>>149865338
Nah, Omalley does do a lot of general repurposing and retconning from the fourth book onward, but Knives was always supposed to make him be an asshole even if a point was made of portraying his treatment of her as innocent as possible in terms of sexuality at least.

That said, the times were absolutely different. Another point is how his male friends find the situation appealing but the female ones consider him an asshole for it even if they aren't outraged by the situation as it was comparatively "normal". In the present the most likely scenario for socially adjusted people would be genuine outrage in the case of women, and a performative version of it in the case of the guys.