How far is too far?

[Agmen of Eladesor]

That's one of those odd areas that really depends upon where and what you personally find creepy and/or disgusting, and also relates to your culture.

Sex scenes normally go too far when they start getting graphic. Simply stating that someone is standing nude in front of someone else, and then moved to a bed, would not be graphic. And I'm not going to say what WOULD be too graphic - I think you can figure that out yourself.

Violence, though. Here's a couple of different examples of the same scene.

Watching through his monitor, Mudd saw his last shot penetrate the shields of the fighter, piercing the cockpit window and also the pilot. It was a toss up on whether he bled to death before he died of exposure.

Watching through his monitor, Mudd saw his last shot penetrate the shields of the fighter. The bolt ripped through the cockpit window, sending shards of glass flying. The beam energy remaining in the bolt was enough to not just penetrate the suit of the pilot, but to tear it off at the middle of his forearm. Mudd imagined the scream of agony that the pilot must have made, as his life blood poured out of his severed arteries. The pressure in the cabin quickly reached zero, and the remaining blood boiled, then froze.

I just came up with both of those descriptions while I was writing this response, and neither are part of anything I have published on this or any other site.

Personally, I'm hard to gross out from descriptions - I read military books, both fiction and science fiction, from authors ranging from Heinlein to Turtledove to Clancy to Weber - and I throw John Ringo in there as well. (I can recommend the Ghost series - but it's NOT for the faint of heart, by any means.)

Violence, though - we're playing a space shooter game. There's going to be blood and guts. You can always just write that your character was sickened by what he saw rather than saying he saw the disemboweled corpse - or not.

I wouldn't get into slave/master relationships, or describing full bondage/dungeon sadomasochistic scenes - even though the violence there is expected, it's a bit over the top for this genre.

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Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.