Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Wish I hadn't read that...

There has been some discussion in the fanfic forum about whether or not certain stories are actually dangerous to some readers' mental well-being, and, if they are, whether these stories should be forced to carry a MAJOR BUMMER warning, so that sensitive FoLCs can avoid them.

I'm not trying to bring up the particular story that sparked the most recent debate. (Hey, if I was, I wouldn't discuss it in the Off Topic forum.)

But the question I want to bring up is a broader one. Do some stories - and I don't mean primarily fanfic stories - actually make you feel literally sick? Do they make you feel so bad that you wish you hadn't read them?

When I studied English at the university of Lund here in Sweden in the late seventies, one of the books we were required to read was Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. I apologize for showing a picture of the movie adaption rather than the cover of the book:



The kid you can see here is the main character of the book, and his name is Pinky, or so I think. (Hey, it's been such a long time since I read it.) Pinky is seventeen years old (I think), a scrawny kid, and it was a big deal to him that he was a Catholic. Back then, I was trying quite hard to be religious, and it was important to me to try to cling to the belief that religious people were good people. And to me Catholic people were religious people, and since they were religious people, they had to be at least moderately good.

You can see in the picture that Pinky's cheek is slashed. Well, you see, Pinky the pimply Catholic kid is a gang leader, and he and his gang regularly attack other people and slash them with razor blades. And sometimes other gangs slash them back.

Pinky has a girlfriend too. There is something fragile, delicately hopeful in the relationship between the girl and Pinky, or at least I remember it like that. The love between the two of them is the last hope in a world of razor blades and darkness. But in the end of the book the girl dies. I don't remember how or why, but she may have become pregnant, and she may have had a botched illegal abortion. I don't know. I don't remember. But I do seem to remember that the cottony strands of sympathy and tentative love making up the togetherness between Pinky and the girl were soiled and torn, and the girl died, and there was nothing, nothing left to hope for or live for other than evil deeds and razor blades, wielded by a kid who made a point of the fact that he was a Catholic.

I'll tell you what - when I had finished reading that book, I felt mentally sick, soiled and queasy. I tasted bile. And for years afterwards, parts of the Swedish cultural elite clamoured for the Nobel Prize committee to give the prize for Literature to Graham Greene. Every time they demanded that Graham Greene should be given the Nobel Prize for Literature, I felt slightly seasick.

Have I read anything else by Graham Greene? Actually, I've tried. Somebody recommended "Travels With My Aunt", which was supposedly guaranteed to be sweet and WAFFY. But as soon as I opened the book, I felt I couldn't go on reading.

So I just wonder if anyone else here has had the same experience - if you have read a book that darkened your mood for an appreciable time afterwards, and made you wish that you had never read it?

Ann

"Ethan Frome." I read it in high school and hated it. There was no high moral content, no real hero to emulate or cheer on, no true villain to root against, and the major conflict was whether or not the central male character (a total and complete wuss) would leave his rich but loveless wife for a sexy young girl with no money. Instead, he opts to commit double suicide on a toboggan run, but screws up and ends up permanently damaged and his girlfriend ends up a paraplegic who is taken in by his wife in an apparent lifelong punishment for the guy cheating with her.

Hated the book. Didn't like the teacher (and she didn't like us sophomores, either; thought she was too good to be enslaved to our class). Bombed the test and yelled at the teacher for accusing me - in writing! - of not reading the stupid book.

And it's a classic?

You know, I thought about it long and hard and...I can't say that I recall ever feeling that bad about reading a book or fanfic.

I've read books that have disappointed me or that I disliked or that made me angry because I felt they'd wasted my time and I wanted my cash back (one book in particular whose author I now forget which abruptly gathered all its protagonists in the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre on September 11 in the last 10 pages and thereby got himself out of the plot hole he'd worked himself into when they were all killed immediately springs to mind in that latter category!) and I've definitely read books that have left me with a satisfied, warm glow as I read the last page...but I can't remember ever being sickened or disturbed by a book.

Perhaps because horror and thriller novels are among my favoured genres - maybe over the years I've grown a thick skin and a greater tolerance. It takes a lot to make me wince.

But really, I think it's partly because for me a book is...just a book. It can affect me at a superficial level, I can enjoy it or hate it, but as its characters are purely fictional, even those I feel empathy, affection and sympathy for can't disturb me at any major level.

Oh, perhaps one, small exception to that. An author who kills the dog in his story loses major points with this reader. :p That will guarantee to have me in floods of tears. But, again, it's a fleeting emotion and I don't wallow in despair for days afterwards once I've finished the book.

The only time I remember even coming close to the experience you describe, Ann, was when I recently read Brian Keene's City of the Dead. No high classic this one - it was purely zombie schlock horror. Not something I'd normally pick up, but I was in the mood for something that mindless at the time. Usually, there is some way that the human race defeats the threat, but Keene managed to kill off every hero he had and destroyed the entire world - which is a far more logical outcome, I suppose, when you're dealing with a zombie horde.

I think it was because the utter bleakness of the ending, the completely and ruthless destruction of any hope at all that the author had left us with, and possibly the fact that I wasn't expecting it and was anticipating that our heroes would win the day in the end, that left me slightly depressed. And I did find myself mulling over the ending for a day or so afterwards. But, again, not in any great depth or in the sense that I wished I hadn't read the book at all.

In fact, in the end, although it wasn't an ending I could say I enjoyed, I admired the author for having the courage to take the logical route rather than producing the usual rabbit out of the hat in the final chapter that won the day and decided that it was a much more 'satisfying' ending for being logical and realistic (if you can make such a claim about a story of zombie invasion ).


LabRat

It's been four or five years since I read "Cold Mountain" and I'm still on a long, slow burn about it.

If you haven't read the book and don't wish to have the ending semi-spoiled, stop reading now... (or simply stop reading the book about five pages short of the ending).

After HUNDREDS of pages of struggle and pain and depression and war, all I wanted was a happy ending. Yes, the writing was lovely and descriptive, but the journey was heart-wrenching. Having finally brought our protagonists back together, all the author had to do was leave it there. Grrrr.

I'm sorry I ever read it.

I'm with you on that one, Anubis. I haven't read the book, but the movie ending had much the same effect in disappointing me.

LabRat

Last year we had to read "True West" by Sam Shepard, I really didn't like it.
In my opinion the whole book is weird. Other than that there were only a few books I where I regretted buying and reading because I like most books if they are well written.
What I really regretted was beginning to watch "Hills have eyes": no plot and only violence! I refused to watch the rest of the film.

Oh, now movies...entirely different kettle of fish!

Apologies, for briefly veering off topic, Ann - but one movie that I really resented sitting through and which was imho a complete waste of time and space was The Happening.

That was definitely one that had both Stuart and I wishing out loud we could have the time back, once the end credits rolled.

LabRat

I thought the Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor was pretty messed up. But like all great train wrecks I just had to find out what happened. And yeesh, what an ending. Messed up but...I have a hard time disliking things in general, so I usually don't regret the sick and twisted.

ETA: Oh man, don't even get me started on The Happening! It actually had an intriguing beginning, and I figured out what the antagonist was...ugh, I still can't let it go. Right up there with the horror flick Pulse.

JD

First - tangent - Anubis, thanks so much for that G.R.I.P.E.S. link! I hadn't seen that and I laughed so hard!

As for books, yes, Ann, I've had that experience. Like Terry, it was assigned for English class - The Collector. This guy wins the lottery, kidnaps a girl, hides her in his basement, is afraid to take her to the doctor when she gets sick, so she dies and he goes out to fetch another girl to hide in his basement.

It was gross, it was crude, it was horrible and it had No. Redeeming. Value. Whatsoever.

I actually didn't finish the book - I listened to the discussion in class and faked my way through the exam. Hm...or is that the one I actually challenged the teacher on and refused to finish? I think it might've been...

Bethy (who didn't much care for that teacher at all, except for when he assigned Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Ann asked whether there were some stories (not fanfic) that make you literally sick. Well, no. not that extreme. But a couple have left me distressed, partly becasue they were so well written, and so I took them seriously. They just left me down for a while after I'd read them. ("forced reads" in both cases, so I couldn't not read them (obedient person that I am <g>) Definitely Great Expectations, which I read as a teenager - it left me feeling that women would be betrayed unless they were airheads. Not an easy thought for a 15 year old to handle.

More recently - Clara Callan - just so very dark and sad.

Cold Mountain - actaully not - it was so beautifully written and yet there was a sadness in the cadence of the language which foreshadowed the ending. Maybe i was just in a sad place , but somehow I knew how it was going to end. And I thought, yeah, that's how it goes. and yet there was a glimmer at the end of hope, not for what we wanted, but for what was still good, and so an unexpected gift.

but fanfiction! Don't get me started. <g>

The one story that I can remember really disturbing me was Apt Pupil by Stephen King. Fifteen plus years later, I couldn't give you specifics, other than the actions of both the old Nazi and the young kid that idolized him. It hasn't turned me off Stephen King, though I'm more selective of what works of his I read after I realized Needful Things was leaving me depressed 6 chapters in. I've read the heck out of The Stand.

I knew what I was going into with The Happening. After The Village, where I guessed "the twist" from the trailers, I wasn't expecting a whole lot. And I got what I expected. I started looking at it as a B movie with the blood and death, and it became more enjoyable. No, the one movie that I've really truly wanted my time back, and threatened to disown the friend who gave us the movie, was Napoleon Dynamite. Ugh, what a waste of good shelf space.

I can't think of a book that I felt disgusted with after reading... usually, I just quit reading it if I realize it's not my forte.

I can think of some fanfic that I've gotten really into before becoming disgusted and not finishing it. It wasn't on this site though and it was nfic. With that genre, things can veer off into territory I'm not comfortable with pretty quickly.

And ditto on The Happening. I was forewarned about it though. (SPOILER ALERT) But still, trees are pissed at us so they're killing us off - so dumb. And there were SOOOOO many inconsistancies I can't even begin to go into it (and probably shouldn't anyway since this isn't the thread for it).

I’ve seen/experienced my share of bad and really bad books and movies but those aren’t the ones that fall into the category that I think addresses Ann’s question.

When I was very little I happened to see “13 Ghosts” on television. I had nightmares and problems sleeping for more than 6 months. I look at that movie now and I laugh, but that was not my reaction when I was only 7 years old.

“Of Mice and Men” left me quite depressed for several days after I finished it. I had a similar experience to “The Grapes of Wrath.” In both cases I had managed to “connect” with the characters and the circumstances left me so disturbed that there was an actual physical impact. I lost my appetite and had trouble sleeping.

So, for me it’s not about disliking a book or a movie. In fact it’s quite the contrary. A really bad book or movie has no impact other than my feeling like it was a waste of my time or money. To have any impact, the work has to be such that I can’t just dismiss it as being a waste of time. The experience has to be powerful enough to establish an emotional connection to have any real impact. Once that connection is made, I am wide open. Over the years I have run into this a few times.

That is the danger I risk here in the LnC fandom. I have an emotional investment in these characters, even though they are fictional. That means that due to the quirky nature of my mental/emotional system, I have to be careful about what I approach. Since I have been reading LnC fiction, there have been a few instances where I have been upset enough by the story to have a noticeable impact. On two occasions, the impact was strong enough to affect appetite and sleep. On one recent occasion the impact was such that I didn’t sleep at all the first night and was still in a state of severe depression several days later. (Enough that my wife was worried about me.)

So, I suspect that different people have vastly different reactions and tolerances. As I said above, I’ve never been bothered at all (as an adult) by a bad movie or written work. But the right (or in my case, perhaps I should say wrong) experience with a "good" work will have a real and profound impact.

Bob

WRT fanfic, I can't tell you how much SQD's 'What makes a man' upset me.

Down to a Sunless Sea by David Graham

Several hundred pages of gloom and doom, with the characters repeatedly escaping death by minutes as their airliner flees an ongoing nuclear war.

I was OK with that, since I was expecting it to be something like On The Beach, but then it pulled a trick I particularly dislike in disaster novels - two of the last survivors drive off to die alone, but are saved by direct divine intervention to become the new Adam and Eve. And no, there is nothing in the story up to this point to suggest that they are in any way deserving of this role, apart from being slightly in love, or that God is involved in any way, shape, or form until a page or so from the end.

Incidentally, the Wikipedia summary of the plot is slightly inaccurate - there are two versions of the book, one in which everyone is about to die, the other in which everyone is about to die but the chosen two get saved as I've described.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_to_a_Sunless_Sea

At least the "everyone dies" version is honest, the other one just sucks because there is no justification for it.

"The Grapes of Wrath," for sure. I had no problem at all reading the novel. It was heartbreaking and difficult at times, but I knew that was the whole point. However, after days of pouring myself into the novel, the ending was just...

I had the same problem with "The Well of Loneliness." After finishing that novel, I demanded my professor give me the last week of my life back. She didn't.

Here's another poisonous book, a Norwegain detective story, Evas øye (Eva's Eye):



The story is about a talented but dirt poor female artist, Eva, who runs into an old high school friend that she hasn't seen for twenty years who talks her into making money by prostituting herself. (Her high school friend is herself a prostitute.) To learn the tricks of the trade, Eva accompanies her friend to her apartment to watch how the business of selling one's body for money is carried out exactly. But as Eva is hidden in a closet, her friend is actually murdered by a customer.

Now the total brainlessness starts. (As if deciding to prostitute herself wasn't bad enough.) Eva isn't going to call the police, but instead she is going to track down the murderer and kill him herself. Okay, people, how likely is that? When did you last hear of a woman who killed a man, a total stranger, because she believed that he had killed an old high school friend of hers that she had just been reunited with after not seeing her for twenty years?

Come on, people. That sort of thing doesn't happen. It doesn't. Now if Eva's child had been murdered, then I would at least have bought the general premise of the story, the idea that Eva felt the need to track down the murderer and kill him herself. But to track down and kill a total stranger, all by herself at that, because he killed her old high school friend???

It gets worse. Eva tracks down the wrong man and kills the wrong man. The police capture Eva. The murdered man's circa ten-year-old son, who adored his father, is devastated. Eva's own young daugther is devastated. Eva's old father is so devastated that we are sure he will die of pure grief because of what Eva has done. The end.

Now wasn't that a great story?

Ann

I can't say I've ever felt that way about a book because I simply stop reading it if I find the content not to my liking. I read for enjoyment not to be grossed out. (Thankfully when I was in school I was never required to read a book that I found objectionable - JUST BORING.) So I don't read horror stories, will never read Stephen King. The same is true in movies. I go for enjoyment so I don't go to horror flicks or "message/political" movies. I can get all that on the evening news for free.

Now fanfic. Yes there have been a few stories I've not ultimately cared for. For some reason when I first started reading fanfic I felt compelled to finish the stories - maybe because you all put so much effort into them. Now if I find I don't care for the track a story is taking I will skim ahead and see if it gets better. If not I quit reading it. You may have spent a lot of time writing it but I don't have to spend my time reading it.

Two of the story lines I don't care for in LnC fanfiction are rape and death of our cannon characters. Rape of any kind is not entertainment and I read the stories for entertainment. There have been a few stories here that involved rape that I have read - they were well written but thankfully they are few and far between. I would probably now not read such fanfic stories. As for murder of our cannon characters - you just never kill off the cannon characters IN MY OPINION. It is just WRONG. So if you do and they stay dead I'm not finishing your story. How will I know? Once I realize where you are going I skip to the end and see if they are still dead. If so that is the end of my reading your story and I'm such a fan that I have a partition on my hard drive dedicated to fanfiction and have about 4000 files between the regular fic and Nfic stories. Each file should be a story. I even keep the ones I don't read.

So please keeping writing but remember we read to enjoy not to be grossed out or dismayed but what happens to our favorite characters.

Whoa, hang on there, kmar. You are absolutely entitled to your opinion on what makes a good story. You are also entirely entitled to read what suits your own personal reading tastes and avoid what doesn't.

But you are not entitled to imply that the entire readership of the mbs shares your tastes and opinions on what is a good story and what they like to read. Nor that authors should only write stories which appeal to your tastes and only your tastes because those tastes are shared by the rest of the community.

A case in point is fanfic dealing with the theme of rape. You don't enjoy them and don't like to read them. That's perfectly fair enough. But on the other side of coin, others in the fandom clearly do appreciate a good story told, no matter if the theme is difficult. As evidenced by the fact, for example, that Becky's Bain's story, In A Dark Time, which has this theme - won the 2002 Kerth award for Best Tearjerker.

Similarly, I can think of several deathfic which I have enjoyed - although there are many which I haven't - and which have been popularly received by FoLCs in general.

So, clearly, you don't speak for every FoLC and not all FoLCs share your view on where the line between enjoyment and grossed out lies. As with nfic, it's a fairly grey area which each reader must work out for themselves.

So, let me reiterate the rules of this forum. So long as they follow the rules of the mbs, authors here are free to write whatever they wish. Whether that means stories with adult themes - including violent themes - death fic, hurt/comfort or extreme angst...alongside the waffy, the kidfic, the comedies and all other themes in between.

I don't believe that any writer here on the mbs writes and posts a story with the intent of grossing out readers. I think they write the stories which interest them, which appeal to them, which intrigue them and, sometimes, which the Muse insists on whether they want to go there or not.

Whether every reader appreciates the story or wants to read it is another matter. But certainly, no author here should feel constrained on writing as they wish, because there is certainly as wide a readership as there is a wide variety of stories and themes.

LabRat

Ann, I had to have a quiet chuckle when I read this in your post. This sounds roughly like the plot of a hundred thrillers - fairly standard fair for the genre, in fact.

If you insist on the plots of most books being real we would have quite a lot less books. I'm fairly sure, for example, that we've never faced a zombie invasion that destroyed the world.

So when it comes to many books in the thriller/horror genre, some willing suspension of disbelief is definitely a requirement.

One of the most ridiculous examples I've read of this was a thriller by Sidney Sheldon. In which two completely ordinary housewives managed to outwit, elude and escape from highly trained assassins sent to kill them, backed up by a vast organisation with unlimited resources. Not once, but over and over again. One of them was a famous fashion model, for pete's sake! That definitely stretched the concept to the limit. For all that, because I'm a devotee of the genre and accept its rules, I enjoyed the read, even as I rolled my eyes and thought, "No way!" for the hundredth time.

LabRat