What villainess am I?

Author's note 7 - Victory and defeat

So I planned to post this a while back; I had been in a competition for martial arts, and after that I had just been cooked out of it, I feel bad that I have left all of this on the table, but life has just been weighing me down. I think I'll post a chapter tomorrow or the day after, but I will get it out. Sorry if the stuff past this sounds weird, I just left it as is and it's brain stuff just being written as I think about it.

To elaborate, I feel I am restrictive in my writing and wonder if it bothers you guys, if you have no strong opinion, or if you'd like to see it used more. I know that using first person, and especially using a child I restricted myself heavily with my ability to tell a story and didn't lean into the reason you probably picked this up, the romance. While I plan to establish more of a romantic partner(s) that may appear or disappear from our MC's preview I wanted to show the realities of reincarnation, magic that isn't (usually) given freely, and to have a magic system that has a cost people don't see in games and stories. 

An example I use as a yardstick is Edelgard from Three Houses (and Byleth as well); semi-spoiler stuff ahead so I hope it's not too much of a bother, but at the end, you learn Edelgard was experimented on to give her a second crest. I won't elaborate much on it to keep it a surprise for those who haven't played the game.

But with that, I wondered what people, especially a cult, might do if given a magical power related to your gods that have tangible power in the world, and what they might do to ensure they aren't attacked or abused by stronger forces. How religious rites of passage would incorporate such procedures, and the damage it causes. A large focus is on the "soul" manifested in our protagonist's vision and the cost of such power. 

In theory, it will further be expanded upon, and the fact we follow the Villainess (some changes from the "game" version) should explain why I find these ideas especially intriguing, as our MC has already sacrificed something for power. Not just the damage of power, but also the psychological damage that dying causes, especially since we rarely see the idea explored. Strangely most protagonists I see are apathetic, or highly joyous to have died and be in a new world, even going so far as to forget about that world entirely outside of exploiting knowledge; it seems almost reductive not to use this concept to explore the ideas of death and life, and what it does to a person, especially when they know their life is cheap yet expensive at the same time. You had one shot, and now you have two, what will you do? What would YOU do?

I may be overthinking things, but I find ideas like that interesting. While these are the main ideas I want to, and enjoy, exploring I also want to explore how people heal after tragedy and the efforts it takes to pull through events that change you fundamentally. No one could ever go through the same experience as our MC (at least not in the same way) even with resurrection magic, as it changes how people view life altogether. Working through that, and returning to a life that is, while not normal, at least stops the person from self-destruction is one of my ideas running around in my head.

Another idea I'd like to explore, and why it takes so long to write something up for me, is what normal life changes to with magic. How does one look at household objects in a world where MP is measurable? How does money factor? How does it change technology, and most crucially, how can I avoid just making the modern day but with magic? If MP isn't measurable, or it is expensive to find out what does a populace do? 

I think about dynamics like this a lot, maybe too much, but I hope it gives an authentic sense that the world isn't just who we are watching, but a snippet of a world. One of the reasons I ask for a critique or just ideas is because it helps me better understand the questions I might not be asking. It's a fine balance, a crude allegory is the "where/when does your character go to the restroom?" in urban settings, a bathroom is almost expected, but in the wilderness, middle age/medieval times, it wasn't a regular convenience people had access to; so do you explain how the character "relives" themselves, or do you let it go and keep the decency at a negligible cost of story "realism."

I'd pick the latter, but some of the things I try to consider, like writing a letter or sending a delegation of people, are what I sacrifice to use the thing. Teleportation is a classic example, right up there with Gravity manipulation and "Shadow" magic. I shudder when I think that shadow magic could be a good idea: quick hint, it can't be without severely restricting how it works. 

Anyway, yeah, that is my tangent rant thing on my work. I realized it got weird after a bit, but to give a summary:
I want to make the story realistic for the setting (plausible by magic).

I like to explore heavy subjects