Honestly, I'm gen z and I honestly love these sorts of stories from the perspective of a psychology student. Because despite how very obvious Iltae are at slowly falling in love, the story doesn't remove Ilay's psychotic nature. It doesn't diminish the person he was before Taeui, and in fact, it actually makes him almost more psychotic because he went from killing and breaking people for random bullshit stuff, to killing and breaking to, quite literally, "own" Taeui.
It's also heavy slow burn and feels super realistic when it comes to fictional stories involving dark romance themes. It's not like this immediate switch where Ilay is this violent beast that needs Taeui to "tame" him, the idea that even Taeui cannot fully control someone like Ilay, but learns to loves him regardless is the romantic aspect that is trying to be portrayed.
Yes, it's horrible to think about, yes it's not something you want or want other to experience in a real life situation, but there are people in this world like Ilay, people who genuinely enjoy killing and hurting others just for their own amusement, and I think PASSION does a great portrayal of such people, while adding in the fact that Ilay, despite his inhumanity and lack of care for others, is able to learn the touch of "love", and that it's not a cut and dry love story, it's a deep psychological understanding that Ilay has to slowly learn that he doesn't have to control or own his lover to be happy and have that stable relationship regular people just seem to... get.
I completely agree that it's fucked up, but not every relationship starts off sweet and romantic, and not every person is this inherent "good" person, but that doesn't mean they can't be redeamed. No matter how red flag or black flag a person's behaviour is, psychologically speaking, anyone deserves the opportunity to be at least given a chance to change the problematic behaviours they have, but often times these people need an anchor to allow themselves to somewhat compare their progress to.
There will be times when these people, like Ilay, like Ceasar from R&C, and Zhenya from CNA, take a step in the right direction, only to fear "losing" their anchor and have them regress several steps. It does not mean they are lost causes, it just means that getting to that somewhat healthy relationship standpoint is going to take longer to reach for these types of characters.
And honestly, I think people lately forget this point and are quick to cancel any sort of problematic behaviour without trying to fully grasp what these stories actually portray. These authors aren't promoting unhealthy relationships, but are actually making people understand that healthy looks different to everyone because life experiences shape who we become and that people sometimes need a helping hand to achieve the good and healthy side of relationships.
Based on all these comments I was expecting this chapter to be way worse. This is nothing. Honestly if you don’t like it then drop and go read something else. This story is not for the weak lol.
In response to the one commenter discussing the time period in which this was written in the novel it’s pretty standard for the time. The vore especially is very early 2000s.
It’s sort of romantic in an extremely fucked up way to want to consume someone whole and desire for them to become one with you.
Maybe it’s the millennial in me ┑(￣Д ￣)┍