beta
To the people nitpicking those of us who aren’t enjoying this shift in dynamic: it’s not about Enzo being “out of character” or a “red flag.” It’s about what the story feels like it has become compared to what originally pulled people in.
The appeal was supposed to be two powerful enemies-to-lovers characters clashing on relatively equal footing. A lot of readers were invested because it was framed as a genuine power struggle, where both sides had weight and influence in the conflict.
But since the end of last season, that balance has steadily eroded as the gap between them keeps widening. What started as a clash between two strong personalities now feels increasingly one-sided.
Right now it feels like Enzo holds all the power, while Rian is repeatedly put in situations where he’s coerced and has no real ability to resist or change the outcome. (He says he’ll never bottom for Enzo again, yet still ends up being blackmailed into it. He talks about wanting to punch Enzo and push back, but the narrative itself never allows those intentions to turn into action — the setup is written so that any attempt to resist leads to consequences that force compliance...Even things he would have never tolerated earlier in the story —the humiliation, the imposed punishments, the c*ck ring, etc — are now just happening without any real ability to stop them, which highlights how extreme the power imbalance has become.)
And when that back-and-forth disappears, so does the s*xual tension that made the dynamic compelling in the first place.
That’s why it no longer reads like the enemies-to-lovers dynamic people signed up for, but more like the familiar dominant top / powerless bottom trope that many of us are getting tired of.