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I still wonder, to this day, why this was marketed so insistently with yaoi/BL at the forefront of its title. Even the author distances themselves from that issue. It stands good on its own as a psychological mystery thriller, and readers would probably have less of a moral dilemma if the lines were just drawn then and there. Perhaps they saw more market value with the explicit content and the growing fanbase of BL?
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I couldn't agree more. When i tell people that Killing Stalking is a personal favorite i always get judged and have to defend it. i don't like it for the BL. I like it for the horror/psychological aspects. The depiction of how society/their family lead them to be psychologically messed up and seeing how 2 messed up people thought they could cope by staying together was really interesting. I think an important part for appreciating KS is the ability to recognize and accept that its a messed up couple and they should absolutely not be together but people associate it so much with BL/yaoi that people disregard how great of a horror it is.
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Exactly, and I'm sorry to hear that you get judged for it. I get where the criticism comes from because most of those jumping into this blind would probably be in for a surprise. I remember on its heyday when it remained top 1 on l*zh*n consistently under BL. Understandably, those who click on it expecting some sort of romance don't get the 'romance' since the meat of the story is, in fact, psychological horror. I wonder what could have happened had they put it under horror/mystery, would it have gained the same fame that it did? It just saddens me how for others this was what introduced them to BL/yaoi when there are so many out there that does the genre justice. The genre itself has become so saturated that anything that contains mature, explicit scenes between two men gets packaged as yaoi front and center.
Can we talk about how incredibly shorts pants briefs skirt and panty dropping the king was back then? Damn