Fanfic Rants And The Rest of Wattpad ↠↠ completed

Isekai and Reincarnation Tropes

You know, I thought that these tropes were popular mostly among web comics (and novels outside of Wattpad), so imagine my surprise when I saw that they're popular on here as well. Granted, they seem more niche on here in comparison to other popular tropes, and for that matter, most of them focus on a particular fandom, like Naruto or Harry Potter. But even as niche as these tropes are, they're still the pretty damn popular ones out of the bunch.

I'm not gonna lie, as overused as these tropes are, they're also kinda like my comfort zone as a collective genre. There was —or is — something comforting about having a second life after you die or being sent back in time to relive you life to fix any mistakes. They always somewhat start out the same, either by murder, general death, or the most well known type of death: Truck-kun. But whether the MC is isekai-ed into a novel or reincarnated back in time or even into a new life, each storyline is different from there on out. Are they any good? It's hard to say with some. Some are....unique, to say the least.

Hell, my first webcomic was a reincarnation comic. It was called They Say I Was Born a King's Daughter. And let me just rant about this comic for a hot second, bc I have opinions(tm), and the comments section on Tapas (previously Taptastic...god I'm old lmao) is quiet honestly a shitshow.

This was my first reincarnation webcomic, but it's not my all time favorite. Going back to the series after having read many other comics of this trope, this one is definitely more lackluster, and the age gape between the main leads does make me uncomfortable at times, but then again, they weren't that far apart in their previous lives so eh. But regardless of that, it kept my attention and I cared about the characters enough to keep reading. Though lemme tell you, the original novel the comic was being adapted from, fucking sucked. I don't know whether it was the translator's fault or the author themselves, but the writing was a big part of why it sucked. It was confusing in a lot of places, not to mention grammatical mistakes galore, and POVs would change without warning. Even the type (compare 1st vs 3rd POV) would change too, and rather abruptly. It drove me fucking nuts.

The first time I went through the novel to see the changes the comic made, I was more or less under the impression that the novel was written more like a comic, with its sudden change in place and characters. But the second time I went and read certain chapters, it really doesn't work because even a comic would have established a change in setting before moving on to the characters and their thoughts. The translation definitely read more like a bad fan translation than an official one.

While the comic adaptation was significantly better in terms of having a better handling of multiple POVs and a consistent, steady growth of the stakes involved, it started to lose its momentum when the Saint plot got started, and it just dragged. This is a problem in the original novel too, but it sucked significantly less in the webcomic adaptation and a large majority of that was due to the comic's understanding on plot progression and quite frankly, better handling of its characters. Despite the Saint stuff dragging in places, the romance was still cute tho, the FL's relationship with her new family were still fun to read as they slowly started to change their minds and the characters were mostly enjoyable to watch as they grew. The greatest thing about the comic adaptation was that the female characters that weren't Sanghee Kim (the main FL) were treated as actual characters. Remember Princess Freesia? If you read only the novel, of course you don't, because she's barely mentioned as being found abused beyond repair at the near end of the novel. Yeah, it's pretty fucked up in how horrific it is and how nonchalant it was just...there. In fact, the entire tone and general vibe of the novel is fucked up and the good circumstances seemed to only really serve Sanghee. It...wasn't a good look for the novel, especially if you put Sanghee as a character under the scrutiny of a self-insert. In the comic, Freesia has a much bigger role as becoming one of Sanghee's friends and she actually has a bit of a character arc as well.