What is the most disturbing thing you have ever read?

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Winston
Rowntree
Has influenced my life, with under a dozen words, more than any book. What the fuck is up with that guy?

probably some of the later torture scenes in american psycho

>inb4 /lit/ gets baited by that image being posted for the 100th time

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V. In Love disgusted me to the point I threw the book down the aisle of a Greyhound. It was passed back to me with much less confusion than you'd expect.

American Psycho's violence was a joke, like an actual joke you were supposed to laugh at. It's Patrick lying, pretending to be a tough guy.

The Room

The ModFam, SDR, 30Rock trilogy.

And yet I still read all 150k words or whatever it is.

Not that I recommend it. I regret finishing it because I still think of shit from it and get that uncomfortable deep down feeling of dismay that a dude out there exists that has a brain that spawned these ideas at such length and yet managed to hook me into reading it all and fuck now I've got that inner sort of dread and disgust again fuck.

>>7547792
/v/ actually gets baited more by that than anything else because it implies that shitty game is good.

>>7547821
You mean the Disaster Artist?

>>7547773

That image.

>>7547842
What is this you're tellin' tales about, anon? What is it that's scared you so?

>>7548499
It's just a wild ride fanfiction trilogy.

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>>7547773

I don't even find edgy or transgressive fiction disturbing. It mostly feels to me tryhard and ridiculous, like these people are trying their hardest to capture a shock within people, even when you can find ISIS beheading videos at the flick of a wrist, which are infinitely more terrifying than any description of Patrick Bateman stabbing a kid at a zoo could ever be.

The most terrifying fiction, for me, is the absurdist kind. I find stuff like Thomas Ligotti's "The Last Feast of the Harlequin" where he stumbles across a society of silent clowns that transform into worms before his very eyes, to be absolutely terrifying, just given the absurdity and meaninglessness of the entire encounter.

Or this poem by Baudelaire -- "Spleen" -- which, in my opinion, is ultimately one of the most terrifying pieces of poetry ever written:

When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid
On the groaning spirit, victim of long ennui,
And from the all-encircling horizon
Spreads over us a day gloomier than the night;

When the earth is changed into a humid dungeon,
In which Hope like a bat
Goes beating the walls with her timid wings
And knocking her head against the rotten ceiling;

When the rain stretching out its endless train
Imitates the bars of a vast prison
And a silent horde of loathsome spiders
Comes to spin their webs in the depths of our brains,

All at once the bells leap with rage
And hurl a frightful roar at heaven,
Even as wandering spirits with no country
Burst into a stubborn, whimpering cry.

— And without drums or music, long hearses
Pass by slowly in my soul; Hope, vanquished,
Weeps, and atrocious, despotic Anguish
On my bowed skull plants her black flag.

These are the types of things that terrify me: the absurdist, the hopeless, the Satanic; and if I could get some recommendations of writers that match these descriptions, I would be very grateful.

>>7549549
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6q9pTPKq2A

The Waste Land. It is disturbingly prophetic.

>>7549549
>Patrick Bateman stabbing a kid at a zoo could ever be.
if that's as far as you got then yeah whatever but it gets much more gruesome towards the end.

>>7549576
Thank you for completely missing the point I was trying to make.

>>7547773
Gas all /v/edditors

>>7547842
>The ModFam, SDR, 30Rock trilogy.
I'm not sure if you're joking or if there is actually a book like this. Source on it?

>>7549699
It's on adult-fanfiction.org, starts in the Modern Family section with I Love Alex. It's actually pretty funny in a dark way if you watch the shows for how perfectly it does the characters.

>>7549611
What point, nigger?

>>7547773

The details of Richard Ramirez's murders.

My diary t b h

>>7547773
Probably "Night" by Ellie Wiesel, if only because I read it when I was pretty young.

>>7550783
My point was that transgressive fiction is tryhard and not actually disturbing.

>>7547792
Would agree with American Psycho; wasn't expecting to read about a decapitated head being filled with cum while the eyes are gouged. I think Ellis must be one of those people who gets his kicks from BestGore.

Also what image being posted for the 100th time?

>>7547842
> You mean the Disaster Artist?

No, I'm sure he probably means the novel by Hubert Selby Jr, an author known for his disturbing writing.

>>7551162
Pussy

>>7547812
For someone who just rode a greyhound for the first time, not really

>>7551162
the scene where his father gets his head bashed in and the blood pours all over him.
fuck

Bluest eye. Might be actual literature, but seriously what the fuck

>>7551196
That's not the second cattle car scene

naked lunch is more disturbing then american psycho for me but probably because of my suppressed homosexuality

Audition and In The Miso Soup were pretty unsettling when I first read them - they're both pretty detailed when it comes down to the grotesque.

I remember being disturbed by my first ever reading of HP Lovecraft's work too. That guy's work still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Pierce

maybe its called Piercing? its about a normal middleaged business men who has to constantly struggle with a compulsion to stab his baby daughter with an icepick.

>>7551275
Piercing

It's by Ryu Murakami, the same author of the books I mentioned >>7551238

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Some of these scenes are brutal

>>7547773

Who wrote the OP pic? I would love to read more of the style.

Or is it from the game? (i never played it)

>>7551348
Pretty sure it's the lyrics of some song of the game's soundtrack

>>7551290
I really enjoyed Piercing. It almost made me want to stab someone with a slightly obscure tool.

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I'm reading a history book about the Second World War. It's turned to the section about Japanese war crimes and their treatment of civilians. Never before have I had to actually put down a book to collect my repulsion and rage and calm down.
The chapter ended with "There were many other scenes described to the War Crimes Tribunal - and not denied by the perpetrators - that are simply too disgusting to recount here."

Google 'Unit 731', 'The Rape of Nanking' or just the treatment of any captured villages.

I guess it's so much worse then other books I've read such as American Psycho because it actually happened

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>>7547773

>>7551348
Some faggot who writes on crackbait.com

certain forums on the deep web

>>7551348
An asshole on Cracked who wrote an article about how video games are superior to any other art form. In the comment section I objected to video games being considered an art form in the first place, and I was downvoted to oblivion. That's all you need to know about Cracked.

>>7547812
as in the chapter v. in love from pinecone or a different v. in love i don't know about

>>7551637
that's cause you a bitch

>>7547773
The Tunnel

>>7551685
Very witty! Have an upvote!

>>7551637
Why don't you think video games are art, anon?

>>7551173
I think he's referring to dubs guy.

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>>7551637
>downboated

>>7547773

any reviews for that shitty game because they all praised it when in reality it was absolutely terrible

glad i didn't pay any money for it in order to support their stupid shit. after an hour or two of its horribleness i just stopped playing, deleted it from my pc, and went about my day.

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>>7551916
(i'm not that anon)
it's a very debatable thing that pends on the definiton of art. The term itself originated as one of the characteristics of good architecture in Rome, it was turned by Ficino and the neoplatonics into an autonomous thing, craftmanship that results in an unique object. With the enlightenment this got expanded, it was art if it was unique and could be recieved in a spiritual level. Of course, that's a strange definition since it included gardens but not teapots, because the first is unique and reflects the spirit of the owner while the second one is a piece in a set. Later, by the hand of Heidegger, it was perfected into the idea that a work of art is anything that presents a tiny part of an expansive world, something that makes the spectator expand their understanding, a solid piece of philosohpy, but has no other use besides it. The idea is that useful items melt into their use, and they are the best when you don't think about them, while art is entirely to think about it. So if you get some use from it it can't be art.
Now, the idea is that something made to be played, i.e. used, can't be art. It's a tool for enjoyment. But that's a something that should be considered in a case by case basis anyway.
Also, art was something you boguth and resold to win money since before it's independecy was declared. So there was a use, maybe it was abstract and unrelated to each piece, but it was a use.

So yeah, what is art is a pretty tough subject.
I could expand on the differences between aesthetic object and art, or popular art vs art, but I guess I would be getting out of topic with that.

>>7551637

It's more of what you need to know about cretins that call themselves "gamers." They're just children playing with toys, yet they want their toys to be taken seriously. It'd be life if they were playing with Star Wars action figures and making "psssshhhhhh poot poot" noises and when someone walked in, they said "DO NOT DO ANYTHING I AM MAKING ART."

You would immediately close the door or just point and laugh.

>>7551173
>>7551941
>Also what image being posted for the 100th time?

he means the OP, alluding to video games being a more fulfilling medium than books

>>7551379
Reading this right now.

So far it reminds me of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, and I mean that in the worst way possible.

>>7547773
Scorch Atlas was miserable. I felt terrible about everything after reading a snippet. Disturbing in every way

>>7551316
>This book is so bad you can tell McCarthy got bored writing it and said "well, might as well have people die in edgy ways".

>>7551376
Nips ain't even human

>>7551376
>I guess it's worse because it actually happened
protip: history books are mostly fabrications, particular selections of data with a context created to produce the effect the author wants the same way you'd do with a fictional story.
Not defending the jap leaders, what they did in china was horrible and to this day they keep pretending it never happened, just saying that history books aren't 100% truth and much less objective.

>>7552094
What's wrong with Genealogy?

>>7552203
Really dude?

>>7549549
seems maudlin t b h f a m

>>7551958
It's part of the system of a lot of comment sections on many websites, and has been since even before reddit existed. But you're probably just shitposting blindly.

haunted by Freud... the sheer obscenity of it all is completely unparalleled in any world literature & even by most hentai standards impossibly fucked

>>7552546
Kek

You probably didn't get it. It's ok, Nietzsche clearly isn't for everyone.

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I'm rarely disturbed by the physical stuff; I attribute that to early exposure to ero-guro, vore, et c. thanks to the internet. What really gets me is a sort of existential dread, the evidence of an entity out there, capable of fucking with and manipulating my life like it's nothing. A sort of Fear of God, if you would.

To cite examples: Babies getting squashed in Blood Meridian didn't bother me; what did was the implication that the Judge was something McCarthy had to struggle with and I knew already. In Gravity's Rainbow, the shit eating or the debauchery of the rich didn't get to me and the graphic castration barely did; but Pynchon's meditations on technology, and how it aligns with the rest of our thinking, make me shit my pants whenever I give them some thought.

>>7552054
>It'd be life if they were playing with Star Wars action figures and making "psssshhhhhh poot poot" noises and when someone walked in, they said "DO NOT DO ANYTHING I AM MAKING ART."

If they wrote out what they were going to do first would it be art?
if they recorded it would it be art?
Besides for quality, I can't see how it is any different from film or stage plays in any regard.

>>7552054
If they were building the toys, would that be art?

>>7553081
>>7553203

No.

>>7552573
actually the concept of votes setting certain comments on top and others to the bottom is entirely reddit original.

>>7553081
It would be puppetry, so it depends. It could be. The thing is that videogames don't have a real variety of things to fo when you play, you can use the engine or assets to create new stuff but then you're just plagiarizing content to do 3D animation.

>>7553203
If they are using molds they are just workers for some company with a very intriguing business model.

>>7552007
Is something being played really a use in itself though? For example with books/literature there is an interactive aspect, turning the pages or, on an e-book, clicking through.

I honestly don't care much about the definition of art though. I appreciate things for the craftsmanship that went into them, and the (sometimes) philosophical nugget from the object, whether or not I use them everyday.

>>7553374
I think most people argue that the developers of (certain) video games are the artists, not that the gamer is creating art.

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>>7553502
>>7553514
Yeah, but the question was playing with toys as art. The question of "art vidja art" is much more complex. As I mentioned before, being something made intentionally to entertain and give a very specific response makes it hard to consider art in a classical european sense. Still, if a song was made to take crops more efficiently (i.e. a tool to improve productivity) would have the same problem, or if the intention is to spread propaganda, aren't those particular and industrial reassons to make a piece? That wouldn't be art, but if art is used to make money and create a market, that's also a particular use. It's a heavy topic.

>>7552112
>Blood Meridian
>bad

It's not his best work but it's still good

The Road (haven't read Blood Meridian yet)
the one bit where the father finds all the people chained up in the basement and it never explicitly tells you what was going on but you know... you know...

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>>7547773
MGS2 did it better then spec-ops

>>7550783
go away, clown

A book called Tenderness.

It's about two young adults. One who just got out of jail for murdering a bunch of girls, as well as his mother. He has a perverse fascination for women with long brown hair because his mother had that sort of hair and he'd lay in bed with her and have her hair draped over his face.

The other one is a very disturbed teenage girl who sees a rockstar on TV with a tooth missing. She starts fantasizing about kissing him and running her tongue through the gap in his tooth. She runs away from home to find him and do this. As soon as she does it, she's bored again and she finds the murderer boy somehow and then they fall in love.

Then he accidentally kills her too.

my diary, 2bh

>>7547812
>>7551670
Yeah, are you talking about the chapter from V.? If so, I'm very curious as to why you found it disturbing. It was one of the most fascinating and nuanced psychological portraits I've ever read.

>>7551670
>>7555476
Anon is probably talking about that thing onstage...

>>7553356
Actually, no, it isn't. Similar systems on bulletin boards were had as far back as 1995, dweeb.

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>>7551637

>video games are superior to any other art form
>video games shouldn't be considered an art form in the first place

Both of these conclusions are terrible and arrogant. You completely deserved the derision you got. The guy who wrote that article is a fuckhead, but you're just as bad because you're lowering yourself to his level by sneeringly declaring whole mediums completely worthless.

>>7549549
The Morgue cycle by Gottfried Benn might work for you.

Little Aster

A drowned beer-hauler was heaved onto the slab.
Someone had wedged a lavender aster
between his teeth.
As I reached through the chest
under the skin
with a long knife
to cut out the tongue and palate
I must have bumped the flower, for it slid
into the brain lying alongside.
I packed it into the chest cavity
with the sawdust
as we sewed up.
Drink your fill in that vase!
Rest in peace,
little aster!

Philosophie dans le boudoir, dat fucking ending

>>7549502
Disturbingly turned on?

>>7547847
The Black Angels are rad; Passover is a phenomenal album. What's your point?

>>7549502
Anyone got a download link?

>>7547773
If that is what you learned from the heart of darkness i feel sorry for you. I read it when i was 16 and i got a lot more from it

>>7556216
Im pretty sure the fag from cracked never read the novel.

>>7547812

>TFW my bookmark is literally at the beginning of that chapter . . .

Pepper my anus?

>>7547773
Try High Life by Stokoe. Cows gets more pub, but I found that to be just disgusting; kind of like a more literary less humorous version of Edward Lee . High Life was profoundly disturbing in myriad ways.

Also liked The Wasp Factory. I thought it was a very good novel, easily 8/10. I didn't find it terribly disturbing, but most people seem to. Worth a read either way.

You can also check out some of Jack Ketchum's work. The movie adaptation of The Girl Next Door is up on jewtube, and it's very faithful to the source material. Stranglehold had probably the most disturbing final passage of anything I've ever read.

One last recommendation is a book called The Summer I Died. Definitely one of the best horror novels in recent memory. The sequel is cheesy as fuck though.

Also, didn't mean to shit on Ed Lee. Header 2 is probably the funniest book I've ever read. Check it out, friendo.

Horse beating dream in Crime and Punishment.

>>7547773

This image is cringy as fuck, but I think dismissing the entire medium of video games as not artistic is a bit narrow-minded. The problem is that 99.9% of games aren't going for "art" and 99.9% of the ones that ARE going for some sort of deeper meaning or themes are pretentious schlock that usually strip the "game" portion down to barebones and add some water-thin theme to seem like they have a message. I think if a game is to be art, it has to make good use of the medium while presenting its themes. The usual candidates people name, MGS2, Shadow of the Colossus, Silent Hill 1/2/3, and Spec Ops are fairly good and I think they're almost there, but at the same time I wouldn't really compare them to high literature.

>>7549549
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S_Jk3RNxfs

Rapey imagery like Alien, and a few others I forget (i remember one being more recent, with a young girl slowly being seduced to be the mate of an underground alien colony). The idea of being the host to some disgusting alien parasite makes me feel sick.

The same idea extends to the Thing too, I guess.

>>7556378
Saints are those given thanks for bringing mankind closer to God.

>>7556378
Have you read that Alien comic book about the guy who was kidnapped by (red?) xenomorphs and had to mate with his mother so they could study him? And she was already undergoing the process of turning into an egg (I think the comic book was released shortly after the second movie, and they used the idea from the alternative ending of Nostromo). Pretty fucked up.

>>7556339
They present high-points of the medium, but pale in comparison to high-points of other mediums. At the same time - cinema is over a hundred years old, literature is several millenia old, so...

>>7553996
I watched the movie of that. that scene is grotesque, that whole world made me sad

extermination zone by randall phillip

>>7549557
this is sweet

>>7549549
Thomas Ligotti + Current 93
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxZpEFJhO6k

>>7552007
The code that makes up the video game program is the true art. It reflects the spirit of the programmer for sure. In the same way that architecture does.

>>7556478
Incredible. Ligotti is brilliant. Thank you.

>>7556322
Has anyone else read High Life? Without question the most disturbing book in the history of literature. I can't be the only one that thinks this...

>>7556339
but the last of us

>>7547842
>The ModFam, SDR, 30Rock trilogy.

I feel like I should kill myself for actually knowing exactly what you're talking about.

What am I doing with my life.

>>7549557
Ruth White's album "The Flowers of Evil," where she reads translations of Baudelaire's poetry over eerie background music, is perfect.

>>7556603
It's shit

>>7556593
I read it.

It wasn't that disturbing, but, then again, I'm not really disturbed by reading things.

>>7555649
Neckbeards always assume you're dismissing games by saying they're not art and don't even consider the fact that vidya is very different from any other medium and may not fall under the given person's (reasonable) definition.

Is the game of Chess art? Not the pieces or the board, but the actual game being played. Is it art?

>>7559447
No, but the rules of the game are.

>>7556490
That's like saying the blueprints are the true architecture or that the written form is the true music.

There ARE video games that I would consider art, but they have all been released independently, for free, online, with no plans of financial gain -- the only purpose being to fulfill the creative vision of the developer. Similarly, good literature (art) is made for the sake of being MADE foremost, and is then commercialized later on.

>>7556490
This is a fascinating concept.

>>7556454
Also consider videogames haven't even finished developping materially, every generation has been different from the last. AND that "videogames" are immenselly diverse in comparison to other media, since the way one plays the game can be completely different from one genre to another (i.e. they aren't genres at all in the traditional sense). Just now we're seeing some big author names and technology has allowed an independent scene to emerge.

And the people who complain about commercialism probably also ignore writing was created with accountability lists in mind, not the expression of the human condition.

>>7559623
T. Jean Renoir

>>7551670
>>7555476
Of course from V. Fascinating & nuanced? You're probably unaware how lame that is. The end is what was disturbing.

>>7549576
Not related to the topic but may as well ask whilst you're talking about it: should I continue where I left off in American Psycho even though I last read it a few months ago? I'm like a third of the way through and, if I'm remembering correctly, he hasn't done anything too psychotic yet, there have just been a load of indication that he's a nutcase. I don't really wanna start from the beginning (cba for those long product-based passages) but do you think it's best to?

Looks like my thread about disturbing literature has turned into a circle-jerk amongst videogame nerds who've never read a book but consider xbox cutscenes the epitome of high art.

I'd delete, but I'd feel guilty denying kids the opportunity to post on a board other than /v/ or /tv/. Knock yourselves out, kiddos.

Once you contract cancer, you might as well let it run its course.

>>7551316
>when the Delawares take infants by the legs and bash their heads against rocks and it's written as a tiny detail while they massacre an entire village

Yikes

>>7561825
>pretending to be OP

Pretty kek anon

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Ligotti's "Conspiracy against the human race". This book is mental rape on species-suicide level. Thus spoke Zarathustra is the only thing which will can keep you alive after this.

>>7559683
There is a structure and aesthetic to the code that the user never encounters. Really videogames are like art and architecture combined. The art being the user experience and the architecture being the code.

>>7550050
I'm genuinely impressed with the execution on those twist(s) and how invested it managed to make me fucking somehow... Probably gonna read the next two parts now...

>>7547773
the 120 days of Sodom by Sade
some extracts from the Dutroux (belgian pedo) files
historical books about genocides
stories of junkies and crackheads on forums
some paranoiac SHIT about HIDDEN THINGS which are secret!!! (always written like THIS)
a weird book about badass SS adventures in the East front
torture process from the CIA
and so on

> i don't like snuff and gore btw

>>7552112
>>7553981
It was just an edgy spin on typical western cowboys and indians bullshit with some pseudo-intellectual drivel tossed in to make it seem deep.

Corncob the worst.

It was a TF2 fanfic based on the novel "I have no mouth but I must scream".

>>7562547
It's high school-tier philosophy. Anyone who knows anything would have understood the arguments behind antinatalism and pessimism long before opening this book. Ligotti doesn't present anything particularly new.

>>7561825
>post b8 image unrelated to thread
>"boo hoo, fucking 4chin derailing muh thread"