hangin

let me go batshit for a moment here:

IM SICK OF IT. IM SICK OF THIS RAPE FETISH TREND THAT'S RISEN IN MANHWAS RECENTLY. WHERE'S ALL THE GOOD SHIT AT????

honestly it 100% is that serious

thank you for validating my anger. because im honestly so sick of this bs. i gotta take a deep breath everytime it happens and click out the story.

Yeah I’m just not into it anymore, super disappointed cuz I liked how it started and I liked the character designs

while I agree with the sentiment I would like to point out that this is NOT new, coercion/rape has basically been the industry standard since the first gay comics hit the shelves. if you go and sort by date, honestly, the early 2000's stuff is just as bad if not worse. unfortunately I have no wise and loving advice to bestow other than look harder

I’d genuinely argue at this point sexual assault defines the genre as it’s seen that male sexuality is seen as violence to this genre’s female authors and audience. I believe it’s a cultural phenomenon that does not translate to western audiences who have a better relationship with lgbt given their exposure in comparison to east Asia’s conservative values and heteronormativity. Female readers are allowed to indulge in their sexuality without the reality of the violence they themselves experience in this region by projecting this trauma onto male bodies who can then experience the spectrum of sexual expression on their behalf.

i get it, i think i do– how these such scenes might be interpreted differently depending on the audience’s relationship with sexuality and trauma. that said, my frustration stems from how often this trope is used without much nuance or consideration, to the point where it feels lazy or exploitative rather than meaningful.

although, i’m definitely not the target audience, it doesn't feel empowering, comforting, or hell, even slightly sexy. it just feels weird, off putting, and revolting. but that just might be me. not to say that your opinion is wrong or invalid, in fact– i've never even thought of it that way, so thanks for sharing.

just my two cents.

i've definitely seen worse, 2000's gay media was WAY MORE shameless with the topic. it was blatant back then, unapologetically done and seen as just another thing that happened! ugh. it's gone to the point it has become disgustingly normalized in these stories. this why i always gotta tread carefully with 18+ stories.. i swear bruh

this is why i always check the comments lol
but good shit has always been hard to find (in my experience), and with the influx of manhwas in general in recent years, a lot of shitty lazy bullshit has been created.

The comment section is sadly not a good indicator simply because of the desensitization of violence in the genre. You’re more likely to have people praising a plot examples being “BJ Alex”, “Painter of the Night”, “Love is an Illusion”, “Yours to claim***” which currently claim the top 5 spots on this website of best BL by popularity they all romanticize rape, all of them. But go to the comment section and the dominating reviews are positive as well as their review scores averaging above 9.5. I sadly now do actually have to read the first couple of chapters of a new BL( yaoi, manhwa,manhua) to gauge the safeness of a plot. Many of them will not include trigger warnings or the appropriate tags as warning for its readers. As I said I truly believe male sexual violence is a characteristic of this genre and has been a part of its identity since its origins in the first documented “yaoi”, Kaze To Ki No Uta.
I believe in the absence of female bodies, the genre has decided the only true show of “passionate” male sexual expression is violence.

***Yours to Claim sits at a 8.9 review.

obviously the comments arent always an indicator, but i find that in a lot of cases you will see at least some ppl complaining in the comments if a story sucks, so that saves me a lot of time. (wether those complaints are mostly performative or not is another subject tho).

shoujo had a lot of "dark romance" so it shouldn't come as such a surprise as to what emerged from that influence.
and it doesnt help that bara isnt any better.
as i said, good shit has always been hard to find, even when stories arent "problematic"

It’s also why I get annoyed when people say hey look at all the other options you have to read if you don’t like this portrayal of “romance” and then I look to what they “speak of” and it’s a needle in a haystack of finding something that isn’t problematic because that’s not “interesting” audiences and that’s not what sells. So you in fact that the problematic stories dominating the entire genre as authors take cues from their profit obviously.

off topic, but how are you 'reading' like 700 bls lol?

Haha I certainly am not. I just save them to remember to read them or I’ll have started a chapter or two and truthfully gotten bored and stopped reading but forgot to uncheck “am reading” to “already read”. I used to be more diligent but after years of reading I just got lazy about keeping my list in order. Sometimes it’s just so I can pick something at random to read that I know I have familiarity already just to have something to read depending on my mood. Hence I can tolerate some other garbage reads if that’s specifically the mood I’m in tolerating them, if that makes sense. Also why my reading list can be some heavy shit to just straight up porn lol.