On another note, a lot of people still don't seem to understand how hymens work.
LOL so true. At least in western cultures, I can't imagine even 10% of 18-year-old virgins still having an intact hymen. Between sports, tampons, and "experimenting down there," the hymen is long gone shortly after puberty for most girls.
Different cultures and even different individuals define "virginity" differently. I knew a girl in high school who insisted she was
not a virgin because she gave a guy a blowjob, and that was
sex to her: in her mind, she had sex with a guy, so she wasn't a virgin (I think she was just embarrassed to be a virgin). I knew a girl in college that insisted she
was a virgin because, even though she had sex multiple times with multiple guys, she didn't let them cum inside her (and who was I say to tell her "No, you are not a virgin. Stop lying.") Some girls in Catholic/religious cultures have anal sex before vaginal sex to "keep their virginity," which seems rather technical; if I knew a girl who was having butt-sex with her boyfriend, I wouldn't think of her as a virgin lol.
I think in erotic games, and definitely in erotic fiction, there's a symbolism to "breaking the hymen" that is sexually appealing to a lot of males. It's rather archaic, but I understand it. It's a literal physical barrier that represents "breaking" a conceptual barrier. So even if it's not very
realistic in an erotic story for the male to break a girl's hymen when taking her virginity, it's kinda hot, at least to me.