A Matter of Taste...
Sabs, it's obvious the story ticks you off, and you've every right to tell the author and the TMF in general that it does. That, after all, is what the Forum's about: open expression.<br>
When you call for a ban on "snuff fiction" on the Forum, however, I must disagree. It's not because I'm an advocate of stories where characters are fatally tickled. (I actually found the story in question a perfunctory exercise, meaning it was more ruthless in its quick exposition than in any moral sense.
The author's aim was so modest that the tale was over before its implications had time to offend.) I just naturally balk when I'm told that some ideas are so unacceptable that they can't be expressed, even in fiction.<br>
Criticize a story, yes. Loudly refuse to even read a story, OK. But, demand that someone can't even write a story about a, er, ticklish subject because it disturbs you...no, I don't think anyone has that right.<p>
In the interest of full disclosure, I once wrote a story for MTJ Pubs a few years back entitled "The Cootchy-Coo Contract." It involved a mob assassin hired to tickle to death a witness set to testify against a crime lord. While the story was intended to be a bit of a send-up of a well-worn crime scenario, I, for the sake of suspense, made it plain that the victim, who was asthmatic, found the tickling absolutely terrifying. (Just so you know, the
plot was foiled in the nick o' time. 🙂 )<br>I don't find murder, even by tickling, to be erotically stimulating. However, I found the challenge to try to write a remotely plausible story about murderous tickling to be creatively stiimulating--and an irresistible challenge. If someone had told me that I couldn't post such a story here because it dabbled in ideas too disturbing for the Forum, THAT would cause me to question being a member. <br> It really is a fundamental question of freedom...the freedom even to offend...<p>
Now, speculating a bit more. on the matter of the Forum's ban on material involving minors: <br>
While I have qualms about the ban from a free speech perspective, I bow to the Forum's concern that it not run afoul of laws--or the commonweal--on the matter. Kids and the Internet is an issue, for better or worse, of keen concern by well-meaning authorities and exploited by, as I see them, censorious Puritans. Either way, if the Forum displayed such material, I've little doubt it would face crippling harrassment or, worse, outright abandonment by servers. This is one case, sadly, where discretion really is the better part of valor.