INTRO
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEATH
AND TORTURE/ABUSE
CALLOUSNESS
EXCEPTIONS
WHAT I FEEL
INTRO
This is a note for those who might wonder, and
for those who might have thought that I'm full of figurative (or real,
for that matter) BS.
First of all, bear with me. I do not have the capability to easily convey to others the concepts I want them to understand. So if I am wordy, it's just because I'm trying to find the right way to fully explain what I'm saying. Sheesh, I even get wordy when trying to explain why I'm getting wordy :sigh:. Anyway.
(Thanks to my cousin, Stormwatcher, as usual, for helping with the wording.)
Child death. Those who know me know that I am usually completely horrified by this subject, whether it be in fiction, or roleplay, or real life. There are exceptions, shockingly enough.
In real life, I am always horrified by it (this should go without saying!) and think that anyone who murders a child should be killed painfully. And when children die from illness, or being homeless, or any of those kinds of things, it makes me grieve just as much.
When child death comes up in fiction...if I am warned of it beforehand I can usually deal with it, skip over it, or skim really fast over it--like with Revenge of the Sith, several friends warned me of that scene so I was prepared for it. But if it catches me off guard, or if there is a lot of it, it usually upsets me. It's a very unpleasant surprise. See, when I read a book or a story, I am there. Period. I am lucky enough to have a hugely strong imagination. I see these things, I experience them, I hear them... And so unless I am warned ahead of time to get myself out of the mindset when I get to that part, a child death in a story is usually an unpleasant shock.
Child death or abuse in roleplay: Child death, no. I would never roleplay killing a kid. I am in a live-action roleplaying group and the group I play with is totally cool with warning me ahead of time if mention of the like comes into the game, so I can leave the room. (If I am playing the child...well, it depends. If I am playing an NPC (characters created for the players to interact with) I won't unless the child will be safe from death. Otherwise no. If I am playing an innocent, defenseless child, I will never play a child who will die. If I am playing a warrior, even though it's a child, in live action game I am in, the equivalent of dice rolls are a huge determining factor in whether I succeed at something or not, and so while I will try to avoid it, there is a chance that a warrior child character will die. And if I am playing the child, thus not having to "watch" it happening (experiencing it myself...see the paragraph below) then it would not be...too bad. I would be upset, but as the chracter would still be alive in my own mind and heart, it's not as bad. If you're playing a character that gets involved with the plots, sometimes it's impossible to stay alive. :sigh: In other words I would never deliberately let him (my character) be killed but would not be devastated if he were.
As for child abuse- if it's in a realistic setting, if it takes place in our real world or is presented in a way that often happens in the real world, I want no part of it. I live in reality; I don't want to pretend reality, too. In 'fantasy' situations, like slavery, torture, or things that I would not usually see in the newspaper...well, how I feel then depends on the point of view. If I am the one playing the child, I have no problem at all. I love playing children, I love roleplay, and I like torment and torture (in fiction). I can handle that kind of thing, it's not me watching and imagining a child being hurt. It's happening to me, in a fictional sense. As for other people playing a child who gets tormented, it all depends on who it is. If it's someone else who I know enjoys that kind of roleplay, then it's okay. If they're doing it just for the sake of writing out the abuse of a child, I have a problem with it. Or if the child will never get rescued...there's another thing. Any child that I play, write, or draw in a bad situation always gets rescued, either in my writing, or in my imagination. Rescued and healed, because in fiction I can do that.
Same with my artwork, for that matter.
And yes, even the mere implication can upset me greatly. Not always, but sometimes, depending on how it's written and conveyed.
---
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TORTURE/ABUSE
AND DEATH
A lot of people say "Well you will toreture a
child in a story but you won't kill one, there's no difference."
Yes, there is a HUGE difference between torture of any character,
child or not, and the character's death. See, if a character dies...that's
it. There's no coming back, they're dead, they can't be rescued,
they can't be healed, it can't be made right. When child death comes
up and it's the kind the upsets me in writing or in roleplay, etc., I can
see the child's lifeless body, perhaps a last look of fear or pain on his
face. I hear the mother's sobbing because her child is dead, and
it can't be taken back. I feel the horror at the idea that
someone has killed an innocent child, or that an innocent child has died
and nothing could prevent that. And I'm sorry, but that's not usually
the kind of thing one wants to feel. At least I don't.
If a child is being hurt, yes there is the victim's pain and fear, there
could be a mother there sobbing because her child is being hurt...but in
that situation, the child can be rescued. He can be saved,
and healed, and taken somewhere safe. It can be made right.
THUS just because I will torture a child character in a story, does not mean that I am OK with a child's death in a story. They are two different things. And usually if I have a child hurt in a story, the child is not only rescued, but he heals, and usually either becomes a warrior, or finds the courage to confront his tormentor and deal with him. Often kicking the abuser's read end all over the place.
---
CALLOUSNESS
A lot of people have reacted badly to my freaking
out about child death, and said heartless things. Sometimes I do
get a little freaky about it...and sometimes I am a little obnoxious
about it. I generally try not to be, but it does happen. But
at least I try. Of course when faced with casual callousness, or
spite, or contempt when dealing with my reactions to child death, it's
hard to keep my temper.
I've been told by at least three people that my reactions to this are overreactions, that they are unreasonable and that I shouldn't feel that way...unless I have seen a child die or had a child close to me die, etc. For one...those people assume an awful lot. None of those things have happened to me, but they didn't know that. Presumption is usually considered very rude. But even having never seen it, why should that effect how badly the idea upsets me? Everyone should be horrified by child death, in my opinion, no matter what. Not having seen a child die does not effect how much I love children, or how horrible the idea of child death is.
I have also been told that if I can't take "reality" that I need to leave and find a Care Bears roleplaying game...or similar versions of this bit of contempt.
And I have been told to just ignore it, as if that were the easiest thing in the world to do. (Newsflash: it's not.)
Obviously, I don't like being told any of that. It's thoughtless, callous, and rude.
---
EXCEPTIONS
There are, surprisingly, instances where a child's
death does not bother me. They are as follows:
Scary/Ghost stories:
In most ghost stories, kids dying don't bother
me.
In stories where the child is a ghost character, their death doesn't bother me because the ghost has becomes a character and the essence of the person is still there. He talks to people, still does things... They're not just dead and gone, forever.
Likewise, in a story where a group of kids goes camping out on the lake, and they meet a weird creature in the woods and are never heard of again, that doesn't bother me either. Perhaps it;s because while I get into ghost stories, I get into them just as scary tales, not actually as places I visit. I don't take them...as seriously, I guess. Or get as involved, if you will. I dunno, that's just a guess.
Resurrection:
If a child dies and then is brought back to life
(NOT as a zombie, or a ghoul, or whatever...brought back to life for real)
it normally doesn't bother me. If the child is irreparably traumatized
by this, then yeah I'd have a huge problem with it. but otherwise
I'm mostly okay with it.
Humor
In spoofs or humor. I do not take those
kinds of stories seriously in any sense of the word, and so if a child
dies in such a story it doesn't upset me as much. I usually think
it's very tasteless, but it doesn't affect me like it normally does.
For example, a friend of mine online wrote a ThunderCats fanfiction that
had to do with giant, man-eating mutant crabs. The lice kind, I think.
And the Thunderkittens end up dying by these things. It was just
a ridiculous story, meant to be nonsense. The twins' deaths didn't
bother me in that story.
Exceptions
And, there are some instances where the child
or children's deaths in a story should bother me, but they don't.
These are isolated instances, and I cannot explain why they
are exceptions to this rule.
The only one I can think of right now is Stephen King's story, called "IT". "IT" is a story about a homicidal creature who took the guise of a clown, and it killed children. A lot of child death is in this book. But for some reason, it doesn't bother me. It doesn't qualify as a ghost story (I differentiate between ghost stories and horror stories.) The children die fairly bad deaths. And there's a lot of it. I can't explain why it doesn't bother me. A group of kids are the heroes of the story, and those are the kinds of stories I like best, but that still doesn't explain why the child death part of this story doesn't really bother me. Not even in the movie, where it shows one of the children being attacked. It doesn't show any violence, but still. There are other stories by Stephen King that have a dead child, or incidences of child death in them and it usually bothers me a great deal there...but not in "IT". No, I can't explain it.
Because of a lot of what I have mentioned here, a lot of times people think that I lie, or that I'm just BSing when I "act" all upset about child death. But none of that is true. I'm not BSing, I'm not doing it for attention, or to put one over on people, or make them feel sorry for me, or anything like that. And people who say that since I will torture a child character in a story, my claim to be upset by child death is bullcrap, are full of crap themselves. If I say it upsets me, it does.
Emotions are not logical, they're not explainable, they don't make sense! If I contradict myself about what I feel, it's because at the time I say it, that IS how I feel. That may change ten times in as many minutes. Those who react mostly with emotions often do that. And those who do not react with their emotions, who don't know what it's like to be a highly emotional being, who don't feel things that deeply, can't understand. But just because you can't understand a reason behind something doesn't mean there isn't a valid reason behind it.
WHAT I FEEL
This is what I feel when the subject of child
death comes up in a capacity that will upset me.
I feel horror, most of all, especially if I see it on the news in a real-life capacity. Horror of the idea that an innocent child has died. If I let my imagination get away with me, so to speak, I can see the child's body dead in my mind, the innocent, wondering spark gone from their eyes. I think that he will never run and play in a playground again, won't even make his parents cry with pride when he graduates kindergarten. He'll never giggle because he's being tickled again, he'll never cheer an adult with his smile. His mother and father will have to live their lives knowing that the person they loved the most will never be in their life again, was taken from them before his time. I hear the child perhaps cry or whimper with pain from injury or illness. I hear in my mind the child scream when he is killed. And knowing that the child died, that he went through all this, and couldn't be saved is about the most horrible feeling you can think of.
When I think of all that, I start to shake and can't stop myself from crying. (Yes, I cry.) I usually feel angry, and in the case of a real life instance, I feel totally and completely helpless that I can't stop children from dying.
I don't like to feel these things, even from a story. Not to this extent. Not quite these kinds of feelings. These are generally feelings I try to avoid. I don't want those feelings in my head for the sake of a "good story."
The idea of a child dying is nearly the most horrible thing I can think of, and I often wonder why someone would want to make a point of including it in a story, unless there was a damned good reason. I often wondered how someone could ever actually roleplay it. There are some people I have roleplayed with that have actually roleplayed killing a child. Just a normal, innocent little kid. And I wonder how someone would want to pretend to do something so horrible. Some people even laugh about that kind of scene, or think that it was fun.
So that is, to the best of my ability to express it, my reasoning for both hating the idea of child death, and not minding the subject of torture. And if there are any of you out there that think I'm lying or making excuses, or trying to make something up as an excuse or something for what you assume is a lie or a contradiction...well, oh well. You can go boil your head. I've told the truth, I've explained myself, and if you still want to go on believing that I'm lying than I'm not going to waste any more time trying to convince you. (And do me a favor and don't waste my time with accusations or flames.)
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