Divorcing My Tyrant Husband

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In short:
Are you tired of the overdone villainess story trend of the "shitty husband/boyfriend/fiancé that's dumb, useless and pathetic" ? Read this.
Do you like a shitty husband being dumb, useless and pathetic for some cathartic purposes that's so common to come across in this genre ? Don't read this.

I will say it right here, the webtoon isn't revolutionary. Like most webtoons of the genre, it's covered in hypocrisy where the antagonist doing something is wrong, but when the protagonist, or the "good" love interest, does the exact same thing, it's magically ok or girl boss power. Like most webtoons of the genre, the visuals are ... uninspired, most main characters being interchangeable with characters of other franchises due to little variety in haircuts, faces and clothes (though at least the shitty husband, having darker skin, stands somewhat out). Like most webtoons of the genre, the love interests are paper thin, falling in love with the protagonist just because the plot says so, without having any depth or any agency aside from their raging shallow love for the protagonist. Like most webtoons of the genre, several side and background characters love the protagonist because "she's amazing and badass", representing how the audience should feel about our protagonist, instead of being written as actual characters.

But if you're a fan of the genre, none of this should rebuke you.

And yet, I ended up binging the chapters that came out so far, because, among all those stereotypical flaws plaguing the genre, this webtoon achieves to stand out simply by making the shitty husband not dumb, useless and pathetic. He actually can counter our protagonist in ways that create conflict and obstacles for her to overcome. Something too many webtoons of the genre don't have, as most webtoons of the genre focus on making their protagonist as successful as possible with as little obstacles as possible for the sake of self-insert(ism) and catharsis.

Another good point I can mention is the pacing as no arcs are padded or lack development.

By chapter 74, most love interests aren't fleshed out, but may become eventually interesting at some point as every single one of them seem to have the same obsessive and possessive traits that could end up biting the protagonist in the rear. The exception is the shitty husband, and while he's indeed shitty, he actually IS a character that stands on his own as much as the protagonist, which is a nice change of pace. The female rival also seems to be taking an unconventional path, but I won't say more to avoid spoilers. If this indeed ends up doing something different than in the vast majority of cases, then hopefully, the other love interests will eventually become more than your usual basic paper thin "character".

Overall, whether you could find this webtoon interesting or not solely relies on how you would feel about reading a webtoon that focuses on the relationship between the protagonist and a shitty husband that is written as a character rather than as a joke, as so far most arcs focused on them.

I have read hundreds of Otome Isekai. I love the medium for all of its ups and downs. And with this experience I can tell you with only 18 chapters currently out that this Otome Isekai will not be enjoyable. In fact, it won't even be ironically good, it'll just be frustrating and kinda boring. I can see that this manwha is determined to take all the annoying Otome Isekai troupes and mush them together into one bland concoction.

Essentially the plot revolves around Korean girl who gets reincarnated as the mistreated empress of a novel. The emperor had a concubine who he loved and ... waited for the empress to die to make the concubine the empress. The concubine was the main character of the original novel. The FL now being the mistreated empress decides to act like a money hungry asshole to get the emperor to divorce her.

First of all, with the title "I will Divorce My Tyrant Husband" you can already tell that she's not going to divorce her husband because her husband will become suddenly interested in her newfound obnoxious behavior. I dislike the whole "oh she's so interesting now" troupe and the "he abused this person and didn't care before but now he's interested in me, so I'll get with him" troupe and this manhwa heavily plays into both of those. Within the first 18 chapters the ML already is getting interested in her newfound "interesting" behavior and the FL is already blushing over him despite confidently declaring in the first chapter that she wanted a divorce and would do anything to make it happen.

Also, what is it with FL's thinking that acting obnoxious will make the divorce go better. The guy is an obvious dipshit and will revel in your reputation being ruined (or I guess enjoy it (get turned on????) because now he wants her). It's just a really frustrating plot contrivance to make a character be bitchy and throw things without the actual character being responsible for her actions because "she's just acting that way to get him to divorce her". Don't kid yourselves, both you and I know that she's never actually going to get a divorce.

Then we have the FL of the original novel, the lover of the emperor, the innocent concubine. As you probably already guessed if you're familiar with this genre at all the concubine is a white lotus character. She seems innocent and naive but is hiding her scheming self underneath using her perceived innocence to trick the others around her. Why? Why is she like this? I get needing an antagonist for the FL (who is acting obnoxious through this whole time because of the trying to get a divorce thing) to contrast with. One pretending to be obnoxious but a decent person and the other pretending to be innocent but scheming... but I mean it's just another annoying troupe. As soon as she walked into the story, I knew exactly what kind of character she was going to be... an annoyance. And the ML apparently knows too!? He says that she's just like him, hiding her true self (but I mean he doesn't hide his true self he's a massive asshole to everyone) and that's why he liked her over the empress but now that the empress is being "interesting" he's interested in her and is cold to the concubine.

The concubine is all angry about this and try the innocent act while getting others around her to humiliate the empress to make her look good. This of course always fails because since the empress is acting obnoxious, she just flips a table or kicks someone or yells and then walks out. And then the ML uses this to get closer to her so the newspaper will print about their good relationship!?!? Infuriating. If you're going to have a white lotus character, at least make her awful enough to be interesting. The best white lotus characters are unrealistically evil, that makes the overused troupe fun (or at least have some kind of reasoning or twist). You can tell that something will happen to reveal the concubine's true nature to the world and get her alienated in some way resolving the perceived wall between the FL and the ML... except the FL wants to run away from the ML... too bad the author gave the ML the largest net in the world because she's going to 100% end up with the asshole after the concubine gets alienated.

As of now this manhwa is the concubine just doing random annoying petty things to get the ML's attention, the ML getting disinterested and only focusing on the FL being obnoxious to the concubine because she doesn't want the ML's attention. It's a vicious cycle! A bland vicious cycle!

I love Otome Isekai and it just annoys me to see more shit like this being made. Ugh.