So i'm trying to figure out how much gore is to much and needs to be tagged. I know the general rule is, "If you have to ask, the answer is probably yes." But I don't want to have to label it because the fic isn't about gore, glorifying it, or really needing to much of it. I myself move on from fics that have a sex tag, I imagine many do similarly with the gore tag. That is why I don't want to cross a line.

So basically what is worrying me is a scene where the human pulls off their hand (it makes sense in context) and pulls out an eye (trust me it really does). I wasn't planning to go into to much detail on it, but would that alone be to much? I'm pretty much desensitized to most body horror, so I honestly have no idea.

What's this context?

1265477 well if you bring the thing into detail such as : as the body laid there decimated from the fall multiple bones were exposed broken a completely out of place her right eye was completely blood shot and the other was knocked out of its socket. most of her lower body was nothing but a gory pancake of guts, entails and blood there was even an idiot could see that she was dead.

Like that

1265477
Mutilation is pretty dark. But there are darker things like:
- Burning ponies/humans alive
- GAS! GAS! GAS!
- Impaling (The Vlad way)
- Skinning (Don't go there man)
- Acid
- Manhunt (or ponyhunt)
- Psychotropic drugging (meh not that bad unless it kills)
- Executing a pony's/human's family in front of them (I really wouldn't go there unless it fits the story)
These are all topics I would avoid unless you use it in context. But even then never use it too much otherwise it turns into a slaughter fest which quickly disengages the audience.

1265477 that's enough to tag it at mature. I mean if that were a movie would you allow teens to watch it? You might even wanna tone down the gore.

If it has a lot of blood and or flesh wounds then it can be posted

1265510 Awwwww. what's wrong with skinning? XD

1265581 best way to spend down time, i say.

1265477 I feel like the gore tag is only useful for situations that call for a deep description of a situation that rather traumatizes the protagonist. If you write a story that has a graphic situation that doesn't traumatize them, then its usually a rather unrealistic and frankly cliched character.

But usually by now, The gore tag is almost unnecessary, as most everyone is desensitized to gore by the ineffective and person less descriptions they often receive in many a repetitive dark-tagged story.

1265581
Nothing but... My kinds of dark are:
- Having a pony kill their lover
- Burning shit cause I'm a pyromaniac
- Gas attack
- Ponyhunt (should write a story bout that :P)
- Hallucinogenic drugging
- Torture (but not to death)
- Blunt trauma
- Betrayal is the most painful. They want to hurt you but you can't hurt them because you love them.

But you know whatever you like is fine.

Also Chaos forever!

1265623 I may or may not include it in my story haha. Im kidding, I'm not. Usually something that extreme is not necessary for story advancement.

1265477 I'm pretty sure most of the internet has been desensitized to gore, as the gentleman above me said. You should be golden, no matter what you chose.

1265636 Oh no, I was joking about skinning. I often fidn extreme forms of murder to be pointless to plot-formation.

The methods I will use in my story have/may include(d):

-Trauma from an uncontrolled exospheric descent (Spaceship crash)
-Malnutrition
-Disease
-loss of the will to live
-A street mugging gone awry due to mind altering substance influence
-Street firing squad executions.
-IED fragementation

And personally, I hate one piece of information people always forget/conveniently overlook when they write about death, which is the drama. When you get shot, you don't flail your arms or any of that bullshit. You go into shock, freeze up, fall down, and shit yourself. Your muscles lose the constant feed of energy they receive from the brain, relax, and as an end result, the smell of feces is soon dreadfully apparent.

That's also the description factor I often see overlooked. The smell even a short while after death. It is the horrendous odor of inner bowels and stomach acid, and it is a smell every human naturally shies from. Noone can bare that smell for more than a couple of minutes, because It sets off a chain reaction in the human mind that instinctively says "Hey, that thing's dead, and where there's something dead, there's something that killed it. Get the fuck out of there before you die too."

I'm sorry. So often I see blatant misinterpretations of death that focus on the drama rather than the trauma of the incident. My protagonist has killed people before, but when he sees one of his comrades die in an IED explosion that severs his lower torso, you know what he does? He looks away, prays for the ringing in his ears to go away, and pukes over the stress and the sight that he cannot erase from his head.

1265487
In short, she is casting a spell. The hand for legs and the eye for sight. Its supposed to be bloodless, but still painful to perform.

1265723
Actually your detail at the end there is pretty much how I wanted it to be. To the point, but not burdening the reader with a lot of details. Those who have seen such things will get the point, and those who haven't are spared the detailed imagery.

I'm trying for a teen tag. I don't think I'm writing anything or will be writing anything in my story that deserves a mature rating. It's a dark fic, but mostly on the circumstances and not the events themselves. Save of course a few scenes.

1265788 Glad to see you're trying to tone it down. Most people who write fics on here go over the top on the gore stuff and try as hard as they can for a mature rating. These fics are written by people who don't understand the trauma of death and witnessing it. But I'm glad to see a good honest dark fic, not some over-dramatized emo fic. I have my story labeled as a tragedy instead of dark, because the story focuses around the underground fight for human civil right told by a man who knows little of what is going on in the big picture scenario. It ends in tragedy when it is found that the movement is being led by a liar with an alterior motive, which ends in failure, and thus an attempted cop-out that kills many people and ponies. (The attempted bombing of Canterlot.) The tragedy is that the main character never learns this, and is killed in the bombing by the man he swore to serve.

It's concept that makes a dark fic, not events.

1265723
depends on the person. They may have adrenalin coursing through them so they may keep fighting and have to be shot up ten times to die. They die of blood loss and don't feel a thing sometimes.

1266263 If a bullet makes a large enough internal cavity in you, you're gonna lock up. We're not talking 9mm glock 39s here, we're talking about the big deal, full 5.56mm NATO rifle round.

Pistols are way different in damage than a rifle. For instance, A guy who goes to my gym showed me a video of himself getting shot in afganistan during a patrol, and I have a friend who got shot with a .22 pistol while getting mugged for his ipod. two completely different scenarios. My friend was able to run all the way home after the thing entered his back and passed through his lung, then pass out on the front step, while the guy I know from my gym just hit the dirt. Yes you don't feel it, but that's because your nerves are so overwhelmed with the sensory information that are receiving. The pain isn't what kills you though.

There's a reason we use Guns in wars; because they kill people effectively. The human body can take a lot, but A bullet in flight is specifically designed within the parameters of the laws of physics to kill you.

I guess what Im getting at is that An actiony and drawn-out death from being shot is far too rare for how often it happens in stories.

1266310
Yes but I'm in the army and I was showed a video of a soldier being shot 12 times and finishing the fight and living.

Then again I've seen someone shot by a 50. Cal Barrett sniper and there is a reason it's against the Genivea convention to use it in open combat against a human combatant.

1266354 Yes, the 12.75mm is a dangerous round only to be used on hard targets for humane reasons.

Were those impacts center mass? If they were, I'd be truly impressed.

1266354
Depends on where you got shot, what got hit, and how much damage cavitation did to your surrounding tissue. Cavitation is in effect the shock of the bullet's passing causing the flesh of the body to spread out from the impact site and then rapidly contracting again (you can see it in slow-mo with ballistic gel and such). Getting hit in the gut is also not as immediately damaging as getting hit in the chest, and still that depends where and how much damage was done. Remember, damage to the brain is normally fatal as well and yet there is that one famous case of the man with a pipe that passed completely through the cranium and brain. The guy lived.

There is always the exception to the rule, but generally the body gets overloaded when hit by to many bullets and locks up. Be weary of videos the military shows you of such extraordinary acts, because there is a reason they are extraordinary.

That depends.
I've heard stories from quite a few colleagues, stories that have been confirmed, of terries who are so hyped up on a cocktail of various drugs that they take more than three rounds to put them down. The Dum-dum bullet was invented for that very reason, because British troops in India were putting down various flavours of dissident who injected themselves with various opiates and they were getting shot by rounds that were much larger than the 5.56mm round we use now, and they kept going. But then the 5.56mm round is not a round designed for killing, it's a round designed to maim and injure.

1266689
That is a different type of damage with the hollow points. Your body transmits signals by electricity in the nerve itself and by then by releasing chemicals to trigger the next nerve. Anesthesia works by taking up receptors. If the receptors for pain are blocked, the the body literally cannot transmit it is in pain even if it is in a fatal situation.

Moving on to hollow points themselves, they still cause cavitation but not as much. Their damage is that they use the force of the projectile to push large chunks of flesh in front of them out in front of them. The exit wound of any bullet is usually bigger then the entrance. But in a hollow point's case this is like the size difference between a quarter and an apple in terms of damage from my training. In their case the injuries are so grievous it isn't that the body becomes overloaded, its that muscles are literally to damaged to function at that point. Someone shot in the arm with one just wouldn't have the muscle left to raise his gun arm, even if he could fight off the pain.

...See personally this where I think at this pint is where a fic would need a 'gore' rating with the amount of detail we are going into.

1270604
Yeah same for Aussie SAS except you won't even see what kills you. Those guys take ninja to a whole new level...