@ghostsounds
Pt 2.
Video games don't necessarily cause people to become violent, but they, like all media, have the power to shape perception. There are a lot of young people who play games like call of duty and read comics where the bad guys get torturted and come to think things like 'it's okay to torture and kill p*dophiles and criminals'. Whether they're right or wrong about that is irrelevant. What matters is that video games absolutely did play a part in them thinking that way: just like yaoi and sm*t absolutely can shape the way people think about relationships. It's not like authors have to model perfect relationships in their stories at all times, but when they choose not to, it has real impacts.
Pt 2.
Video games don't necessarily cause people to become violent, but they, like all media, have the power to shape perception. There are a lot of young people who play games like call of duty and read comics where the bad guys get torturted and come to think things like 'it's okay to torture and kill p*dophiles and criminals'. Whether they're right or wrong about that is irrelevant. What matters is that video games absolutely did play a part in them thinking that way: just like yaoi and sm*t absolutely can shape the way people think about relationships. It's not like authors have to model perfect relationships in their stories at all times, but when they choose not to, it has real impacts.
I don't think authors should be required to do anything, but I do think that the morally correct thing to do is to make it clear when a relationship is toxic. The portrayal of bad things isn't bad, but the normalization of them is. I respect authors who write stories that reflect heavy topics to inform people about them. I respect survivors of abuse, trafficking, r*pe, violence, war, and all other tragedies who share their stories. The difference between a trafficking survivor telling people about trafficking and a yaoi author depicting trafficking as an acceptable relationship with the trafficker having no consequences of any kind is the way it is approached. Yaoi authors are often very insensitive and frequently handle SA, dating violence, trafficking, and other topics like this with little to no care, and that is the problem more than them depicting the topic itself.