Is it just a few of us who can actually deduce a cover's art style and if they were going to be degenerate or not? For some reason the moment I saw the cover's pov and rendering I had a gut feeling and instantly knew something was off.
But kidding aside, there's something horrifying, raw, and disgusting about this work. It's good in a way that /nothing/ was actually good, that everything was awful thematically and in a literary sense. Art style and pacing, however, it's short, crisp, and daunting. Kind of similar to watching a car crash right before your eyes, everything happens without a moment of breath. One moment the boy is having a conversation on introductions, the next he is coerced into penetrative sex. One moment he's in class, the next he is handed that after sex photograph. The story is wrong, immoral, and sickening. But all art is art, no matter what form it takes, and which mind it came from, and whose hands had made it. Art is simply art untiliy it is labeled within the boundaries of morality and law.
What I personally like in this work was how the boy never even was sweetened into the relationship, he was never comfortable, and never found himself falling into a Stockholm Syndrome like plenty rape-centric works in this site. The morbid curiosity of the boy at the start of the story, the predictive anxiety, the lack of autonomy with his own mind and within his family, and his social ineptness, he was the perfect victim to be a grown man's emotional and sexual punching bag. Honestly... plenty children, then and now, have always been susceptible to praise and affections, especially from older and more experienced people. Children from broken environments more so are weaker to praise and affection as they grow up. Considering the protagonist's home, he must feel completely dysfunctional and the curiosity to be with an older man turned into a desire for a romantic or physical relationship - as if to counter the terrible reality his mother is having a new lover, and how his mother seems to be passive with him. Caring, but somewhat passive (or maybe the story's narrative has been twisted by the boy's POV).
This work was probably made for fetish purposes, but I find it interesting that the 'fetish' was raw trauma and aggression, the power imbalance between an adult and a child, and the depiction of genuine fear and the numbing aftermath of how it paralyzes him to give in. The victim never wanted more, he just gave in because there was no better option and death was never the easy option yet either. I feel like these kinds of writing and storylines either come from actual predators or victims who have never healed from their own traumas and now they try to recreate and project their exact emotions into tangible forms (characters) because surely this isn't the only work of it's kind, there are much more out there.
Is it just a few of us who can actually deduce a cover's art style and if they were going to be degenerate or not? For some reason the moment I saw the cover's pov and rendering I had a gut feeling and instantly knew something was off.
But kidding aside, there's something horrifying, raw, and disgusting about this work. It's good in a way that /nothing/ was actually good, that everything was awful thematically and in a literary sense. Art style and pacing, however, it's short, crisp, and daunting. Kind of similar to watching a car crash right before your eyes, everything happens without a moment of breath. One moment the boy is having a conversation on introductions, the next he is coerced into penetrative sex. One moment he's in class, the next he is handed that after sex photograph. The story is wrong, immoral, and sickening. But all art is art, no matter what form it takes, and which mind it came from, and whose hands had made it. Art is simply art untiliy it is labeled within the boundaries of morality and law.
What I personally like in this work was how the boy never even was sweetened into the relationship, he was never comfortable, and never found himself falling into a Stockholm Syndrome like plenty rape-centric works in this site. The morbid curiosity of the boy at the start of the story, the predictive anxiety, the lack of autonomy with his own mind and within his family, and his social ineptness, he was the perfect victim to be a grown man's emotional and sexual punching bag. Honestly... plenty children, then and now, have always been susceptible to praise and affections, especially from older and more experienced people. Children from broken environments more so are weaker to praise and affection as they grow up. Considering the protagonist's home, he must feel completely dysfunctional and the curiosity to be with an older man turned into a desire for a romantic or physical relationship - as if to counter the terrible reality his mother is having a new lover, and how his mother seems to be passive with him. Caring, but somewhat passive (or maybe the story's narrative has been twisted by the boy's POV).
This work was probably made for fetish purposes, but I find it interesting that the 'fetish' was raw trauma and aggression, the power imbalance between an adult and a child, and the depiction of genuine fear and the numbing aftermath of how it paralyzes him to give in. The victim never wanted more, he just gave in because there was no better option and death was never the easy option yet either. I feel like these kinds of writing and storylines either come from actual predators or victims who have never healed from their own traumas and now they try to recreate and project their exact emotions into tangible forms (characters) because surely this isn't the only work of it's kind, there are much more out there.
That's just my two cents though.