Admin Mawile: Love can help people, yes, but it’s not going to fix anyone. It has to be a person’s choice to better themselves, and no amount of loving them is going to make them better if they aren’t willing to improve themself. 

I get what you’re saying here, anon, and it sounds deeply worrying that some people think DL is a good idea in real life. 

Now, I hate to discourage anyone, but in the case of DL, it kind of has to be said. The idea that you can love someone abusive into treating you better is a dangerous, dangerous thing, and one that I’d hate to see younger fans of DL getting mixed up in. People should be loved and accepted, but that’s not an excuse. Loving someone doesn’t mean enabling them, and allowing people to treat you the way the boys treat Yui is just abuse. 

To anyone who thinks that the way that DL works is applicable to real life; it’s not. You can’t “fix” someone by loving them. 

(However, I am not saying that DL is bad. It’s wonderful, as long as the abuse and violence stay firmly planted in fiction-land. Just keep in mind, the way Yui “fixes” the boys is never how it works in real life.)

Admin Mawile: (●＞д＜)ノ That is a… complicated topic. 

First of all, Sadism and Masochism can be legitimate, perfectly acceptable sexual and non-sexual practices. The ways the boys do it is wayyyy wrong, but in itself, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying pain in a safe, sane, and consensual environment. 

The way the boys act is primarily a product of the way they were raised, but you’re right in that it’s not an excuse. The boys are meant to be damaged, yet genuinely terrible people. They’re not nice, they don’t treat Yui well, and yes, a lot of what they do is absolutely abuse. I would never deny that the boys’ actions are cruel and abusive. 

However, that’s where the fantasy comes in. 

The fantasy of DL is being able to win over a damaged, abused pretty boy and “fix” him through love. Yeah, some people are attracted to it for the masochism element, but what it boils down to is a power fantasy of fixing someone broken just by loving them enough. 

And this is completely a fantasy. There’s a clear border between reality and fiction, and DL is FAR on the fiction side of things. It’s not realistic; it’s nothing that anyone would want in real life. 

Some people have fantasies of swatting down anyone who challenges them with a single hit, and some people have fantasies of being able to “fix” someone by loving them enough, and that’s okay. As long as it stays in fantasy, these things are healthy and fun. There’s nothing wrong or bad about shipping yourself or your characters with the boys, and having that power fantasy is a 100% normal thing. 

The fun of it, though, is is that it’s not real. It’s fun to be able to imagine the boys in all kinds of situations, even reader insert, but if they were real, they’d be awful. DL is fiction at its core, and I highly doubt that anyone is saying that what the boys do should be encouraged or enjoyed in real life. 

In the end, DL is a work of fiction meant to be enjoyed. It’s safe and fun in fiction land, and as long as people can differentiate that the fantasies of the story aren’t okay in reality, it’s harmless.