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sweetestlamb · 4 years

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Sometimes Goodbye’s a Second Chance

Summary: Gang-tae and Mun-yeong talk.

Author's note: Here it is the final chapter of Stronger, for those of you who were waiting I hope you enjoy this chapter and enjoyed this journey. The series was honestly one of my favorite despite its shortness, I enjoyed letting MY express her anger and frustration and letting GT address them instead of gaslighting and never apologizing directly. There’s so much more I could have written but I think this was the ending I wanted, I won’t say too much but thank you for joining me on this journey. My IOTNBO fics might start to dwindle as a I explore new shows and fandoms but this was my first and they will always have a special place in my heart. All my fics are like my babies. I think about them all the time and how I could continue, if I find time I will update one of my other stories. Stay tuned and thank your for your support!

With a poignant pause at the sliding door, Mun-yeong contemplates evading this conversation once more and closing Gang-tae out again, not out of any maliciousness or desire for revenge but simply because she's terrified.

She hadn't been knowingly bluffing when she told him to leave but the pain she'd felt when she'd come out to find him gone had been immediate- her heart had plummeted faster than even their moment at the beach. The very catalyst for all of this. But after pushing him away and taking time to figure out what she wanted, it had still been that broken man with the unforgettable eyes. He wasn't perfect and he was adept at striking her with dagger sharp words but he was just as astute at soothing her and bringing light into her eyes.

At the end of her soul searching, all signs pointed back to the one thing she had been running from.

Whilst running away from him and everything being with him entailed she'd realized her true feelings for him and they are deeper than want, desire, or like. Despite lacking it almost her whole life somehow this stunted man had awoken something in her heart that had been locked away for years.

"Come in." She hears herself beckon, stepping aside to let in a cautious Gang-tae who moves carefully as if he's scared to spook her. It's too late his mere presence is doing that.

He sits on the floor, placing a moderate distance between them but facing her head on. For once he's not running, not being a coward and honestly it unnerves her; his eyes are unwavering as he stares back at her.

Taking a deep steadying breath she collects her thoughts and considers this conversation they need to have, uncertainty making her stomach coil into knots.

"CanIstart?" Gang-tae stutters out in one breath, and she stills in shock before simply nodding, shaking hands clasped in her lap.

Now it's his turn for a deep breath. She can almost see his lungs expanding and collapsing through his chest.

He's nervous too.

That thought eases some of her jitters.

The sounds of nature permeate the silence that lingers between them, twin bird calls cutting through the air, she wonders if the lone bird found a companion and if the creature had been lonely before.

"While you were gone I got a chance to think too."

Quite an ominous start to this conversation and she vaguely wonders if he came all this way to break up with her, thinking it kinder to sever their bond face to face. She can't promise that she will remain pinned if that is his intention.

As a precaution she straightens up, preparing for the worst. Life has always been an unfair battle for her after all why should this be any different?

"I missed you everyday."

Oh.

Her heart, the traitor perks up instantly thundering away despite her brain trying to calm it with reminders of how much he's hurt her in the past, her reckless heart doesn't care growing wings and taking flight.

"Everything reminded me of you, the rain, books, bright colors, I couldn't even use a knife without thinking of you." A fond smile creeps onto his face and she feels an answering smirk threatening to spread on her own lips.

He's definitely not the repressed unflinching Gang-tae she'd meet so long ago. She will happily take some credit for that.

"Mun-yeong, I didn't mean any of those things I said on the beach. I know I can't take it back and I'll have to prove myself to you everyday, but I want the chance. I want you to give me another chance to show you that I can be better, I can be the man you need. Please."

It's so gravely different from the Gang-tae who sat across from her at the dining room table, expectant and entitled, no apologies in sight as he asked her to stay by his side despite leaving her side when she begged him not to.

She'd given him her worst, lashed out and hurt him purposely, she now understands this was petty and love shouldn't hurt but she deserved some comeuppance she'd been the bigger person with him several times and her only reward had been him throwing her aside like something expendable.

So she has no regrets but she can't deny the happiness that bubbles up.

Finally he understands. The weight on her shoulder lightens as she stares back before a wary smile spreads across her face.

She'd missed him so much.

"I missed you so much." It takes a minute to recognize that he spoke those words and her thoughts are not audible for all to hear.

She's not quite ready to be that vulnerable with him, yet.

But she preens at the words, letting the words wrap around her bruised heart like a bandage.

"I'm not ready to go back yet. I'm going to stay here, I promise I'll come back tomorrow though. I'll come back to you."

Not a concrete answer to his plea but the warmth that fills his eyes let's her know that he's received her message loud and clear: I'll give you another chance.

"You can go back before me, I'm sure Sang-tae is waiting for you. " She means it, she no longer views him as competition for Gang-tae's affection, he cares for them in different ways and she similarly cares for both brothers in different ways.

Love has various hues and nuances.

He huffs climbing to his feet before walking over to her and extending a hand, "Where would I go? You're here so I'm staying. Do you want to go for a walk?"

She was offered a multi-dollar deal when she was just 21 for her first best selling book and even that offer pales in comparison right now. He has fundamentally changed her mind about so many things, including the purpose of taking walks.

Grabbing hold of his large warm palm, she allows him to pull her up.

"Yes. I want to go with you."

They take a leisurely stroll around the area, avoiding puddles that flood the dirt paths. He brings her to the field where he plucked those wildflowers for her, choosing a single flower to carefully place in her hair.

She can't control the shy blush that burns on her cheeks as he whispers that she looks pretty. Under his watchful eyes, she feels like a work of art. During their walk his eyes never stray too far, as if he's scared she might disappear.

She squeezes his hands in reassurance.

When they wonder back to the guest house the skies are dark inky blue and the moon glows brightly, a beacon that guides their way.

A tray filled with drinks and snacks greets them, déjà vu making a surprise appearance.

"We can bring it in the room, my feet hurt I want to take a bath."

Gang-tae quickly moves to lift the tray at her words and she nods at him before entering the room and collecting her sleep clothes before wondering off to take a well needed bath.

Minutes later, she returns feeling freer and squeaky clean, the warm water doing wonders for her sore feet. Stubborn drops of water drip from her short mane soaking the collar of her satin white sleep dress, it brushes against her knees as she walks.

Sliding the door open she softly enters the room question on her tongue, "Do you want to have a drink? I think we both deserve one."

She wanders around the room unfolding her bedding and then finding a brush in her bag before sitting to detangle her hair. Humming softly to herself, a nameless tune.

Moments later she realized that Gang-tae never responded to her question, after a final downward stroke she peers at him over a barely covered shoulder.

"Hmm?.."

He is staring at her. Penetrating through her more like, his dark eyes sweeping from her face down to her body and then back up, marginally. Too low to reach her eyes, licking his own lips slowly before he realizes what he's doing.

A loud cough expels from his throat as he shifts looking away resolutely. Nervous twitches as he twists his hands in his lap.

But as if uncontrollable his eyes meander back to her, devouring her face. Now she knows for a fact he's staring at her lips. As if they are a four course meal.

Finding her lips dry she soaks them with a wet swipe before crawling cover to the tray, her dress drapes teasingly under her chest, material clinging to the soft mounds of her chest, she shivers at the breeze that caresses her naked chest, opting for nothing underneath the thin dress.

His gulp is deafening in the dead quiet of the room.

Ignoring him, she pours herself a drink careful not to splash any of the deep red liquid to on her dress.

Leaning back she swallows the saccharine beverage, savoring each drop as it slides down her throat.

"Don't you want some?"

His eyes are locked on her mouth and she pulls her bottom lip into her mouth to capture some stray liquid. He groans. She releases it empathetically.

She pours him a cup, handing it over to him.

His fingers brush against her hand and the static crackles between them at the first touch.

He grabs the cup and she begins to retract her hand but his grip is too quick and too firm.

He clamps down on her wrist, gentle but sure.

Eyes glittering in the hushed darkness he simply holds her.

Before he tugs, a single strong tug that sends her crashing into the wall that is his chest. She releases a puff of surprise that lands squarely on his neck. His arms wrap around her waist as she settles comfortably against him.

She takes a shuttering breath before gazing up at him, he'd been waiting for her eyes already locked on her face.

"What are you trying to do to me?" He groans out long and suffering, she accidentally squirms brushing into the growing hardness, rigid line pressing against her thigh.

"You were so controlled last time. I didn't do anything this time, why are you losing control?" She taunts him, not a big enough person not to mention his ironclad control and rejection the last time they'd been here.

"We're different now. I know what I want. I want you."

Oh how long had she waited to hear those words? It feels like coming home after a long journey.

She melts into his hold at his proclamation. Freely giving herself to him. Happy to be the one wanted this time.

Her want for him is always thrumming under her skin, its exhilarating to see his want so openly on his face as he surveys her body and hardens from simply looking at her. She feels powerful.

He swiftly grabs her shoulders as he throws her onto the mat, catching her wrists in this hands and peering down at her. Sweeping her off her feet, before he kisses the wine off her lips. She gets drunk on his flavor, lost in the swipes of their tongue and his hands pushing under her dress to clutch at naked skin.

As they surrender to their bodily desires, clothes torn and swept away, hands roaming and stroking, joining together in passionate waves she feels his love as he thrusts into her breaking her apart only to haphazardly stuff her back together. Her skin tingles as he caresses her, fingers plucking at taut nipples and tongue exploring her wet treasures.

He breathes love into her skin as he fucks any doubts out of her mind with powerful thrusts that drive her up the bedding as she scratches and screams her pleasure. He hammers at her walls, drawing her back each time she tries to find a moment of reprieve.

She's so dazed by their frenzied coupling that she almost misses his frantic whispers.

"I love you. I love you Ko Mun-yeong. I love you."

She wraps her legs around his waist tightly, gripping at the hard length that slams into her with uncoordinated motion. Fast, faster, faster.

Her orgasm blinds her as she twists and bucks in his hold, his own release flooding her in creamy warmth before they collapse in tangled limbs.

She loves him too. She knows that now. One day, she'll share those feelings with him. But for now she'll give him a chance, give them a chance. It's what they both deserve.

#its okay to not be okay #its okay to not be okay fic #psycho but it's okay #moon gang tae #ko mun yeong #stronger #final chapter #thank you all #it's okay to not be okay #my babies #my muses

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impressivepress · 3 years

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What Charlie Chaplin Got Right About Satirizing Hitler

The Great Dictator—Charlie Chaplin’s masterful satire of Adolf Hitler—began filming in September 1939, right at the start of World War II. By the time it was released in 1940, the Axis had been formed, and Nazis were already occupying much of France.

The threat was not at all abstract: critic Michael Wood notes that the movie premiered that December, in London, amid German air raids. The following December, of 1941, would yield its own devastating threats from the air—this time on American soil, which would clarify for Americans the realness of this war by bringing it home.

It was, in other words, a strange moment to be making a comedy about Adolf Hitler—even a satire holding him to account, and even one in which Chaplin himself, who was at that point one of the most famous movie stars in the world, famous for playing the ambling, lovable Little Tramp, took on the role of Hitler. In 1940, Germany and the US had yet to become enemies; feathers, it was worried, would be ruffled by a movie like this. But Chaplin was already unwittingly bound up in the era’s iconographies of evil. His likeness, the Little Tramp, with that curt mustache and oddly compact face of his, had already become a visual reference for cartoonists lampooning Hitler in the press. And he was already on the Nazis’ radar: the 1934 Nazi volume The Jews Are Looking At You referred to him as "a disgusting Jewish acrobat." Chaplin wasn’t Jewish. But he was frequently rumored to be. And when he visited Berlin in 1931, he was mobbed by German fans, proving that his popularity could surpass even the growing ideological boundaries of a nascent Nazi Germany—hence their hatred.

Chaplin was aware of all of this—and of the fact that he and Hitler were born only four days apart, in April of 1889, that they had both risen out of poverty, and that they had enough points of biographical comparison, overall, to spook any sane person. Let’s not overstate their similarities: One of these men would go on to make the world laugh, and the other would go on to start a world war and facilitate the Holocaust. Humorously, that split would come to be echoed in The Great Dictator. Chaplin does double duty, playing the movie's two central roles. One, the character of Adenoid Hynkel, is a Hitler spoof by way of a short-tempered and preposterously powerful personality, a dictator of the fictional country Tomainia. And in the opposing corner, Chaplin offers us a variation on his classic Little Tramp, a Jewish barber who saves a high-ranking officer’s life in World War I and, after a plane accident and years of recovery in the hospital, wakes up to the seeds of World War II being sewn in his country.

The Great Dictator is a classic for a reason. It's startling in its depictions of violence, which stand out less for their outright brutality than for how memorably they depict the Nazis’ betrayal of everyday humanity. And it's renowned as well as for its resourceful and original humor, which combines Chaplin at his most incisive and balletic with raucous displays of verbal wit. This was Chaplin’s first sound film; his previous feature, the 1936 masterpiece Modern Times, was by the time of its release considered almost anachronistic for being a silent film in a sound era. Dictator avails itself of this technological progress, making perhaps its most successful bit out of the way Hitler speaks, the melange of rough sounds and brutish insinuations that have long made footage from his rallies as fascinating as they are frightening.

The Great Dictator understands Hitler as a performer, as an orator wielding language like the unifying, galvanizing power that it is. But it also understands him as a psyche. This of course means it’s full of what feel like sophomoric jokes, gags in which Hitler’s insecurities, his thirst for influence, his ideological inconsistencies (an Aryan revolution led by a brunette?) and zealous dependency on loyalty come under fire. It isn’t a psychological portrait, but nor is it so simple as a funhouse treatment of the coming war, all punchline and distortion.

It’s all a bit richer than that, which might be why The Great Dictator is on my mind this week, as we greet the release of Taiki Waititi’sJojo Rabbit, a movie in which Waititi himself plays Adolf Hitler, not quite in the flesh, but rather as imagined by a little Nazi boy who’s fashioned him into an imaginary friend. I’m not crazy about Waititi’s movie, which is less a satire than a vehicle for unchallenged moral goodness in the face of only barely-confronted evil. But it does, like Chaplin’s film, nosedive into the same problems of representation and comedy that have plagued movies since early in Hitler’s reign. Should we satirize genocidal maniacs? Can we laugh at that? And if so, can the line we usually toe between comedic pleasure and moral outrage—a mix that comes easily to comedy, in the best of cases—withstand something so inconceivable a mass atrocity?

That Chaplin’s movie succeeds where Waititi’s fails is a fair enough point, but comparing most comedians’ work to Chaplin’s more often than not results in an unfair fight. What matters are the things we can all still learn from Chaplin’s work, down to the fact that it so completely and unabashedly honors and toys with the public’s sense of who he is. This wouldn’t be nearly as interesting a movie if the Jewish barber hadn’t so readily recalled the Little Tramp. But because of this familiarity, The Great Dictator feels much the way movies like Modern Times did: like a story about the travails of an every-man who’s suddenly, with no preparation, launched headlong into machinery too great, too complex, too utterly beyond him, for it not to result in comic hi-jinks.

That’s the how barber’s first scenes out of the hospital, as beautifully staged and timed by Chaplin, feel: like watching the Little Tramp turn a corner and walk, completely unaware, into a world war. He sees "Jew" written on his barbershop, for example, but because he’s an amnesiac just released from the hospital, he has no idea why it’s there, and starts to wash it away. This is illegal, of course, and when the Nazis try to tell them so, he, thinking they’re run-of-the-mill brutish anti-Semites, douses them with paint and runs away. Much of the humor, at least in the clearly-marked "Ghetto," where the Barber lives, plays out this way: a terrifying game of comic irony in which what the Barber doesn’t know both empowers and threatens to kill him.

The Hitler scenes, by contrast, are a ballet—at times almost literally—of alliances and petty tasks. The highlight must of course be a scene of Hitler alone, having just renewed his faith in his plan to take over the world, dancing with an inflated globe of the planet, bouncing it off his bum, posing like a pin-up on his desk as the globe floats airlessly skyward. You can’t help but laugh. But that laughter doesn’t mute the brooding danger of it. You see the globe, the ease with which he lifts it up, manipulates it, makes a game of it, and realize that this is precisely what a dictator wants. It's a guileless and child-like vision, from his perspective, of his own power.

The Great Dictator’s famous climax finds these two men merging, somewhat, into one. It’s a rousing speech ostensibly delivered by the Jewish barber, who (for reasons best left to the movie to explain) has been confused for Hynkel by the Nazis and is called upon to speak to the masses. And then he opens his mouth—and the man that emerges is Chaplin himself, creeping beyond the boundaries of character, satire, or even the artificial construct of a "movie," as such.

The speech makes a case for humanity in the face of grave evil. "We think too much and feel too little," Chaplin says. "More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness." You’ll recognize this theme—"more than machinery we need humanity"—throughout Chaplin’s work, and it rings especially true here. Chaplin emerges, fully human, as himself, breaking free of the film’s satirical trappings, to deliver one from the heart.

It’s a scene that plays well on its own, as a standalone speech. For a long while, it was hard to find a version online that hadn’t been modified with dramatic "movie speech" music by way of Hans Zimmer. Youtube comments imply a recent upswing in activity, of people finding the speech anew in the Trump era, and that makes sense. But the scene plays even more strangely, more powerfully, in context, where it’s less easily lent to meme-able political messaging, where it has to brush up against everything else in the movie that’s come before.

It’s startling, frankly. The Great Dictator’s tone to this point never feels so earnest. How could it, what with its balletic Hitler and its foreign dictatorships with names like Bacteria. From the vantage of 1940, Chaplin couldn’t quite see where the war would take us, and it remains the case that some of the film plays oddly—but all the more insightfully for it—today. What’s clear from its final moments, to say nothing of much of the rest, is the power in this tension. Insofar as it can sense but not see the future, you could say that The Great Dictator is a film made in a cloud of relative ignorance. Yet look at how much it says, how far it goes. It makes it hard to make excuses for films made since, which often have the benefit of hindsight yet little of substance to say about what they see in the rear view. We know more, much more, about Hitler today than we did in 1940. Why should we let anyone get away with saying less?

K. Austin Collins · October 18, 2019.

#film #Charlie Chaplin #adolf hitler #the great dictator #vanity fair

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fcb4 · 4 years

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I’m posting this because I can’t find many voices that present a reasoned dissent or at least an offering up of a few counter responses other than complete and total submission of thought and action.

So, a Few Quarantine Principles by Doug Wilson

In ancient Israel, the authorities had the right to tear down someone’s house if it was afflicted with the creeping crud (Lev. 14:33-53).

They had the right to make someone with a contagious disease into a permanent exile, having to live outside the camp (Lev. 13:45-46).

There are three things to note.

First, a biblical quarantine is of the diseased individual, or reasoning by analogy, a quarantine of a diseased “hot spot.”

When the president shut down travel from China early on, he was right to do so. There was a scriptural logic in it. It was not tyranny when Moses made the person who had contracted leprosy to go and live outside the camp. It was hard, and a personal tragedy, but abuse of governmental authority was not part of that tragedy.

Issuing a “shelter-in-place” order for a healthy population is not it. It is not scriptural, it is counter-productive, and “flatten the curve” graphs shown to a people who don’t understand graphs doesn’t fix anything. Quarantining New York City would cause more acute pain in that particular area, but it would be far more biblical than having somebody who lives in Elk River, Idaho have to stay at home. But we live in egalitarian times, and so that kind of thing strikes the levelers as “unfair.”

Second, a biblical quarantine is a hard quarantine. Nobody goes in and nobody comes out. Yellow tape is strung all around the house. There is no such thing as a highly porous quarantine. You don’t let the lepers come into the camp for weekend visits.

Issuing that “shelter-in-place” order, while at the same time not restricting travel to and from contagious areas, is an inverse quarantine. Right now, without breaking the law, a citizen of Moscow could catch a flight over to Seattle, walk through various hot spots breathing in deeply, and then come back to Moscow in order to stand in a tight huddle of people outside one of our local restaurants in order to pick up his takeout. All perfectly legal. But it would not be legal for him, symptom-free, to go across the street to visit his symptom-free neighbor. This is nonsensical.

And third, our leaders have not only shown thoughtless panic in one direction, but a real callousness in another. A large number of people in our country live paycheck-to-paycheck, and they do not have the reserves to handle what has been thrown at them. For many thousands of people, the cure is already worse for them than the disease would have been. And it is not a comparison of lives v. dining out in a fine restaurant. As I have been saying repeatedly, it is lives v. lives.

When someone was in debt, scriptural law required that you could not take their livelihood away from them as a means of securing the debt. To take their means of earning a living from them was tantamount to taking their life.

“No one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge.” Deuteronomy 24:6 (ESV)

The cameras are all focused on one kind of damage, and the church needs to point out that there is another kind of damage going on, and countless distrupted lives.

Conclusion

Allow me to use a ludicrous example in order to illustrate the principle. And I am stating the example the way I am so that everyone can see the principle involved. Suppose we are hot into the presidential campaign this coming fall, and Trump is twenty points behind in all the polls. It looks like him losing the election is a certainty. Two weeks before the election, he postpones the election until the following March. He does this, not because he is trailing in the polls, but rather because of the deadly malaria outbreak.

We all look at each other and say, “Wut?”

Now does he have emergency authority and all that? Yes, he does, but at what point do the people in Minnesota, hiding in their basements from Congolese mosquitoes, have the right to come out into their front yards, scratching their heads and saying, “Wait a minute . . .”

We are free citizens, and the things that are being done to us do not add up, and the things we are being told do not add up. Get out your calculator. Try to add them up. They don’t add up.

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eeveelutionsforequality · 6 years

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Hey, just wondering what your stance on MAP/Peadophiles is? The posts you’re talking about are fairly long winded and I would like to know.

It's not really a topic that I can afford to dumb down or simplify my opinions on, I'm afraid - if I don't include all of the nuances of my stance then I'm quite likely to be misconstrued.

Three important things before I begin: 1) I am not a MAP, I'm a CSA survivor and abuse survivor and I, and many professionals, believe what we believe in regards to NOMAPs because this seems like a potentially effective way to prevent CSA. and 2) My opinions do not represent or speak for the opinions of Mod Flareon, who is also active on this blog. and 3) I'm dyslexic, very tired, and my predictive text is fucking up, so I apologize if my wording isn't perfect here. Being somebody with OCD (which causes severe and uncomfortable intrusive thoughts) and other mental health issues, I understand what it's like to have disturbing thoughts that you cannot control and would never act upon, so I can somewhat sympathize with how the world at large does not understand such things and vilifies innocent people for things that are not their fault - Tumblr especially seems to be a hub for the kind of people who enjoy demonizing the brainwaves of others, rather than basing judgement on the harm (or lack thereof) that an individual has elected to cause via action.

I was initially going to give you the benefit of the doubt in how I responded to this question, but two minutes of scrolling on your blog has shown me that you wouldn't give me the same courtesy - given that you want to "limit" Lecter's "reach" because he said that trans people can be MAPs, and are still LGBT+ despite being MAPs (because being trans makes those individuals LGBT+, regardless of anything else about them).

Judging by the post after that, I need to take my explanation of my position all of the way back to the terminology itself. "Minor Attracted Person" is actually a more understandable term than "Minor Focused Chronophilia", which is another way that you could potentially word the grouping of nepiophilia, pedophilia, hebephilia and ephebophilia. Conversely, "Unconventional Campfire Enthusiasts" is substantially more vague - none of the terms within the title you proposed adequately convey what is going on, while "Minor Attracted Person" describes exactly what is going on - and your label would include a lot more than simply the action of arson (which is an action, while your proposed label describes a very vague state of mind), such as people who enjoy dancing naked around campfires or people who sing Spongebob songs around them. What you proposed is more like saying that you could call child molesters "Unconventional Kid Enthusiasts" (with MAPs being more akin to people who like fire in your analogy), which I think is a pretty telling and disheartening mistake. Suffice to say that your comparison sucked (that said, it started me singing Firestarter, so thank you), and I think that the term "MAP" is a clear and concise way to group those particular chronophilias.

The next term that I want to address is "non-offending" - this term is specifically and exclusively referring to legal, criminal or sexual offenses against minors. You reblog things that define being rude, insensitive, etc, as being "offending" (like reblogging the post of somebody who didn't want to be reblogged from) - I think that really belittles the severity of the word "offending", which means child abuse, it means that an individual has sexually abused a child. I really don't want the shit that happened to me as a kid to be lumped in with and compared to "He reblogged from a 17 year-old one time", for obvious reasons. It's fine to say that somebody's being rude, a dick, unfair, etc - I'm in no way saying that reblogging from somebody who doesn't want to talk to you is a nice thing to do, it's not - but there's no need to accuse them of a term that means something much more serious, when they haven't done that thing. Calling people "offending" when they are not only serves to make it easier for them to say that your side doesn't care about victims and that your side unjustly paints innocent people as monsters - because you are unjustly, perhaps unintentionally, painting somebody who hasn't harmed a child as a child abuser.

About 50% of child molesters (people who assault pre-pubescent children) are minors themselves, and the peak age to commit that crime is 14 - the repeat offense rate is low (given how high repeat offense rates are for other crimes), especially in these cases (the Ted Talk on the topic, here: https://youtu.be/h2iV3Gf0lVA which I highly recommend that you watch, said that 97% to 98% do not offend again within that young demographic, so rehabilitation works and by extension prevention could well work even more effectively). Estimates put situational offenders (people who are not MAPs) as the majority of offenders, while preferential offenders (people who are MAPs) are estimated to make up between 20% and 50% of offenders - with the general populace being made up of substantially less MAPs than people who are not MAPs, that means that MAPs are still more likely to offend (against children specifically, but not necessarily more likely to rape in general), but it also means that attraction is not the sole risk factor or the sole cause of offending, and that the path to preventing CSA is more complicated than simply preventing MAPs from offending. Estimates of the number of people with these chronophilias in the general populace have put the rate of offending within the MAP population as low as 2% - but I'm going to be honest and say that I think that some of the estimates of the prevalence of these chronophilias in the general populace fall victim to some of the same flaws that the studies that found higher rates of preferential offenders fall victim to (testing genital reaction is unreliable, and thus results in estimates of the number of MAPs in both that I think are just unreasonably high), however it seems definitive that the rate is still far from being even a majority. Offending has been shown to be linked to other psychological and situational/life issues like dependency on drugs and alcohol, poor impulse control, history of abuse, and so on. Like all of these things, attraction is a risk factor - something to take into consideration, be aware of, be mindful of - but it's not the deciding factor, it's not the sole cause, and it's not an inevitable prophecy.

Pedophile and child molester are not synonymous - one describes a psychological phenomenon, one is a crime, an action. The former is an unchosen collection of thoughts, an attraction, and in most cases is as likely (according to the research that I've seen) as any other attraction to be entirely resistant to conversion therapy or being "cured"; the latter is an action, a behaviour that causes incredible harm, and something that a person (especially with the correct professional intervention) can prevent themselves from doing. It's important to remember that the attraction does not inherently come with any kind of desire or urge or fantasy, and neither it nor desires would indicate an intent to act on the attraction, and the presence of the attraction definitely does not indicate or convey the person's moral position on acting on said attraction (I think that it's important to separate desire from intent - as human beings, we all want things in theory sometimes without wanting them in reality, emotionally want things but know that we can't or shouldn't, and we can even be wholly against those things ethically - you may want to eat the nice chocolate bar in your friend's lunchbox in theory, but in reality you would never take something from your friend like that and you have no intention of eating the chocolate bar, no matter how much you want it, how much you fantasize about eating it, and so on). For example, a person can fantasize about killing their bully, they may even have the desire to kill their bully, but that doesn't mean that they have the intent to kill their bully, it doesn't mean that they think that killing their bully would be ethical, and it doesn't mean that they will kill their bully. You can suffer from suicidal ideation, fantasies and desires, without ever attempting suicide and without even having the intention to attempt suicide. An attraction may entail daydreams, fantasies, etc, but it does not tell you what somebody's behaviour will be, what their moral opinions of that behaviour are, or even what they want to or intend to do in reality. We as human beings, all of us, can't control our attractions or even necessarily our thoughts, but we can control our actions - not only that, but it's actions that cause harm to others, not thoughts, be those actions creeping on somebody or committing atrocities against somebody.

I think that the goal of the NOMAP community is to create a space that fosters a healthy outlook on the world, a space that fosters a healthy understanding of the science and psychology of consent (and why kids cannot consent, and why it's important that MAPs do not act on their thoughts), and a space that fosters a positive attitude, willpower, and mental stability - which, in turn mitigates the other risk factors that I mentioned. Nobody's going to go from a good person to a rapist overnight just because they took up heroin, but the steady decline of one's health and willpower that comes with heroin, the depression, the financial strain, other circumstances surrounding them, etc, may eventually have the power to warp their outlook on life, their connection to reality, and send them down that dark road - a function of the NOMAP community is to prevent people from falling into bad places and adding more risk factors into the mix. Another function is to provide tips to people for how to find a trustworthy therapist and how to broach the topic with said therapist - if it's safe and/or necessary, it's important to speak to a professional about worrisome struggles. Another function of the NOMAP community is to prevent the radicalization, especially of younger or more vulnerable MAPs, by pro-contacts. The power of indoctrination, radicalization, manipulation, misinformation, and/or a charismatic liar are never ever to be underestimated - it's not just their victims that abusers can manipulate, and they're just as capable of getting into the head of a slightly uneducated late-teen who's just discovered their attraction, who's already isolated and vulnerable to being led to believe that the sick pro-c community is the only place that truly cares about them. The NOMAP community aims to debunk pro-c arguments, to stop people from falling victim to the pro-c rhetoric, and to catch the attention of lost MAPs before they are roped into that sick ideology.

I have many other opinions on MAPs - my stance is not one of just picking a side, not on this topic and not on any other topic, and I try to address each issue as it comes - but unless we can agree on the basic framework that feeling an attraction towards an individual does not mean that you will cast morality aside and make like a viking (you are capable of not raping the adults that you are attracted to, so you know from firsthand experience that attraction alone does not render somebody a rapist), then you'll likely disagree with almost anything I say past this point.

~ Vape

#Mod Vaporeon #maps tw #csa tw #my vision is blurred from tiredness

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d-dumais-blog · 7 years

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Keijo!!!!!!!! Review: I Like Big Butts & I Can Not Lie

Keijo is awesome! It’s insanely stupid and yet, somehow it succeeds at nearly everything it attempts. Keijo’s success is quite honestly an anomaly. A quick glance at premise, studio, and staff would suggest this show should have been forgotten before it even finished airing, and yet somehow it stuck around and resonated with fans, particularly in the West, in a way that no one involved saw coming. Its success in the West isn’t only a surprise to me, it appears to be a surprise to license holder Funimation that currently has NO merchandise available for purchase. No posters, no key chains, no announced bluray release. So let’s talk about why it works and why I love it so damn much.

Let’s start with the basics; this show is not for everyone. Keijo is a show about girls fighting each other in bathing suits using only their boobs and butts atop a variety of floats in an Olympic sized pool. Yes it is as dumb as it sounds. Yes there is an obscene amount of fan service focusing primarily on the girls’ butts. I completely understand why some people might be turned off by its objectification of the women portrayed. You might consider the show sexist, and you might consider me sexist for my enjoyment. A quick note on that, I’m a fan of all fan service both male and female. I’m a straight male with a particular affinity for the female rear end, check the title of this review, but you bet I appreciate some well drawn men in various states of undress. Anime has the opportunity to unrealistically portray human sexuality and I think artists are free to draw all manner of people however they’d like. I hope this helps you to understand why I won’t be talking about the sexism debate that surrounded this show.

Keijo’s fan service is excellent, and a show so focused on fan service would never succeed unless it was good, really good. The show focuses on a few girls, but has a great ensemble cast full of all sorts of girls of varying shapes, sizes, age, and color. Two points of clarification, there are very few different colored women, none of which are black, and that’s a bummer, and two while they vary in age all girls in the series are over eighteen years of age which we’ll discuss further down this post. Back to the subject at hand, how to properly handle “tasteless fan service.” Keijo’s fan service is omnipresent, leaking into every scene. This means it’s not a major shock when a butt fully envelopes the screen, it’s expected and not even that distracting. This differs from a majority of shows that feel the need to randomly insert their characters in compromising positions so that the viewer gets a better look at their body. It’s low hanging fruit but let’s compare this to Sword Art Online, it makes an easy comparison because pretty much everyone has seen it and most know its flaws. SAO II episode one while introducing new female protagonist Xion pans up her body while she lays down in a sniper position. The camera literally stops and does a quick zoom on her ass before finishing the shot. It’s disgusting, it’s distracting, and it feels completely out of place in a show that intends to be about technology and coping with grief.

The other most important thing about the fan service, aside from the age, is the fact that all of the girls are complicit in the fan service. They might be shy, and a bit embarrassed, but they are never forced into a compromising situation against their will. There seems to be this prevailing idea in anime that anime characters are cuter if they are pure, but we also need to see them without clothes on because of course we do. This results in a number of horrible tropes that need to stop, the most prevalent, light novel guy walks in on light novel girl changing. It’s almost always the establishing shot for their relationship over the series and I just hate it. The other trope is somehow even worse, girls in fan service shows need to stop being raped! People generally consider Asuna’s rape scene in the second arc of Sword Art to be the beginning of the decline which is absurd considering Silica was sexually assaulted by a plant in the first twelve episodes and no one seemed to care. It’s so gross and so often over looked. There’s nothing wrong with a girl being okay showing her body, and if an anime character is going to be undressed, I hope that character is willfully undressed. This goes a long way to help make your characters actual characters and not simply objects. I think the girls are surely still being objectified, but there’s a difference between looking at a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition and looking at leaked celebrity nude photos. The context matters and Keijo gets the context right. Our secondary protagonist Miyata even admits that she started Keijo because she wanted a cute swimsuit made custom for her and I think that’s something all of the viewers would also like!

This show did far better in the west than in Japan, and that’s largely thanks to the way it was adapted. Xebec isn’t exactly known for its great adaptations; in fact I’d argue they generally suck. Their best known for To Love Ru and Shaman King; two shows that don’t do a lot to improve upon their source material. Most recently they were responsible for the horribly bad Clockwork Planet. Apparently that’s actually a pretty good light novel, which should be no surprise considering it’s written by Kamiya Yuu, the celebrated author of No Game No Life. I can’t speak to the actual quality of the Clockwork Planet books because the first episode of the show turned me off of anything that has to do with it. Point being adaptation is not a strength of Xebec, hell Xebec doesn’t honestly have a ton of strengths aside from their willingness to get smuttier than other studios if that’s your thing.

This is entirely different in Keijo, the adaptation is immaculate, and makes it far more appealing to a western audience. For starters, the anime skips the entire first arc where our two female leads are still in high school and under the age of 18. The girls first appear in their bathing suits in the anime after entering the Keijo training school. In the manga there are multiple battles that take place before this while the girls are learning Keijo for the first time at the stadium event shown at the start of the first episode. This arc is also gross for western fans for a number of reasons on top of age. For some reason at this point in the manga guys are allowed to compete in these non official Keijo matches. Guys of course only compete for the opportunity to rub up against girls in swimwear. Girls who, I’ll reiterate again because it’s important, at this point are underage. There’s also a ton of guys in this manga, which is weird considering there’s really only one in the anime and he’s less of a creep more of a sports fan. The men in the Keijo manga come to watch and gamble on Keijo and are depicted as perverse onlookers. Nozomi’s teacher is one such male who has a gambling addiction and comments on his underage student’s physique more than once. The anime made the right decision removing him from the series. This first arc also has an extremely uncomfortable and short lived love interest in the form of Nozomi’s brother. They might actually be cousins, the translation I read wasn’t exactly clear on that, but still something western audiences always frown upon. His feelings are never reciprocated by our star Nozomi, but the whole situation is uncomfortable, especially since he’s eager to jump in and battle her in her first mock Keijo match. There’s also more preliminary try outs the anime totally skips and that’s to the show’s benefit because again the girls are underage, and it cuts out a plethora of characters that don’t matter at all. The adaptation also does a great job with its references, choosing series that are particularly popular in western fandom. Attack on Titan and Fate/Stay Night are popular around the world, but really struck a chord in the states and Keijo very obviously references these shows multiple times to great effect. Other references to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, One Piece, and Dragon Ball are all also greatly appreciated and largely absent from the manga.

Keijo performed very well in weekly viewership numbers, both legally and illegally, but was quickly written off by most. Everyone who watched it seemed to enjoy it, but wrote it off as “just another fan service show” and that’s unfair. It stands out among its peers, and should be celebrated as such. It was ranked the fifth most popular show according to Myanimelist, beating out shows with more popular appeal in pedigree like Occultic;Nine, Izetta the Last Witch, and season 2 of Ajin. It also beat out several truly spectacular shows in Sound Euphonium season 2, Flip Flappers, and the fifth season of Natsume’s Book of Friends. This wouldn’t have happened if it was “just another fan service show.” If you’re still in need of proof that season had just another an service show, it was Brave Witches, a fairly tasteless follow up to a reasonably successful show about young flying military girls who don’t wear pants for some unknown reason. People talk about Keijo as if it’s like Brave Witches, and no one talks about Brave Witches because no one cares. It might be easy to right it off if you don’t watch a lot of fan service shows, but let me tell you Keijo is special. I’ve lived in Trash Mountain for some time and am an expert in awful anime fan service, please don’t compare Keijo to that garbage; it’s far too good for that. Keijo is excellent! End of statement, no caveats no excuses, it’s really great. The show is easily the best thing director Takahashi Hideya has ever helmed. It’s arguably the best series Xebec has ever produced solo, inarguably the best this decade. I love Keijo, and I hope someday fans look back on it with the respect it earned.

8.5/10

#keijo #keijo!!!!!!!!#anime #fan service

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