warnings

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I think I may have gone a bit overboard in my warning on my latest piece. Anyone want to venture an opinion?

warnings

Dorothy, you were correct in your warnings

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine
    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine

The warnings/lables seem appropriate IMHO

In the story, though the violence is mostly *off camera* you do cover some strong topics so the warnings are only fair to potential readers. BTW if you have not read her story the following does contain PLOT SPOILERS, so be warned.

--PLOT SPOILERS!--

Identify death/mind control have been hot button issues here before and likely will in the future. It is only right and proper that they are. Even given that most everything here that is a story is fiction or at best inspired by real life still identity death and the like are a serious violation of a person.

It's almost akin to physical death in extreme cases. The poor *retarded* boy in the excellent series here, Catwalk, whose attraction to Alex led to her kidnapping was himself a victim of identity death via kidnapping, abuse, brain washing, possibly physical injuries to his brain and was no longer who he had and should have been. In that case he killed his abuser/Alex's kidnapper/torturer and died shot by the police who thought he was about to kill Alex. So the abuser and the unrecoverable victim both died. Probably the best in both cases. In any event there WAS closure, whether you agree the boy's death was a blessing for who he'd once been or one last abuse of the once bright and loving child the bitc* kidnapped some years before.

What you have done is put it in a far different context than most. We have not achieved closure here. In fact the boy's confession to the priest is his attempt to find an honorable way out of a near hopeless situation he never wanted in the first place. In this case the identity death is so far only partial and accidental. It was done accidently by a victim of a grievous physical assault who did not know he had this power. This is not some sicko/power-hungry creep who has abused others, this is a person who lashed out essentially in self-defense. He had been threatened and raped by this boy and his gang and feared it would happen again. He only wanted the abuse to stop, not to harm others.

He finds he can't undo what he did and feels terrible guilt over it, how the boy -- as bad as he was -- is now trapped inside a female persona that wants to transition to complete womanhood, hormones, SRS the whole nine yards. He couldn't have devised a nastier torture of his rapist if h had tried. And this is a key point, he never intended to hurt anyone!

As to Linda? I don't think she had THIS outcome in mind when she named Adam as her boyfriend to fend off an unwanted advance. Maybe she didn't know how dangerous the bully was? No one knew Adam had this power, not even Adam, so I don't think this was some weird scheme by Linda. Her helping Adam and the former abuser seems genuine though it could suggest she has a thing for girls or at least men with a strong feminine side but that could be reading in something that is not really there.

Even the bully, now mind controlled accidental victim was not all we thought as the glimpse we were given of his home life and in particular the dad suggests he was a bully made not born.

You have raised a interesting question. Everything he has done to make better the accidental harm he done has led in some measure to more harm. Alex must now choose to do the ultimate harm to the bully, erase everything in his mind that was male to fully release his feminine aspects and make her happy. But in doing so he will have killed a large part of who that person was and end their chance of ever having offspring. He could and likely will offer HER the choice but as a prisoner in HIS own body, is it really a free choice? But then if he had not raped Adam none of this would have happened?
It is often said there are two sides to every dispute/story. Here we see things can be far more complex, IE more than two sides.

So where lies the truth? Where is the *right* way forward? Or is it like in Return of the Jedi, "it was the truth from a particular point of view," to paraphrase the Obi wan Kenobi character.

John in Wauwatosa

John in Wauwatosa

thank you John

Your summery shows that I succeeded in creating a complex dilemma that would make people think. As I was crafting it, I pulled back on the description of the rape, but after it was published I worried that my warning might scare off too many readers. Glad you think I got it right.

"Let me succeed. If I cannot succeed let me be brave in the attempt." Pledge of the Special Olympics.

dorothycolleen

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