I think this story is might all be about perspective.
Absolutely this. And one thing I've noticed (and commented on before) is that we get to see
exactly what Judith sees - there's never any breaking out of her perspective, except very occasionally when we're seeing her hearing about someone else's perspective or memory (and thus Judith's imagination showing it).
I've long thought this was a deliberate choice, one that puts the reader in a position where we can see that there's lots of stuff going on outside Judith's sphere without ever actually getting to see them. It's also a choice that's now put the readers in a position where we have to ask ourselves "Is Judith a reliable narrator?" She's certainly not
consciously unreliable (though that's a rare way of doing an unreliable narrator - they're almost never knowingly lying to the reader), and she's always seemed very direct and honest and reliable, but now? Finding out that Judith wasn't isekaied, that she was reincarnated after a full life, as a child . . . that her past didn't seem to match the novel very well, and then suddenly it does, and then this?
The best kind of unreliable narrator is someone who's simply honest and straightforward in telling things as they see them - so honest and straightforward that you never think to question whether their perspective on reality is accurate or not. Judith's view of things has been so totally dominant in this story that it's never even seemed like an individual's perspective, but the fact that it
is Judith's perspective just got dropped on our heads like a tonne of bricks . . .
The 'novel' says og!Judith was an abuser and the highlights the festival as neglectful caretaker. But now we know it's not the case....
Yeah, and this is done really well - as I said in my comment on the last chapter I couldn't see how this reincarnated Judith would turn into the abusive aunt of the novel . . . and then there it was, not only plausible, but quite convincing (and heartbreaking).
I don't know, this reveal seems real similar to when we get to know time-travelled!Luca sees his uncle as a cold duty-bound person with no emotions cause of how young!Luca's POV of that assassination attempt is very different from Judith's 'novel' POV (chpt 87).
From a young kid's POV, he might not have understood how much og!Judith had to work for them, only knowing a seemingly kind uncle coming for him and bringing him to a completely way richer place, away from his seemingly neglectful aunt. Not sure what's up with the og!Judith harassing what's his name for more money, maybe that's og!Judith coming to her senses that she basically just sold Luca off in a fit of angry and was trying to get Luca back.
One of the big questions I've had is why Luca at the start of this timeline was so insistent on staying with Judith. It always felt a bit off, and learning he was a regressor didn't actually resolve it - if the Judith of his original timeline was the abusive guardian of the novel, why would he be so insistent on staying with her?
This . . .
may answer that, finally - if his original timeline was the one that Judith just remembered/relived, then he must have been aware that she was struggling to bring him up as best she could, even though she wasn't happy. And possibly the rest of his life before he regressed taught him that people can love you and care for you even when they're not happy, so he was able to find a different perspective on how his childhood went, and how his aunt actually felt about him.
Really curious about what exactly is the 'novel'. Og!Judith is now confirmed to be the same isekai!Judith, just from birth instead of remembering as a grown adult (did the time-travelling wish power thing displace Judith's memories? Causing amnesia? Causing her to forget her life as Judith all the way back to her previous life's death? Making her assume she replaced og!Judith when she is og!Judith). Rereading chpt 88 and the 'novel' that Judith remembers was hinted to be off. Now og!Judith who does have memories of her previous world, says there's no actual novel???
I'm still on the fence as to how the timeline Judith has remembered fits with the current timeline - there are still too many things that leave me going "Hmmmm" . . . Well, I say "too many things", but in practise they all boil down to how Luca's regression and Judith's regression/reincarnation fit together - are they linked, and if so how? And if they're not linked, how on earth does this hang together?
But I think we'll get an idea about some of this when we know which Judith it is that just woke up.