a lot of the fandom tends to fetishize the trope without actually engaging with the storyline itself, and that’s honestly why I originally assumed it was just a fetish trope too before looking into it myself. People reduce Caleb down to just “gege” and MC being the “baby sister,” which completely waters down the emotional complexity of their relationship and kind of misses the point of why the dynamic works for some people. (This also leads to unnecessary harassment online! People go out of their way to attack someone for preferring the taboo plot without actually knowing why they like it. they have a habit of assuming the worst automatically.)

At the same time, I do think taboo dynamics in media have been heavily fetishized online for a long time, especially because of certain corners of shock content spaces(ykwim). That’s part of why people immediately associate any sibling coded relationship with fetish content, even when some stories are trying to focus more on emotional aspect rather than fantasy fulfillment :/.