Omegaverse is pretty gray in consent, but u just have to understand that it's not supposed to be anything like real life (obviously if men can get pregnant lmao)

And this entire show, no one's supposed to be liked at all from the mild to extreme it's so gray morally so u can't really put it into one singular spot. Ppl don't gotta like it or get it but as a person who's been into ABO for a really long time and get the dynamics, the show is pretty fire

You don't know how happy I am to find this discussion. I know I am late to the party but as someone who consumed a whole lot of western m/m contents before very recently watching BLs (except for many a few manhwas over a decade ago), I must say most often consent does not seem to be even a concept in Asian media (I am talking in terms of BLs). And you can't even talk about it without getting attacked by rabid fans !! So I appreciate your thoughts.

It was very interesting to hear WL's side as the aggressor and how it also impacted him.  WL and GT were both victims of the circumstances. But I just want to add that for HY and SY the consent violation to me seemed more complicated.  It was not just the grape, but the systematic way HY messed with SY's health repeatedly, intentionally and I felt that it wasn't addressed. A real world parallel would be to mess with someone's birth control for months while they suffer from unexplained hormonal issues that is putting their health at risk. THAT to me felt like a bigger and more serious abuse than the explicit grape because as you said the grape was a consequence of the circumstances.  I strongly believe media reflects the real world in a more dramatized light. And even in the context of this fantasy world, it is not hard to translate the character's actions to something that can easily happen IRL. HY's behavior seems very textbook abuser and so it left a very bad taste for me. WL and GT could have provided a much needed fluff in the show since their dynamics is a perfect hurt/comfort setting but it would not have undone the "dafuq was that". 🤷‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️  

I’m not sure it’s correct to say that in Asian BL consent is absent. This has to be put in the context of the storytelling the narrative is meant to serve. As the OP puts in her original post, in women’s writing: “the omegaverse makes coercion inherent to its biological frameworks and this premise naturally limits the characters’ “agency & ability to seek, give or withhold consent” in this dramatized, parallel version of a hierarchical social structure. these scenes are deliberately portrayed as explicitly non-consensual as they parallel real-life consent violations taken to the extreme through the science-fictional elements of the genre, like how alphas being dominant and omegas being submissive parallel male/female gender scripts in our world.”

Even if it’s not an Omegaverse universe good BL series/drama adaptations that are thoughtful and respectful about what women’s storytelling is doing politically, not just reproducing visual aesthetic‘s and tropes for a quick buck, will notice that some forms of inequality might be removed or lessened (eg no gender difference), but new inequalities are purposely brought in to make the dynamic reflect hierarchies in real social life, forcing the characters go on a journey to removing those hierarchies, only after which the CP become equals and is love is possible. That is the point.

The consent isn’t just about sexual consent but is ultimately about consent to the relationship itself, i.e. on what terms are these people entering into a relationship that can be called *love*, not just one based on sexual attraction, which is the story too many Directors end up telling (this is as true of Asian BLs like Kinn Porsche as it is of gay western shows like Heated Rivalry). This challenge is where many male Directors enter the BL industry and fall flat in terms of not being able to produce the adaptation with the same radical intent as a novel that tens of millions of BL fans thought was meaningful.

They do not understand the *why*; and may think it’s because of what exciting actions are visible on-screen but completely underplay, or miss altogether, the achievements not always representable visually - like care, knowledge, trust, commitment, understanding and respect. 

In ABO Desire only one CP completed a journey where they did the emotional labour that established all these dimensions in their relationship, therefore only one CP ends with a relational status that can be described as love.