Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-24662533-20141220153720/@comment-26054278-20150304210119

VerminGoat wrote: AGrimAuxiliatrix1 wrote: The worst pastas are the ones that are readable, but are insulting/offensive Seriously? It's always been a part of horror to be "offensive" on some level. If you mean things like violence (especially against women or children), that's literally one of the greatest sources of inciting fear in fiction, and if you're so messed up by it that it deeply affects you emotionally, that means it's doing what it's supposed to do. Sure, on its own without a creepy atmosphere it isn't that effective besides shock value (which is actually almost equally integral to horror fiction, especially creepypastas), but that is also a valid form of content under the umbrella term "horror". Think about body horror, or some psychological horror; if it didn't have that offence to it, it just wouldn't work.

I have nothing against you personally, but what you're saying sounds an awful lot like censorship based on the premise that you get "triggered" by it, like SJWs say. There's nothing wrong with that (I used to avoid reading horror or watching horror films for a while because they affected me too much in the past), but the best way to go about it really doesn't make sense to be changing the nature of horror fiction; I mean, everything has its time and place and for dark things, that generally lies right in horror. Hell, a lot of classic horror stories are "offensive" by modern standards for reasons that the writers didn't even consider (because back then those things were not as offensive) and that's part of why they are classics. If you have nothing against them based on the fact that they were written in a different time, then you have no reason to have anything against modern writers emulating that same effect that those classics had on people; classics are timeless, as people often say, and wanting to write a story that becomes a modern classic is only natural for every writer out there. How they go about it and whether it's successful or not shouldn't be relevant at all because what scares a person is way too subjective.

If the reason you're against "offensive" content in fiction, for example rape, is that you believe everyone writing about it to condone it... well, I can't even begin to tell you how little sense that makes and you should realise it yourself if you actually thought about it for a second. I already mentioned earlier that things like that are an effective source of horror, but it's not just that; the paradoxical feelings that they may give some people (eg. getting sexually aroused while terrified/angered) are just as much part of the intended reaction for some writers. If a story makes you question yourself, isn't that the ultimate "creepy"? You know, a lot of people like horror films and literature and such because they make them excited in one way or another, generally the tension and the feeling of something bad happening. If you don't like that feeling, you simply don't enjoy horror and that's perfectly fine; we all have our own tastes.

Also, like I said, I used to avoid horror fiction in the past. I got scared and couldn't sleep at night, etc. and that is honestly just the effect that creators of horror fiction want people to have, meaning that the stories and films that had that effect on me (particularly the Russian Sleep Experiment and the episode "Right to Die" of Masters of Horror) did exactly what they were supposed to do, and thus I look back to the experience as a positive one. If you write horror but don't want people to be scared/creeped out/disturbed/disgusted/etc, I have no idea why you'd want to write horror in the first place. Negative emotions serving as thrills are a continuum, and you can't block a part of it off for any reason. It just doesn't work like that. When I said "insulting/offensive", I was referring to when it is used tastelessly to the point that it offends the reader not in a way that makes the story better, but actually makes it worse. Cry Baby Lane has a single sentence about raping children just to get some shock value and just in a last desperate attempt to get something out of the audience. I considered it offensive and insulting (to my intelligence) because of the manner it is presented and because they throw around this serious subject just for a cheap scare.

Darker subject matters can be explored, but you have to treat these serious subjects as what they are: serious subjects. You really can't just throw these terms around and never bring them up again. When a story does that, that is when I consider it offensive (in a bad way that detracts from the story, not something that adds to it).

Also, for the record, I never mentioned that writers couldn't write about these matters, nor did I ever say that the reader shouldn't feel disturbed or disgusted or scared.