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"“Killing Stalking” and The Romancing of Abuse" Transcript

“Killing Stalking” and The Romancing of Abuse   
01 Apr 2021

Killing Stalking and the Love of a Bad Boy (Short)

Romance is DEAD (Thumbnail)

Killing Stalking

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Auto-transcribed by YouTube, downloaded by TerraJRiley.
Thanks to /u/astrienluna and /u/DHLawrence_sGhost for finding various sources.

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Apr 01, 2021 First published.
Dec 07, 2023 Privated post-callout.
Feb 26, 2024 Unprivated with apology 2, claiming no plagiarism.
May 8, 2024Channel deleted
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Feb 27, 2024
As of Apr 01, 2021

What the hell is “Killing Stalking”?

#KillingStalking #VideoEssay #manga
====================

https://www.thehotline.org
https://www.loveisrespect.org
https://www.strongheartshelpline.org
http://www.glbtnationalhelpcenter.org

My Patreon:
[link]

chAosOPUS STUDIOS
https://www.chaosopus.com

====================

00:00 Content Warning and Introduction
05:17 1. Tainted Love
19:58 2. Crazy in Love
22:22 3. Is It Love?
29:51 4. You Give Love A Bad Name
35:53 5. I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
44:05 6. This Is Not A Love Song
52:32 7. Love Never Dies

As of Feb 26, 2024

What the hell is “Killing Stalking”?

[patreon link]

#KillingStalking #VideoEssay #manga
====================

https://www.thehotline.org
https://www.loveisrespect.org
https://www.strongheartshelpline.org
http://www.glbtnationalhelpcenter.org

chAosOPUS STUDIOS
https://www.chaosopus.com

====================

00:00 Content Warning and Introduction
05:17 1. Tainted Love
19:58 2. Crazy in Love
22:22 3. Is It Love?
29:51 4. You Give Love A Bad Name
35:53 5. I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
44:05 6. This Is Not A Love Song
52:32 7. Love Never Dies

 

i just wanted to drop a content warning here as both physical and psychological abuse are discussed in this video i also wanted to thank chaos opus studio who composed the score in this video they're also an animal welfare charity that raises money through the creation of lgbt plus media including an upcoming animated adaptation of killing stalking you can check them out at the link in the description and you know like share and subscribe and sign up for my patreon for monthly exclusives like early access audio commentaries behind the scenes featurettes and movie watch along parties alright now on with the show so if you're anything like i was circa six weeks ago you're probably thinking what the hell is killing stalking i too was one so naive you see the day i released the power couple video i got an emergency call to come home because my mom was in the hospital home for me is a five-hour drive away so instead of premiering the video as planned i just set it to live jumped in my car and drove my mom pulled through thank god but it was pretty touch and go for a while so as i waited in the hospital and in my hotel room i started checking the comments on the power couple video lots of love which i definitely needed right then but there were also a few people absolutely haranguing me because they thought the couple in the video's thumbnail wasn't wiccan and hulkling from marvel comics the subject of the video but yoon bom and songwo and they were absolutely furious that i would have the gall to portray them in any kind of positive light and all i could think was who the hell are you in bomb and song woah if i wasn't already in such an emotional state i would have ignored the comments as simply being misinformed but they were calling me out on a bad day so i decided i'd better do some research so i used the hotel's honestly shockingly good wi-fi to hop onto the good old google.com and look up songwoo and yoon bom this is when i came across the korean web comic killing stalking and right below that in the google search in the people also ask section was the question does song songwoo love yoon bom oh they're gay let's investigate now because i'm a good law-abiding citizen who would nev ever ever pirate something i hunted around online for the books of killing stalking which i was seeing described as a psychological romance romantic thriller and dark romance but try as i might no online bookstore would sell me an english version of the comic french spanish italian german polish and korean versions were plentiful and even available with prime shipping but nothing in english fine i'll do the bad thing and read it online well [ __ ] so because i had nothing better to do than sit in hospital rooms and hotel rooms i read the whole thing in two or three days all 67 issues multiple special issues holiday issues and author notes and it was good a dark psychological thriller about loneliness trauma and severe abuse closer to a horror novel than a thriller right in my wheelhouse but then i thought back to how i'd seen it described online dark yes psychological yes thriller yes a romance it had always been described as a romance who the hell was describing this as a romance according to the internet um a lot of people which suddenly i understood why some commenters were so angry that they thought i'd used an image of this couple and put power couple beside it and because i'm never one to turn down making a mistake i decided to dive deep into the killing stalking fandom which has a surprisingly large presence on tiktok personally i'd love the series it was something akin to jillian flynn novels stories about extremely flawed emotionally broken people but what i saw online was a community obsessed with the romance between the two lead characters the emotionally stunted yoon bomb and the serial killer he's infatuated with songwo now before we talk about why looking at their relationship as anything even close to a romance is wrong let's go over the plot of the series so that you know what i'm talking about [Music] yoon bom is a depressed 20-something who's had a pretty hard life having lost his parents at a young age he's been brought up by his grandmother and abusive uncle he was drafted into the korean military military services compulsory in south korea and despite his frail body and psychological instability he's still forced to serve while in training camp he becomes the target of other recruits who accuse him of being gay and make fun of him for looking like a girl in one such altercation his attackers are just about to rape him when he's rescued by another recruit a handsome young man a few years his junior songwo ever since then yoon bomb has become infatuated with songwoo after both completed their term of duty he began following him around finding out where he lived and even figuring out the security code to his house based on which buttons looked to be pushed the most yoonbom essentially becomes the stocking in killing stalking one day he manages to actually get into the house though he's almost thwarted by a police drive-by once inside the house he's almost euphoric to be in sangwo's private space he has a look around but starts to hear noises from the basement he goes down partially hoping to find songwo but is shocked to find a mutilated young woman tied up and screaming for help but when he takes off her blindfold she screams for him to stay away bomb hasn't noticed that seongwo has snuck up behind him having been told that someone was in his house by the police outside one of those officers by the way believes that seongwoo killed his own parents but we'll get to that later so songwoo smashes bomb over the head with a bat he tries to escape but can't get past the much larger song wow and so in an act of panic he professes his love for him telling him that he's been in love with him for years ever since the military songwo seems to calm down with this and even invites him upstairs when yoon bomb asks if he's been forgiven for breaking into his house sangwo says yes but not with his legs in that state eventually destroying bomb's ankles with a sledgehammer and here in this dark basement guest starring a soon-to-be corpse is where the love story of songwoo and yoon bomb begins it's not problematic at all but when bum wakes up now chained next to the girl who is now dead by the way songwo confesses that although he kills women on the regular he hasn't killed a man since his father he starts force-feeding yoon bomb some sort of porridge gruel before leaning in and kissing him and bomb instead of fearing for his life which would you know be understandable in the situation wonders to himself does this mean we're dating so after an unspecified amount of time chained up in the basement assuming weeks songwood decides it's time to bathe bomb bath bomb to wash him once he's all clean and now dressed in girl's clothing songwoo tells him that he's going to let him live under two conditions he never passes the threshold of the stairs at the house entrance and he has to do all the cooking cleaning and other housework essentially bomb under pain of death is made into songwoo's mother but bomb needs to eat off of a plate on the floor presumably because sangwo doesn't want to humanize him too much and sangwo watches him like a hawk even when he's on the floor eating just waiting for him to make a mistake any mistake so that he can physically assault him and he does on multiple occasions no offense is too slight to bring on the wrath of songwoo eventually song woah with science bummed the task of organizing a collection of shelves in the storage room while doing so bum finds a bottle of rat poison and gets the idea to put it into sango's food he'll be fine because song won't ever lets him eat at the table let alone the same food as him but not that night no sangwo invites him up to the big boy table and bomb is forced to eat first which makes him violently ill later that night when bomb is done throwing his guts up seong-wo actually lays him down on his own bed and here we discover that song was father was incredibly abusive particularly to his mother and would force the two of them to eat off of the floor just like he was making bomb do but just in case you thought the author was humanizing songwoo in some way he then follows up his confession by telling bomb that he hates people like him people who are always complaining about their lot in life that he has no sympathy for broken people that they're useless but for one thing and then we find out what that one thing is with an insanely awkward sex scene that is despite what many fans think rape the power dynamic between the two is too vast song wow has far too much control over bomb for to not be rape sorry shippers this isn't a loving sex scene it is sexual assault where the aggressor is a serial killer and the victim is psychologically underdeveloped this is not romantic anyway bum continues to do everything he's told creating a bond of trust with songwoo leading to songwoo one day saying that he needs to go out for a little while bomb immediately decides this is the time for him to make his escape he changes his clothes he passes the threshold and approaches the door but then he stops and starts thinking yes life with song wo is pretty terrible but he hasn't been so bad since they had sex not nice by any means but not terrible but if bomb escapes and goes home he'll be left at the mercy of his abusive uncle who we've now discovered has been raping bomb since he was a child but at least then he'd have a modicum of freedom and so he opens the door smelling fresh air for the first time in months but sitting on the stoop waiting for him is songwoo this was a test you see a test that bomb has failed and so songwa assaults him leaving him a bloody mess in the street all the while laughing and yelling somebody save him but nobody comes this area is mostly deserted it's a bad area of town bomb can yell and yell but no one will save him songwoo takes him back into the house throws him back into the basement and tortures him in a scene that would feel at home in saw now as i mentioned earlier one of the police officers we met in the first issue has been looking into sangwo because he's thoroughly convinced that he killed his parents the details around their deaths are just too sketchy this has been running throughout the series by the way he eventually decides it's time to investigate sangwo's house and does a walk through he looks everywhere but doesn't find any evidence of foul play he also doesn't find bomb which song won't notices once the officer leaves still very suspicious songwell flies into a fit of rage convinced that bomb used this opportunity to flee he searches the house the basement outside and he can't find him anywhere but once back in the house he finds bomb on the floor he's been hiding from the cop he grabs him you're in tears saying they're going to be together forever in fact songwoo decides it's time to win bomb over so he gives him some crutches since bomb's ankles are still wrecked and takes him shopping for new clothes at one point bomb is actually alone in the store this is a public mall he's got the chance to escape he can approach a security guard he can call 9-1-1 this is his chance but instead he starts to panic and looks for songwoo instead stop okay that's enough synopsis sizing for now we need to talk about stockholm syndrome this term is thrown around a lot and most cops and even psychologists question its validity whether or not it even exists but in my opinion killing stalking is a textbook case of stockholm syndrome in theory at least the term originates from a bank robbery in stockholm sweden in 1973. john eric olsen took four employees hostage during the robbery and held them captive for six days in one of the bank's vaults when finally released none of the captives would testify against olson instead they began raising money for his defense fund their sudden connection with the captor became popularly known as stockholm syndrome the symptoms of which are perceiving kindness or compassion from the captor or abuser developing positive feelings toward the individual or group holding you captive or abusing you adopting the same goals world view and ideology as your captor or abusers feeling pity toward those abusing you refusing to leave them even when given the opportunity to escape having negative perceptions towards police family friends and anyone else who may try to help you escape the situation and refusing to assist police and government authorities in prosecuting the perpetrators of abuse or kidnapping people like to throw around this diagnosis for a lot of things like disney's beauty and the beast where it 100 percent is not applicable but here it 100 percent is yoonbomb hits every single one of the diagnostic triggers for stockholm syndrome he feels songwoo is being compassionate toward him when he so much as lets him eat he not only develops positive feelings for song wo but fulon falls in love with him at least he believes he does he helps songwoo to commit murders and even dispose of bodies he feels pity for songwoo after finding out about his abusive childhood he eventually won't run away given the chance sure his first attempt failed but what about in the mall and multiple other instances during the series he's suspicious of the police officer trying to help him and finally he refuses to assist the police when given the opportunity to do so eventually the story moves on to the point where the police officer has gotten enough evidence he believes to arrest and convict songwo for murder and kidnapping he brings both songwoo and yoon bomb to the police station but yoon bum won't say a bad word about songwo he's the only witness they've got and he won't say a thing especially after seong-wo declares to the police station that he and bomb are a couple that he loves him this declaration sends baum into a euphoric tailspin resulting in him agreeing with everything sangwo says refusing to cooperate with the police and eventually the police dropping all possible charges even after songwoo tells him that he was just lying to get the cops off of his back yoonbom holds on to the original declaration of love that's what he wants to remember and so that's what he will remember as the series progresses we get deeper and deeper into the supremely toxic relationship between these two men it becomes clear if it wasn't already that both are mentally ill yoonbomb has severe depression anxiety and abandonment issues while senwo is a narcissistic psychopath he has a very high opinion of himself and anyone who isn't him is basically scum tools to be used by him until they're no longer useful to him and that's what unbomb becomes to him a tool especially for sex these sex scenes are violent disturbing and painful to read it's honestly very hard to believe that certain fans think that they were written to be romantic yoonbam begins to represent songwoo's mother in more ways than one as well not only does he care for songwoo in a motherly way but in a series of flashbacks we also learn that sangwo's mother sexually molested him as a child and so his now regular sex with yoon bomb is a continuation of the relationship with his mother this drawn connection between yoon bomb and sangwo's mother eventually becomes a source of anxiety for him though you see songwo's mother was actually the one who killed his father he didn't do it his mother did but in a blatant act of gaslighting she convinced her son that he killed him in a fit of paranoia his mother decided that sangwo needed to die as well and so she tried killing him with the very rat poison that yoon bomb attempted to kill him with early on in the series seong-wo eventually discovered this and killed her arguably in self-defense and so the people he trusted most in his life his mother and his father both betrayed him in one way or another and now near the end of the series he fears that yoon bomb will do the same thing after an injury leaves him unable to leave the house he's forced to rely on yoonbomb to do the grocery shopping and run errands convinced that yoon bomb is either going to run away or kill him bum never does though but the paranoia remains during this time the police officer who had been trying to bring songwoo down has been having more or less a mental breakdown but a confluence of events gets him back into the case leading into a violent confrontation between himself and songwa when songwa is restrained he calls for yunbom to get the knife that he dropped and kill the cop to save him bomb gets the knife but can't do it he lets it clatter to the floor song wow is shocked looks at bomb and says simply i don't need you anymore the cop orders bomb to run away once out in the pouring rain he stands outside looking at the house that's been his home and prison for god only knows how long inside the battle continues and thanks to a gas stove and a lighter an explosion rips through the building yoonbom is taken to the hospital where he recovers from his multiple wounds when he gets out he goes in search of sangwo who last he'd heard was alive in another hospital here we learned that sango is dead not from his injuries but by being smothered by another patient she couldn't handle his mumbling through the bandages day and night all the time calling out bomb's name the series ends with yoonbomb seeing who he thinks is song while even though he's dead and running into traffic to chase after him [Music] when it comes to doing an analysis of killing stalking we're going to run into some problems what's the subtext that the author is trying to get across what are we intended to come away with does it even matter do the author's intentions matter how much context is needed for killing stalking and what is meant to be just taken at face value i for one find it very unsettling that it's perceived as romantic not only by the shippers by the way but also by a great many people who read the comic and do understand that it's toxic alright so if it's not a romance what is it it's a horror thriller obviously this isn't even a psychological thriller this is full-on horror song wow is closer to jigsaw than hannibal lecter there are a few other themes that the work might be trying to talk about as well treatment or dismissal of the mentally ill the dangers of a culture which thrives on obsession this is coming from the land of k-pop after all and the negative effects of compulsory military service though i can't speak to the reality in south korea in north america mental illness is absolutely treated as something for which you might see a psychologist a handful of times where you'll eventually be put on meds and never checked in on again and that's if your insurance even covers it i have a pretty good job and it still only covers two psych visits a year the mental wellness institution as a whole generally doesn't much care about you yoonbom gets the overarching diagnosis of borderline personality disorder because he obsesses over people and then he's just tossed out into the street it really resonates with how i see the system failing people with mental illness in the real world every single day not to mention that in spite of his history of mental illness he is drafted for service in the korean military because instead of treating people and offering them the strategies and coping mechanisms they need we're going to isolate them in an environment that is built to withhold special treatment in order to foster an environment of conformity at which point killing stocking asks a very strange question of the reader to discern where individual decisions begin and where societal familial conditioning ends at what point is a toxic individual a failure of a society at large and at what point should we start judging them for their own actions anytime we analyze a story that is at all left open for interpretation there are going to be people who disagree with your take on it and just yell you just don't get it now i don't think there actually are multiple ways of looking at killing stalking it's a horror story not a romance but a lot of people are coming away seeing it as a romance so is there interpretation wrong yes but let's pretend it's not let's pretend that this story's themes are vague and look at it alongside some other works of art that people disagree on art is in the eye of the beholder after all is killing stocking a surface beauty and the b style romance where the monster can change in the end or is it as i believe an analysis of trauma and abuse granted there have been any number of times when an audience especially an academic one falls into the trap of just assuming that everything is deeper than it really is in fact in some cases people read into a work of fiction to find layers when there are none intended just to justify their appreciation of it but even when things aren't done to deliberately troll intellectuals there's a trend of intellectuals taking a body of work and saying well if this play is deep then they all must be deep like half of shakespeare if not more is that a hot take not not really like come on the man wrote almost 40 plays in 20 years you can't expect every one of them to have a nuanced insightful world vision he had to put food on the table for him and his troop of actors and his boyfriend he was a businessman before he was a creator most of what he wrote was on commission that doesn't mean that hamlet or macbeth aren't excellent expressions of literary subtlety but there isn't much that's subtle about titus andronicus where the hero takes the two sons of the villain bakes them into a pie and feeds them to her it's basically shakespeare's slasher movie which that's why it's my favorite shakespeare play and the biggest fallacy of his career was that romeo and juliet arguably his most iconic work wasn't meant to be a classic like big shock time all those guys in high school english who gagged at the gratuitous romance in the play who were dismissed by the english teacher were actually right see aside from the fact that this is a grotesque amount of romance that chokes out what little plot actually exists in romeo and juliet there are a number of dated cultural contexts that highlight that this is a relationship shakespeare would have considered toxic taking this into consideration it becomes a cautionary tale juliet referring to her love as being in excess was a key feature elizabethan england was stuck in a bit of an austerity kick where modernity and temperance were strongly valued anything in excess was seen as dysfunctional so the fact that they both die at the end really should have been a tip-off shakespeare was probably thinking the fact that their affair leads to both of their deaths should tell audiences that this is a bad nobody's going to find death romantic romeo and juliet therefore should not be viewed as a romance but a satire a parody of romance and romantic plays i'm sure most people are more accustomed to hearing about satire and parody when it's comedic which it is much easier to make a clear thematic satire when it comes to comedy but satire is just a matter of pushing a medium into the territory of the carnivalesque actions decisions reactions and elements of design and theme are so absurd that they reach a point where it's impossible to take them seriously at least that's the idea satire is usually comedy because if you're trying to defame the nazis it's easy to do so by making them look like fools because you're simply taking elements of how they already were foolish in history and amplifying it sometimes you can get away with being honest in comedic satire because the events that you were making fun of really were that ridiculous and sometimes you have to tone it back or people will think it's too over the top stalin is invincible the force of [ __ ] death back to the salt mine what's happening this is impossible and maybe he's appointing his successor a drawback to this is that it's not always entirely clear what is being made fun of this is especially true in absurdist or ironic depictions is south park making fun of al gore claiming that climate change is an imaginary issue or are they doing the opposite and making fun of the people who dismiss al gore saying that what they imagine al gore acts like isn't the reality of how he portrays himself and for reference south park's defenders often do use the you just don't get a defense when it comes to criticisms directed at them and they do tend to cross the line every once in a while but this video is not about south park satire can also be dramatic though this is less common in modern media however here we take culture and history and rather than amplify the ridiculousness take elements of violence bigotry romance political ideology or even culture itself and bring the real life absurdity to the audience's attention the hope is for these themes to be read as societal problems a downside to this is that the line between satire and reverence is very narrow was stanley kubrick presenting a horrifying depiction of psychological conditioning trauma and groupthink as it exists in the american military and full metal jacket i mean that's probably how he intended it but if you're an individual who values elements of hyper masculinity pro-violence and american imperialism then you can just as easily see full metal jacket as a shining testament to an era when men were men and weak undeserving men simply snapped under the pressure in which real men persisted as for what kubrick intended it's a little bit difficult to gauge he offered phenomenally little information about what his films were intended to really be about he liked to see them as a litmus test which had more to say about the observer depending upon how they would interpret the film this is epitomized in his final film eyes wide shut which is about something even when some of us think there's no way someone could have positive interpretations of a work there is someone who's going to read a clockwork orange and think yeah that's what masculinity means and the government is the villain because they they brainwashed him out of his individuality but in instances like kubrick's nuanced vagueness can we really use intention as a means to analyze works of fiction all this is to say that i'm taking an analysis of killing stalking very seriously and even though my focus is as you might have been able to tell the audience's attitudes about it it's important to know that people can see art in very different ways one of the most significant philosophies of art criticism comes from jean boulliard he argues in very generalized terms that we as a society have lost or are losing our ability to tell the difference between artifice and nature meaning we can't really see a clear difference between a performance and an earnest state of being what is real and what is counterfeit and to what degree can we tell the difference between the two this is more in the vein of say being unsure if the kardashians or errant airheads or whether this role is emphasized in their programming in order to fulfill a brand which they use to solidify and expand their platform hey bestie this is especially true in instances of long-spanning performance art as you could see among lady gaga cher madonna or even people like ann coulter donald trump where the performance ends and the individual begins and how much they overlap are both areas of debate an extrapolation of this in the situation of killing stalking is whether this is intended to be a work of fiction which plays upon and subverts romantic tropes or whether it's earnestly romantic when i read it i read a very conflicted horror story where neither of the main characters were particularly meant to be admirable and where the element of romance was there to highlight the insidiousness of song woo and the dysfunction of yoonbom as this is a visual novel meaning that the visual language is just as important as the written text there are a number of instances in the comic itself specific panels which can be removed and shown as romantic instances of cuddling hugging and kissing are all present granted this is usually before or after someone is tortured or killed or buried very romantic but does this ability to separate these romantic elements form a kind of phantom plot in which the perceived romance runs parallel to the actual depiction of the toxic relationship this could encourage someone to against all reason deliberately read romance into situations where there is none this is to say nothing of the special issues for christmas and thanksgiving whereas songwoo and yoonbomb are depicted romantically or erotically and without any torture except for the people that they are murdering and disposing of but they're doing it together on one hand is this a matter of depicting a relationship at peak toxicity or is this exploiting a will they want a romantic format to keep audiences tuned in for 67 issues because in spite of these seemingly apparent layers and the seemingly self-aware damnation of its own content killing stalking has acquired a certain following in spite of the obvious or what seems to me to be obvious messaging about how damaging and traumatic this relationship is if you can even call it a relationship which i don't there is a swath of fans who lean toward the will they won't they take that this whole journey is a progressing romance leading to seong wo finally giving in to his feelings stopping hurting yoon bomb and then running off together with him the torture has been fantasized as a kind of love you to death kind of thing like songwa is so in love with yoonbomb but the only way he knows how to express affection is through abuse all sangwo needs to do is learn how to properly express his feelings of affection and then everything will just turn out fine being honest the implication throughout the series is that seong-wo keeps yoonbomb alive because he reminds him of a maternal figure which you'd think would lead an audience to immediately connect him with norman bates well a boy's best friend is his mother but they don't but maybe these people haven't watched as many movies as i have or even the tv show bates motel so which is it gore porn or star-crossed romance or a character study of stockholm syndrome we could look to the author who in front of every issue plasters a big old disclaimer that very explicitly says that this is a depiction of abuse and dysfunction which you know that must clear it up right done deal maybe because we're also in an era of joanne karen rowling prefacing everything with i love the transsexuals but this tactic is called dog whistling which is doing or saying something hateful but in a vague enough way that you can credibly say that's not what i was actually saying people who are racist and homophobic and transphobic will be emboldened by the message and people who are indifferent or centrist will take it for granted as a joke and even they themselves dismiss the haters as social justice snowflakes in periods past it was considered a point of pride to clearly advocate for your beliefs but these were also eras which had a very clear hierarchy of privilege and there was no shame in supporting the hierarchy today where the majority of progress is dedicated to dismantling these systems of privilege and oppression there is an awareness of the right thing to say even if you don't necessarily believe it indicative of the i'm not racist but line that always is followed by something racist people want to be seen as progressive or at least on the right side while still holding on to privileged attitudes and cultural stereotypes even bigoted people know how to properly carry themselves in order to advance their platform and not do or say anything too extreme in public there's a reason the kkk wears hoods much in the same way that song wo knows how to act like a normal person in society so that he can blend in despite being a crazed psychopath i wasn't just comparing jk rowling to a psychopath what are you talking about so the series is written by a korean author and illustrator who goes by the name of coogie for whom there is next to no information available online i did manage to track down and translate an interview from 2018 where she was asked if there was any sincere feeling of love between the two lead characters she responded it's up to the readers to decide if i have to decide then no okay but it's a bit odd that on every site where this is available for purchase or even for just reading it's listed as a romance on amazon it's even classified as lgbt plus marriage comedy she's also said that the book should be categorized as a psychological horror story and not a romance of any kind though to be fair if you visit her twitter the page is mostly populated with romantic fan art of yoon baum and songwell so where she really stands on how the series should be read might be up for interpretation but let's take her at her word in the 2018 interview that she does not intend on this being read as a romance in any way then why does the fan base read it like one and why when i did my initial google search was it so often described as a psychological romance romantic thriller dark romance well there's two answers to that question one the fans are doing the categorizing two publishing yes the archaic slowly dying traditional publishing industry which has real difficulty when it comes to queer themes and books especially involving men you see when a book is being published the publisher has to decide what kind of categories the book falls into so that it can be marketed to the proper audience and when a book comes around with a gay lead character who doesn't have a romance in the plot they have no idea how to classify it women don't want to read a book about a gay straight men certainly don't want to read a book about a gay gays barely want to read a book about a gay but a gay romance well according to market research women eat that up so much so that it makes up for the loss of a potential straight male audience gay readers don't really factor into the thought process which is a problem in itself and something i'll cover in another video and so we come to killing stalking is this a romance no even the author says so but are there romantic elements not really but could there maybe be perceived romantic elements if you tilt it the right way and read it under a quarter moon during february of a leap year maybe sold into the m m romance category you go they don't just have to pick one category though which is why the much more applicable psychological thriller and horror tags also get put on there so when readers are self-categorizing the book online it becomes a psychological romance romantic thriller dark romance so from the synopsis of killing stalking i think it's pretty clear that both characters yoon bom and sangwo are not mentally stable but in two very different directions both of their lives have become disasters since they were children with abusive caregivers in both cases that's why there is no romance in this story there's no actual love between these two characters yoon bomb thinks he loves song wou because seongwoo rescued him from being assaulted something that no one else has ever done not even his grandmother who seemingly cared for him but looked the other way when her son baum's uncle would beat and rape him and sengwo does not love yoonbomb he uses him for sexual pleasure and his own emotional support but that's it but you wouldn't think that by going over the comments online many not all but many of the fans of this series would have you believe that it's a beauty and the beast style love story a tale as old as time that it's about two lost souls finding each other and helping each other become a whole people if i've not yet made myself clear that is not what this is about so why do they think that well yoon bomb isn't immediately killed by song woah unlike his other victims therefore this must mean that he's special this must mean that songwo cares for him whether or not he's good at showing it bomb should certainly stand out amongst seong-wo's victims but that's because he's a man sangwo is a misogynistic sexual sadist getting joy from torturing and murdering women and because he is psychologically damaged he essentially kills his mother over and over and over and over again by murdering women and then goes home to his mother in the form of yoonbum who he then assaults mentally and physically just like his own father did to his own mother sometimes he has moments of clarity where he realizes what he's doing but they don't last long sometimes he'll even beg yoonbomb to not leave him breaking down into tears but this is simply emotional manipulation he's using bomb's abandonment issues to manipulate him into staying we know this because when bomb drops the knife during the final altercation seong-wo tells him he doesn't need him anymore lashing out at him and calling him down to the lowest so what about yoonbom he grew up being neglected by everyone except his sexual abuse of uncle who would tell him that he was gross disgusting especially after raping him he was socially awkward making it near impossible for him to make friends when people would start to get close to him they'd be put off by how shy and awkward he was so when sangwo hugs him kisses him says he loves him says he'll be together forever even after crippling him choking him hanging him and cutting his throat just just deep enough so that he won't bleed out yoonbomb looks past the trauma and abuse and just sees the affection because it's the only affection he's ever gotten from anyone so he latches on to it even after he knows that song wo is dead he can't let go and despite the fact that song won't never shows any unconditional kindness to bomb even insulting him when doing something that could be characterized as kind some readers still look for a love story they've taken an incredibly horrifying twisted story of trauma and abuse and twisted it further so that they can ship it they don't see it as a horror story and hope for bomb to escape his monstrous captor they hope for songwo to declare his undying love they don't want sangwo to get arrested for being a serial killer they want the pair to ride off into the sunset this isn't two sad broken people who have found each other and made each other whole this is a twisted psychopath manipulating a poor lonely boy into being his puppet this is a story that warns us about the effects of long-term abuse on two very different people how sometimes lifelong trauma is inescapable without a support system killing stalking in my opinion is an amazing psychological horror story one that kept me swiping through those pages unable to put it down hoping that yoon bomb would escape that seongwel would be caught that yoon bomb would be rescued and given the help that he needs and yet there are masses of fans out there who want them to get back together in the end who flame the author online when she ended the series with songwoo dead the monster dies in the end he doesn't transform into a handsome prince because he always was one but not all the glitters is gold the fact that song wo looks like the man of your dreams is meant to show you that even the person you think is perfect could be a monster underneath to watch out for yourself to not let yourself get trapped into this kind of traumatic relationship the author has said in no uncertain terms that she did not intend this to be read as romantic despite her twitter feed so why in seven hells are people especially teenage girls reading this as a romance well because they've been raised too no beauty and the beast is not about stockholm syndrome it's about a woman who is forced into a castle and has to work at making the monster she shares it with into a respectable human being for her own sake the original french folk tale functioned as a way to ease young women into accepting marriage arrangements especially those in upper classes where their husbands were usually the shining exemplars of wealthy male privilege to the women betrothed this seemed to be like an awful proposition and to ease them into it there needed to be some kind of device that told them that it gets better you know so they wouldn't kill themselves even if it was an errant lie that sounds familiar so it's not like the idea that a woman can change a man is new culture has been placing the onus on women to be the active force in taking control of men's behavior for all of christianized european history if not longer and it's from this beauty and the beast attitude that we get the idea that all a woman needs to change her monstrous romantic partner is a little elbow grease and so we end up here with killing stalking which is neither an arranged marriage nor a heterosexual coupling very 21st century at which point we are at this weird junction where we're kind of pulled between seven different thought processes about cultural attitudes towards representation romance gay men femininity femininity in men art criticism attitudes around common sense the zeitgeist fandom social connectivity and isolation mental health social possibility nobody should need to do this nobody nobody should need to look at killing stalking and say well we need to know if the borderline personality diagnosis was an accurate one to say with confidence whether the author meant for this to be read as erotic or not no sangwo kills people he literally kills people and not in a dark avenger punisher kind of way he takes joy in murdering people for fun full stop and you and bob he's not in love with song woo he just can't tell the difference between love and abuse if you read this and your first instinct is to put these two [ __ ] up people together for life there is a problem there is a problem with you there's a problem with our culture i know from reading the comments of killing stocking tick tock compilations which are almost as unsettling as the source material that a lot of the reader base are young women like middle school they talk about reading it in class hiding it from their teachers even if you have experimented with dating you have such a narrow concept of what it means to actually be in a relationship at that age you have no idea what functional relationship even means and trust me a lot of older people don't know either this is not just an abusive relationship this is an abusive relationship engaging in a carnival of over-the-top violence gaslighting manipulation and rape i am so unsettled thinking about how our society is presenting a young generation with such a twisted idea of romance to the point where there is a shipping community built around these two [ __ ] because this isn't just killing stalking this didn't come out of nowhere it wasn't straight from beauty and the beast this the pro-romance killing stalking fandom is just the next logical step in the evolution of romanticizing abuse especially when you've got twilight where edward and bella's relationship ticks off every single qualification of an abusive relationship as qualified by social workers and still there is this paining over the protagonists like this is a they're going to make it after all love story about making things work even if your parents in society don't like it don't even get me started on 50 shades of grey it was hyped up as this racy sexy over-the-top intense sexual romp through bdsm and then i read it not knowing what the hell the hype was about because i'd read anne rice's sleeping beauty series in junior high maybe a little too young but i was mature for my age so in 50 shades women kind of swoon over christian grey even though he's obsessively controlling anastasia he violates safe words meddles in her personal life and oversteps boundaries regularly and the fans are all like oh i invade my privacy heart or daddy then you get things like phantom of the opera which you know a lot of people read into the fact that the phantom named eric is literally a psycho who murders people and tries to lock up his love interest christine in a basement but in spite of this you still get fans who drone on about how christine was so dumb not to choose eric because eric was just so rally sexual and overpowering and oh he really does care underneath it all he threatened to kill her oh but maybe he's good i read killing stalking as an honest interpretation of these tropes which is a hell of a thing to do subverting toxic literary tropes by confronting them with the reality of how they function in real life the only difference is that the author doesn't try to force a romance into the text even if a huge portion of her fans think that she ruined the ending by probably killing off the serial killer which is why they fill her twitter timeline with fan art of their preferred ending of these two characters christmases family reunions vacations song wow a serial killer who killed women to reenact killing his mother over and over and over again finally getting in touch with his feelings realizing that he was gay all along and taking it upon himself to cater to yoon bomb's emotional needs because no he's not gay it is stated in the text and the author has stated he is not gay he is a straight man who is using yoonbomb as a device for to fulfill his needs and then the months that yoon bombs spent locked in song most house and basement with broken ankles it's just a story to tell their adopted kids but you know christian gray learns to share the power dynamic and even sub for anastasia in the end and bella eventually gains the ability to protect herself and thus does not require edward to be so obsessive belle's beast turns into a man who made a whole generation of people realize they preferred furries eric the phantom finally does learn to empathize with someone else's needs and lets christine go kind of not really there's a sequel called love never dies don't watch it at which point it occurs to me that it wasn't the romance in the story that the fans fetishize but the possibility of song wow changing and becoming romantic it's this yearning obsession for redemption arc that the fans want it's not even that the fandom is choosing to overlook the abuse and the violence and the murder the fandom embraces all of this it's just a part of the bumpy road on the way to love this is songwoo's journey this is songwoo's redemption this is songwoo's story even though it's not the story is explicitly framed from yoonbomb's point of view and it's his emotions and struggles that drive the plot sangwo at best is an obstruction but should it be that surprising that audiences are drawn to a character who is depicted to be attractive and nearly every review of the book calls to attention just how hot he is i mean doesn't everyone want to be with someone who's hot what's a little character flaw like psychopathy and murder when you're sexy all of the fandom is focused less around yoonbomb's experience and more about how songwell looks which a crowd of girls fawning over attractive serial killers pleading for his innocence isn't new i find it weird that this audience is simultaneously dismissive of yoon bomb as a character while at the same time fits into the category of girls who fetishize gay relationships what's the thought process here are a bunch of women looking at a submissive gay man as a cipher their entry way into this relationship or have they just kind of moved past the sadness of brokeback mountain and the yearning of love simon and they need something a bit more spicy for their gays now all of this makes me wonder why did it need to be gay in the first place was there anything said in this comic that couldn't have been conveyed if yoonbomb was a woman or even if sangwo was a woman were the sex scenes actually necessary did they fulfill a pivotal use in driving the plot character yes but were so many of them necessary maybe if yoon bomb was a woman the author would have been more sparing in their use of physical abuse maybe it would have hit too close to home but by making bum a man it allows a layer of disconnect and all the major plot beats worth talking about don't seem to include any elements of sex whatsoever and it's these sexual moments that the fans latch onto and say yes the romance is real song wow just needs a chance to open up which even though the author won literary awards in the category of horror thriller it did go on to be categorized as a romance did people pick it up expecting a romance and read into it or would they have seen that from the very beginning textually it does draw a thin line between teasing unbomb with a romance and teasing the audience the latter of which is not okay and i'm not trying to say whether this should or should not have been made because all art has a place there is a context for every piece of earth that can add value to our world both for enriching our culture conveying a message about the world we live in or even acting as a confrontation between what we believe about our culture and what the reality of that culture is killing stalking has a lot of interesting nuanced layered and poignant things to say that make it work as a horror story and stories like it are actually often enjoyed by people who have suffered abuse a way for them to see that they're not alone in their trauma survivors of abuse can often feel very isolated so seeing someone who has been hurt like them in fiction can be very cathartic but all of these things are being overshadowed by how a fetishistically appropriative audience has turned it into a romance novel and this is concerning to me not just about how these people read the media they consume but also if they might think that this type of relationship is normal do they have the ability to understand when they are in an abusive relationship are they going to do the right things and confront their friends when they're in an abusive relationship or are they going to push through and encourage others to do so in the hope that something beautiful will blossom out of the trauma or are they completely aware of what is safe and acceptable for them but their ideas are different for queer people as we in real life progress more and more towards sexual tolerance and acceptance of safe sexual practices in kink s m and role play are we challenging fiction to raise the bar as we have fewer real-life applications of forbidden love are we as a culture raised on folklore about enduring abuse for romance increasing the amount of abuse that must be sustained to achieve true love we need to be more open to discussing abuse so listening to those who have been abused so that they might feel comfortable telling their stories so that people can better judge what is healthy and what is not what is safe and what is dangerous we need to make it safe for the victims of abuse to feel safe otherwise people and not just young people will continue to think that the relationship between songwoo and yoon bomb is true love that enduring trauma is fine for the right person that it's a necessary part of falling in love abuse is never a necessary part of falling in love and so in the description of this video i've listed resources and links for anyone who might feel that they've become trapped in an abusive relationship abuse is not love trauma is not romance please do not let they can change trap you in an unhealthy or dangerous situation get away while you can because a happily ever after should never involve pain you

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