In high school, I remember a teacher recommending a story by a writer. It involved a man and his dogs tracking over some cold, unforgiving land. And it seemed that the dogs were suffering, so I could not read on.

If he'd killed a rat, it wouldn't have caused that reaction.

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I don't get it, I must be a cold hearted bastard. Why are pets so special? I care about people, real people who suffer and die and are conscious that they are suffering and dying.

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Given a real person vs. a real pet, though, I'd save the real person. Pets are secondary.

Although I will have to say they're moreimportant than property. A few months ago on my local news there was a fire that destroyed a man's stables where he kept his horses. The news reporter mentioned that no one was hurt but that there was extensive property damange -- they completely failed to tell me how the horses were doing. I was not happy with them about that.

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I don't get it, I must be a cold hearted bastard. Why are pets so special? I care about people, real people who suffer and die and are conscious that they are suffering and dying.

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No, not a cold hearted bastard just probably someone without pets or who hasn't lost one that meant something to you yet.

Pets suffer and die and are conscious that they are suffering and dying. When we first moved to the farm one of our older horses colliced. I spent the next 10 hours walking him. All night, the mare kept kicking him in the gut to get things moving again. By morning, while the obstruction was gone, his circulatory system had crashed, the pain medicine had worn off, and he was in pain. He walked to the vet and placed his head on her shoulder for the shot that would put him down because he knew she'd end the pain.

The thing about pets is they are as close to unconditional love as you get (well, except in the case of the formerly abused wolf-hybred I'm trying to rescue - she'll still as likely to try and take a chunk out of me than walk away if she doesn't want any more affection). Babies become kids and then there are issues with the relationship. You never get to the issue stage with pets. They don't judge, they listen to all the stupid stuff you'd tell people if they wouldn't lock you up. In the case of a particularly intuitive cat of mine, he knew when I was upset and would come over to purr at me until I felt better. He was in my life for 12 years.

Pets just work thier way into your life and when they are gone part of you is too.

Also, pets and infants are completely dependant on thier people to care for them. So it is upsetting when something happens to them, especially if that something is malicious.

The scene in Battlestar Galatica mentioned earlier really upset me (as well as the mother's screaming after 9 killed the baby). I didn't stop watching the series though. It's one of my favorite shows.

I would do anything for my son -- and that includes getting rid of the cats. Fortunatley, this is not something I have had to do because I do like the cats but the only unconditional love I feel is for my son. (He makes it easy -- he's such a good baby!)

For a couple of months I wasn't sure how my girl cat was going to be with the baby. When I brought the baby home from the hospital she began to sulk and she was VERY jealous -- so jealous that I was worried and I began to get this surge of protectiveness for my baby and resentment for the cat. Even though she's gotten over her initial jealousy and is pretty good with the baby now, I never have felt the same about her.

I too have recently adopted a pup from a shelter, and she follows me everywhere I go...she whimpers when she can't see me, when she is hungry or bored...she does a little dance when she sees me, and lays by feet at night (poor dog).

My WIP has three baby/young child killings. The first is an execution by a soldier, and is witnessed by the MC. The second happens when she kills several people in a blind rage, and only after she has calmed down does she realize a young child was among them. In both instances, I describe the MC's emotional reactions, not the actual act. The third is done by the villain, who calmly smothers his own newborn child as a way of secretly controlling/hurting his wife. I use his POV to avoid the details. While he is doing it he's thinking about something else - the look on his wife's face when she finds out, how he'll pretend to react, etc. He's not even thinking about the act that he's committing, because with his personality he wouldn't. When it's over, he notes that it's done and goes off about his business.

EDIT: As an aside, my MC is not exactly a sympathetic protagonist, at least not at that stage in her life. We're not supposed to be very happy with some of the things she does. However, your point is well taken.

But there's no comparison between stories about pets dying and stories about children dying. I am truly tested by any story that involves the death of a child, and any author who writes gory child-murder scenes falls right off my reading list. I've been known to put books in the trash, rather than pass them on to friends or take them to the used book store. And I can't remember, when I was young, reading a single book about a child dying. If I did read one, I don't remember the title or the plot or anything about it. This may be unique to my childhood, such books may be widely read and loved, I just can't name any.

In reading some of these responses, what comes to mind is that perhaps I asked the wrong question. I have an idea for a story, and the story is about a plague that affects cats. So...lots of cats die. This will inevitably rouse strong emotions in some readers, and in some cases these emotions may be strong enough to alienate the reader. Maybe the real question is this: why do I want to write such a story? More precisely, why do I want to SHARE such a story? Just because I have the idea, and the idea is so clear that I can build an entire cast of characters and a plot and a setting, does that mean this story must be written? pantros answered this, in a way, by saying, "You've lost none of the readers in your target audience."

Why do we NEED such stories? The question is mild, until you broaden it to include some of the things this thread has brought up, in particular: "A Cylon casually snaps the neck of a newborn just to watch it die."

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In reading some of these responses, what comes to mind is that perhaps I asked the wrong question. I have an idea for a story, and the story is about a plague that affects cats. So...lots of cats die.

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Depending on the POV and rest of the story, the fact that lots of cats die during a plague that I presume an MC somewhere is trying to cure is less troublesome to me at least then an MC who intentionally/ unintentionally hurts cats.

After all Watership Down included the death of lots and lots of rabbits and I still read it, loved the story and watched the animated movie. Why write that story? Because it was a statement of life as we know it written in a way that was less offensive than using humans.

Non protagonists have more leeway in their actions.

Antagonists have far more.

I am actually pretty narrow minded on this topic, to be perfectly honest. I don't generally like books with criminals as the protagonists. I can usually tolerate a thief/pickpocket, especially if they were forced into it because of unfortunate events. But I don't want to be in the head of a protagonist who is a killer...movies are a little easier because I'm not in their heads. I hatd Pulp Fiction for a lot of reasons but I thought Grosse Point Blank was amusing. I think a key difference between the two is that in Grosse Point Blank he didn't assassinate anyone in the movie (even if he did try once).

I tend to think you can write a story where the action is a person's search for forgiveness for committing unspeakable or unforgivable acts. The movie The Deer Hunter based on the book whose name currently escapes me is this type of journey. Whether or not that journey can be sucessful (i.e. make his/her peace with his/her past bad actions) is a different issue.

If you are going to try it, I would consider "Shakesphere violence" in other words keep the bad or "unforgivable" acts off stage and you need to explore the reasons for the bad acts. THe assassin in Serenity was a bad guy who murdered lots of people to get to River but, we have an almost grudging respect for him because he is acting based on his belief that River must be recaptured and controlled and he lives by his own code of honor. While I'm not sure I would have liked him as an MC, I had a real response to his actions and liked that he was not a two dimensional character.

You are also going to have to be careful about why this character wants to be forgiven. Why does he/she suddenly thing he/she was wrong?

(added link)

And, uh, My husband and I might be part of an audience of people who could handle a book about pets dying. But I don't know. Is this a book for people who look at pet lovers and say "It's a flippin' animal. Get over it." Well, there goes any political aspirations I might ever have had.

In reality, pets die, and people kill children. In fiction, when those same things happen, it's gonna have an emotional impact on me as a reader, but mostly only insofar as it affects the PoV characters.

So I can see this going in several ways. Note that this is just my two cents, and I stink at being objective, but I'll try anyway.

A) Little Connection to the MC's = little emotional impact, or Why should I care about this?
Cheesy example #1: MC's mother's old dog dies and a vet says it was some weird disease never seen before. All the suffering is offstage and only barely hinted at, if at all. You won't lose any sensitive readers this way, but you might end up making people say "Why should I care?"

Cheesy example #2: Kid dies offscreen. The fact is mentioned but no one in the story really reacts any more than if someone mentioned "The sky is blue today."

B) Strong emotional impact, or Is this writer some kind of sadistic pervert?
Cheesy example #1: Elderly MC cares tenderly for his/her pet since he/she has no other living relations; pet's condition gets worse and worse; every step of the illness, every putrid sore and whimper-inducing wound is described in detail; pet dies and MC tries to give it a proper burial but is too weak from grief and instead makes a funeral pyre for it out of old newspapers with headlines about mutating bird flu. There's a lot of graphic detail in this one, and a lot of gut-wrenching dialogue, etc etc. All in all, it's too over-the-top and turns off a large audience out of either disgust or disbelief in such melodrama.

Cheesy example 2: Same thing, but with a child or infant in place of Fido.

Or, C) The event happens, and the MC reacts much the same as I the reader might, making me care more about the MC in the process.

In sojoyful's WIP, the MC witnesses a child's murder, then later, inadvertently kills a child herself. The same feelings of outrage/horror could jumpstart the MC's path to redemption ("omigod I can't believe I did that. I have to get my temper under control or who knows what I might do next.") This kind of reaction would also make me lean more in sympathy toward the character. But moderation in all things. A little subtlety goes a long way.

What do you all think?

Hercules had to undergo 12 impossible labors to be forgiven for the murder of his family even though the Furies had driven him insane and he truely wasn't responsible for thier deaths.

I have a friend who is not capable of watching any movie/show or reading any book where children are in danger/likely to be hurt or killed.

In the mind of the killer, however, she isn't seeing it like that. She'll be "I killed a child without meaning to. Will I be like Evil Antagonist and kill children in cold blood?" And that's the reaction I need to feel out of her to make her a protagonist to root for: someone who may have sunk low enough to feel the bedrock beneath her feet but who is willing to climb back up anyway, and somewhere along the way take down that despicable infant-smothering Evil Guy.

So pretty much I'm saying I'd read both Novice's and Sojoyful's stories without qualm, (skimming over anything graphic; I have a vivid enough imagination as it is.) But not everyone would be. It doesn't matter, though. If those are the stories you are trying to write, don't worry about audience and just write them. Write it well and people will read it.

But I stopped reading Raymond E Feist after he destroyed a child character. I never did figure out what happened to the kid. It's a shame because I liked his one series of books. Here we are talking a writer destroying a fictional child. Even that was morally rephrehensible enough to me to stop reading his books.

Something doesn't seem very equal about that equation. Now I'm not some cruel heartless witch, but are you saying that the loss of life of any child is only equal in worth to an adult losing his life to save the world?

Child's death = messiah's death

What about the price in suffering of the MC? Are we equating youth with some archetypical idea of snow-white innocence?

I guess I can't help but think about a similar situation in the series FullMetal Alchemist. I'm been a bit obsessed with this series lately. I'll try and keep the spoilers down, but you've been forewarned.

In the anime, I was always ambivalent about the character Lt. Colonel Roy Mustang. He was ambitious and cunning, sarcastic and conniving, and he jerked Edward Elric around.

In the war in Ishbal, Major Roy Mustang (I assume he got his promotion later) was faced with a situation where a Ishballan child held a gun on him. We see the terror on the child's face, we see Mustang falter, unable to bring himself to kill this child.

The child starts to pull the trigger, and Mustang reacts.

We can infer that the child died although it's not shown. The child's death has a profound affect on Roy, and it shows. And in fact, the fact that he suffers tremendous guilt and shame, and apparently has PostTraumatic Stress Disorder with paralyzing flashbacks because of this one event, is enough to redeem him in my eyes. At least for a little while. [spoiler]At least until we learn that Roy, acting on orders, killed Winry's parents, who as doctors in the Ishballan war treated enemy and ally alike...and many of those enemies healed well enough to turn around and kill more allies. Then I'm back to being ambivalent again.[/spoiler]

You have a good point here, pantros:

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But they have to die and though they will be a good hero, they will never really be an acceptable human being again.

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