Manhwa Recommendation: I Thought It’s a Common Possession or I Thought It Was a Common Isekai Story

“Everybody knows the dice are loaded, Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, Everybody knows that the war is over, Everybody knows that the good guys lost, Everybody knows the fight is fixed, The poor stay poor and the rich get rich, That's how it goes...” -Concrete Blonde’s song “Everybody Knows”

“No, they have to make the choice of their own free will. Otherwise, the system doesn't work. It's like the Harbinger. It's this creepy old fuck, practically wears a sign, "You will die." Why do we put him there? The system. They have to choose to ignore him, and they have to choose what happens in the cellar. Yeah, we rig the game as much as we need to, but in the end, they don't transgress...” -Sitterson, the movie “the Cabin in the Woods”

Dialogue
"You've killed more people as an afterthought."
"I've never killed anyone."
"You use your powers to compel murder."
"Oh, tomato, to-mato." -Jessica Jones and the mind controlling villain Kilgrave

“The fact of the matter is, if you haven’t been in an abusive relationship, you don’t really know what the experience is like. Furthermore, it’s quite hard to predict what you would do in the same situation. I find that the people most vocal about what they would’ve done in the same situation often have no clue what they are talking about – they have never been in the same situation themselves. By invalidating the survivor’s experience, these people are defending an image of themselves that they identify with strength, not realizing that abuse survivors are often the strongest individuals out there. They’ve been belittled, criticized, demeaned, devalued, and yet they’ve still survived. The judgmental ones often have little to no life experience regarding these situations, yet they feel quite comfortable silencing the voices of people who’ve actually been there.” -Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare

I can do this one without spoilers, except the items in chapter 1. I’ll ask that others not put spoilers in the comments
This Manhwa opens with what is often the dream of many romantic women. It’s a beautiful wedding that could only be afforded by the upper nobility or the richest of the rich. It’s also quickly shown to be a façade, its undertones are both mean and corrupted robbing the event of any happiness while the heroine tries to keep up a brave face before a hostile public.

Even if Chapter 1 opens with a wedding with its metaphorical meaning of the start of a new life.  It also cuts to a flashback making it clear that the female lead was just pushed down the stairs as she was murdered by her own brother.  She is not a random victim of truck-kun.   She is a victim of an abusive South Korean family that ignored her, used her, and then killed her without remorse.

With the world of the trap, Suna Choi has reincarnates into a villainess named Edith Rigelhoff.  For fans of Isekai, this sounds like a typical set up for what is a favorite genre; however, it is anything but that.

There is no just make better choices and everything will be fine plotline.   This is a fixed rat maze of a game where multiple human beings are deprived of free will and agency.

She isn’t the first person to become reincarnated as this villainess.  She is the thirteenth.

Twelve other women were reborn only to be ritualistically murdered by the plotline and rule restrictions of this world.    This is not a romantic setting, this is a killing field.

Even the body she inhabits is different.   Edith is not a typical villainess, she herself was an abused child, used as nothing more than more than a disposable tool for her family’s goals.  

I’ve seen that multiple reviewers skim this work and miss the point.   This is a world where you can’t even reveal you are the actual victim of abuse.    You have a part you are being marionetted to play.    In the end that part will end with your death.

The irony of course being that in this situation, the reviewers themselves would have shared the same fate of the Twelve women that came before Suna Choi.   They would have been set up for an inescapable slaughter before even reading the psychological horror story they had found themselves in.

No one knows your pain.   No one cares.  There focus is on a predetermined point, much like an audience following a stage magician’s craft.

So, one of the biggest questions anyone can ask of any work is does the antagonist have a realistic motivation for doing this.   The answer is simple.   Yes, they do.

In fact, if you are a student of history, there are monstrous men and women that have bathed in blood in every major society throughout human history chasing the same goal.   Many of their names are infamous even unto today.

Given the power of the author in the world presented and given the maximum that absolute power corrupts absolutely, there is one disturbing conclusion, even though we are talking about the lives of real people here.   Given the nature of those that are sociopathic and psychopathic, what happens here isn’t a random act.   It’s something that is almost inevitable if someone like that is given that degree of godlike power and the motivation to achieve their goal.

The only fly in the ointment is that the victim this time is one fluent in the language of abuse and the extraordinary lengths one can go through to attempt to survive that horror.    This is an unknown factor the author did not account for.

In the end, one thing is certain.  This is not a common Isekai story.