this was okay for what I have read of it and I do feel like I would like to read more. The blurb doesn't tell you much about the story as the titular bullying is forced by a villain system, and by the main character trying to outwit the system her actions of "bullying" usually saved og FL from actual bullying which of course makes her fall in love with her awkward saviour. Its fairly sweet and its a relatively good version of a concept that has been done a... more>> thousand times before <<less

I started reading this novel after I read up to around chapter 40 of the manhua already. I would definitely recommend reading them in conjunction or consecutively because it was often amazing seeing how much more into detail the novel went into Yvonne’s feelings regarding Elsa or just other aspects of worldbuilding.

I’d say this novel was what I initially turned to after finishing most of I’m in Love with the Villainess, but I ended up enjoying it way more...

I’d say the story’s strongest points would be the main protagonist... more>> and her perspective on things. Her inner voice often sells the conflict she feels really well. Basically, I enjoyed how relatable she felt in that situation and didn’t feel that she was acting s*upid for the sake of a plot.

I will not deny that there are some tropey aspects of this story, but I will say that it’s an enjoyable read that I reread twice so far! <<less

This story is suprisingly good.

The MC transmitigrate into a games villain with a system. The system gives her tasks to bully the female protagonist often giving her 3 severities of choices. The catch is that sometimes there's only severe choices and sometimes the system seizes control of her body to do something nasty.

The MC does not want to do any sort of bullying, but she knows that if she purposely fails her own family gets severly affected aswell so she can't just "not do it and take the punishment" as... more>> it doesn't affect her alone.

Because of this she always does the bare minimum of bullying and always cleans up\helps the female protagonist and as a result is actually pretty nice to her.

MC:

A very kind and caring super softy Tsundere. She's also a flawed character who makes mistakes and is bad at some things making her more relatable and likeable. She absolutely hates being forced to bully the female protagonist and she breaks down (or nearly breaks down) a few times because of it.

Female Protagonist (female lead) :

Although super talented, skilled in a huge number of things (like any cheating protagonist) she's also flawed.

She's the "kind to the s*upid level" person and often let people take advantage of herself.

She notices that the MC actually doesn't want to bully her and also notices the kindness the MC gives her (the tsundere way) and ends up liking the MC. It is hinted that she knows "something" about the MC's situation.

Is it a must read?

Yes i'd say so, it's a good and interesting story with a twist on the whole "I transmitigrated into the villainess" trope. <<less

This is a yuri novel through and through. If I had to name my biggest complaint, it would be that the pace is somewhat irregular: sometimes it goes too slow, other times it goes too fast. But that's okay, if you're not reading live (one chapter a day), that's perfectly fine. The novel is very enjoyable despite. My favourite plot points are the shocking plot twists (like the ones concerning ... more>>

Spoiler

the Witch

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or the Second Prince, or the major whole-premise-changing plot twist around chapter 51-72), and also how the novel doesn't waste time on a prolonged "will they, won't they" stage, choosing to focus on the sweet heart-warming slice of life stuff and on the actual plot developments instead. It's not my favourite novel, but it's definitely one of my favourites. It's also not the most well written novel I've ever read, but it does a good job of conveying the character's emotions and, most of the time, the story intended, and that's enough for a light novel in my opinion. I don't think I've read any other "reincarnated as an otome game villainess" novel that takes the plot in this direction before, and AFAIK the premise itself is also quite unique, but, at the same time, it also has a number of classical "reincarnated as an otome game villainess" yuri novel tropes done IMO very well, so I really loved it. IME they know how to balance the innovative / surprising and the classical tropes and elements very well, but aren't always as successful when it comes to properly balancing the slice of life scenes with the plot development, leading to my aforementioned complaints about the pacing (sometimes they veer too much into slice of life and the story kind of stalls, while in other moments they veer too far into advancing the narrative and the plot ends up moving so fast you need to reread a few times to understand what's happening or how it came to this... well, there's also times where they get the pacing balance just right, and the story is still very enjoyable even when they don't).

The translation leaves a little to be desired, but, comparing to other non-professional translations I've read in this website, I have nothing to complain about it... except for in one or two R18-rated chapters where, for some reason, the translator started randomly censoring every few words, making it completely unreadable, but that just happened in one or two chapters specifically, and I'm not reading this for the s*x scenes and don't much care for ecchi stuff anyway, so no problem (it's weird that they hadn't done this kind of censorship at all before and never overdid again after, though). Also, the translator sometimes means Elsa but refers to her as Yvonne or vice versa, but you can understand who they mean if you read carefully, and, again, compared to other non-professionally translated works on this website where character names and pronouns are both constantly swapped for one another and non-consistent across chapters or even within a same chapter, here the problem is so small it's practically not worth mentioning. Oh, and they always misspell "Yvie" as "Evie" for some reason (even though it's short for "Yvonne" rather than "Evonne") and can't settle for whether to translate the name of Yuna and Brin's race as "little/small folk", "dwarves" or "gnomes", so in that one single point they don't keep the terminology consistent from one chapter to the next (since the setting is inspired by

Spoiler

The Wizard of Oz

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, I would have gone with "munchkins" myself), but, again, those are just minor issues that don't really affect intelligibility, and, compared to other non-professional translations available on Novel Updates, it's not even enough to justify deducting even a single star in my evaluation.

TL;DR: I really like it, would definitely recommend it to anyone who wishes to read a light-hearted cavity-inducing GL romance with comedy, fantasy and ecchi elements, and can't wait to read more myself. It has its own unique flavour, while at the same time also resembling my personal favourites of the genre in all the best ways, all without ever falling into the realm of the predictable (which can't be easy, given the genre). Certainly exceeded my expectations and surprised me in all the best ways. 10 stars out of 10.

PS: This work is actually already fully translated on the translator's website, but you need to pay to read from a certain point onward; that said, they post a new free chapter here more or less daily, so if you don't want to pay for it, just wait a few more months and it should be fully available for free. But then again, if you have money to spare and the means to make safe online transactions, please consider supporting the translator. They didn't have to post online for free, or even take the time to translate at all, and they can't be making much money from this, so just a little tip as a token of appreciation for their efforts would probably be quite welcome.

EDIT: I was wrong, the premise is not unique at all, it looks like it's a quite common trope in Chinese "reincarnated as an otome game villainess" novels... well, I did say "AFAIK the premise itself is also quite unique", it's just that, up until this novel, I had only ever read Japanese and Korean LNs because I was unfairly prejudiced against Chinese LNs 😳😳😳 Now that I've overcome my prejudice, just a cursory search already turned up two or three other Chinese novels with a similar premise (even though I've never seen anything similar in J and K novels). Still, that doesn't change how unique the story direction is, and even if even that wasn't unique, it still wouldn't change how much I loved it anyway. Maybe 9.5/10 because the premise is actually tried and true rather than innovative and unique? <<less