While i do agree that this particular story is very, very well written, which is the only reason my rating isn't 1/10, I cannot simply glance over two glaring issues in it, those being the two out of three Male leads and the MC herself.
Penelope, the main Heroine or at least that's her new name since she's a reincarnator, goes and buys a slave. She doesn't fight the slavers, doesn't trick them, just contributes to the slave trade after a couple very stern mental words about hte prospect. Sure, she wants to "Free" the guy (which does not magically remove the money out of the slavers' pockets), since he's one of the male leads, but the guy then promptly gets so horny for her that he wants to be her slave forever. This isn't a voluntary change. Penelope actually works on him with that goal in mind, functionally grooming this person in a lower position of power into a yandere. Later in the story, slight spoilers here, he is taken advantage of by the story's twist villain, and is promptly discarded by Penelope for that fact, causing him to mentally break down as he's been groomed into loving her so much he can no longer fathom existing without her love or the literal slave collar around his neck. Not only is this disgusting behavior from MC's perspective, she's also rather unapologetic about this.
Speaking of positions of power! The person who Penelope ends up with in the end out of the whole cast of men, once again, spoiler warning, is the crown prince. If you liked the mental abuse part of Fifty shades of gray, this will be right up your alley.The crown prince is an enormous narcissist. This isn't me overanalyzing the character, that's literally how he beahaves all throughout the series. A wacky series of events leads to Penelope effectively rejecting him without him even getting so much as a hint of loving feelings for her, which leads this narcissist to go absolutely batshit insane about her. After all, he is the best and cannot simply allow a mere woman to defy him. In the next chapters he commits several felonies to prove to himself that this is the case. Actual retellings of his crimes, and therefore spoilers, follow.
He forcefully kisses her, four times as of latest chapter, twice while she is unconscious and could not have given consent. It's not a peck on the cheek or anything, it's got full on lips to lips contact. He blackmails her with her secrets to have a dance with him during his birthday banquet, after all the narcissist cannot allow himself to be rejected during his own banquet. Penelope is clearly uncomfortable with this, so she runs away after a bit of shuffling her legs around. The prince of course chases her and then proposes to her. Here the author suddenly makes Penelope's feelings for this man who has done nothing but abuse her blossom out of nowhere, before she decides to check his affinity meter and sees the fact that it's low, coming to the conclusion that he is not proposing out of love but out of his narcissistic strife to own her just "fondness" (she is too oblivious of a person). The crown prince later demands she sees him even though she's ill, even though the illness is fake.A little after that he wants to once again be let into her estate, retaliating for not being let in (by Penelope's orders) by knocking out all the guards and breaking into Penelope's greenhouse, proudly announcing that fact. Oh and at some point he also puts a magical tracker on her and doesn't tell her. Later, when Penelope discovers that fact, she calls him out as the stalker that he is, but the moment is played off as if this invasion of he privacy isn't such a big deal.
After all that, the Crown Prince Callisto harasses his way into her heart, with the out of nowhere feelings blossoming pretty much on both sides.
It is okay when a Male lead is flawed. It is okay when a Male lead is mean to the Female lead. Yet something needs to come of it. A change in the ML's character. Recognition of his flaws. AN effort to fix them, successful or unsuccessful. A single gods damn apology. Yet we receive nothing of the sort.
In the end, I can only assume that the author considers that there is such a thing as "Slavery for the greater good", thinks that mentally abusing and manipulating a person into submission is okay and any crime, even the big R one is okay to do without consent as long as it's done out of love, though we have concrete confirmation from the affinity meter that the first 2 out of 4 kisses were very much not even that.
(+4)
(-3)
