Fiction is the gateway too our imagination. It allows for the expression of the wildest desires and stories held within the human mind. However, this also falls under some of the most gruesome content that a human can experience or summon up. It can show the very worst and put it into uncomfortable settings under the banner of it not being reality.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a gritty story or a shocking painting. No physical pain is brought upon the observer and it cannot physically cause harm. Although, from the grittiest reality too the most abnormal and strange ideas that come from the depths of a creators imagination, the issue comes from three primary areas. Fear, Bias and shock.

These areas do not account for the subtle, varying situations that arise from each individual reaction. However, they do remain to be three large contributing factors that demonstrate the mental impact fiction has outside of the creator. When people’s emotions and thoughts are stimulated in ways that they would typically ignore or not encounter the reaction is typically excited and their individuality governs how they will react towards that excitement.

When people are afraid or shocked, many times by something unexpected or a topic that is difficult to swallow, a standard reaction is to do as humans do and place their bias own it. Everyone does it, has their own belief system and their own ways of coping and handling a situation put before them. Fiction is no different, it is a unreal account from the human mind that presents real situations and plots that have been imagined in a real brain.

Arguably, fiction can be obscene and even further, fiction can be shocking and hold difficult perspectives that wouldn’t be discussed in an everyday setting or at will, especially, knowing that another mind created it. However, every topic holds legitimacy to be discussed. No matter how horrifying or gruesome a subject, it holds its legitimacy for the very reason why it is difficult too handle. It came from another mind and had the liberty too do so. Every picture painted or novel created has some sort of depths or image that formed within the mind of another human and was allowed by the right to publish and speech that should be considered standard for expression.

Holding this stance is often difficult in the face of the most terrifying works, works that have situations that would never see the light of day except on a headline or perhaps in the basement of some odd man’s house who still lives with his mother. However, we must defend that fiction cannot go “too” far unless we become blind to the realities it presents and the expression that we would be hypocritical too deny. Anything less would be too stomp on liberty and create tunnel vision for ourselves.