Honestly 2.5, I was really looking forward to the story and the premise seemed very interesting. I am speaking from a completely new audience's perspective. The translations seem to be high-quality, but honestly the language doesn't go together in a way that is sensible. So either the original work had shit organizational dialogue, or there's something the translation isn't delivering. I may have been able to enjoy it more if I could understand the complete original meaning. Just from point of the story though, I don't really like it either. The character personalities are fairly flat or weirdly built, the heroine is smart n bold but her actions seemed forced and irrealistic sometimes. The main thing that bothers me, is the way the author portrays it to be, that Yurgel has nothing lovable about him except for looks and everyone loves him. The heroine protagonist is there to counter this, she supposedly is supposed to be the representative of 'not falling in love w someone for no apparent reason', but the ironic thing is the author can't resist the temptation of arranging all the attractive characters to fall for her(also with not a lot of apparent reason either). This sort of deconstructs the whole point of the story, which should have been showing how everyone is lovable, not because of their looks, but because of what they do, etc. However, having a whole hoard of hot ml's fall for her doesn't really help the cause, because 1) I'm ok if a few fall in love with her(like Sir Mio, cuz he actually spent time w her) but EVERYONE who is hot falling for her is just a hot trash trope; 2) it elevates the heroine to somebody special when in that world's supposed reality she is supposed to be 'plain' and ordinary. But for some reason she stands out among alllll the other maids for these ml's to fall in love with. 3) the heroine has a bit of a ....hero complex, shall we call it? The author is constantly trying to express that not just the main characters are lovable, and that other side characters are just as important, and that the plot should make sense etc. BUT THE PLOT OF THIS STORY DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE MOST TIMES. And also, if ur writing a story, and reading a story, there's gonna be main character and side characters, whaddya fucking expect?? ANyways, the (original) author seems to mind very much that they are not the 'main character' of their life and their world, and I feel like that mentality has dripped into how they built this world. If we look at the storyline, it's really just about 'Cinderella' getting loved by all these hot ml's(while she is either conveniently oblivious or 'not interested') and rising to a peak in life. Which, would have been enjoyable if the author had thoroughly acknowledged this point, but becomes cringey and a pain in the ass when they're trying to pose the heroine as someone who 'effortlessly' makes ppl fall in love w her, just like Yurgel(not saying Yurgel isn't a hot trash tho). :< The end of my spiel.
Surviving As A Maid