# About Violence, Gore, and how ambiguous it all seems.



## RealWriterX (Aug 3, 2017)

So, today I posted up a short story I wrote a few months ago named "Blood Moon". I thought to myself, "There is battle, fighting, death... this is not for General Audience. Nope.". After I tagged the story as "Mature" and unsurprisingly perhaps it got a handful of reads.

When I compare that to the others story I posted, in its parts, those had at least 30 each, but they were either Adult or for the General Audience. 

So I sat here thinking, "Maybe I should had posted it under General Audience? But not everybody likes to read about battles or fights." but the more I dwelt on it the more I came to realise... violence is an odd thing, especially since the story was based in the Warhammer: Fantasy universe.

I remembered that when I went to the Games Workshop shops to collect/buy/play with my miniature armies there would be young children there, and a lot of them. Young children who, undoubtedly, bought the Codexes and rule books, and could read about the twisted demons and other evils. About people being burned alive or otherwise murderized... I mean, heck Demonettes weren't exactly running around covered up all proper. And some of the races used flayed skin for their banners or even armor adornments. 

I tagged my story as Mature since I thought it was such. But with all the saturation of violence, gore in television, video games and even in books that are readily available... don't I hurt my own readership by trying to be honest, and considering something as "Mature" or "Adult" and tagging it as such?

Or is perhaps reading about violence far graver than "seeing" it?

What do you all think about this?


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## ChapterAquila92 (Aug 3, 2017)

It greatly depends on the context in which violence and gore are applied in a given medium that will determine how it'll be rated, parental discretion aside. The only certainty that really comes to mind is that deliberate fetishization - that is, violence/gore for its own sake - is definitely an adult rating.

Out of curiosity, how many other stories of yours also take place in the Warhammer Fantasy setting? The fact that it's a niche franchise is also a factor to consider.


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## RealWriterX (Aug 4, 2017)

It is the only one I posted on Fur Affinity, since it had some relation to the Furry Fandom (a different take on Beastmen). Perhaps part of my error was that I did not include in the title "Warhammer: Fantasy Story" or some such. It was simply called "Blood Moon".

If we were turning this into some manner of research I would have to post another story based in the Warhammer universe that is for a General Audience, to see if more people would be interested in reading it.


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## quoting_mungo (Aug 5, 2017)

When posting to Fur Affinity, ratings should be selected to conform to the guidelines in AUP Section 1.1. Sometimes, this can be difficult with writing, but in general if you go into explicit detail about violence or describing wounds and gore, you're looking at at least a Mature rating.

It's been too long since I was into Warhammer Fantasy for me to recall whether the codecs had age recommendations, but I'll note that my kid brother had, in elementary school, classmates whose parents considered _Akira_ suitable viewing for kids "because it's a cartoon", and that I've personally witnessed game store clerks eager to make a sale characterizing the violence in a game featuring headshots as "not bad". Unfortunately it's a pretty herculean task for parents to screen the media their kids consume, and not all parents are very interested in trying. So I wouldn't say "kids consume it" is a very good indicator for what should be suitable for general audiences.


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## RealWriterX (Aug 6, 2017)

I agree with you Quoting. I recall I had a few moments during the Christmas period where I would pay visits to the Gaming sections in shops and try and guide parents in buying the right games for their kids. Not only in terms of quality/replayability/price but also the age bracket. 

Unless the box clearly shows gore/violence I doubt most could tell that some games can be rather violent or bloody. I did see though that some games go out of their way to be available for the general public rather than just adults, which I find a bit surprising.

Games that focus around war should, in general, be considered violent. It's hard to coat a game about total war as being "Neutral". Going back to the Warhammer example, when you consider the Inquisition, Chaos, Occultism, or read about the God-Emperor's throne, or the Exterminatus, or even look at the Imperial Guard Codex (as far as I recall) it's all about exterminating millions of people.

More on topic though, one of the problems I have with posting certain types of stories where there might be combat, or fighting is that tagging it as Mature or Adult seems to greatly influence how many views a story gets while it's still on the front page. 

I know this is not a good sample size but I published two Warhammer stories, one which was tagged Mature the other for the General Audience, and the General Audience story seemed to score far more views than the Mature-tagged one. It might had been the title of the story perhaps, but I have the feeling that due to being age-gated that greatly restricted how many people actually saw it and read it.

Alas, this is somewhat of a guess, since it's only two stories, and I do not actually know what age groups tend to visit Fur Affinity.

Just more food for thought.


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## Troj (Aug 6, 2017)

American culture is weird. 

YA authors will tell you that you have much greater leeway with regards to violence than sex. Nobody bats an eye at the Hunger Games, but if a story for the same age group contains an explicit sex scene instead of an explicit murder scene, publishers balk.


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## WolfNightV4X1 (Aug 6, 2017)

i think violence isnt an issue at alp, actually. Not because we should live it, but it's healthy for everyone to understand and have awareness of the pain and danger that exists in the world. Even if all humans themselves were peaceful, even wild animals can occassionally attack, leading to violence.

Living in a padded bubble is not good for anyone when we have to face the reality of nature and the world. I often wonder why we have reservations and fears about our childrens and teens learning about sex, despite it also being saturated in the media. Double standards, anyone?


Anyways, I do believe writing may not have the same impact as visual material, because it is reliant on the individual to see it in their mind and some people dont have that experience with brutal content to imagine such things even as they read, perhaps that is why?


Guidelines for submissions should qlways be followed anyways, not everyone may want to read that content if thry accidentally run into it


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## quoting_mungo (Aug 7, 2017)

WolfNightV4X1 said:


> Anyways, I do believe writing may not have the same impact as visual material, because it is reliant on the individual to see it in their mind and some people dont have that experience with brutal content to imagine such things even as they read, perhaps that is why?


I think that depends a lot more on the individual artist's or writer's style than on any overarching quality of either medium. Wounds in art can be nothing more than a red scribble (still Mature on FA, mind!), or involve skin, bone, organ, and muscle detail. In writing, violence can be glossed over as a passing mention (could qualify as General, depending), or go into explicit, visceral detail (very much not General!).

Some writers have a knack for writing gore that hits home. Just like some writers seem to be better at writing things that get your tears running or your adrenaline pumping.

I can only guess, but it's quite possible the impact of writing VS art can also vary greatly from person to person, independent of ability to see things in their mind's eye. Compare how, generally, men tend to prefer visual pornography and women tend to prefer written erotica. Different brain wiring, different ways of processing visual VS linguistic stimuli.


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## RealWriterX (Aug 7, 2017)

On that note, I do not remember ever seeing books being Age-gated the same way movies or video games do. I cannot recall a single instance where a bookshop would say, "Sorry, you cannot buy this book for your child, it's too graphic.". In fact, unless a book is VERY controversial it will be discussed but not banned (at least here in Poland). And by controversial I mean either political or religious type of controversial. On the other hand it's possible that violent-controversial books do not appear in stores because they are stopped on the publisher-stage.


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## quoting_mungo (Aug 7, 2017)

Absolutely, books do not typically come with "ratings" so much as "reading levels", which typically are based more on how difficult the text is on a language level, rather than on a content level. One part of this is probably tradition, another the assumption that kids won't read voluntarily anyway, and yet another the idea that reading levels will to some degree... provide some gating on their own. It's a lot more rare for a child to be a fluent enough reader with a large enough vocabulary to comprehend the novel _Hannibal_, than to be traumatized by seeing the movie version at too young an age. So that last one has some limited merit.

You'll still find books separated by target age in most book stores, though, and most literary fiction is pretty tame, so the risk of running into the level of sex or violence common in movies or games in a randomly picked novel is pretty slim. And most of them are likely to either bore or frustrate a child long before they get into inappropriate content, anyway.


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## WolfNightV4X1 (Aug 7, 2017)

Well the warrior cats fandom seems to boast about how a children/teens book series contains material about cats killing each other

...I think as a kid you dont comprehend death as much, so it wont have the same impact, like when I watched bambi and land before time as a kid. Then you grow up and you're like "holy shit!"


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## ChapterAquila92 (Aug 7, 2017)

WolfNightV4X1 said:


> Well the warrior cats fandom seems to boast about how a children/teens book series contains material about cats killing each other
> 
> ...I think as a kid you dont comprehend death as much, so it wont have the same impact, like when I watched bambi and land before time as a kid. Then you grow up and you're like "holy shit!"


Your mileage may vary there. Speaking as someone who, at 5 years old, lost their baby brother to SIDS, death was something I became accustomed to rather early compared to most other children. It's not a light topic by any stretch of the imagination, but learning to cope with loss is part of growing up.

Oddly enough, I found that Bambi and Land Before Time were forgettable by comparison.


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