finally a story addressing rape

I totally agree. As someone who luckily never experienced it myself, I never really understood how the Mc cope with it in other stories. Seeing it actually have an effect in his personality and his reactions is interesting

agree
but there's almost no point in including it since we know MC ends up with ML so in a way that almost makes it worse bc they're admitting it was assault and exploring the damages from it and STILL saying that assault can have a reasonable explanation ("I just wanted to drive him away!") and also portraying his assaulter as being a sympathetic character. People choose to forgive their rapists, yes, whatever helps a person get through the trauma, but literally any professional anywhere would highly recommend not staying in contact with them, and sure as fuck not being in a relationship with them, regardless of whether or not they apologize or appeart to be remorseful. You can never truly trust them again and once that trust is shattered that's it, the relationship is broken. It would only be even remotely appropriate at this juncture if MC didn't continue to associate with ML and ML spent the rest of his life guilty over it.
mind you I'm judging this from a realistic perspective **only** because they're attempting to portray it realistically. If they hadn't bothered to attempt realism, like most BL, I wouldn't even bother.

you made great points but i disagree with the overall statement. i think there’s an important and meaningful point in including after affects of rape even when the couple end up together. ofc this would never work irl but on the basis of fiction i love how it’s possible to explore harmful actions/feelings/and more without actually hurting a real person. it humanizes the character affected, and makes them have depth or relatability. instead of ignoring the biggest elephant in the room- the acknowledgment of an awful action is getting explored, even if the continuation isn’t followed through (not ending up with a rapist because the story explores how traumatic the experience was)

rapists will never atone enough and should never get a chance at redemption. when rape is given its rightful attention, i don’t think it’s trying to create sympathy for the perpetrator. with all the explanations you provided, i think we have to take into account what led up to this incident in question again. looking at it from a realistic perspective, it wasn’t to drive him away- it’s intention was to terrify and silence mc. it wasn’t an act full of self righteousness or impulse, the rape was done fully as an act of power and to assert his own strength over mc. ml isn’t some regular guy who works at an office job, he IS a shady criminal involved with drug dealing, murder, and overall violence. am i saying his rape was justified? fuck no! but his reaction to seeing someone he cared about witness something of that scale makes sense. mc was most likely supposed to die that night or at least be tortured into silence, but instead the ml did something just as evil… however in his mind less painful or life threatening. this isn’t praising ml either, but to explain why in this case them ending up together isn’t as crazy compared to other stories with rape since the was an such a heavy/crazy explanation to it

yea it’s important to have these discussions in any media! people should/will already have empathy towards rape victims: but the exploration of how they cope and seeing how it truly affects their day to day life is necessary. it shows how deeply it alters someone’s mental health forever without having to exploit or force a real person