I Used To Defend These Men. Now I Need Therapy.
🚨 warning: long post / rant / critique / former dark romance enjoyer speaking || mentions of trauma, psychological themes, storytelling tropes, and way too much webtoon side-eye energy. proceed with caution, besties 💅
Hi, you all probably don’t know me and honestly, that’s fine. Most of you might scroll past this thinking, “just another nobody ranting about fiction again,” and yeah… you’re not wrong. But hear me out for a sec, because I used to be that person, the one who devoured every dark romance like it was the peak of storytelling. I’ve cried, swooned, and even defended some truly unhinged fictional men in the name of “depth.” But lately? The genre’s been feeling… off. Like a poorly made copy of something that once had bite, grit, and soul.
Let’s talk about it, especially the male leads. Because the way dark romance used to be written versus what we’re getting now? Night and day.
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The Tortured Psycho Trope (and how it’s become cheap)
Once upon a time, a “dark” male lead had layers. Think Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, awful, yes, but human in his cruelty. There was always a sense of tragedy behind his madness. But now? It’s like every ML thinks being emotionally constipated and borderline abusive automatically equals “mysterious.” The psychological aspect, the slow unpeeling of why they are the way they are, is gone. Instead, we get trauma dump backstories used as excuses, not context.
Example: Modern webtoon MLs will choke someone out in chapter 5, then drop a single tear in chapter 7 with the line, “I was hurt too,” and the fandom’s like, “He’s healing 🥺.” No, babe. He’s not. He just trauma-bombed you and you called it romance.
Alternative: If you’re going to make a dark ML, give him emotional logic. He doesn’t have to be sane, but he does need consistency. Psychological thriller dynamics work when there’s tension, when you understand his madness, even if you don’t condone it. That’s what makes him compelling.
2. The Bland-Angst Factory
Why do so many recent MLs feel like they came from the same template factory? You know the one: “cold CEO/Duke of the north/vampire/demon with tragic past who only softens for the FL.” Yawn. Where’s the internal conflict? Where’s the moral dissonance that makes you question your sympathy for him? The original dark romance charm was that push-and-pull, when you were torn between fearing him and feeling sorry for him. Now it’s just sad man + smut = formula.
Example: Some newer manhwas (side eyes certain Webtoon Originals) give us MLs that talk like they were assembled by C.AI. Every line is just recycled tension with no genuine emotional evolution. It’s like they think whispering “You’re mine” counts as depth.
Alternative: Write a dark ML who grows. Not necessarily into a good person, but into someone aware of what he is. Let him struggle, self-destruct, maybe even regress. Make the darkness feel earned, not aesthetic.
3. The Misuse of “Dark”
Some authors really said, “Let’s call it dark romance,” and then filled it with nothing but trauma porn and excessive smut scenes. Don’t get me wrong, I LIKE tension, I like messy, I like sensuality, but there’s a fine line between exploring darkness and glamorizing cruelty. When everything becomes about shock value, it loses meaning.
Psychological note: Darkness isn’t about violence, it’s about intent. What makes a story dark is the emotional cost. The moral descent. The feeling that you’ve peered into someone’s soul and didn’t like what you saw, but understood it anyway.
Example: Compare Killing Stalking’s psychological unraveling to a random “kidnap and fall in love” manhwa. One explores trauma, obsession, and control with disturbing honesty; the other just slaps a “dark romance” tag to justify bad writing.
Alternative: Let darkness serve a narrative purpose. Show how it corrupts, isolates, reshapes. Make readers uncomfortable, but make that discomfort matter.
4. The Over-Saturation of Smut (and Why It’s Killing Tension)
I’m not anti-smut. In fact, I LOVE a well-written sensual scene that advances the relationship or reveals character vulnerability. But when it’s just there every three chapters for the algorithm? It ruins the pacing and numbs the emotional tension. The point of dark romance isn’t the act, it’s the impulse behind it.
Example: Classic dark romances built tension through emotional warfare, power struggles, guilt, desire, denial. Modern ones? They throw characters into bed before we even understand why they’re drawn to each other. It’s instant gratification masquerading as chemistry.
Alternative: Write intimacy with intention. The best “smut” is psychological, not physical, it’s in the hesitation, the danger, the trust that feels like betrayal. Make readers ache for the moment, not skip through it.
5. The Lost Psychology of the Female Lead
Why do modern FLs in dark romance act like they have no self-preservation instinct? She’s either a saint who forgives everything or a cardboard cutout with a trauma kink. Older stories gave us complexity; a woman who fought back, questioned, broke down, and rebuilt herself. That’s what made the relationship hurt in the best way.
Example: In older works, the FL’s perspective grounded the story. Now, she’s just a narrative prop for the ML’s pain. The emotional lens is gone, and so is the nuance.
Alternative: Bring back introspection. Give the FL psychology. Let her be messy, scared, angry, rebellious, or selfish. Her reactions are what make the “dark” believable. Otherwise, it’s just fantasy abuse disguised as romance.
🎠Conclusion: The Genre Needs Depth Again
I’m not saying dark romance should disappear. I’m saying it needs to remember why it existed in the first place. It was never meant to be about prettified pain or sad hot men with tragic monologues. It was about the study of power, desire, and human weakness. It was about love born in brokenness, not in the fetishization of it.
As someone who’s crawled out of the dark romance phase and now binges psychological thrillers like they’re therapy sessions, trust me, I get the appeal. But maybe it’s time we stop calling every manipulative guy with abs and trauma a “complex character.” Complexity requires writing, not vibes.
So yeah, maybe I’m just ranting. Maybe I’m just tired of seeing stories that mistake cruelty for depth. But if dark romance ever wants to matter again, it needs to start hurting for a reason not just because it can.
(sigh anyway, thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Side eyes at half the new Webtoon lineup.)
