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I'm sorry I got heated. I honestly never meant to. I was kind of in a hurry to get my thoughts down before heading somewhere, and honestly I dislike when people says stuff like "obviously the author loves X" in what sounds to me like a derogatory manner. It's a dumb line to have set, and I never meant to set it, but it lies there in my mind. I shouldn't have included that part, and for that I apologize.
I've read stuff written with or catering to fetishes. Vengeance fetishes, slavery fetishes, and many others. Some good, many very bad. I honestly can't buy that with this. Sure, there may be some sexualization of Raphtalia's breasts, but I honestly never got the impression that there was any actual interest within the story toward a master/slave dynamic. As you said, Flame, if anything it's about trust: early on he needed it to trust anyone, even a child, and now it can be seen as a demonstration of trust from the side of those that take it. But there's nothing I've seen related to actual control or dominance, which is kind of the bread and butter of standard slavery fetish material.
I also doubt the whole "can't trust women who aren't slaves" thing. That was a plot point at the start when he was initially betrayed, but it is not the case anymore. Several of the strongest women are not slaves. The only ones deliberately enslaved were Raph, who lost it and chose it out of concern due again to the trust issue (which honestly I imagine came partly from her recognizing from personal experience with betrayal that it can be hard to just accept a promise), and Filo, who Naofumi didn't know was even capable of conscious thought at the time. After that the crest has only been offered, to all of his citizens regardless of gender, for the sole purpose of exploiting the growth bonus.
And I'm sorry RF, I don't mean to be argumentative toward an admin, but seriously? Interpret "a character flaw that needs correcting" as "oh she should get shocked for being that way"? We both know that that NEVER happened. He only used the shock a handful of times at the very beginning, a couple times to get Raphtalia to actually attack, once or twice when Filo was going too wild to control, and once, cut from the anime, when Filo recklessly jumped forward and Naofumi tried to stop her in a panic (this was the time with the zombie dragon and directly caused her being eaten). As for subservience, it was never corrected, only viewed as a demonstration of how utterly obnoxious the character was, and it was corrected over time through personal character growth with momentary instants of temporary improvement, which incidentally coincided with changes in power: when subservient and willing to do anything asked without question, she's an utter weakling who can't get stronger no matter how she levels, but when she's standing firm as her own woman she's quite possibly stronger than Naofumi.
Personally, I just don't see anything in this as the author himself indulging any kind of interest in slavery itself. It could certainly have been presented differently in places, but there didn't seem to be any sign to me of wanting to actually control women or anyone. And the inability to trust was largely indifferent to gender and more importantly presented as something that needed to be grown out of. To me, it seems to be trying to say that you should know how to trust people, that it may often take effort on both sides but ultimately you shouldn't need any kind of absolute guarantee to be able to trust another person. Slavery fits well as a shape for such guarantees, and also works well as a way to demonstrate conflict, prejudice and oppression.
And yeah, I do believe that enslaving an ugly guy who'd tried to enslave the citizens was more of a "I can't kill you, so I'll do to you what you wanted to do to them". Whether this "encourages" others to try and take vengeance and lead more slave raids or convinces them that it's not worth such a risk is too uncertain to really call it an act perpetuating or discouraging the local trade.
Anyway, got long-winded again, but I'll try to leave it here.
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