Discussion "Urge to Kill... Rising..." -Violence in Fiction

Let's just get this out in the open; violence in fiction is ever-present. It might be very mild or simply slapstick violence, or it may be graphic. The violent act itself may not be depicted at all, but its aftermath would be described. Violence can be alluded to, or explicitly described. Most often, violence is seen in action and dramatic stories, the latter usually depicting the result of the violent acts, rather than the act itself. Violence can be integral to the plot, or a diversion, or even just thrown in for sheer shock value because the author feels that it makes the story "more adult."

I use the term "violence" here to describe any action that results in physical and/or psychological trauma to the person(s) involved. This would include acts of torture, and even accidental acts which result in harm to the character. A vehicular accident would be a violent act, as it caused trauma. A character falling down the stairs, whether by accident or provoked, would be a violent act. This also includes any actions which result in the death of the character, either by accident, mechanical failure, or murder. If a character is working on the engines of their starship, and the ship inexplicably activates those engines and fries the character to a crisp, that would be a violent act of mechanical failure, so long as the source of that failure was not caused by another character's direct intervention.

Throughout our respective writing histories, I hazard that many of us have experimented with writing graphic violence at some point. This could be early in our hobby, or even more recent, and the motives could range from experimentation to the idea that graphic violence makes the story "mature."

Now, I ask you, does it really? What makes a story "mature?" To what degree must the violence be to warrant a labeling of "mature" or "adult?" Does violence help a story, or can it hinder a story? Where in a story do you feel is best to include violence? What genres do you feel should not have any violence whatsoever?

Hurt/comfort fics may be the result of a violent act toward the character, even if the violence is not depicted. Also, on the subject of torture, tickling is an oft-used method of torture, though many of us may not associate tickling with being a violent act. Even if the tickling isn't intended to be torturous--a character tickles his girlfriend to make her laugh--it can sometimes result in harm to the person, particularly if they are sensitive to being tickled, and the act of tickling causes them to lose muscle tone and collapse.

So, your thoughts on violence in fiction? Do you employ it in your own writing? Are you disgusted by it? Are you indifferent? Are you a malevolent god to your characters and delight in watching them suffer? Plenty of more discussion points, so go nuts.

Just... keep the collateral damage to your fellow posters to a minimum and check all weapons at the door.

 

Hmm.

Slugthrower sniper rifle...check. Sawed-off scattergun...check. Belt of thermal grenades...check. twenty-three hidden holdout blasters...check. Okay, I think that takes care of...oh, wait, I forgot my six throwing vibroblades...silly me.

So, yeah, violence in fan fiction stories. IMHO: it's a non-issue. Why can I dismiss it so? Just look at the sorts of violent acts that take place in the Fate of the Jedi series. I mean, nothing could possibly be more violent than what the main antagonist does when

Spoiler

she violently takes over the bodies of her victims from the inside out, destroying their minds as she makes them into avatars of herself.

Not to mention the rich detail that is given to describing this act.

As for the "maturity" of a story being affected by violence, I ask the following: Don't the young reader novels include just as much violence as the actual fims, which Lucas himself has stated were meant to be understood by pre-teens and young teenagers, if not more so? A study done in the 90s claimed that by the time a child turns 18, they will have seen 26,000 murders on television (probably including movies and video games too, I'd imagine). So violence alone does not impart maturity, never mind the fact that maturity is—and will always be—intrinsically relative.

I've used violence in my fiction, both original and fan fiction—when you're writing war stories, it is expected. You can't have a war story without war, and war is all about violence. I've also written a story wherein the prime mechanic is a torture session designed to break the victim and draw her to the dark side. Yes, it was more of an experiment to see if I could do it, because it never seemed to me as though gratuitous violence of this nature was ever really possible for me to write. The experiment, however, showed that my initial hypothesis was incorrect: not only could torture work as a primary interaction, but that I'm also pretty good at writing it—without, I might add, going into overly graphic descriptions.

Violence is a means to an end, nothing more. And even the good guys have to engage in its use.

 

Just take superhero comics, for example. You have your heroes engaging the villains, and regardless of the outcome, the act of engaging the enemy is violent. However, there was a time in which you could see a very solid line drawn between the heroes and villains, particularly before the grim-and-gritty era of the Nineties. It came down to the simple fact that Superman does not arbitrarily kill. Batman is darker, but even he's shown restraint. However, that's not to say that they've never crossed that line. But, there are heroes who have always crossed that line, placing them within the antihero archetype. Wolverine would give you a smile like he's going to fillet you and enjoy it, and yet, we still view him as a hero.

So, yes, the good guys engage in violence. It's not just for the baddies. Though, one has to wonder... where does one draw the line? An easy delineation would be to say that if the character starts beating up and killing others for kicks, then they would be villainous. However, what if that character has motives that when viewed at a certain angle actually seem valid? What if that character is simply out of touch with reality and cannot determine what's right and what's wrong? A character kills another because the voice of a deity told them that they had to "save" their victim, that they were doing them a favor. A parent character considers euthanizing their own child to "save" them. In that character's mind, their acts, however violent, are not "evil." They don't view themselves as "evil." Thus, "evil" based upon actions without knowledge of a clear motive is rather subjective.

Violence isn't always a bad thing. It isn't always a thing that only evil people do. If someone attacks you, you will rightly defend yourself, and in doing so, you may even attack your opponent just to get them away from you. You have engaged in a violent act. But, was that violent act "wrong?" Your back was against the wall, you had no other recourse than to fight. Are you thus "bad" for engaging in violence?

 

I think it depends entirely on the morality in the tale in question; in an idealistic story, we'd expect the protagonist to limit (or at least try to limit) their bodycount while the antagonist doesn't care or does the opposite. A more violence-prone protagonist (particularly a killing-prone one) marks the story as darker or greyer in tone.

Indeed, I feel there's a distinction to be made between lethal and non-lethal violence here; a protagonist who stealthily infiltrates a compound knocking guards out left and right is more upstanding (by our standards) than one who kills all the guards. Of course, when these two things don;t match up - when moral paragons end up with massive bodycounts - then we end up with a problem. Videogames tend to run into this one more often (although they're getting better).

 

*sets sniper rifle in basket along with two projectile/energy weapons, a Bo Staff with a hidden vibroblade, a phaser, a lightsaber and a few miscellanies weapons.*

Yes, violence is everywhere in our movies, TV shows, books/comics/graphic novels and video games. Each source of entertainment has different levels of violence or the description of said violence. Video games are rated E, E+10, T and M to give buyers a sense of the content. A boy of fifteen/sixteen told me that he has played M rated games and his grandmother seems to have no problem with her grandson playing games with horrible violence, language and adult situations.

Some forty years ago movies were rated R for something that now would only make PG-13 MAYBE PG. About forty years ago my mom wanted to see an R rated movie so her father went with her. She told me it was rated R because for a brief time you see a woman's bare back.

 

Myself, I have no problem with violence, maybe because I'm morbid and have become desensitized. Yes, you do have to question what is justified and what overkill as far as graphic violence goes.
I once wrote a story in which I wrote an overly graphic scene...in which a demon murders a woman through violent means. Did I go too far...was I doing it for shock value... No, I think I was doing it because of how the character was...how I wrote him to be. A few friends were shocked I'd gotten that graphic, but I think it more than infused how horrible the character was...

Yesterday, I witnessed a graphic transformation scene for a werewolf in the series Hemlock Grove...a netflix original. Now, it was original..but I think I'd say it didn't have to be so grotesque...

The series itself does have scenes of violence in general. Adding to the topic of adding or detracting as discussed above, two women get killed by some unseen force...an animal. Thus the graphics they used were very blatant. If the graphics were done less so I feel that the impact of the character's death and the tone wouldn't be as serious.

But as I said before, very little phases me as far as movie/tv violence. Except the werewolf transformation scene (shudders)

 

The only violence I have problems with is when it is up close and personal, torturous and graphic. You can blow people up all day or decapitate people with lightsabers, but I probably would cringe if you had somebody torturing somebody by cutting off body parts or putting a cigarette out in their eye. I can't handle movies like Saw. I have in my story described how the heroes found the bodies of the tortured, but I didn't describe the torture scene in the story.

I let my sons play M rated video games if they are military or fantasy related. I don't mind him shooting zombies. I won't buy they Grand Theft Auto or other crime related video games. I know it probably is irrelevant...violence is violence.

 

This is actually perfectly timed, because I was just venting to someone about this roleplay group I'm in. It's heavily prose-based, and it revolved around Jim Kirk during his time at Starfleet Academy in the 2009 'verse. Except . . . two of the players have decided that their characters' backstories needed some spicing up.

Now, I don't have a problem when violence furthers a story and makes sense in its setting, such as when, in mine, Khan kills a bunch of Klingons to rescue his wife, or in the EU, when the Jedi fight the Vong. But when you're throwing things in as a crutch to make things more "interesting", that's when I start to rage-face. For example, in this RP, Kirk's player has decided that when he was 10, he ran away from home, was taken into foster care, and his foster father sold him into slavery. He spent the next 8 or 10 years of his life as a sex slave to people who raped and tortured him. The other player has an OC who was raped by her father from the ages of 12-14, and when she got pregnant, he waited 'til she was 6mos pregnant and then cut the baby out of her with a knife. Just this last week, this character was also gang raped, but, according to the player "it's not the first time it's happened, so it's okay."

That kind of thing, to me, is too much violence and not appropriate to any medium unless you know how to handle the repercussions both in-story and with your readers. A lot of people were upset by the violence in the recent SW books and stopped reading. I, personally, didn't mind most of it, but I really think the tone of the books has gotten too dark. I don't think they're really Star Wars anymore. It feels more like Christopher Nolan's version of Star Wars, which . . . is okay, but it's not what got me into it.

As for the line of where it hits the point where it becomes adult . . . That can be a really tough call to make. I don't think NJO or anything since is anywhere remotely kid-friendly. Mass murders, tortures, self-mutilation, orgies . . . It all depends on subject matter and execution (ha!), and to me, it has to be done on a case-by-case basis.

 

Okaaay, yeah I think that is a little excessive of those RP players, Dantana Skywalker. You don't even see those things in rated M video games (I hope).

 

I approached both players and told them I was uncomfortable with it. Not in their defense, but as . . . partial explanation, both players are barely 18.

 

Goodness. Honestly, I've never understood the fascination with a player's character being raped and tortured for the sole purpose of them having a "tragic backstory," or the acts are used mainly "to make things interesting."

In a prose-based RP I'm in, it's a Pokemon RP. Thus, violence is to be expected. If you have powerful Pokemon, they're going to cause some damage. Legendaries are no exception, only that their destructive tendencies are on an apocalyptic scale. However, for the sake of not being too powerful, I nerfed Mewtwo's powers, but he did level a city block. However, unless mindless destruction is needed, I try to avoid using it. Though, that hasn't stopped a few people from saying that the RP is "grimdark."

Compared to that Star Trek RP, the Pokemon RP is far more sunny. Granted, the storyline has been a bit serious as of late, but it's not violence, torture, and rape for the sake of violence, torture, and rape. In fact, there's no rape at all. Some torture, but it's been perpetrated by another player. There's plenty of violence, because Mewtwo is a walking atom bomb. But, I still work to inject humor and downtime, and keep the body count from getting too high.

In RPs, I draw the line at explicit violence for the sake of violence. Violent acts need to have a reason to be there. They need a motive. You don't arbitrarily throw in violence just because you think it will make the story "more interesting."

 

Yes, I agree completely. Now, the violence has all occurred "off camera" for these things, but still. Using these things as a crutch doesn't make you a brilliant and fascinating writer. If you can incorporate, justify, and use it well, that's one thing. But to, as you said, use it just to make things more interesting . . . No. Not only no, but hell no. I'm not saying one should shy away from difficult subject material in the fears of offending others, but doing it because you can't think of a more interesting way to flesh out your character?

We've got one character whose entire family died in a house fire (I don't know how only she escaped, she hasn't explained). She was orphaned and raised by her aunt and uncle, and decided to go into Starfleet because it had been her brother's dream. To me, that's more interesting than "I was raped lots, tee hee."

While I was largely writing overly dramatic tripe at 18 (and even later, ugh), I learned not to do that.

 

I think some subjects are a little too touchy such as rape, incest, or molestation of a minor. I did have a sexual assault (sort of like a date-rape) in one of my stories and the criminal was brought to justice. I think it was done sensitively.

 

I've included assault and threat of rape in my stuff, but it was usually dictated by the story's setting and the characters inhabiting it, rather than some need to make the story "interesting" or "adult." And when I included it, it was mainly alluded to, and any gender was subject to it. Otherwise, I don't bother with such acts as I see no place for them.

Back in the Cringe Era and the Emo Era, angsty-wangsty dramatic sob stories in which the characters go through hell and back, fall into deep depressions, and are tortured at the whims of the equally-angsty and depressed author were quite prevalent, and many of those stories included explicit descriptions of violence. I can remember one terrible description of a character being punched in the face so hard that their nose shatters like glass. I still cringe at that and at the crap I wrote as an emo teenager/early-twenty-something.

Then, I grew up and put a leash on those emotions and tied them out back. Now, my idea of "mature" is to use my fics as a sounding board for socio-political beliefs, which can be just as irritating as violence for shock value.

But, I digress...

Depicting violence is something of an ongoing learning process. We're all still learning where to draw the line and when. The use of violence can also depend on the genre and its audience. Though, judging by the amount of hurt/comfort fics out there, particularly the ones that have more hurt than comfort, I think it's safe to assume that writing violence against our characters is a cathartic release for us. Someone makes us suffer? Woe be the character that we pull out of the box that night!

 

While I don't think there is any place for excessive violence in fics for the sole purpose of "making it interesting", I can certainly understand how some folks take the increasingly violent world we live in as inspiration for their stories.

I don't really think they are too touchy. However, I do believe that if such subjects as rape, incest or any other sexually suggestive topic are going to be addressed, they must be handled with care, with sensitivity as you said.

If a writer can't manage to put a mature perspective on the topic, then it's one they need to stay away from. Plot advancement is one thing, but graphic violence for the sake of making a character "interesting" completely halts my interest in reading a story.

 

I agree with Trak and Jen. The only kind of violence that shouldn't be in a story is whatever kind does not suit the story, as in throwing stuff in there for simple shock value or to make a backstory more interesting. But that last sentence is just preaching to the choir...

Regarding the Star Wars EU's darkening nature, I completely agree and frankly, I'm a little disappointed in this development. While we've seen planets being destroyed long before, it's true that since the NJO and much more so in the most recent series, the violence has been ramped up in frequency, intensity, and narrative quality. This last bit is a sort of double-standard, yes; while we want good prose and story, the violence in that story has to be so well-written as to properly fit into the story. Gratuitous torture was second nature to the Yuuzhan Vong, and that's part of what made them who they are, but to be honest a lot of the stuff they did in the NJO books made me cringe. Not just at the horrific acts themselves, but in the rather disgusting way some of their biotech was described. Bleech.

And it's only gotten worse with the Dark Nest trilogy introducing wild sex parties that leave a bit too much to the imagination, and the FotJ series taking all the dark deeds you could think of and wrapping it up into one singular villain. Though I liked the idea of a lost sect of Sith becoming a new antagonist for the Jedi Order, having them fall under the prime antagonist's sway the way they did smacked as a cop-out. If Allston, Golden and Denning's plan for the villain was to make her so thoroughly disgusting and unworthy of any sympathy whatsoever, they went a little bit too far in succeeding, IMHO. Not to mention LotF's rather lazy way of depicting Jacen's fall to the dark side and the horrible acts in that trilogy.

Personally I'm hoping that Abrams will weed out some of these Nolan-esque trappings that the EU has been rolling around in. As Dantana Skywalker said, this ain't the universe I signed up for.

 

Hm. A thought.

Regardless of the plot necessity, was it right or wrong for Obi-Wan to leave Anakin crispy-fried on Mustafar? Should he have performed (or attempted to perform, for the sake of canon) a mercy killing? Was Obi-Wan a monster to leave Anakin to die a horrible death?

Let's say you have a fic in which your characters have engaged in a brutal fight. Your protagonist has just beat the antagonist into a bloody pulp, and now the antagonist is sprawled on the hardscrabble ground, broken, and looking forward to a slow and painful death. Should your protagonist kill him? What are your thoughts on characters performing mercy kills? When do you feel that it is okay for the hero to kill?

 

Isn't "Mercy Kill" one of the latest books?

But yes, I would definitely have my protagonist put them out of their misery. IIRC, it's possible Obi-Wan thought he had died, 'cause he sorta burst into flames and stopped moving.

 

I think Obi-Wan was absolutely wrong to leave Anakin there, dying with all that rage and hate burning his insides as the superheated magma riverbank seared his flesh. He'd already severed the man's arm and legs, what's another swipe of the saber going to matter? Especially since, as far as Obi-Wan knew, there would be no rescue for his former apprentice and hence crispy critter. There was no feasible way to capture Anakin, because where were he and Yoda going to hold him, much less heal and/or attempt to redeem him? They were fugitives from the new Imperial government, and if Palpatine had even a hint that his apprentice was in Jedi custody, he'd have hunted them to the ends of the universe.

Of course, this is without either Jedi Master realizing that there was some sort of magical Force bond between Sidious and Vader.

As for the other questions. First, if a character is willing to beat his/her opponent in such a way, then that character ought to be willing to finish the job, otherwise what sort of example is that? Since I primarily write fiction with a military slant, most of my characters are or were in the military, and in the service they teach you to kill the enemy before the enemy kills you or your comrades. That said, if an enemy is found to be wounded after the combat is over, and they pose no further hazard (e.g., clutching a hidden grenade, holding a sidearm, or reaching for a nearby weapon), then if your protagonist is "good" or you style them a hero, then they should capture that wounded enemy soldier and take him/her in for treatment. A villain protagonist would of course kill the wounded soldier anyway, but that's for an individual author to decide. If said enemy is found to be mortally wounded, then IMHO it behooves the "hero" to finish the job as quickly and painlessly as possible provided that doing so doesn't expose themselves to further harm from other enemies.

When is it permissible for a hero to kill? There are many answers for that, even from the same author, which mostly depends on the nature of the hero they are attempting to depict. Speaking for myself, and again as one who writes war stories, it is almost essential for the hero or heroine to kill. That's what soldiers do, an author can't escape it, and if they try they will only end up producing subpar stories that call into question the author's understanding of warfare or, indeed, the human condition. That's one thing that I didn't like about G.I. Joe; all those battles with laser rifles and when the soldiers of both sides get close enough, it's just a bunch of kicks and punches and nobody dies or even gets hurt. And everyone always manages to bail out of their stricken plane, even if it's been completely blown up.

I think Obi-Wan would have felt it in the Force if Anakin had died. Else, he should have anyway.

 

Obi-Wan was trusting Anakin's fate to the Force, not "leaving him to die." The book does a much better job of explaining this:

In the end, there was only one choice. It was a choice he had made many years before, when he had passed his trials of Jedi Knighthood, and sworn himself to the Jedi forever. In the end, he was still Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he was still a Jedi, and he would not murder a helpless man.

He would leave it to the will of the Force. He turned and walked away. After a moment, he began to run.

 

Yeah, I've read the novel (which is better than the film, indeed) but didn't remember the specific line. Unfortunately, while the sentiment is true to the Jedi Order of that era and of Obi-Wan himself, I have a problem with that mode of thinking: it isn't murder if he's already out to kill you. Of course, it isn't murder to leave him to "the will of the Force" either, but you don't turn your back on a foe no matter how wounded he is. In fact, the more severely mauled he/she is, the more sure you should be of ending it or, as what happened in the saga, that rancor will come back to bite you. Hard.

But in the context of the current argument, however, the canon is largely irrelevant, and only serves as an illustration for the thesis of mercy. I happen to think that, if you are absolutely forced to fight for your life and/or the lives of others, it is far, far better to be sure of a clean kill than to leave a potential problem unresolved. You deal with the threat now, and face the consequences after the blaster bolts and bullets have stopped flying.

Yeah, I'm kind of a pragmatist that way, and IMHO it's one of the traits within Luke's "new" Jedi that make them better able to serve the galaxy than the old Order—that is to say, the Order of the Republic Golden Age—ever was.

 

Violence doesn't squick me, but I do think it has a time and a place. I will admit, I'm a pretty big fan of reading H/C fic (I really have no idea why) so I've been known to read some pretty violent stuff. But to read a book or watch a movie that has violence which only serves the purpose of 'making it exciting', that annoys me.
I have been known to write some violence in fic, but usually based off something that happened in canon of that fandom.

Okay, you got me... my muse does delight in the suffering of characters, but it's not always (or even usually) violence, so I guess that doesn't really apply.

 

Generally, I try to gauge how violent and graphic the films "feel", not so much what they show, because I think there are some ways in which the written word can have a bigger impact on the reader (and sometimes vice versa). I think there's a difference between seeing someone who is in pain on TV and reading about it, perhaps (at least partially) from their point of view, in which case you're actually in their head while it's happening. You can also get away with a lot more in a story if you don't go into a lot of details. Film is more limited in a way because, visually, we will always perceive a certain amount of information.

But as far as rape scenes are concerned--nothing can make me stop reading a story faster, or dislike an author more, particularly if there wasn't enough warning beforehand that the story would go there. This is one of those things that--like Han Solo being tortured by Darth Vader--I feel ought to stay "offscreen".

 

I've written two fics that refer to horrible violence. One of them an OC shares a memory with Luke of the murders of his people. In one of the memories a pregnant woman had been killed and her unborn child had been cut out of her and killed as well. The other one a woman has a vision of people dying in a massive fire as well as a vision of many of her people dying from the results of a firestorm. Then in the next chapter of that fic a city is under attack so people are dying from the explosions from bombers payloads either from the explosion itself or the fact that buildings are collapsing.

I did write a fic where two characters were raped. They had suck off for some fun in the city and some angry young men yanked them into an alleyway. They slapped the girls around and insulted them a bit before I switched POVs to when they are found. The girls were raped because one of the girls had been implanted with an embryo so the rape was suppose to temporarily cover what had been done. THe guy who ordered all of it was mentally unstable as well.

 

I thought it was wrong also, but I also thought a mercy killing would come off wrong for the hero.

There really was no way to avoid it. If Obi-Wan chopped off Anakin's head, then that would be confusing when we saw him in EP 4. Unless the Emperor could have his head sewed back on. Wasn't his cybernetic arm working? If that is the case I guess Obi-Wan could throw down a vibroblade and so Anakin could end his own life. Or maybe Anakin collapses and Obi-Wan thinks he is dead. It's not like he hasn't been tricked with a fake death before. That is how Ventress escaped. Or maybe he did die and the Emperor does that bringing people back from the dead trick his master did in the book Darth Plagueis. I know the book wasn't written yet. But the Emperor could find him dead and do some Force lightning to start his heart again and then make him Vader.

Although it seemed cruel I think it is in character for Obi-Wan to walk away and leave it to the will of the Force.