HyouganeMiyagi

Another yaoi trash where they're trying to tell you that a boytoy or girltoy is more important than family, that they should be always be treated kindly, given endless benefit of the doubt and accomodated no matter how grossly defective they may be but you should subject everyone else, even your family, to the harshest, most unrelenting scrutiny. They're trying to indoctrinate you with the poison that family is always the problem, never you and definitely never your pet, and being yourself is about abandoning your family and putting a stranger over everything and everyone else just because you have the hots for them. This is another one of those garbage romances that is polluted with the idea that you stick with your hoe (note: hoe is meant to gender neutral here) no matter what but only keep family and friends around if they're perfect at all times. These people act as if anything you do for friends and family is a favour but a lowly sexual relationship has a natural claim to your utmost care and effort. When any healthy, intelligent person would instinctively know that it's supposed to be the other way around.

One of the very few areas that I concede that less advanced societies are better than us in is the understanding of interpersonal relationships. They understood that kinships were the most important and essential human bonds and gave them the position of primacy. With friendships and alliances following right behind. Sexual relationships were looked down upon and treated as a frivolity as they should be. They had it right. This mate control, parasocial stalker level
insanity should be limited to the shamed and shadowed corners of culture but unfortunately, it's overflowed out of the fringes and polluted even the mainstream.

God, is that girl annoying! I am supposed to root for someone who is nearly an adult yet doesn't know how to treat people like humans? "I didn't have parents" is not a good enough excuse for acting the way she does. Buddy, you had everything else. Until recently, you were the only female offspring that the duke had. You were the tentative heir and all the privileges that came with it. You never had a competition threatening your future until now. So, why are you such a bitch to everyone! I can understand your aggression against the other candidate and the fact that you're on edge but you are old enough to know right from wrong, to know not to treat other people the way you do. You are old enough to control your impulses and to not abuse the people serving you. Why is the story writing trying to potray her as the victim when she is out there degrading, assaulting and abusing the servants for no good reason but also, presenting the other potential heir as the embodiment of evil for acting antagonistic towards the MC when she does clearly have a reason for it?

This is why I hate this breed of self-insert fanfiction that has oversaturated all genres of manga and related art forms. They struggle to remain consistent with themselves even for a single chapter. These works are worse than Mary Sue. This is Mary's mom, Deux ex machina, who earlier used to stay in the background taking care of everything for her dear princess but apparently she wanted her own time to shine. This MC does not make a compelling hero protagonist. She needs to be an antagonist who either gets reformed after an encounter with the protagonist or learns their place once and for all.

There's a very good reason why there exists the time-honored tradition of these flawed characters only being deuteragonists, tritagonists, secondary characters, arc antagonist, main villain and such, but rarely a hero. Even the stories that do feature them as a protagonist uses them to teach a lesson to readers to not be like the protagonist. Because they just don't work. Presenting them as the POV "positive" character in a hero vs villain story just makes the inconsistency in logic blatantly obvious. Such stories should not, then, expect the reader to cheer for such a protagonist while simultaneously booing the supposed villain, when there's hardly a difference between the two. Often the villain is more sympathetic.

But, no, centuries of literary tradition was stupid, according to a certain generation of people, for not writing their protagonists as OP, infallible gods that must be worshipped unquestioningly. Character growth, to them, is so uncool. So, they decided to correct the course of literature and ended up suffocating the whole genre with their chuunibyou fantasies.

Also, the setting is just so hilarious that I can't look past it. Isn't the power transfer thing just like primogeniture? It has never crossed the minds of a single royal family that they needed to kill all their other kids once the tentative heir safely survived to adulthood and produced the next generation of potential heirs. Why the hell do they need to kill the other daughters once one of them manifests the power? Nothing makes sense here. If the duke only needs one daughter to manifest the power and then, must kill the rest, what does he keep the son around for? Since only daughters can inherit the mystical power, and you are supposed to kill the ones who don't, what are they having sons for? Shouldn't they be killing male offsprings at birth, then? Is it that only males in the family can produce female offsprings capable of inheriting the power? If not, why kill non-mystical daughters and not sons? Even evilness should make some logical sense, come on.

Given this ridiculous background, I even understand the duke not caring about the MC. He is not exactly a father to either of those girls, yet. He's just a boss (more like a master) who happens to be genetically related to them. I sympathize as well. Given that these people are expected by some higher power to kill the spares, it just makes sense to treat female offsprings as a tool, until the heir has been decided, and only then, adopt the winner as your child. After all, you shouldn't mix up your pets and your livestock or else you'd end up with neither.