I only made it to ch3, but the stuff with Pop gave me serious ick. First of all, he looks too young, and nobody clarifies how old he is before shit goes down. Major concern (and the axe) just from that, but his whole backstory is just presented as being really vulnerable.
Apparently OG duchess picked him up as an orphan, named him, and they clearly had a weird/sketchy relationship. We don’t know the relative ages, but it just felt like an easy situation to take advantage of, even if Poh is technically on board. Just a bit too much potential from grooming, not to mention the power imbalance even if they are the same age.
Even if he is a reasonable age, it’s just as much of an issue to readers that he isn’t really drawn to look like he’s a reasonable age. And yeah, new MC didn’t have anything to do with that, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s taking advantage of an existing dynamic that is clearly not right.
Just ick all around, so I’m out
Oh yeah, the age thing is a major question and I’m not a huge fan of the ‘draw them younger looking’ art style but I was just complaining from a storytelling perspective since I just don’t see why it was mentioned at all if the author didn’t continue, develop, or even explain anything around the event. It doesn’t seem to hold any type of weight to the story, so I could t compute the reason for its existence since it now makes it hard to understand the characters’ personalities every time they’re in a scene together. I was just being critical of the author’s storytelling skill.
Wait so why did Poh have sex with her in the beginning (doesn’t really seem like that happened before the elixir)? More importantly, why haven’t any more scenes of him bathing her or anything come up again?? The previous chick’s personality don’t really come off as the type to have sex with him in the first place, but if it’s happened once I don’t get why he wouldn’t ask for it again like he did the first time (his personality is the type to do that - unless the change in her character is that big of a turn off for him??)?? That plot point is seeming like it was either a mistake or wasn’t thought out and now the author is just ignoring it happened. It just feels like they’re really pushing Ian now when they kicked off with the wrong dude or something (maybe they thought of doing a reverse harem initially?).