- #1
Spoiler
Dropping this because I find the ML insufferable. He misunderstands the MC all the time and creates problems for the MC because of his own lack of critical thinking skills & inflated sense of self-importance, then expects MC to be grateful & kiss his ass whenever he saves MC from the trouble that he himself got the MC into. After reading so many selfless, devoted, doting MLs and badass black-bellied yandere MLs, this ML just comes off as annoying & lame to me.
[collapse]Also the pacing is off, the ML & MC have interacted with each other loads of times, and yet their romance doesn't even feel like it has started yet because they barely even know each other despite having interacted loads of times? And it's not like there's a lot of stuff going on in the main plot either, 32 chapters in and the political shenanigans have barely started.IMO, a slow romance in this kind of setting needs tiny little meaningful interactions & emotional moments between the characters to feel like it's actually going somewhere. Either that, or lots of action, drama, intrigue, mystery, something, anything to keep things interesting and give the story a sense of momentum. Don't just pad out the story with boring filler and use "well it's a slow romance" as an excuse for bad pacing lmao.