I feel like a lot of these types of stories are mislabeled on purpose either by the publishing company or by the authors themselves. Some of them are psychological thrillers to the core, but sold as "romance". Personally, I wouldn't mind reading a thriller that happens to have gay men in it if it was marketed as such. But that's almost never the case.
Some of the worst works for me are the ones labeled as "psychological" and the psychological aspect of them is just constant SA. Of course SA messes up with the mind of the victim and it could be considered a psychological story under certain circumstances, if taken seriously, but when the victim is acting like all's good, ends up falling in love with his abuser and the abuser has a happy ending... that's just messed up. Then they start selling merch with them as a cute, happy couple and you're like "???". They want to sell it as a love story so bad.
wait recs that have this pls
don't kill me I'm bored asf as fuck AF as frick
Haha I'm a sucker for it, but I think readers love the power imbalance and physical disparity; it's sort of an easy ticket to "tension" I suppose
All the bl I have been reading rn half of them is just psycho top, powerful, rich and obsessed with bottom and all of them end up somhow running away from the top to get trapped by them. Or some tops are psycho but only good to uke so that he can't escape him somehow. Like they are being tricked into love. That's my observation so far. Not all the bl but few. The ones that are really famous and always on the feature.