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What are other peoples opinions on how this story depicts problematic themes?
Personally, I think they are far too romanticised, and despite my love for the story itself, art, way of how the characters are articulated, much of the time I am made hella fucking uncomfortable with how certain scenes are done.
For context, I do read grimdark and psychological works / novels, and those have plenty of r*pe scenes, which are done to express a traumatic and horrifying act a character is / has experienced, but this work seems to depict those acts like they are sex. As I hope we can all agree, r*pe is NOT sex.
The way it is drawn is like how every sex scene in these types of works are done, like its some sexy hot porn. Personally, it makes me a bit sick and questioning if I should drop the work because of my own personal morals and such. I also have reason to believe fiction does affect reality from personal experience, which I would not like to recall, but if it is needed, I may.
Alas, it has me extremely conflicted, and I have been reading this since this beginning. Now there is the themes of father and son fetishization, and that just adds on to the discomfort. It is okay to depict bad things in stories, but this author seems to do so like they enjoy it. Not to mention how much Seth has become the typical "Damsel in Distress" a male hetero writer would depict the female interest in a shitty male gaze power complex novel / movie / whatever the fuck.
So yeah, I am just interested in what others think about this. Is it worth sticking through and bearing the very uncomfortable themes which are not handled as they should, for the sake of a well made story with great art? Or do you think with more of these themes continuing, or escalated, its just not worth the headache?