Mmmmm. That’s a very very valid reason. A very heavy and personal subject indeed.
That's understandable, I've seen a couple shows that do sudden deaths. Sometimes it can be really effective, but most of the time it ends up being cheap shock value/drama. I'm sure the scenario you decided on fit much better for the story tone. Oh! Lol! That's good to know, and I'm glad how you described the scene came off how you intended. I know you mentioned posting it at some point, but don't feel nervous about sharing uncomfortable stories or scenes, humans kinda need that stuff from time to time. It's not healthy to always have fluff, and darker/uncomfortable stuff can really help some people deal with their own bad experiences. Also writing that stuff exercises your brain since it's more challenging to execute well.
Exactly you make a good point. No need to sugarcoat or fluff anything. To be honest, it hides valuable truths about topics like that that no one discusses.
Hmmm.. back then, I was working on a prequel story to the main thing I was working on. It's focused on demon hunting in the modern age, and the introductory scene starts with getting a group together for a local disturbance.
TW: suicide and self-harm
We follow the main protagonist as he and the group enters an apartment building. They enter and it's all dark and musty, cluttered as hell. The apartment evidently rented out by someone who became a hoarder, but she's nowhere to be found until our main guy searches a bathroom. In the bathroom, there's a 3-foot-tall humanoid demon licking a filthy, bloodied bathtub. The woman had committed suicide by slitting her wrists and drinking herself to death while in a filled bathtub.
Being that it was written for a comic, I didn't want to be overtly graphic with showing the body. That's why the place is so dimly lit to begin with. Anyhow, this is our main guy's first case. He's so sickened by the sight of this and exits the building to go throw up. The commander of the group enters the bathroom and pulls his weapon out, apologizing to the demon and the woman. Then the scene ends.
The rest of the comic wasn't going to be nearly as dark, but at the time, I felt like it was a good introduction to the grim nature of the job. Now I'm sort of.. hesitant on letting that be a canonical part of the story. The actual first case that defines his character arc starts shortly after anyways. I feel like this scene was too morbid for the series as a whole, especially since it relies so heavily on the reaction to a corpse. There's a conversation that follows after, ensuring that the team would be there for our guy if things ever feel too heavy to handle by himself.. but idk, these days I feel like the sentiment can be showcased without needing such a gruesome scene
Summary
One character actually depicted having a sexual intercourse with a corpse. It's just for a minor characterization and generally fits the story's tone.
While I'm personally impassive to scenes I write myself, I thought the possibility for it to be unnecessarily graphic for a mere characterization purposes. Also, I am probably still not good enough to write a sex scenes. In the new version it's just him getting aroused as he saw a severed foot.
Eck! That is very disturbing! Yeah that really is going to far! Yeah. When things get graphic like that, I believe that is the furthest of the too far you can possibly get! Thanks for sharing though! This is why we have these types of conversations.
Also I’m glad that you toned it down to having your character be turned on by a foot. It’s still weird but they sound like a fascinating character.
Well I admit I was going to have my character Eric be suicidal but he wasn’t written to be so I dropped the idea and believed he wasn’t at the stage of being suicidal. In the story (spoilers coming) he later reveals to Winston that he’s been tortured by their boss and that he’s keeping him in England. If he escapes, he will kill him, if he fails a mission he will kill him, basically if he’s not submissive to the boss he gets killed. So from that, Eric has a lot of scars from torture sessions and failures which is dark in of itself but it could’ve been a lot worse. I just realized it didn’t make sense, if he’s trying to not get killed by obeying his master, then why would he want to kill himself? I thought it would be because he’s trapped on an island unfamiliar to him (England in the UK) and trapped in a cycle for six years. But he has something living for, his friend (later boyfriend) Winston and his mother. Which is the whole reason why he’s there in the first place. Gosh I love Eric as a character he actually makes sense!
Back when I was a dumb kid who wrote shitty fanfiction (emphasis on the shitty), shipping anime characters with my own, I tried to be unique and wrote one story that went too far. It was awful.
Tw: p*dophilia
Here's the synopsis.
[Redacted] a 14 year old girl who lives with her spoiled mother who sleeps with random men and lives off of alcohol has to maintain her job to support her one person family and maintain her school life. just as she thought things couldn't get any worst her mother suddenly gets engaged to a rich man who she slept with. oh no, she is NOT eccepting a 18 year old boy to be her step father!
It's an Uchiha Sasuke x female OC in a modern alternate universe thing. Awful awful eugh eugh.
The story is still on the internet. I chose not to delete it as no relationships ever developed in it and there wasn't many chapters written. I hate it and I cringe so hard but It's a good reminder of how far I've come, how stupid a kid I was and what NOT to do.
I hear you there man! I wrote ambitious and crappy fan fiction and even with my older original works I had some pretty questionable stuff.
For example, me writing about real people. Back in the day I wrote a Minecraft fanfiction called Slamacow’s Destiny and I self inserted myself being the the dumb 13 year old I was and shipped myself with the Minecraft YouTuber. It was a cute romance and nothing sexual or graphic happened but it went to the point where I made real people such as CaptainSparklez and others far from their real selves. It nearly came to the point where they were idealized and not true to their real life counterparts. It’s why I wanted to write a Beatles comic about the life of John Lennon but due to my poor history and me being tired of bad biopics (look I don’t like ‘em lol) I just didn’t because I want to show respect for who they are and we’re.
Fanfiction was where I started, I definitely learned a lot from writing it but it’s always cringey when I look back on it.
With my original works I can also see how far my writing has come as well. Even from four or two years ago I see some questionable stuff I wrote. Even with my first draft of Cracking Eggs I wrote last year. I had characters but no story or direction which thank goodness I have now. This second shot at Cracking Eggs was a serious drastic change from my last one. I did have emotional moments but it didn’t feel earned. Also it was really weird. Jack could hear voices which he later learned were voices of the dead. Mister Fine was apparently an immortal demon who traps souls to keep himself alive. It was set in a post apocalyptic sort of modern London in the future. And weirdest of weird you can possibly get. Winston had a romantic relationship with a hen so he had like a strange obsession with feathers. Turned out the hen was a very beautiful woman who was cursed by Fine. This one is so messed up WTF!!? Looking back now, I’m grateful Jack is normal, Fine is normal, Winston is normal. So even now I still cringe at my stuff and say why did I write this?
The latest one is so much better! 
Thank you! I am glad I didn't went with that too. I realize that will add nothing but shock value (to audience)
It might be in the future. Currently, there's a scene planned where one of the characters voices his opinion on the consequences of WWII, and despite that no, he doesn't try to say that nazis were good and instead talks about how they were a significant factor that shaped the modern world and morality, with each passing day I feel less and less sure that I shouldn't cut that scene out for my safety's sake.
Not only because the thought that thinking that nazis resulted in anything but evil is morally wrong seems to be resurfacing in modern times and can hurt the image of my comic or get me canceled, my own country has laws that can put me in jail if somebody'll think I'm not against nazis.
Wow! That’s uhhhh an interesting choice. Maybe instead of focusing on the Nazis, there are others who influenced our modern world as well so people wouldn’t frame you as a sympathizer, in which I 100% believe you’re not. Maybe have your character explain that many people on both sides of WW2 were involved with shaping the modern world. Maybe find people who shaped modern India or Britain, how the war affected Japan after the war. How it shaped America and the future Soviet Union. You can talk about how Germany was shaped as well because of course it changed but make sure to see how the war shaped modern Europe and the world as a whole. Perhaps instead of focusing on an (obviously) terrible, have your character make a generalization so it’s not as controversial.
I’m planning for the far future to write a story set in WW2 but that is going to be a long ways away. It will be about a French girl from an antisemitic family and she befriends a Jewish girl at school. They are captured by Nazis and rescued by British soldier and a ex nazi. It is going to be based on a school project I wrote way back in 7th grade. I have no plans to work on it anytime soon though.
Well, the problem is that in the context of that discussion (which is "humans did awful stuff, just look at WII!") the point is that specifically nazis helped shape better humanity as a whole, by providing an excellent and stark example of how racism and imperialism are bad and maybe we shouldn't do that, so I can't provide another example cuz then the entire discussion becomes meaningless and it is better to just cut it. But it is also an important discussion for character development, by providing thinking fodder for another character (that who goes "but look at WWII!") to turn him around from misanthropy.
Ohhhhh! I see it now! Then if you are trying to prove that point then that’s a perfect example! 
my bad
Mine is not too bad, but it's something I realised while editing an earlier chapter. So, near the beginning, one of his crush' friends calls Simon a homophobic slur, which is a source of conflict between Simon and his crush. However, one of Simon's actual friends does the same thing a couple of chapters later, which Simon was mad at, but more easily forgave. Had to tweak that a bit to make their confrontation after more nuanced.
Yeah sometimes dialogue and action can go too far. I know I had to edit my dialogue on occasions because it was way too harsh for the tone and/or it didn’t make sense. In my original thumbnail sketches I actually had a lot of language in my dialogue. I don’t swear in real life so I have a no language policy I follow put on by myself but it does make me feel better about my dialogue and that I have a filter. My stuff is usually family friendly but a little bit adult too. It’s a good balance of that. My stuff isn’t dumbed down nor it’s too mature for anyone to handle it’s a fine mush.
1 month later
closed Jan 5, '23