Taboo, you say?
I'm not against leveraging a good taboo now and then. Have done, in fact. Certain cultures have a taboo against writing anything into the skin. Tattoos are equated with magic spells etched into your body that have to pull their energy from somewhere. I definitely used that in the Nightmare Ink books. How could I not? It lends itself so well to 'what if' and to imagining the unintended consequences of flouting the taboo. That's tasty stuff and I did my best to respect the cultures that hold that taboo to this day. It's important to me that my characters face down whatever chaos results from the choices they make.
But.
I draw a personal line at taboos that hurt or exploit innocents. Want me to hurt animals? You can piss right off. You'll always be able to read my stuff with the assurance that the dog will not die. In my world, some taboos deserve to remain untouchable forever. I feel like the line between taboo and kink is informed consent. Taboo is about victimizing someone. Kink is about having a good time while playing with the edges of what's deemed acceptable by society. Based on that, I'm pretty dead set against breaking taboos in my stories unless doing so drives my point of view characters. My mains characters knew what they signed up for when they volunteered for a story. They get what they get. I'm going to do my best to push them past what they think of as their limits. I'm going to do damage that they have to either recover and grow from or wither and die from. But handing over some innocent bystander to a bad guy for some taboo breaking simply for shock value or to 'show' you how bad my bad guy is? No thanks. First, there are taboos that do not bear thinking about in any way, shape, or form. If I hate the whole notion of certain taboos, I'm not going to write them. There are too many other ways to get at what I need to motivate characters to change. Second, there are taboos that aren't a part of my experience and I do not have the authority to speak to them or represent them in fiction. I might not be able to get inside of those taboos to comprehend what purpose the taboos serve. By that I mean that most taboos are protective - they're meant to stave off harm to individuals, a clan, a culture, or a society. I had a boss who had immigrated from Iran explain that the prohibition against pork in his culture was a protective measure against trichinosis. That's understandable. An example of a taboo I can't understand is a current Tik Tok semi-comedic, semi-horror meme. It comes from Appalachia where the saying is "If you hear someone call your name from the woods, no you didn't." I understand the intent - to protect you from vanishing into the wild never to be seen again. Whether it's bug or feature, though, I don't comprehend it because I lack the imagination to grasp not having a modicum of power over what happens to me when I walk into the woods to investigate something I heard. This taboo isn't my story to tell. I lack the mindset and experience of people who grew up with grandmothers who drilled the taboo into their heads.
Yes. I'd probably be one of the first to die in a horror movie, killed because I foolishly rolled my eyes at a taboo I couldn't wrap my brain around.
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