Above all else, what I can't forgive is the fact that the author made uke into someone who thought it was their fault for getting raped. I don't mind rape, pedo themes that much in whatever I read simply because I've come to learn that it is hard to avoid those themes. It is okay for authors to bring them up in their works but what really matters is how they handle it. Whether the characters who commits these acts are punished or criticized in the work or they are rewarded for it. Like in so many of bls, here too, the uke ends up forgiving their rapist with a single apology (sometimes not even that) and no retribution or punishment. The authors take it even a step further and give these rapists happy endings where they get to marry the person they raped and live out their "happy ever after". Honestly my bar for so called "asking for forgiveness" has fallen so low that Taeju from lowtide in twilight felt so revolutionary as a character, for him to slowly realise what he had done wrong and for him to sit euihyun down and talk to him about it. He not only worded out an apology but accepted the fact that what he did was so wrong that he can't be forgiven for it. He then devoted himself to making sure he keeps euihyun happy and to never repeat his mistake again. The way he took care of euihyun during the pregnancy won me over. However if you think about it, it's such a basic humane act. Yet smth of that scale felt revolutionary. That's how low the bar is. It's so normalised for uke's to get raped sometimes for plot, sometimes just became the so called ml feels like raping him, because the uke do smth that irks them off. I hate how the rape is used as a punishment for these ukes and how they don't even get treated right after suffering through these acts. No proper apologies, no proper medical care, no therapy, no acknowledgement of what they went through was wrong. And this results in so many of them thinking "I got raped because I made him angry. Because he owned my body. Because everything in my life that I have is thanks to him and just for that reason, whatever happened is smth I deserved". Honestly it's all so disgusting. I don't understand why it's so hard to make characters that can genuinely acknowledge their mistakes/crimes and work on them. And I don't understand how hard it is to make characters with some self respect that aren't total doormats and aren't manipulated into thinking that whatever happens to them is because they fucked up.
Above all else, what I can't forgive is the fact that the author made uke into someone who thought it was their fault for getting raped. I don't mind rape, pedo themes that much in whatever I read simply because I've come to learn that it is hard to avoid those themes. It is okay for authors to bring them up in their works but what really matters is how they handle it. Whether the characters who commits these acts are punished or criticized in the work or they are rewarded for it. Like in so many of bls, here too, the uke ends up forgiving their rapist with a single apology (sometimes not even that) and no retribution or punishment. The authors take it even a step further and give these rapists happy endings where they get to marry the person they raped and live out their "happy ever after". Honestly my bar for so called "asking for forgiveness" has fallen so low that Taeju from lowtide in twilight felt so revolutionary as a character, for him to slowly realise what he had done wrong and for him to sit euihyun down and talk to him about it. He not only worded out an apology but accepted the fact that what he did was so wrong that he can't be forgiven for it. He then devoted himself to making sure he keeps euihyun happy and to never repeat his mistake again. The way he took care of euihyun during the pregnancy won me over. However if you think about it, it's such a basic humane act. Yet smth of that scale felt revolutionary. That's how low the bar is. It's so normalised for uke's to get raped sometimes for plot, sometimes just became the so called ml feels like raping him, because the uke do smth that irks them off. I hate how the rape is used as a punishment for these ukes and how they don't even get treated right after suffering through these acts. No proper apologies, no proper medical care, no therapy, no acknowledgement of what they went through was wrong. And this results in so many of them thinking "I got raped because I made him angry. Because he owned my body. Because everything in my life that I have is thanks to him and just for that reason, whatever happened is smth I deserved". Honestly it's all so disgusting. I don't understand why it's so hard to make characters that can genuinely acknowledge their mistakes/crimes and work on them. And I don't understand how hard it is to make characters with some self respect that aren't total doormats and aren't manipulated into thinking that whatever happens to them is because they fucked up.
Sigh.....