Nightmarish

Why lol

Umm I mean w ain it should be pretty obvious y *cough cough training a much younger partner to suit his "tastes", pretending to someone else, using said false identity to thus fraudulently gain consent coughing cough*. Though i will say I have not read the novel for either so this is my opinion based on the manhwas only. Either way I can only see this one getting worse.

As for ash from dtr it's a bit more subtle but he is overall v pushy w karlyle's boundaries and also manipulative imo. For instance:
- doing things lyle was uncomfortable w like public kissing and rlly just pushing for physical intimacy v quickly despite saying he wanted to get to know ppl first

- that sex scene where he made lyle cry bc he didn't stop when he asked (yes ik it's meant to be an overstimulation thing and yes ik that's not the most egregious thing a seme has done in terms of consent but that's not the point)

- trying to get away w his slip ups by acting pitiful

- the barrage of compliments that feel kind of condescending and also love bomb-y right from the start (literally says that even karlyle had a cute side after calling him out before the appointed time on their SECOND proper meeting)

- introducing lyle to his sister which is VERY leading imo bc would u introduce a fuck buddy ur meant to only meet 8 times to ur sister?? And again, ash only comes to like lyle AFTER their breakup so... ?? ×2

- pretending he doesn't rmbr the new year's kiss

- being overall v controlling and using sex to kind of punish lyle (the new apartment debacle)

And this isn't even counting the dumpster fire that the side stories are but I'll stop here lol

You're so right. I'm sick and tired of obvious fetish content being tagged as "psychological." It's always the rape and torture porn too, you never see any other type of fetish being tagged that. I don't get why these particular ones always get reframed as psychologically complex when it's just wank material. I guess they just want to tart it up somehow and "psychological" sounds fancy.

Good point lol. Whenever I try scrolling thru the psychological and horror tags, a large proportion rlly is js torture porn and I'm so tired of it. First example that comes to mind is Harada's stuff, w a lot of readers claiming her stuff is psychological (i disagree lol). That's the case even w stories that aren't meant to have smut like "Maria no Danzai" (potentially controversial but i read like 5 chapters and the torture porn vibes were js strongggg) and "Pumpkin Night". Obviously tho, the tagging system on here is to do w the readers so apart from the authors trying to legitimise (?) their works more, other explanations i can think of r that some readers don't want to admit that they're into stuff like this, some js can't tell and that some don't know that js bc smth has sensitive scenes/topics it isn't psychological (a true psychological story would actually explore the inner processes of characters imo). Anyway, srry for the long response, I like chatting abt shit like this lol

I enjoy a few of Harada's works but have to agree with you. Her fans will swear up and down that her stuff is deep when most of it is just excessive cruelty and gratuitous rape. They'll tell you that it's "dark" and "twisted" and meant to disturb but I'm so numb to her schtick by now I just find it cheap. I haven't read Maria no Danzai but have to agree with the Pumpkin thing. It's definitely a mixture of what you said; some people are too ashamed they cling to whatever makes them feel like they're exploring something substantial instead of just being rape fetishisers. That's also what I view as a true psychological work. It should place heavy emphasis on characters' thought processes and emotions. Someone just lying there, being raped and tortured non-stop isn't deep, it's just porn. A lot of people on this site ended up with a very distorted definition of "psychological" because they somehow only encounter it through rape and torture slop. Don't worry about the long response lol. I like yapping about this too.

That's so real bc I personally have no problem with authors choosing to add dark topics like grape to their story as long as they're doing a good job at properly representing it like how it feels and looks like from a victim's perspective to go through such a traumatic experience like grape and harada did a lot of works where i feel like that was portrayed well bc the scenes never felt romanticized or fetish like they genuinely felt traumatizing and were shown as an actual awful experience thru the victim's eyes that's what makes it psychological actually showing what goes thru the victim's head during and after the traumatic experience meanwhile in this work for example it's doing a very shitty job showing that bc they are portraying the grape scenes like they are some sexy normal sex scenes instead of actually making it seem as dark and traumatizing as it actually is(like really making the victim blush during the grape) and honestly if u can't write a story that's psychological without adding grape scenes there's something deeply wrong with you, grape isn't the fuckin symbol for traumatic psychological shit in stories damn(not to mention that this author specifically all their works besides the gl one are a fuckin mess that just keeps repeating over and over again this story is awfully similar to their last bl it's legit the same story different fonts no creativity at all)

Yup, agreed. Personally I like Harada, the way she tells stories is interesting to me + the art. However, I do NOT condone rape or the victim and abuser staying together—however I see the realism to it, many people in real life end up staying with their abuser—a toxic cycle.

Swallow You Whole is one example of the victim being shown as feeling it while being raped. In Harada, it’s not too different but the author doesn’t seem to exactly romanticize, I remember one of the stories mentioned how nobody will find their love/relationship normal, but that they’ll remain together forever.

Well I’d say there’s different psychological aspects still, there can be psychology stuff and rape, it won’t be NOT psychological because there’s SA in it. But there are poorly written ones.

But I agree that many stories can be written WITHOUT rape/SA. Unfortunately BL has heavily normalized rape/SA scenes. I think there’s one story called Aesthetics of Unpleasantness(?) or something, and they don’t show the bottom being raped, but IMPLIED it happened.

Loved that one. It was refreshing.

I usually read Shounen Ai to avoid rape, sad. I like to read smut too, but I’ll have to adjust sometimes.

Exactly like I'm tired of bl authors in general acting like rape is the only angst they can add in their story like damn get creative cuz on top of it being excessive as I said it's not even portrayed properly