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Untitled Villainess Otome, Rough Draft (Patreon)

Published:
2026-02-24 01:41:34
Edited:
2026-02-25 09:10:18
Imported:
2026-10

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Content

Alright, it's time for me to be done with this. I'm unhappy with it overall, and feel like it would be better with another 50K words, which is a sign that I've succumbed to a disease peculiar to webfiction writers. There's a chance that I come back to this, but I'm posting it now as the alternative to shelving it and maybe never touching it again. I think it's readable, and I'll avoid giving any kind of prejudicial post mortem. As a writing exercise, pretty fun, but as a final product, I keep thinking to myself "I could make this a lot better with some more changes that would take me a month". And this would be fine, but I don't really feel like putting in that work, and don't think that I will until I've had some space ... at which point it will be a whole thing to get back into the project.

I'm a little bit frustrated about doing it this way, but releasing something that was mostly a fun exercise for me and not in its final state does seem like it's probably the right call.

I have a link to a Google Doc, or the attached epub. This post is also "for sale" via Patreon for $5, I have no idea whether this is the correct price point or whether that's a good idea, but I guess live and learn. I'm also very reluctantly giving a comment link where you can do typo corrections, because I worry that otherwise people will just comment or @ me about them. I intend for a single sweep to catch anything in a week or so, but otherwise am mostly letting this lie and going full bore on AGARES, ideally finishing Book 1 this week.

This is a whole book, so will probably not be a one sitting read. There's a channel set up in the discord, #wisteria, or you'd prefer, you can go to my not-often-used subreddit, /r/alexanderwales and make a discussion post there. On writing this, I've realized that there are no chapter numbers, so I've gone back and added those in for the sake of discussion, but these are not necessarily sensible-sized chunks of word count.

Comments

Michael Scire

This is some of your best work, incredibly good stuff.

N

Just finished reading this. Took me like 6 hours. You made the right call releasing this, even as a rough draft. I certainly enjoyed it.

Kevin Vermeer

I disagree. I'm also grateful for the release, I enjoy the concept and the setting is kind of fun, and I also think that AW sometimes holds himself to an unnecessarily high standard and is too judgemental of his own work. But Untitled Villainess Otome is not his best work by a long shot! The story that any one person might call his best work is up for debate: I think Worth The Candle is probably AW's magnum opus, and certainly wins the title if word count has any weight. This Used To Be About Dungeons is a much more polished fun/cozy story. Thresholder, Dark Wizard of Donkerk, and Glimwarden have (IMO) more interesting worldbuilding. Metropolitan Man, Instruments of Destruction, and Branches on the Tree of Time all made me think in ways that this fun idea did not demand. The setting and perspective of UVO are unique, but AGARES is even more unique (if incomplete), and I'm excited for that to be the next focus.

Nexidava

I enjoyed it a lot! The pacing of the ending felt choppy in some way I can't quite describe, but I really did enjoy the themes and the payoff. I saw both halves of the twist coming, but not, somehow, their synthesis, and was very tickled by it. Overall, very glad you released it rather than letting it languish. It's a rare gem, from my perspective.

Beep

I think the choppiness came from Emily not really ruminating or processing the ending. It kind of feels like it's washing over her because most of the story has her speaking as the narrator, so we get to see her thoughts. Toward the end, we get less of that, so while her reactions imply more thoughts than the text is letting on, it feels like she's just sort of skipping from thing to thing a bit. The problem is, I'm not sure the story would improve if we got more of her thoughts here. It might help the pacing, but I'm not sure it would be beneficial otherwise

Nexidava

I think you hit the nail on the head, yeah. The benefit to pacing and closure would be significant, but I agree it would probably make it harder to reveal the ending at the right moment.

Beep

Fantastic, love how your writing always makes me say "wow, what a mediocre person. I am just like them". Very human. While I really liked Thresholder's "sometimes, you just don't grow and continue being kind of subpar" attitude, but it's also nice to see flawed people succeed in growing. Gives me hope for myself.

Cryptic Cryptid

This is honestly the best thing I have read in awhile. I was having a rough day, but this made it a lot better. I finished it an hour ago and I am still going back to re-read some segments of the story.

MrHrulgin

Aw, that was really sweet. I'm glad you released it.

Caleb Biddulph

Amazing! It was in fact a one sitting read.

Putnam

You missed the "some of" making this reply, I'm afraid

M

you're way too self-critical. this was very nice to read.

iridium248

That was great, but I do feel that the second half from the reveal onwards was a lot weaker than the first bit.

patreonizing

Happy you released this, it was worth every minute I spent reading. Could have been a one-sitting read if not distracted by other responsibilities; the second half I ended up trading sleep for to binge, since it has that classic AW "hurtling towards Scylla and Charybdis" flavour that the endings of most works to. Wouldn't have sat right to just go to bed in the middle of the deadly trials. Yeah, it's rough, yeah, I'm not really sure how you'd polish it into a Professional Book (the setting is weird, the...sociocultural aspects are ten kinds of Pr69lematic, the symbolism is didactically heavy-handed). But hell if it wasn't a fun romp anyway. It's also fascinating to see the writing muscles being stretched by trying out very different protags from the typical; not the first time for a female lead, or even particular proclivities, but having them be so fundamentally ordinary is interesting indeed. No mark of destiny, no god-tier powers (I do like that the magic is notably inferior, though the angle of "just murderhobo through the problems" isn't seriously explored), minimal use of anachronistics. Foreknowledge of the game kind of mirrors Joon's, but can't be employed nearly as effectively, since things go off-script so quickly and there's an actively adversarial second player. Do think the maid is a dog that doesn't bark though. Definitely had potential for shipping, in a mirror of the main relationship, with attendant tensions to the unnamed beau. I found this to be an ongoing tension that never really pays off...despite the plot importance, actually diving in and exploring the nuances of human relations is just way outside scope of the setting (contradictory too: legal precedent but also stigmatized but also celebrated at the ceremory), and possibly the story itself. Or maybe this is just another level of symbolism, that despite nominally being the proximate cause of all this trouble, despite the constant invocations of "we need to have a Serious Talk", it just...doesn't really happen. Not sure how I felt that by the end, the protag still wasn't really comfortable with the B-word, not without tons of caveats. That's like Perry levels of failing obvious self-introspection when the entire plot is contrived to shove it in your face.

Amit Levy

The communication issues still felt a bit silly, but better than the standard for the genre. Didn't feel like a draft, felt like a book. You could put it on Kindle Unlimited

PlanarFreak

I thought it was great! I was hooked by the 0th draft and this 1st draft really, really delivered. As you said, it feels 90 or 95% done - it hits all the key points and with very good writing. It's unfortunate you don't think it's worth the effort to bring it up to your standards, but I still think it's wonderful to have been brought to life. My only comment is that I totally thought the 4th ritual was headed somewhere else, given the hints that were dropped. It's really minor but seemed like there was a theme forming and I can't believe the pattern wasn't completed. Well, that's life for ya, you don't always get all the ducks in a row.