My husband and friends tease me that i'm such a bleeding heart. I'm a very forgiving person and I'm told i'm gentle, I don't even really express anger.
I also love to read, and for some reason I have a weird fascination with revenge/punishment stories. Perhaps because I was raised in a household where extreme punishment was the norm.
But this fascination has lead me to read a lot of stories that I regret reading because they eat at me inside. Has anyone else experienced this?
Comments
Many times
There have been stories that have made me feel ill with what happens to the main character. Those stories have then bothered me for days and weeks afterward.
I've become very careful about reading the summary and I avoid stories that do not seem to have much in the way of redeeming value.
One of the ways I found to fight back against those kinds of stories was to write a Tropes-breaking story to directly counter the story that bothered me. It's similar to imagining that you are sitting in front of a nice warm fireplace when you are standing in the driveway shoveling a couple of feet of snow during the winter.
Regretting Reading a Story
> Fighting back against a story by writing "a Tropes-breaking story to directly counter the story that bothered me."
Some of my stories are that, or were originally motivated by that. I still have a few in my Big Hopper of that nature, countering stories I've read. Some are from a long time ago.
-- Daphne Xu
Absolutely.
This is the main reason I tend to be extremely careful (some would say overly so) about what stories I give a shot. I've got a rather extensive list of trigger issues along with the standard-issue depression problems most of us here have, and more than once I've read stories that left me feeling cold, pained, or just flat-out awful. Every time that happens it makes it that much harder to give another new author or story a shot, hence why I'm so meticulous in picking what I will or will not try.
Melanie E.
For me it's not trigger
issues, but there are certain themes I have no interest in. Moreover, my preference is stories that are uplifting.
My hard drive has a file called "noread.lis". It lists authors that I simply will not read anymore. It's actually not easy to get on this list; it takes a certain level of persistence. What are the primary criteria?
[1] Mis-rated stories - I expect a "G" rating to be something I wouldn't panic if any of my grandchildren found one. Put a "G" on an "R" or "X" story and you've been nominated (to use terminology from the exchange between Yule Brynner and Steve McQueen in "The Magnificent Seven"); do it multiple times and you're elected.
[2] Stories that glorify evil, e.g. injustice and/or gratuitous violence/cruelity.
[3] Stories that are blatantly propaganda. I'm not talking about stories that merely advocate a political view, I mean stories that have no point other than the political one.
As much as I love Ayn Rand, I had to struggle reading through "The Fountainhead" because of her (characters') long rants. If I see a story description that starts out something like "Barry Obama walks into a bar .. ", I'm done.
all the time
and i dont get sad or depressed from them.... instead i get absolutly infuriated at both the main character for not standing up for themselves, and thier tormentors for being total scum. The worst part is that i keep reading it until im so disgusted that i wanna throw something... that's useally when i close the story out and go watch something sickeningly sweet ... like my little pony or something, just to have a mental cleansing.
but then i've never been the turn the other cheek type and more the eye for an eye... for starters... and then some more so the fool wouldn't dare contemplate doing it again type. I also don't suffer fools, so this makes me very unpopular with employers.. yeah wouldn't advise having my personality if you can help it :P
Definitely
Lately I have become more and more unsatisfied with all the stories that seem to have no purpose other than absolute humiliation/domination and identity death. Unfortunately those stories seem to be more and more common these days.
No
I haven't regretted reading stories, but I have stopped stories when my own feelings got too intense.
Occasionally
but I've got better at spotting them. When in doubt I do cheat by looking at the end. Much worse when you regret writing something.
The regret in writing something is more difficult
Sometimes, you do not see something as objectionable when you write it and it is only after you actually get some feedback that you are able to see that it bothered folks in a way you did not expect.
Weirdly enough, while I just plain avoid forced femme
and also stories that try to celebrate femaleness but in such a superficial and fetishistic way that the author doesn't seem to have a clue about what being a girl is really about, so that it winds up feeling demeaning (these are usually found at a different fiction site)...
I also sometimes find good, well-written, solid, insightful and uplifting t.g. stories horribly depressing. They remind me how far away from anything like that I am in my own life. Aren't I just a bundle of positivity and good cheer?
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
~huggles~
it takes time to get there, a lot of us have gone through or are going through, the same struggles you are.
Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.
Level playing field
Rule 1, this is a friendly place.
If anyone posts something that is unfriendly or encourages unfriendliness then the moment it is seen it is likely to disappear, there's no mystery. That includes the people you mentioned, it includes everyone.
-
You can't choose your relatives but you can choose your family.
Yeah but
Yeah I have regretted starting a few stories, not because of the subject matter, scenes, or anything due to the story line, but because they were never finished. I became 'friends' with the character(s) and then the story was seemingly abandoned. I don't fault the authors because the reasons can be manifold, things from real life can pop up unexpectedly, but I do regret not finding out what happened to my imaginary friends.
Jeri Elaine
Homonyms, synonyms, heterographs, contractions, slang, colloquialisms, clichés, spoonerisms, and plain old misspellings are the bane of writers, but the art and magic of the story is in the telling not in the spelling.
Absolutely
I have read several stories that I have regretted reading. Forced femme stories drive me crazy as it seems the wife/girlfriend always is just trying to find someway to get rid of their husband/boyfriend to be with some macho jerk without a care of what may happen to the husband/boyfriend. As long as she gets what she wants it is fine. And I agree that they are becoming more of the norm on some other sites.
Exactly
And in case I wasn't clear in my earlier comment, I was referencing stories in general...not just on this site. I find this site far less oppressive in the writing styles and content compared to some of the others. I am not completely opposed to the forced fem stories, but I generally only enjoy them if there is more to it then the typical Bam you're a sissy/girl now meet my new manly man.
Open Mind
I usually try to keep an open mind when reading a story here. Of course there are always some I like, love and hate. Snowfall and WolfJess write some great action packed stories that I greedily read every time one of their stories are updated. Efindumb writes some of the most emotionally packed heart wrenching stories on the site, I also greedily read.
There are some series that I did not like, some I never even made it through the first posting. There are some that are just too long to even begin, (Sorry Angharad but I just do not have the time to read 3000 posts to catch up), Then there are some that are formatted so poorly I cannot read, no quotations used, long paragraphs that include multiple speakers, etc.
The gist of the matter is we are all human (with the exception of me of course, but I fake it really well) and we all have different tastes. What one person here finds as the greatest story they ever read, another person will find it boring, or too violent or <Insert what you disliked about the story here>
Something to remember, most if not all of us are not professional authors. Writing is not how we make a living, therefore we are all amateurs. Some have been doing it for far longer than others and some are much better at it than others.
One thing to remember we do have one thing in common, our love of writing and reading TG fiction. Remember that and stick together :)
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.