After hitting an unexpected doom flag, Katarina is exiled from Sorcier!
Starting her life in a new country proves more difficult than she thought, especially when she can't find work on a farm. However, she finds a glimmer of hope in the form of a job opening as a maid for a wealthy family in her new country... but things aren't quite as they seem.
Katarina faces a challenge she never expected when she discovers that the woman who hired is actually the villainess of a different otome game! Now, Katarina must do her best to help her new employer dodge doom flags of her own, all the while wondering if she may be able to find some way back home....
Living Loving Maid
is an active multi-chapter My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! fanfic by BogStandardOtaku, no relation to his other series Mirrorverse (My Next Life as a Villainess), that explores what happens when Katarina gets exiled to another otome game's setting, and decides to take a more active role in preventing the villainess's doom this time around, especially as she grows closer to said villianess, one Malicia Baudelaire, and slowly brings the prickly girl out of her shell.
Living Loving Maid contains examples of:
- All-Loving Hero: Katarina Claes, as always. She manages to get Malicia to open up about herself, saves a maid from being falsely accused of thievery, save another from being fired over a mistake, and gain the admiration of many commoners and several of the nobility, including 2 of the Ritallian Princes. Downplayed however compared to her canon counterpart, as her status as a maid instead of as a duchess means most nobles and even some other of the other maids don't even bother to give her the time of day, let alone allow her to act freely.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Love's Uprising Villainess Malicia Baudelaire starts off as a prickly and bratty noblewoman who could not care less for the commoners in her land. While in-game she escalates into abusing her maid Clara to ridiculous degrees, here Katarina manages to slowly win her over, allowing herself to open up to others and take sympathy for the plight of the commoners.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Malicia constantly envisions her role model, Katarina Claes, as a suave, yet elegant noblewoman who can handle any situation with ease, and thus tries her best to emulate her during stressful social situations. This image stems from rumors spread about Katarina's exploits from across the Sorcier Strait, and is also a common view amongst most of the Ritallian nobility. She is completely unaware of the fact that her new maid Rina Clayton is both Katarina Claes, and that she has about as much elegance as that of a hungry monkey.
- Inciting Incident: Instead of in canon where Maria confronts Sirius, leading to her kidnapping and Katarina's dark magic induced coma, here Katarina inadvertently stops Maria from seeking Sirius out before accidentally confronting him herself, leading to him telling her to go far away using his dark magic and a doom-flag addled Katarina to leave the country, kicking this whole plot into motion.
- Schizo Tech: While still technologically low compared to Japan, Ritallia possesses a much higher standard of technology compared to Sorcier, with most buildings outfitted with electrical lights, automobiles roaming the street (much to Katarina's horror owing to being a victim of Running Over the Plot), and the Commoner Revolution being able to employ radios, loudspeakers, and guns. This seems to be propagated by a mysterious backer known only as the Prof, and helped along by the fact Ritallia possesses much fewer mages compared to Sorcier, necessitating their technological advancement compared to their more magical neighbor.
- Shout-Out: The pseudonym Rina Clayton is a reference to another one of BogStandardOtaku's fanfic, pleased to meet you (hope you guess my name), where Katarina uses it to hide her identity from Maria.
- The Plague: A disease called Etran Flu is spreading throughout the population of Ritallia, affecting both commoners and the nobility, and has no known cure. The King falling ill to this becomes a major catalyst for the commoners to revolt, as the nobility are left to squabble amongst themselves.
