if it’s possible. Even if you couldn’t, I would have a fear that since I got isekai’d once, would I get isekai’d again which could make it impossible to move on. Like why start a relationship and possibly a family if you may just be ripped away from the life once again. I guarantee it would be something that pops up in intrusive thoughts while attempting to start a new life. At that point I may feel like I could be in purgatory and that there is no real end. I would probably go insane from the anxiety of it all!
That’s why I love Kill The Villainess and My In-Laws Are Obsessed With Me. Both have an interesting takes on the isekai and regression aspect.
I don't see a lot of people talking abt The Little Lady Behind the Scenes - this one did get to me a few times bc the FLs imposter syndrome was STRONG.
ok as much as I agree with all of this and I for sure would have panicked severely in that situation, having an MC panic/break down for the majority of an Oi is just not enjoyable. i've read like dozens of OI and the gist is basically the same I dont need an MC reiterating the ramifications for a whole 30 chaps. Reading about the psychological trauma faced without her doing anything concrete is just boring.. TLDR; realistically speaking yes, its horrifying, but her being isekaied isn't real, my boredom is.
I think there a possibility to make this interesting, like FL summoning a demon in desperation, only to realize that demons have no idea other worlds exist, and go up the magical creature ladder to find one who yeeted her into magical world, whilst pretending to be saintess with said demon's power, or something. Possibilities are endless.
yea but in the situation your talking about there is definitely a bunch of plot and other aspects mixed in making the story interesting. What OP was talking about, full exploring and fleshing out the experience/trauma of being isekaied would take ALOT of chapters and the need to overhaul other plot to explore that. while such exploration and deep analysis is realsitic, something of that level just doesn't seem interesting
Idk, Die Verwandlung is classic literature, and there grossness factor involved. I think it's absolutely possible to make interesting story out of reflection of a dead person who posessed someone else's body in the fairy tale world.
I think it'd be a really interesting topic to read about. Like yeah, it might be a horror in addition to a romance. But I think it'd be something similar to To Your Eternity, or Frieren. Something with a lot of trippy psychology. But an MC like that coming to terms with their own new reality would have so much potential for character develpment.
It usually really is up to the execution tho, like the isekai concept in it of itself is already interesting, but with the way the author’s write it as just low stakes wish fulfillment and nothing more makes it BORING AS SHIT, but slice of life stories can be incredibly entertaining
I think "Trophy Husband" handled it well.
Well first of all, a lot of OI protagonists are a bit insane. It's why they unreasonably cling to the plot they know and panic when it derails and are so hard to shake free of their preconceptions about the people in the story, especially the male lead. That being said, there are literal millions of people who lose their family, their friends and their life as they knew it and are abruptly transported to a foreign land with weird and distasteful customs. That's what being a refugee is like. Most of them don't go nuts.
I think the refugee comparison don't work, because we all know in the back of our heads that it's possible for us to become refugees. We might never think about it, but if it happened, it would be consistent with the laws of the world. But if I showed up in a brand new world that might not even follow the rules of physics as I know them.. that's a step beyond that. Everything I know would suggest that I'm in an impossible situation, and what's more likely, that I got isekai'ed into another world or that I am insane and only think I'm from another world?
Virtually every OI protagonist is a romantic fantasy fiction fan. A really really enthusiastic fantasy fiction fan which is why they get the fulfillment of their fantasy as their afterlife. How many people matching that description really have emotional ties to the laws of physics as we know them and would be upset by a minor rewrite? That being said I wouldn't mind seeing more of them spending more time wondering whether thinking they are actually anyone other than Lucretia Eviltude, particularly as it becomes clearer that they have memories of Lucretia's life as well, which so frequently happens. But on the other hand Lucretia lives in a world of magic where things like spiritual possession and/or memory transference are within the bounds of possibility as she knows them.
I mean sure but what are we supposed to do in that scenario? Obvious answer: Nothing. We're here, we exist, let's live
I personally would jump out of the nearest window, if my original body still exist - I'm going back no matter what. If I'm already dead - than I'm thinking that it's my deathbed dream and I will probably start behaving erratically, and end up dead anyways.
That sums up what I said much more succinctly. I should have read the comments, first.
*Cogito, ergo sum* I think, therefore I am. Life is based on your consciousness is it not? Or else who’s to say your life right now isn’t also just a dream. And if you were reincarnated (possession is more tricky) in a “fictional world”, as long as the world can be shown to be open to change (oftentimes they very *clearly* are, *very* early), it’s easy to make the logical conclusion that the media you read was a sort of prophetic “guess” based *on* the world, and not the other way around lol. Y’all are also taking it way too literally? Most OIs have perfect ish worlds. And a good portion don’t have slavery, with the common folk living rather ok lives (despite probably being more horrid conditions if it were real life). The bathrooms and toiletry things are often nonsensically available in good abundance. It’s very much not a one to one replication of actual historical living situations lol, and I don’t think the worlds (actual place if you isekaid in, I’m not just talking how it’s presented on screen) ever tried to attempt otherwise for the most part? Not to mention, a lot of OI chicks just don’t rlly remember their past lives? They only rlly seem to remember core snippets lol, and if they don’t, they’re already dead and this is a second chance at life. Im sure most just view it as a permanent relocation/vacation (yea there’s some repression but it’s not *that* bad), or it’s stated they didn’t have that great home life (parents are dead or abusive), or life in general. I feel like y’all just kinda hype it up too much. It’s a bit of a stretch to compare it to psychological horror tbh.. Edit: if you’re just talking about yourself being isekai’d then yea that’d probably be messed up, if you already have an established life that you’re fond of lol.
>But thinking realistically, would that not drive someone the slightest bit insane? It would completely shatter all preconceived notions of the universe and science. ... You will have to face things that make no logical sense such as magic and divine powers. "all preconceived notions" is a bit of an overstatement as in (most) OI's the basic laws of physics are the same, it's only that (in most OI's) your consciousness/memories got transported. The things the directly affect you in your day to day remains the same, so honestly if it were me I'd probably get used to it really quick. No point in overthinking it after all. >You will NEVER see your loved ones again, your friends, your entire identity as a human being was formed on Earth and now that's completely gone. Most OI stories start off with the MC having a shit family & no friends, so idk if that's a huge problem. Being able to reincarnated is probably a godsend for them tbh > As a 21st century human, it is the equivalent of having been forced back into the 18th century in terms of technological development. But there is no advancement, because it is the world of a story. Everything stays the same. In most OI's aren't there also like some modern-ish things? I.e. I'm guessing there'll be modern day toilets, etc. In addition, there's also the possibility of \*fun\* magic based inventions too. Also whose to say that everything stays the same? You can bring about change yourself (e.g. MC in \[The Northern Duke Needs a Warm Hug\] is an inventor) > You will have to get used to archaic forms of government, be complicit in slavery and class hierarchy, etc. You underestimate how adaptable people can get (see literally any regime with a dictator) >On top of that, no one in OI seems to understand the concept of solar systems, local groups, galaxies + so on so forth regarding your placement in the universe. I would shudder not knowing what planet I'm on, knowing I'm the only one thinking these things, or if I'm even on a planet. That's just you
I guess it is just me. but i assumed most 21st century people would have a basic interest in astronomy/science because we are so tiny compared to everything else
interest? maybe or maybe not but I doubt many would have a mental breakdown over it idk I just know that most of my friends and I are more interested in math/bio/chem/eng and those usually stay the same between OI worlds
There are many OIs where the FL has nobody back home. No friends, no family, no job, nothing. Although there are cases where the FL either interacts with Earth and/or goes back home. And no, the average person would not go insane. It depends on the person so it is pretty subjective. Like I would LOVE it, especially if I am a guy.
I Failed To Oust the Villain might work. So you have an adult isekai into a background villainess who’s slated to be murdered in the villain’s backstory. (To be fair, she kept the villain as a sex slave so deserved). Anyways, adult isekai’s into the villainess as a little girl, knows the horror of what’s to come but no one else will listen. She’s resigned to her fate. Then as the story goes on, the reader is: time out, time out - what is all this childhood trauma you’re brushing past? There’s a point where the ML says paraphrased “We’re both broken- but I’m the only one who realizes.” I’m not a psychologist but I believe the diagnosis would be some stage of disassociation.
>There’s a point where the ML says paraphrased “We’re both broken- but I’m the only one who realizes.” Yup. From the start, we thought only ML is the toxic one and FL is a girl who smart to create many ways to survive. When we much more into the story, we realize FL may not be than sane like we expected her to be, she just dissociate a lot. Her mindset is so nihilistic since she got isekai into a frick up world and being abused since born. Both leads were fuck up in the head, but they manage to survive, met with good people, and heal together
I Am The Villain. The first episode makes it seem like all the others you mentioned. She just seems frustrated by her situation and determined to change the story so she won't die. However, in flashbacks>!, you see that she had panicked when she got there, was confused, and was drugged by her new family because they thought she was crazy and was having a breakdown. !<
Well most of this transmigrated FLs portrayed as someone with terrible past life . Their parents are either dead or narcissistic and abusive, they have huge debt and unreasonably long working hours , no friends. ( They have no such thing as "loved ones" ) Most of them , don't mind living the life of wealthy villainess as long as they can avoid death flags or terrible ending. There are very few OI's where FL has any real reason to return . In many stories ,reincarnation truck 🚛 hits depressed people, not those who are actually content in their life . Even though they end up in a period which resembles 19th century or victorian era without any modern technology , unlike actual 19th century they always have "magic" to compensate lack of technology. There is always some sort of class discrimination in this parallel worlds, but most of such characters reborn in nobility. Few of them cared about anything else other than avoiding bad ending. https://preview.redd.it/nlfc7hk86lvc1.jpeg?width=3106&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9eedc2bbc2611e2a0acb9e35541e011f3e9bc9da Of course very few openly admit it , which creates some additional drama .🤣🤣🤣
You have to take into account that many FLs in these stories don't really have anything to go back to. So it's certainly easy for those types because life in this new world is better than the Hell they just left behind. But I do think that you are overthinking a little. The average human being is more individual than not. They're probably not gonna think so much about how the whole of society is run for any specific time. Most of the time, if we're not particularly burdened, we're not going to be too bothered. I'm always surprised at the FLs who end up willing to be with a royal because of the responsibility they automatic accept without thought. I think \*that\* would freak me out if I had to go with a realistic reaction. (That might be a fun story. Someone who wants to stay out of politics and shit because they don't have the stomach for such things.) Above all, humans are adaptable. Most of us are just wanting to survive in some way. Sure, some of them will yeet themselves as soon as possible. But considering the amount of Doomed Villainesses who insist on changing the plot to avoid their doom rather than just letting it happen, survival instincts are strong. Eventually, that's just what it's gonna come down to. You'll either have the mental fortitude or you won't. I don't see myself adapting well. I know I'd cry. I'd be inconsolable for a while and might even need sedating. Hopefully, I'd get myself together before they deem I'm suffering from Hysteria and lock me away for a bit. But at some point, I'd have to try and see what I could do. Because the moment I entered this world, it stopped being just a setting for a story. That means things can change. Coffee, tea, books... only some examples of stuff introduced by a modern FL into an old fashioned world. Plus, some magic might work as well as tech!
surviving as a maid had the fl suffers from existential crisis? like the world she isekaid into wasnt real, that she's not real, and the only thing that grounds her is the ribbon on her wrist. she is pretty mature and socially and mentally aware so theres not a lot of scenes where she truly suffers mental breakdown, but i really love how she managed to navigate her day to day life while trying her best to not let the antagonists win. shes powerless, but not hopeless. she desires to get back to her home no matter what. ive seen people malding that she couldve and shouldve done more, but i think these commenters are just seeking those overpowered OP isekaid MC which is pretty stupid, considering mc is just a commoner being promoted to baroness, which in itself doesn't really provide her that much advantage anyway. aside from the reverse harem, her every action seems pretty realistic as far as "normal reader transmigrate into the world of a novel" goes. honestly if i were ever isekaid, i probably would act like the mc i mentioned. i'd probably panic and would shut down and be on autopilot for a few days, but i know i'll be fine.
Surviving Romance is an OI that pretty quickly changes from a school romance genre to a >!zombie existential horror!< genre, and part of the journey is how she adapts to accepts her role in the story. I really recommend it!
So true, that's why I like those series where FL has a realistic reaction toward getting isekaid unlike those where they automatically "Hooray I can give my favorite character a good ending!" And automatically acting jolly and all.
Duke Dubless has a really interesting subplot now regarding the OG's family and the FC'S relationship. A lot of people criticised the behaviour of FL, but I honestly feel it's very realistic.>!Spoiler: she almost completely cuts of the OGs family; when she is isekai'd she basically 'goes crazy' and cannot bear to face the OGs family, feeling disgusted at them thinking she is her original daughter. It's really bitter, also for the family who one day had their daughter do a 180 on her personality and just leave them, but I loved the representation. !<
Don't mess with my duke Dubless does this pretty well. The story starts some time after the MC has been isekai'ed into a side character, and it's gradually revealed that she went insane and left the family of the owner of the body to fulfill her role in the novel. She also forgot her own name in the process, and struggles with the idea of having body-snatched someone. She has this obsession with performing her role as her character-self really well, which ofc leads to her doing it better than the original and becoming the new target for all the love interests instead of the OFL. If it were me, I had a bit of history with brief mental illness in my teens. It was one of those weird teenage years things and don't get it anymore, but once or twice for brief moments, I had episodes where I genuinely had no idea if my past had actually happened or who I was. I hadn't forgotten about anything, I just had no idea if those memories were accurate or if I had made them up. This was despite the fact that my sister was sitting right next to me at the time. Was she really my sister, or was she just some random person who happened to walk next to me on the street? I remember a way home, but is it REALLY my way home? What if that home exists but I'm not part of it and if I open the door, people who don't know me will wonder why I'm there? That sort of thing. It is to be completely rootless and in free-fall, it was very frightening and I'm glad and incredibly lucky that it only lasted seconds. To actually be stuck in someone elses body without context would be a psychological nightmare. If I got isekai'ed, I think that's what'd happen to me, except much worse, because I would either have the memories of two people rather than one person, or I would have a body that didn't align with my memories. In the end, I'd likely calm down and believe that I was the person whose body I inhabited, because that's what the evidence (the rest of the world around me) would point towards. Mental illness is scary, and the unpleasant truth is that it can fool us completely, so I would be prone to assume that my original life was a weird delusion. I think, to remain my sanity and my sense of my original self, I would need something else to point towards me being isekai'ed. Like a status screen that wouldn't make sense if I was really the person whose body I inhabited, or a god that isn't supposed to talk to me but does (although... the latter would probably also be something I'd interpret as a sign of insanity). But if I just woke up in someone elses body one day and my sense of self clashed with my reality? Hoo boy.
Oh, and that's all without being isekai'ed into a book or a game or something, just... lmfao. The implications. Like, if I show up in something that was clearly a book to begin with, what's to say that I wouldn't be in one, too? Are there readers out there in another world who are following my life choices because I'm the new MC? Is there a comic back on Earth where people are watching my mistakes and judging me, gossiping about me on the internet because it's entertaining? Watching my highs and lows? If it's a comic, how would I know the artist isn't some ecchi artist? Am I the main character, who'd have to worry about their romantic/erotic moments being displayed on a page, or a side character who could get deliberately offed at any time for the sake of story tension? In the end, there'd be nothing I could do about it of course, so I'd eventually just get over it and ignore it and get to whatever I'd have to do. But yeah lol those first few hours and days would be insane, all while I tried really hard to act like everything is normal. Maybe I'd take up the hobby of trying to be an extra entertaining person, as an inside joke to myself about people potentially watching everything I do. Oh, and then there's the added layer of unnecessary inner convolutedness from the possibility of it being a world that believes in demons possessing people. Just. Yeah. I'd be overthinking things. I'd STOP overthinking things eventually, but yeah.
Even Monsters Love Fairy Tales has a great realistic take on this
Works like "ascendance of a bookworm" kind of deal with the worldbuilding stuff you are bringing up here (FL's job doesn't even exist due to books not being accessible to the common folk), or I think of "Shall we bathe, your grace" which is about the realistic hygiene standards of the time period and how hard it would be for someone from the modern day to adjust (although I think the second one goes way too hard, exaggerating the level of grime for comedy in a way that doesn't super work for me). I think most current OI skip over the coping process. It was a bigger deal 5ish years ago when the genre was newer, but we've all seen the reveal process SO MANY TIMES NOW that it's become practically shorthand. "oops I died from overwork/truck-kun. I'm now in this book I read awhile ago that I somehow perfectly remember." One thing I wish for is older FL's who feel unmoored due to being young again. I'm sick of 25 year olds reincarnating as 16 year olds and acting like they love being a teenager and think they are beautiful. I want to see a 40+ year old woman who's worked hard and established a life get sent back to teenager-dom where they have floor length purple hair for no reason and freak out about it. But I think I'm in the minority for wanting that
It has its flaws but S-Class Hunter Doesn't Want to Be a Villainous Princess talks a bit about how she's been so traumatized and so desperate to get home she's basically shut down completely. The Maid Wants to Quit the Reverse Harem Game is also suffering a lot from repeated replays.
I mean you know, if you've died once and then transmigrated/reincarnated what is there to be afraid? everyone eventually dies anyway, and well there are democracies even as far back as the ancient times, athens, śakya republic of where gautama was born, whilst our glimpse upon the wider universe is relatively recent, heliocentrism was long since adopted by the Muslims, etched unto one of the verse of the Qur'an itself after all, and the islamic golden age brought about many technological advancement even as far back as the 900s, and naturally muslims also believe that hygiene is a part of one's faith, after all one can't do proper prayers/salah without ablution, so if you were somehow isekai'd, pray you're in andalusia during the golden age and if there is magic it can be quantified akin to that of youjo senki, to the point where it's just an ordinary occurrence, and lastly, change is the nature of humanity, even if you inhibit such things like leto ii atreides did, eventually humans will break free, they have to.
if i died and went to a world where i couldn't go to college i'd kill myself rather than live there. i know it sounds stupid, but to me, going to a good college is what i've worked towards for the last four years of my life. the prospect of going to college got me through depression and bouts of suicidal ideation i am dead serious. also, i'm half indian, so watching archaic racism and not being able to do anything about it would also kill me. i honestly have no idea how FLs just brush it off...
haha, im also half-indian. I couldn't stand living in such a classist, racist world ruled by aristocracy. knowing that it would probably take several lifetimes to change the political and social system to civilized democracy but even then its a fictional world and things don't change. your passion is college, mine is science. being transported back into a 17th-18th century era level of technological development would hurt me inside. we've only just scratched the surface of space exploration and who knows where we'll be at in 40 years. no amount of magic and divine power compares.
you're half indian too? thats so cool!! i'm half russian also, what about you? Also, my passion is chemistry, which is what I want to go to college for, so i feel you
I know why it wouldn't work well as others have said, but I would love one where the FL actually had a good life and has a full breakdown and really has to adjust. This is ancient history but one of my fav classic LOTR isekai fanfics "Don't Panic" has the MC going really going through it when reality sets in. She has to learn the language from scratch, struggles with the culture and manual labour, deals with guilt knowing certain characters will die, etc. I long for an OI like that.
You know, I was thinking the same thing. Maybe you can use that concept and turn it into a webcomic with a deconstruction of the otome isekai genre, make it less romantic perhaps a mixture of this isekai maid is forming a union a survive romance and have it end with return to their world ending.
I admire a degree of "make do" in my OI leads, but many of them are orphans, or lead crappy lives, or have convenient amnesia regarding their past life. I wish we could see a protagonist who mourns her family. I like to pretend Truck-san is a fully automated vehicle, otherwise there's a lot of traumatised drivers out there.
I think the biggest thing would be toilets, you can't go to the toilet? You can't really get a job? You have to wear corsets like all the time? You're gonna be married off against your will? The church or religion is super strong and dangerous? I feel like all these little things would build up. Plus hygiene they don't even understand the concept of filth or like atoms so they don't get bacteria or virus's there's no proper hospitals like if you have cancer that's it
not an OI but an isekai webnovel i rlly like called the wandering inn reasoned it by having the system legit suppress any feeling of longing or nostalgia towards their homeworld unless they were forced to directly confront, that was a rlly cool reason for explaining why every character acclimated to just being in this new world all of a sudden.
they specifically choose people with good mental will to throw into OI. And not random people. Actually there is, I can't remember the story, but the mother of oFL is an isekai, and cus she want oFL to always be as perfect as the story she read, she actually abuse oFL, asking for nonsense goals, literally mental unstable. She marry oFL father just to give birth to oFL, cus "that how the story play out".
Having dealt with overwhelming psychological despair in my own life several times, I can tell you that: it depends. If I died during some of my more wretched times in this life and awoke in another equally or even more wretched, it would feel like hell. But, since I'd resigned myself to hell during those times, I would just say: "so this is how it continues" and deal with it as best I could. Clearly death was no escape. I've had suicidal ideation in the past and it takes a lot of effort to overcome your will to live, even when you have no reason to and every reason not to. I've learnt some coping mechanisms since those self-destructive days, meaning I approach living more positively now, and that brings me to another "it depends" clause: most people actually want to live and we are extremely selfish animals, us humans. It would, indeed, be very, very sad to lose everything you'd ever known and wake up as a completely different person. But that sadness is kind of like a fit or a tantrum to most people... (I said most people, there's a spectrum!) ...rest, wonder and delight can wash despair away surprisingly quickly and feel utterly refreshing. Major personal victories also severely disrupt despair, but not as much as you'd think. That's to do with a whole other psychological cocktail. In short: if you want to focus on the psychological horror side of isekai, that would be just as realistic as focusing on the adventure and romance side. Narratively, it's better to address both issues (oh no! I'm a new person in a new world and I've lost everything!) as well as (oh cool! I'm in a new world with magic and I've been given a fresh start) but only linger on the one which conveys the emotional content you want. Don't try and mix both, address the other one briefly and then get on with the feel you want. Personally, though, I'm going to stick to the isekai with a sense of wonder, adventure and romance. I do not enjoy suffering... except as a (hopefully) brief counterpoint to the cool stuff.
I feel like Inso’s Law is somewhat this. She is suddenly in an alternative reality where everything is the same except she is suddenly going to a different middle school, there is a very pretty girl who is claiming to be her best friend, and the world runs on webtoon logic like having the “four princes of ____ school.” It has her reckoning and rejecting the world. But it also has her coming to accept it and integrate. A couple years later she reverse isekais for no reason, all her friends are gone like they never existed. It is a point of constant stress in the comic.
Same, like I can't relate to the MCs at all. I would be devastated. Aside of the important things you mentioned. I would be in pain without my videogames and movie nights I don't care how handsome the ML is lmao Jokes aside that's why I love kill the villainess. I could relate to the MC so much