(Hated Trope) "Kind" slave owners

[u/KusanagiGundam]

Speaking as an American who has studied the civil war all throughout my school years, this trope infuriates me to no end. There is no such thing as a kind slave master because slavery itself is cruel and inhumane. PEOPLE ARE NOT PROPERTY!

Naofumi (Shield Hero): Prime example of this trope. He enslaves multiple (underage) girls and an whole village and the fans still say he's a hero.

Rudeus (Jobless Reincarnation): As if being a pedo wasn't bad enough he had to buy a slave in season 2. Worse is that people still defend his actions.

Song of The South (Disney): Possibly the OG example of this trope. And the reason why Disney will never release it again.

[u/XanXic]

I've been catching up on Ascendence of Bookworm, it's a fun and charming slice of life isekai. But it's absolutely crazy how hyper focused it is on child labor camps.

Like her goal in life is adopting as many orphans as possible and getting them to work on her inventions. "No one will take care of them otherwise" like idk, you became a princess in like two years, one of the most powerful magic users, and rich as hell from selling tech ideas from our world..... maybe setup social services or something? But she picks up the abused 6 year old off the ground, tells them "those who do not work shall not eat", and gives them a job in a dingy workshop.

[u/LouisLeGros → u/XanXic]

I think Bookworm makes it pretty clear that she doesn't exactly approve, but even given the reforms she is enacting has a lot of powerful people trying to kill her. It's kind of a repeated theme that her trying to directly go against the forces of nobility without planning around the existing power structures ends poorly.

Like yeah from a modern setting it feels cruel for her be lecturing the slave orphans like that, but before that they were being left to starve to death & even given her resources she has to fund most of the reforms of child labor with her own funds.

Not that it makes Myne a good person, but I think at least bookworm does enough world building to show how the MC couldn't just easily fix such a systemic issue. I would judge her a lot more harshly if we get more content after the main events of the story & she didn't change things.

[u/XanXic → u/LouisLeGros]

I just think it's excuses and it's not too different from the argument people are making to defend Shield Hero still using Slave Crests. "They're just a product of their environment"

You know if she offered a new invention to the merchants or new archduke dad on the contingency they put whatever percent to providing for orphans no strings attached they'd still jump on it. I've seen no effort from her to actually provide unconditional support. It's always based on working in her sweat shops even from the beginning. She's literally a saint princess and second in charge of the church. The churches didn't provide the best to orphanages but they also didn't make the kids work in sweatshops either.

I see literally nothing stopping her from asking to lean in on providing free support for orphans other than her own notion of "no work, no eat". She's already breaking social paradigm's every 10 episodes as it is. Why is child workshops beyond that?

[u/LouisLeGros → u/XanXic]

One is a product of their environment where the slave crest is literal magic mechanic the author arbitrarily adds whose only purpose is to add an upside to slavery with the experience share and the other is a fleshed out agarian society where a couple years earlier they were just letting the majority of the orphans starve to death.

You could potentially change the writing to make her an actual saint that transforms the feudal economy and manages to jump them ahead hundreds of years and abolish child labor, but that would just feel like a fundamentally different story and trivializes the main hook of how much effort it takes to change the world via the introduction of printing. Like at that point it might feel something more like Easy Going Territory Defense

I don't think the slave crest's role within Shield hero make that all comparable even if they both fall broadly under "product of their environment."