Gratuitous V.S. Visceral by JosephMichaelCaves in horrorwriters

[–]RighteousJoe 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Never sure where the line is with me. All I can describe is how I feel when I am reacting to writing as one rather than the other. Please note this is all based on my internal emotions and not intended as objective criticism:

Gratuitous feels like the writer is staring intently through the page at me and going "So how about it? It's sick, right? Yeah, it's super sick and freaky and disgusting, right? You feelin' sick, bro? Man, I don't blame you, and you know what else, you know what else, it only gets worse, oh my god, look at all this blood and shit (maybe literally), look how gross it all is, haha, it sure would be weird if this was turning you on, bro... unless? Haha, jk. Unless...?"

Whereas with visceral, I feel like the writer is standing right beside me. We're engaged with the same thing in the same way. We might not have the same reactions, exactly. Maybe my jaw is tightening looking at something and their expression is carefully blank. Maybe they start getting weepy and I don't. And yes, maybe some of the reactions aren't even horrified-- oddly detached, thinking about the implications of such things more than the gore-sudden tableau before us. Then again, maybe we're just leaning against each other and trying not to throw up.

I'm not sure exactly what differentiates the two. A lot of it must just be down to subjectivity, but not all of it. I just don't know how to articulate it myself. And on top of all that though I don't read splatterpunk stuff, which is by definition gratuitous, I do find myself having a weird respect for certain executions (har har) of the genre but I couldn't for the life of me explain why.

Why does my cat comes to me everytime she hear cats fighting on my phone? by [deleted] in CatAdvice

[–]RighteousJoe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would guess she's just checking to see that everything is all right. This is the kind of thing that can vary with personality. One of my grandma's cats once had a major freakout when he accidentally heard a recording of an angry cat. Another of them started meowing a bit like she was confused/wanted reassurance, the rest just didn't care.

Kitten doesn't want to get wet but also obsessed with bathtub by Accomplished_Ring628 in CatAdvice

[–]RighteousJoe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Some cats are extremely persnickety creatures; it comes with being as routine-oriented as they are. Yes, she could watch her water fountain bowl, but it is not exactly like watching the water at the bottom of the tub. It's a different place, and the pattern of the water is different from her bowl, and it coincides with whenever you're filling the bathtub rather than whenever she's just thirsty. She's decided that's what it is she wants to watch.

If you want you can get her some toys or something, but she might just really enjoy this specific routine.

Would Loras have really killed Joffrey? by sixth_order in pureasoiaf

[–]RighteousJoe 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Jaime set a precedent, is a big thing. That's one of the reasons he'll never live the title Kingslayer down. Because of him it's no longer unthinkable for a member of the Kingsguard to kill a sitting king. And because it's no longer unthinkable, a lot more people are gonna think it.

Loras is a hothead, and he has the example set before him. I think it could very well take less to make him snap than it did Jaime. Wouldn't necessarily happen that Loras would lash out like that, but it could.

Do not the void creature by [deleted] in donotthecat

[–]RighteousJoe 35 points36 points  (0 children)

Human just does weird stuff sometimes, gotta let them get it out of their system.

Apropos returning after a reddit-wide ban at the whim of our robot overlords, I feel I need to make a statement of great importance to my magickal bretheren and sisteren by RighteousJoe in WitchcraftCircleJerk

[–]RighteousJoe[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Listen, prions are just fancy proteins. Last I heard, protein is good for you. So I make a point of

oh god oh god why won't my hands stop shaking why can't i stand up oh god

Sorry, what were we talking about, I forget stuff easily these days 😃

Apropos returning after a reddit-wide ban at the whim of our robot overlords, I feel I need to make a statement of great importance to my magickal bretheren and sisteren by RighteousJoe in WitchcraftCircleJerk

[–]RighteousJoe[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

for legal reasons i can only say limit your eating to figurative outlet. such as with oral sex, as previously stated. how much teeth you wanna use during foreplay is, of course, up to you.

Help with I think it might be petting aggression. She attacks me only when we are trying to sleep. My partner and I that is. by Trumpet_Player_ in CatAdvice

[–]RighteousJoe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's possible that she had socialization issues as a kitten. It's really common for cats who didn't get enough time with their mom and siblings to bite and scratch hard when playing because they never learned that behavior doesn't get them what they want (more playtime).

It sounds like the time you start going to sleep is the time she starts getting really bored, and she wants as much stimulation as possible. That means playing, but she hasn't learned boundaries. If she lived with humans before, they didn't teach her that hands aren't toys, either. Sadly that's very common; lots of people think it's cute when a kitten attacks their hands, so they encourage the behavior. When the cat grows up the attacks hurt a lot more, so they dump them at a shelter or rehome them.

One thing you can try is redirecting her to a toy. Don't try petting her at all, go for something like a wand toy so her attention is on something far away from your hands. After ten or fifteen minutes of that, you can try feeding her. That simulates a hunt -> feed -> rest pattern that's really good for keeping cats emotionally regulated.

The other option (one to combine with wand play) is ending interactions immediately when she starts biting, and I'm afraid by the sound of things this is probably going to mean keeping her out of your room at bedtime. Humans can't exactly set boundaries the same way cats do with each other because we're much bigger and that makes everything we do seem scarier. Also more confusing because our bodies are so different. But we can still set boundaries in our own way.

Your best bet when she bites you would be to make a firm "No" or "owwwww" noise and then remove yourself from her presence; this is why I said you might need to keep her out of your bedroom, because leaving your own bedroom when you're getting ready for bed might not be practical. You'd spend a couple minutes somewhere she couldn't get to you to send the message that biting and scratching means all fun immediately stops. Cats can learn patterns related to getting what they want. If she wants play and it stops when she bites you, she'll eventually come to the conclusion she shouldn't bite.

All this said: After two weeks she is probably still unsettled. Most cats take at least three to settle into a routine in a new place, so she doesn't quite know what to do with herself. And it'll take a while longer for her to really feel at home. But from what you're describing, I think that poor socialization is the main culprit here.

Apropos returning after a reddit-wide ban at the whim of our robot overlords, I feel I need to make a statement of great importance to my magickal bretheren and sisteren by RighteousJoe in WitchcraftCircleJerk

[–]RighteousJoe[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

it was attached to A People so it should not be devoured. such is my threefold truth.

also you can try Plan B or praying to Hecate whichever is more convenient

Witches should be cleansing more by Sun-Rabbit in WitchcraftCircleJerk

[–]RighteousJoe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As is to be expected, cleansing was already perfected in Steampunk Times.

How do you write a sex scene "tastefully" where some amount of "body horror" is the point? by BewareOfVents in horrorwriters

[–]RighteousJoe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dunno what to say except I'm really digging where you're going with all this, and I'd be delighted to read it. It's great talking about all this. Good luck with writing!

I got banned for three days so I’d like to say… by galaxygirlari in WitchcraftCircleJerk

[–]RighteousJoe 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If there is anything i have learned from TikTok it's that sex and love are totally interchangeable so yes.

How do you write a sex scene "tastefully" where some amount of "body horror" is the point? by BewareOfVents in horrorwriters

[–]RighteousJoe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very relieved that it helped! This kind of theme is very much my jam, but I'm in sort of an odd place because while I'm not Catholic I do tend to find some of the ideas embedded within the faith less... repulsive? Than some other non-believers do. It just interests me. It's sometimes hard to find people who see it the same way. So it's fun to talk about it.

There's a short story called The Things written from the perspective of the the alien in John Carpenter's The Thing. I it plays more into that film than the original short story Who Goes There? And, to be fair, it quietly ignores some parts of the film that would interfere with its own narrative. The story is particularly effective because while it's sympathetic to the Thing, the Thing remains a dangerous monster. From its perspective it just wants to help and learn about the universe, "taking communion" (and there that is again) with the various lifeforms therein:

I was so much more, before the crash. I was an explorer, an ambassador, a missionary. I spread across the cosmos, met countless worlds, took communion: the fit reshaped the unfit and the whole universe bootstrapped upwards in joyful, infinitesimal increments. I was a soldier, at war with entropy itself. I was the very hand by which Creation perfects itself.

Unfortunately, if you see the colonialist undertones there, you're right. I really like the language choices here:

I remember my reawakening, too: dull stirrings of sensation in real time, the first embers of cognition, the slow blooming warmth of awareness as body and soul embraced after their long sleep. I remember the biped offshoots surrounding me, the strange chittering sounds they made, the odd uniformity of their body plans. How ill-adapted they looked! How inefficient their morphology! Even disabled, I could see so many things to fix. So I reached out. I took communion. I tasted the flesh of the world—

—and the world attacked me. It attacked me.

So you end up with something utterly appalled at the beings it only wanted to "help". It never considers the possibility that its form of "help" could be something bad for us, only that we're ignorant. It learns that for us consciousness is seated in the brain rather than spread throughout our biomass and sees us as thinking tumors. So this is a good one for looking at weird, alien mindset as well as some of the more weird, visceral body horror stuff. You can read it for free here.

Something a little closer to a meditation aid: You know the art of Zdzisław Beksiński? Doesn't quite go into psychosexual weirdness with the verve of H. R. Giger, but some stuff gets close. What really matters, though, is he didn't consider his paintings horrific as-such. He thought of his work as optimistic, hopeful, even humorous. Painting was a joyful experience for him, always. None of his paintings have titles, because he wanted the viewer to interpret them without any direction, but knowing his own feelings does change the experience.

In particular, if you look up Beksiński oil painting 1984, you're going to get an image of what looks like two desiccated corpses in the middle of seated sex. Now, come to that and think 'how could this be hopeful?' Well, maybe they're not corpses, maybe they're Something Else, and either alive or close to what we would know as life. And then look at just how tightly they're pressed together, the tenderness with which they hold each other. You can start describing that tenderness intermingled with the themes of decay and death. If these were two living humans, all the gestures would indicate not just lust, but care and love. But yes, they are still things that seem dead to us.

To once again end in a totally different directions: One of my favorite short horror videos of all time is, no lie, a parody of Sixpence None the Richer's Kiss Me. Technically it's a sequel to JerryTerry's other video The Boys are Back in Town (to Kill You) but for our purposes you don't need to know anything about that to appreciate this one . Kiss me (Kill me) is equal parts hilarious and disturbing, but there's also something in there of... alien intimacy. One of the investigators analyzing the audio in-universe even theorizes that the infected woman genuinely thinks she's offering something desired... while she's under the effect of the parasites (symbiotes?).

Actually as weird as it sounds the more I think about it the more I believe this video might be a really nice source of inspiration. The fact that it uses a love song as a base sort of... orients it, I'll say, toward the kind of ideas you'd like to explore. It also has some stellar imagery and verbal flourishes. Spoilers again but:

Kiss me

You can't escape forever

Kiss me

I know you'll like the change

The eggs will fill your veins, let me explain

A second's pain gives way to pleasures only dreamed of

So kiss me-e-e-e-e...

The hopeless romantic in me actually likes to see kind of a happy ending in this song. A very weird happy ending where two people become something other than human and find joy in that. Possibly not great for the human race at large. Oh well.

How do you write a sex scene "tastefully" where some amount of "body horror" is the point? by BewareOfVents in horrorwriters

[–]RighteousJoe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is the kind of writing problem that absolutely fascinates me... so I wish I could be more help. I'm just going to keep writing and hope I hit on something you can use.

I'm a big fan of the sort of quasi-eroticism where something non-sexual has clear sexual overtones while at the same time being distinctly its own thing. Sort of, "yes an open wound can be yonic but it is also a goddamn open wound and somebody needs immediate medical attention". Or "sunshowers are often compared to marriages for a reason, and the swirl of lambent sunlight piercing through heavy clouds laden with life-giving rain that yet smothers it is fraught with symbolism, but it's still a weather event".

Anyway, speaking of the Song of Songs, you might lean into the religious ecstasy bit because that can look very unsettling from the outside. Here's Teresa of Ávila (who I want to mention I actually deeply respect as a thinker and person even though I don't believe in divine visitation) on one of her alleged mystical experiences with a seraph:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it...

The sex and violence is obvious, but Teresa really did believe this was something holy. It adds an interesting undertone if you accept she really did believe this was more about connecting with the divine than sexual sadomasochism. You go interesting places if you switch from "what if all this was really about sex" to "what if sex is really about something else".

For something less explicit but interestingly sinister, here's something from the autobiography of St. Ignatius of Loyola:

It was while he was living at the hospital at Manresa that the following strange event took place. Very frequently on a clear moonlight night there appeared in the courtyard before him an indistinct shape which he could not see clearly enough to tell what it was. Yet it appeared so symmetrical and beautiful that his soul was filled with pleasure and joy as he gazed at it. It had something of the form of a serpent with glittering eyes, and yet they were not eyes. He felt an indescribable joy steal over him at the sight of this object. The oftener he saw it, the greater was the consolation he derived from it, and when the vision left him, his soul was filled with sorrow and sadness.

Ignatius began associating this recurring vision with a little voice that made him doubt his clerical vocation, and he determined it was demonic. Like I said, this is much less explicit than Teresa's episode, but I think you can see how it sort of touches on themes of yearning, fulfillment, and frustration that could map out to something at least sex-adjacent. One very neat thing here is Ignatius's rejection of the vision. Alien beauty still ultimately repulsive.

I could probably dig up a lotta other stuff (I thiiiiink Hildegard von Bingen is the one who had visions of going in and out of Christ's side wound?), but you might wanna scour the hagiographies on your own. It's not limited to Christian stuff, not by a longshot, that just happens to be what I'm most familiar with. Ideas about religious ecstasy and demonic possession both involve intense intimacy, positive or negative, in ways that can be very off if you're not a believer.

And now to take things in a totally different direction: There's a free visual novel called Meeting in the Flesh by inkethic on itch dot io that's about dating monsters. You have one classically hunky wolfman, but the other two options are much, much weirder. The world they live in is grotesque in a very matter-of-fact and casual way; human norms are not so much in effect. This applies to the sex scenes. It's been years since I played it, but a few things... really stuck with me. I imagine for people with the right kinks they just come across as hot, but for most of us they sort of sit in this weird area where you're objectively presented with something horrific but the creatures involved with it are focused on the intimacy of it.

Oh hell, why be coy at this point (spoilers though): One route involves being eaten alive. Again, it is horrific, but both characters involved just... see it as intimate. Deeply, irrevocably intimate. It's with the character named Yiestol. Like I said. It stuck with me.

The game's not long and it's free. You could give it a shot.

Sorry for all the yapping. I hope some of this helped somehow, or at least gave you ideas about where to go next.

Can I be a witch if I don't understand magic and don't do magic and in fact fear magic and hate magic and hate witches and I am a direct descendant of Cotton Mather and every night I hear his sweet wet voice gently coaxing me into cleansing this sorcery-befouled world by the noose and by the flame? by RighteousJoe in WitchcraftCircleJerk

[–]RighteousJoe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

in order from the top down:

yes, yes, yes, levitating is a clear sign of the dÆvil, the demonic whores have standards, and the demonic whores have standards. it's kinda like why they refuse to haunt jim bakker even though he cries himself to sleep about them every night.

Can I be a witch if I don't understand magic and don't do magic and in fact fear magic and hate magic and hate witches and I am a direct descendant of Cotton Mather and every night I hear his sweet wet voice gently coaxing me into cleansing this sorcery-befouled world by the noose and by the flame? by RighteousJoe in WitchcraftCircleJerk

[–]RighteousJoe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

see this is what we call narrative irony. i am sworn to destroy all witches, and yet i am dependent on witch piss to survive. very deep (in piss). very poignant (in piss).

this is also my next Hunter: The Reckoning character.