Putting aside the weird consent stuff of the series, let's talk about what really matters.

Does anyone actually get anything out of waiting for each page to load like you're on dial-up because the images are roughly the size of a highway billboard?

I think the drawings are actually upscaled, too. You can see that they're pixelated at full size.

Typesetter here (and I apologize for not checking comments for a couple weeks)... The raws for Volume 1 (c01-06) came to me extremely large, and I just didn't think to downscale them. The raws for Chapters 7 and 8 are more typical dimensions, finals will be smaller.

I like the character designs, and I want to see them together, but I feel like it's too pushy and in your face about pushing someone undecided into a potential role they aren't comfortable with and that's not how people work and it bothers me :T

I gritted my teeth at the pushiness too; but it does help get past the “prologue” part of the story into the two-sided SM more quickly. Otherwise the story of how Mio gets won over to SM would be twenty-plus chapters by itself.