Incomplete Combustion: The Eroticization of Trauma

If you've already read the BL story called "Incomplete Combustion", yes I'm furious yes I'm a hater and yes I won't stand this shit anymore I dropped this story while it was still on the 21th chapter (?) due to the scenes between the boss and yeseung, because initially I liked yeseung because he had this foxy innocence vibe to him that made me adore him quite a bit, but the sexualization of his trauma had left me disgusted, and now I saw some talk about the latest chapter and just as I expected, the story only went downhill since I dropped it. YES THIS IS A RANT AND A REVIEW AT THE SAME TIME DONT TALK TO ME.

I think for the most part, what frustrates me about Incomplete Combustion is the way it handles sexual assault and trauma under the guise of psychological complexity. The story seems to want its audience to perceive it as a dark, deeply psychological exploration of abuse, grooming, and the traumatic response that follows afterwards, but I find that its repeated sexualization of sexual violence actively undermines that premise and goal. Rather than encouraging sympathy for Yeseung and the abuse he has endured, the narrative repeatedly turns his trauma into erotic material, as though the sexualization of his suffering alone were enough to give the story psychological depth, when all it was capable of giving me is disappointed and disgust.

Yeseung's sexual behavior is what I personally perceive to be the most important part of this story. His provocative behavior, his apparent desire for sex, and his attempts to obtain affection through sexual intimacy is ultimately understood as learned responses to an environment in which love and attention have been made conditional on his sexual availability. As we see happen multiple times with his boss.

• There is nothing inherently unrealistic about a survivor developing complicated relationships with sex, intimacy, and their own sense of worth. That is something I expect anyone with enough understanding of psychology to see clear. Trauma obviously won't manifest in one universal way, and survivors do not need to behave according to some prescribed image of victimhood to be believable, realistic, or sympathy provoking. My issue is not with Yeseung's characterization itself, in fact I see myself in him quite a lot being a victim of SA and manipulation myself, further more I personally find him a good representation of what "fawning" is, BUT my issue lays with the way the narrative frames it and the implications that framing creates to the audience who is not capable of understanding yeseung's person correctly •

To put it rather simply, the story's handling of these behaviors makes it far too easy for readers to interpret Yeseung's sexual provocations as an invitation that excuses Gyeol's sexual assault against him. Provocation is not consent. Sexual desire is not consent. A person's history of sexual abuse does not make them responsible for someone else's decision to violate their boundaries. Even if Yeseung's behavior is a coping mechanism or an attempt to secure affection, that does not make Gyeol's actions any less abusive. Even if gyeol is a reactive and impulsive, often violent person, it doesn't make what he does any less wrong. a psychological explanation for a character's behavior should never become a convenient justification for the harm that same character inflicts on someone else, yet the way the story intertwines Yeseung's sexuality and his trauma with Gyeol's violence risks blurring precisely this distinction and creates the possibility for excuses to be made for gyeol for what he does to yeseung.

This problem becomes even more frustrating when considering the role Yeseung's trauma is expected to play in Gyeol's character arc. His suffering and pain is supposed to create a reason for Gyeol's development, but instead of challenging Gyeol's reactive, impulsive, and violent tendencies, the narrative allows those tendencies to escalate into further abuse, including sexual assault against Yeseung. Yeseung's trauma consequently became less about his own experiences and recovery and more about what it provoked in Gyeol. His pain becomes a mechanism through which another character's emotional turmoil and development are explored, while the story's treatment of the resulting harm fails to provide the critical distance that this serious subject demands.

And as said before, the way the story depicts Yeseung's grooming and abuse at the hands of his boss left me deeply unsatisfied and annoyed. Grooming is not simply a taboo sexual dynamic or a disturbing experience that can be made compelling through erotic presentation. It is a process of manipulation and exploitation that facilitates abuse. Meanwhile the narrative repeatedly presented yeseung's experience through an eroticized lens without adequately confronting the coercion underlying them. the distinction between depicting sexual abuse and using sexual abuse as erotic content is something I consider easy to not step on, but this author just proved me wrong with how sexualized the scenes with yeseung's and his boss were. A story can definitely depict disturbing sexual material, that is something I'm never against. but the presence of dark subjects does not automatically make it a well thought psychological story, in this case, Incomplete Combustion turned into an erotic content made to sexualize this specifc taboo dynamic.

Ultimately, my problem with Incomplete Combustion is not that it depicts sexual assault, dysfunctional relationships, or survivors whose responses to trauma are complicated. Those subjects in the contrary should be explored tastefully and carefully in fiction. My problem is that the story repeatedly returns to sexualized abuse without, in my view and opinion, giving sufficient weight to its consequences. Trauma started feel less like an experience the narrative wants to examine and more like a recurring source of erotic tension, emotional intensity, and plot progression.

★ I find that there is a fundamental difference between portraying a survivor whose sexuality has been shaped by abuse and using that abuse to sexualize the survivor and their trauma. There is also a difference between depicting an abusive character and framing that character's violence in a way that encourages readers to overlook the victim's lack of consent. Psychological complexity should deepen our understanding of these dynamics, unlike the route this story took with making too much of a light subject out of it and intentionally or not creating a space for people to excuse the abuse yeseung goes through.

I just find this story particularly disappointing. Darkness is not the same as depth, and the repeated sexualization of trauma is not, by itself, a meaningful exploration of trauma. At some point, the narrative needs to do more than make abuse disturbing, provocative, or sexually charged. It needs to confront what that abuse means for the person enduring it. Incomplete Combustion prioritized the later on the expense of the former.