Talk:Darling/@comment-7706473-20140903115800

Ah, but have you seen comments - specifically, my comments..? Sometimes, shock, gore, guts, and rape - or any hot-button issue - can be plodding and pedestrian.

Let me start off with the good - this is a really well-written story, with a fairly tight beginning, middle and end. The grammar and spelling are good, the theme is solid, and the sense of tension is nicely palpable throughout the story. However, that's also precisely why I never once felt afraid during it, and why I'd like to criticise the story from the grounds of familiarity. If this was the first story I'd ever read where someone is abducted, I'd probably have been scared out of my wits. But - I'm older, and I've read a lot of stories like this, the only difference that this one involves the peculiar scenario of the monsterrapist communicating to our narrator through a video game.

Familiar stories aren't bad - but they often make it harder to feel fear. The most terrifying and interesting parts of the story for me where when I wasn't sure what it was going to be about. What if jajames' sister had ran away of her own volition, and was sending this scenario to mess with her brother? What if she had kidnapped burlyman, or was working in cahoots with him, or what if something darker still had been present..? The moment the kidnapper arrived in the game, however - knowing that the jajames always played the game as his sister(???), I knew what was coming, what to expect - and thus conversely lost any fear I might have had.

Again - a lot of stuff suggested that the story might deter from the formula. The time that the narrator recognized her scream, I wondered if maybe we'd have some surprise conclusion, but... Also, thinking about it, the vague age of the main character and the sister was a bit off. Were they young children, young adults? Not really an issue, but something that I pondered while reading through it. Anyway.

Rape is a terrible thing, and frightening. But like anything, the more normal it is, the less you fear it, or at least fear it irrationally. And altough there are of course mysterious trenchcoat-wearing van-renting monsters out there, in the real world, monsters tend to be more recognizable and less monstrish... So this ends up feeling comedic to me. I do have a pitch-tar sense of humour however, so there's that. But I'm not alone - witness the Evil Dead, for example, or Reanimator; both of which know that 'dark' and 'frightening' things often stray to the point of being comical when applied too quickly, too pedantically.

This felt a little like an action-movie to me - our narrator is told he's a hero, not to give up, smacked down by an untouchable horror, and hopefully keeps going. What really made me laugh, however, was the ending - far from being frightening, it was one hook-hand away from being urban legend territory; our narrator defending posting his story about he he bravely played his sister in a Fallout mod to the reader, breaking the fourth wall and wishing a cruel fate on doubting him for the veracity of the story. Our daughters and sisters, our darlings, could be disappeared too just because we didn't react now! Seems awfully vindictive for a protaganist, doesn't it..?

But then again - maybe the hidden twist is that the narrator himself is alone, beard falling down to his knees as he types as he refuses to acknowledge the horror of his own actions, compartmentalized away in his mind. That alone would shift a lot of my humour to chills, although I still would feel the structure of the story is predictable.

It's well-written though, and I guess my complaint is that I feel like horror comes from surprise; surely your familiar with how we criticize hyper-realistic blood as an oft-overused device? The same applies to any 'shocking' thing, and I couldn't shake the feeling reading this that it was prevented from going from good to great by lack of surprise.