Youre completely right but this was in character with xinlus character thats how he is. He doesnt give a fuck about consequences because he was spoiled his entire fhxking life. Thats also how he lost his eye. Tho i cant say this situation isnt fucked up specially sunce so many people had high expectations for the manhwa and we're all disappointed. Yuri does not claim this as rape to himself and he forgivss xinlu. Its highkey pathetic. I just hope this rape fetishization of men is stopped. They should atleast get jailed for even thinkibg about rape. Reverse thinking and bad apple and such other manhwa creators should honestly be detained for makinh such disturbing disgusting works.
Exactly. That's why I sometimes list everything an ML has done in one comment. When you see every action written together—rape, coercion, blackmail, abuse, manipulation, covering up crimes, or whatever else applies it becomes impossible to brush it off. People get offended and say, "Why are you putting it like that?" Because that's literally what happened in the story.
The problem is that readers experience these events over 100–200 chapters, so they slowly become desensitized. As the story moves forward and the ML gets a sad backstory or starts acting nicer, people forget what happened in the beginning. Suddenly it's, "He deserves a happy ending," or "The MC was partly at fault too." The narrative itself often helps by never having the ML plainly admit, "I raped you," or by barely showing the MC's trauma. Instead, it gets reframed as romance or character development. That's what frustrates me not that the ML is a terrible person, but that the story and parts of the fandom gradually erase the severity of what he did.
Take Jinx as an example people literally even now can't admit that dan was RAPED and ABUSED JUST CAUSE HE WAS WORKING FOR HIM OR HE GAVE CONSENT AT THE START
Also the same goes for how women being assaulted is so normalized that people start saying shit like "it happens to everyone" or "its not that big of a deal" imagine a guy comes on the internet saging he got raped by a man whatnwould these people who have been exposed to such reads think and say? Its just like what porn has done to peoples minds so much that they cant stop thinking abouy it in normal daily life activities. This has fuckibg bad consequences on us and some mfs still go on and makenthis type of shit. Depressing really.
People always say, "It's just fiction," but my frustration comes from how desensitized people have become in general. Even with real cases of rape and sexual assault, you constantly see people downplaying it, victim-blaming, making excuses, or moving on like it's nothing. So when people barely acknowledge the seriousness of real-life sexual violence, can we honestly expect everyone to recognize it in fiction when the story itself romanticizes it or refuses to even call it rape?
Honestly, after Jinx became massively popular, it feels like more and more Korean BLs started relying on toxic relationships, coercion, and rape as "plot." I can't really say the same for Japanese BL because those tropes have been around there for decades, but it's disappointing to see Korean BLs increasingly following the same formula. I'm not saying every Korean BL is like this, but the trend feels way more common now. Instead of writing genuinely complex relationships, some authors use sexual assault as a cheap shortcut for drama or character development, and readers slowly become numb to it. That's what frustrates me the most.
Authors keep using rape as a shortcut for "plot progression," even when the exact same story could work without it. Nowadays, if someone says an ML is "complex," I almost expect there's going to be rape, followed by a tragic backstory explaining why he did it.
What annoys me even more is that the ML almost never outright says, "I raped you" or fully takes responsibility. The authors know exactly why. If the ML openly admitted it and the story treated it as rape instead of romantic tension, a lot more readers would see the relationship for what it is a rapist and his victim not a romantic couple. So instead they soften it with excuses, trauma, misunderstandings, or redemption arcs, hoping readers focus on the backstory instead of the harm. That's the part I find frustrating.