As it is, Finder and the vast majority of works within the gender are written by women to satisfy the fantasies of other women, meaning that they will, more often than not, fetishize people and situations that tend to be very controversial. It is all very messed up, but yaoi is not exactly the place where one should expect to find realistic gay relationships. Yet, he is portrayed to be aroused nearly every time, usually under the “excuse” that either he is enjoying what Asami is doing to him, or he is thinking of Asami when others abuse him, which I find very disturbing because it communicates that his body is giving consent even if he, verbally, isn’t. Akihito, for the longest time, didn’t give Asami (or Fei Long, or Sudou, or Mikhail, or Yuri, or anyone that ever touched his body), the consent to do so.

The men in this story hardly ever consented to the sexual acts they performed until very recently. I agree with you that Asami “calmed” Fei Long down without his consent, and that is probably one of the most controversial things in Finder. Many of us were also unwilling to do so with Fei Long for 9/10 of the Naked Truth Arc, even if he had “good reason” to act like a resentful, scornful sob.

Many of us are not really willing to take such a huge leap of faith, and that’s fine. If he doesn’t, then yes, the burden of Asami’s redemption (or lack thereof) will continue to be the readers’. So far, there is no indication that Asami will ever apologize to Akihito about how their story began, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t, in the future. The fact is that said one shot was a huge hit and people clamored for more, so Yamane Ayano had to operate some crazy magic to turn that unsympathetic, sadistic bastard into a man that is actually capable of love, and loveable. What I think complicates Asami as a character is that he was not created to be one half of a loving, caring couple: he was created to be the cruel, hot seme in a bondage one shot. As a fan of Asami myself, I don’t know if I would justify his early wrongdoing in this story by saying that “that’s Asami being Asami”.

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