Title: Writing My Male Lead’s Happily Ever After

Author/Story: Lee Jiha (ORIGINAL STORY) and ANTSTUDIO (ADAPTATION)

Artist: ANTSTUDIO and Gaetteok

Rating: Gen to Teen (Violence)

Genre: Transmigration/Isekai, Romance, Fantasy

Hosted On: Tapas (ENG) , Kakao (KOR)

Official Link(s): English, Korean

Official Summary:

A madman with a tragic childhood and a disease that brings on insanity, destined to fall obsessively in love with the saintess of the holy nation… This was the male lead of the melodramatic novel I wrote. He is also the very person who kills Laria Sherwood, the villainess I possessed, and whom I must stay away from to survive… or so I thought, until I saw the terrible reality I created. I suppose, as the author, it wouldn’t hurt to teach him how to love, then leave right when the female lead appears, right? But will it be as easy as I thought?

My Thoughts:

I read a lot of webtoons and I’m gonna be real: few have stressed me out the way “Writing My Male Lead’s Happily Ever After” has.

As a creator who also writes fiction, I love putting my characters in bad and awkwrd situations. Junpei Is always struggling at levels beyond his canonical end in Jujutsu Kaisen. My stable of original characters are always dealing with a lot and their lives are hard. So I know that your characters are basically the best way to unpack your own trauma. However, what happens when you’re sucked into the world you’ve created and you’re expected to fix things for your favorite characters?

That’s what happens when the author now known as Laria Sherwood is sucked into the unfinished novel she started ages ago. She has to give her main characters a happy ending or die trying. Frankly, in her shoes, I would’ve died ages ago. The world that Laria has created is a devastating one. The main character of her novel, Grand Duke Nocturn Blackwell is plagued by fits of violent rage that leave people around him fearful. His adopted children are afraid of him because he keeps his distance and has a stern face. They’re being abused by the nanny who’s supposed to take care of them. Characters are subject to horrible child abuse that shapes their personalities and how they relate to the world around them. It’s hard.

Laria, attempting to abandon the family that mistreats her, applies for a maid position at the Blackwell manor. She saves the children from the abusive nanny twice over and gets the job after some trial and error. And she resolves that she’s going to break the cycle of violence and abuse, heal her traumatized male lead, and fix things so that everyone gets a happily ever after.

I think the moment I watched Laria realize that she needed to apply what she’d learned in her first life – as a mistreated child and then as a teacher – to her current life and push to fix the characters’ fractured relationships, I knew I was hooked. Because I wanted to root for Laria to succeed and fix this messed up world she created. I wanted to be excited for her, to shout as she and Nocturn developed their family and built a dreamy romance made stronger by their mutual respect for each other. And above all, the promise of Laria ending a cycle of abuse that’s plagued the Blackwells and Sherwoods for generations was too exciting to consider.

Add the contractual relationship and a fake engagement and everything is just delicious. The art is gorgeous, the characters are babes, I really love how everyone’s relationships develop. There are a couple twists evident that will be making Laria’s goals a lot harder than they were. I’m hoping that the ongoing second season will keep the energy of the first one because that was darn near perfect.

If you’ve read Writing My Male Lead’s Happily Ever After, what did you think?