Romanticizing abusive relationships

Also one thing: I recenly had the chance to meet a very nice girl that revealed to me and some friends during a dinner that got into pretty dark themes later, that she was sexually abused by her uncle when she was younger. When we told her "Did you tell that to anyone? Did you get any help?" her answer was:
"No i kept it for myself the whole time. But for it's in the past now. I forgave him"
.....Well cases can be 3 here:

• Maybe the abuses were "lighter" like he didn't heavily abused of her, only touching (thou, it's already a big bad thing)
• She was lying.
• She's an angel.

But this was just an example to say, that it is bad to romanticize abusive relationships of every kind, but if it's true what this girl said to us at that time, i think there are rare and real cases where the victim, okay, doesn't fall in love with the abuser but can "forgive him".
Still sounds weird to me, but i've never been into an abusive relationship (fortunately) so i can't really tell.

The GL comic i've been thinking about lately it has an abusive relationship where both girls falls for each other, BUT ONLY after they go through character development, deep dynamics, a temporarily pardon,and a skip time of 7 years. And even though many people will probably dislike it, i'm still gonna publish it maybe and give a proper warning first, because i'm aware about how much delicately this thing has to be handled or how you handle it badly.

About the girl you mentioned, her response to the situation is actually pretty common. Victims usually don't tell anyone else for a variety of reasons that can span from, or include all of: fear, shame, wanting to protect the abuser, the victim is manipulated, the victim thinks they are at fault, the victim thinks people will think they are overreacting, the victim simply doesn't have the energy and doesn't care about themselves, or the victim doesn't realize it's a toxic situation because they are so used to it that this is their normal.

Forgiving your abuser may sound counterproductive, but it is in fact te most commonly suggested thing by therapists. Not for the sake of the abuser, but because hate is a heavy thing to carry for the victim.

I was put through online sexual abuse and manipulation for 3-4 years of my mid-late teens by a man who was 15 years older than myself. I didn't tell anyone because I blamed myself, I was manipulated by him into thinking it was all okay and that my purpose in life was to fix his shitty life, and I was ashamed of the whole ordeal. After I got out of the situation I still kept quiet about it because I found it embarrassing and thought people would call me an idiot for letting it happen to me.

I still haven't gotten to the point where I can forgive him. I envy those who have.

I can attest to this, and can't emphasize enough how much I agree. Both personally and through the experiences of the women around me. My psychology professor was sexually assaulted by three men. While she told police, she never mentioned it to any of her partners, up until she met her husband. She told us because the end of the year was drawing close, and she wanted to leave us with something to remember about coping mechanisms.

They never found them, and now that so many years have passed, she's forgiven them. I don't think it makes her an angel. I think it makes her stronger, and healthier.

A few years ago a fellow creator told me that they wanted to illustrate how people can "evolve".

I had to explain to them that, in reality, and if they were trying to stay as true to life as possible, that abusers don't "evolve" most of the time. They make only minor, superficial adjustments to sway the PUBLIC eye that they've turned over a new leaf but the abuse usually continues in some way (if not worse, in some cases).

In anything written by fujoshi (and I am going to make the distinction, because to say that all LGBT comics and prose is like this is false), I noted that this kind of abusive relationship is turned way up and, for some reason, people fawn all over it and praise it as good writing when, those of us who were/are in abusive relationships find ourselves cringing at what we're reading/seeing. For some reason, the abuse is immediately identified when we're talking about hetero male on female abuse but not the other way around and not in fujoshi-written content.

Now: don't lie to your audience.

Abuse happens and abusive relationships are apart of life (as shitty as that sounds) but what you are showing the audience is the lessons learned from that abuse and illustrating justice, no matter how subtle.

Also: This is NOT to be confused with the "Belligerent sexual tension" trope where people don't get along with each other at first and parts of the story are dedicated to watching their relationship grow/they discover the potential/they discover they have feelings for each other.

Just because someone is MEAN doesn't necessarily mean they are abusive, per say.

About the visual novel... had the abusive line good end?
I haven't play this novel, but I have liked visual novel "Tsukihime". In that novel you mostly choose the options of the boy's behaviour, who is MC, so player learns his POV. There were cruel things here, including that player had an option to rape some of girl characters. But if they choose this option, good ending have become unreachable (if I remember correctly). I personally see nothing wrong about it, cause it shows bad consequences of such a things.

Well, in this case maybe this game should be named "Stockholm syndrome" instead

Ahh like i said i never played it, and I don't live in Japan so I don't know what the public opinion on it really was. I just figured it was an otome game, and those games are usually well... serving one purpose.

Mmm I know lots of people see the most famous bits like the cage and hear otome and assume. There's a pretty decent anime adaption, subbed and dubbed, that does a pretty good job with the vibe of it. Otome games are actually more and more getting plots and taking on darker themes, it's quite interesting seeing them evolve from basic bland girls gets guys for reasons I can't figure out to actual stories dealing with some very dark issues at times.

We should be allowed to experiment in fiction because not everything is meant to be educational, or a manual of "how to become a better person". We can't ignore that some people fantasize with abuse (inflict or receive it), it is something that people might like to play with from the safety of a reader point of view.

I think that abuse is totally valid in a plot, what makes no sense is when an author tries too hard to justify the abuse. "Oh, he is not really evil, he has suffered so much" "Wait, but he redeems himself".
being sorry after the abuse doesn't make it less abusive!!! The dominant character never gets consequences for their behavior.
Being apologetic for the abuser is potentially dangerous because it fits the real-life domestic abuse mindset.

@HGohwell Well, that's actually sounds interesting. Now I want to play this game to sort things out by myself.

Hah, god, yes. I definitely am not a Toma fan. I've played Amnesia in both English and Japanese -- the end you're referring to is a bad end. The good end involves Toma discovering the MC's diary leading her to recapturing her memories and Toma apologising, going on to help her submit the data of the troll group harassing her to a fanclub leader. It's still awful, it continues to be a strikingly lame "redemption" for him.

The other dude, so many kill-endings with him! Ukyo! Yeah, he's the one with dissociative identity disorder (supposedly from trying to follow her through timelines and dying thousands of times). The romanticised anomalies portrayed in Amnesia are a'plenty, dang.

But this is centered around otome/female-audience visual novels. Does anyone know how the relationships are portrayed in harem games/male-audience dating sims? >.>

Dang that's right, for some reason I thought that was the good route, or was it that good route was so bullcrap that my friend decided that that bad ending was better than the good ending even though she thought it was trash cause the good ending was a out of character made no sense bad attempt at redemption experience? I don't know the whole game is generally a thing I try to block out of my memory tbh.

As for games aimed at guys, I don't actually get to sit through those much since all my friends that do the VN share are all female, as well as all the free games that Playstation keeps giving me cause I have PSN+ are all Otome, I really don't think I have ever gotten a VN for males from PSN+, only Otome.

There was one that a friend who is thirsty for yuri content played though, I don't remember what it was called (look. She just starts playing them in hangout and screen sharing while I'm working on comics, I don't make a point to go out and play these with friends for fun) I'm not sure it counts as a dating game cause it obviously takes it a step further and becomes a bow-chika-wow game. Anyway the plot was something like... you're a dude... that gets turned into a girl, and you get to seek out on lesbian adventures. Lame and iffy as hell but I don't pick these games my friend does.

And just... there was one event that you had to go through in EVERY SINGLE ROUTE. Where you got raped by your male teacher. You could NOT avoid this event, it happened in every single route no mater what girl you went after. It was the most annoying thing, every time that scene showed up it was just "fk... not this a*hole again WHY do I have to sit through this AGAIN" I don't know if it was some weird wish fulfillment thing to get it on with a lesbian since this was a game aimed at guys and not girls/actual lesbians, but you could NOT avoid this event at all. The scene was not presented in a scary way, I'm not sure if you could call it romanticized though but it was very much meant to arose the player.

Aside from that the only other one I can think of that they played is... maybe... Hunnie Pop (or however you spell that) and that was more... desperate attempts to pick the right options to get into girls pants than it really was any story.

On a side note, Amnisia was actually not as FKed up as a lot of the yaoi games my friends have played... holy crap... just... fk... give me the dude locking me in cages over the alien rape that results in shitting out meat babies game.

Edit: From what I have been told by my brother, stalking is apparently a common 'romantic' thing in male dating games, either by the male player stalking the girls or the female characters stalking you.

Two of the biggest male aimed games I can think of: Catherine and Fate/Stay Night series. Catherine I've never actually played in full but have played bits with friends. From the bits I've seen it's a fairly typical "men just can't be faithful" type involving and affair and eventually choice between the sexy seductive type and the stable marriage type. Fate/Stay Night one of the biggest anime franchises out there, has a big magical plot but seems to surprise a lot of people that it's original for is a sex heavy visual novel and a lot of these so called spin-offs to the original anime are just the different routes. There's a lot of messed up stuff in there as well, most notable in some of the side character, but it is of course famous for Rin one of the classic tsunderes.

Tsundere and yandere's are also the most obvious example of abuse towards males in some of these being considered cute. Yandere's not so much, although it does happen sometimes, but the tsundere is the classic. I've lost track of the amount of times I've got annoyed by the supposedly cute and feisty female lead best friend/love interest hitting their male lead, sometimes to the point where you can see when they've said something wrong there's a look of oh crap now I'm gonna get hit but that's considered cute and feisty and she's a strong female. I don't know why guys have decided the violent tsundere is attractive but I wish they'd stop. If a male character treated a love interest like that there would be outrage but violent tsunderes are acceptable and cute for some reason.