Fanfic⭐Challenge

★★ No Blood, No Gore (10/11/2015)

Be sure to carefully read the Intro, Rules and Q&A pages before going any farther.

The chant for Homra from the series K or as the series is also called K Project goes, "no blood, no bone, no ash". Hence we get the title for this challenge "No Blood, No Gore". A lot of people think blood and gore is a mainstay of the horror genre, but in reality blood and gore didn't become a major theme in the horror genre until much later on. Many works succeeded in instilling fear into the reader without the use of blood and gore.

One famous piece involves The Twilight Zone. This television series started airing during the late 1950's. I bring up The Twilight Zone because many of the horror movies followed the formula for this given series prior to blood and gore becoming popular. There are people out there who think a piece isn't horror unless there is some level of blood or gore in the piece, but are they right? The answer lies in what defines the horror genre.

The horror genre is defines by the reader or viewer feeling fear and/or dread as they watch or read the piece.

While some works which specialize in blood and gore do create a feeling of fear and/or dread, many simply just put the viewer through a complete gross out, or they manage to shock the viewer with how violent the film can get with the blood and gore. A few people though think shock and a good gross out is the same things as making the audience feel fear and/or dread, but it's really not. According to Merrium-Webster...

fear - an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger
dread - great fear especially in the face of impending evil or extreme uneasiness in the face of a disagreeable prospect
shock - a sudden or violent mental or emotional disturbance
gross out - to offend, insult, or disgust by something gross

This isn't to say there isn't an overlap. A piece which shocks and grosses the viewer out can also instill fear and dread in the viewer, but not always. A good horror piece will use blood and gore as needed, but the creator will also remember sometimes leaving things open to the imagination will create more fear and dread for the viewer then showing it on screen. In addition the more accustomed the audience becomes to violence the less likely blood and gore will work towards creating the feeling of fear and/or dread. 

The first part of the challenge is to write a story for the horror genre without using blood and gore. The second part of the challenge is to write a story which wouldn't be marked up to the mature rating. These stories need to also be between 1,000 to 10,000 words in length for a one-shot, and 2,500 to 15,000 for a chapter piece.

Rules

1. Follow all basic rules put down under the rules section.

2. Tag all stories with the proper category tag, fandom tag, and #frightnight-nogore.

3. Only one story with chapters and one story which is a one-shot for each fandom. Note - For original fiction it's for each genre pairing. Tag your stories #horror-romance and #horror-scifi.

4. OC may be used as the means for creating horror within the series.

Note - I thought about putting in a rule about character bashing being allowed because one of the things about the horror genre is getting to pick on characters, but then I realized picking on the characters isn't character bashing. It's making the characters out of character to achieve ones end, or making bad things happen to said character, but the part about making bad things happen to characters just because you dislike them or your forcing your plot to work by making said changes.

But in the horror genre you're hands down meant to pick on the characters, and bad things will happen. Sometimes a dislike for a character can lead to a well written horror piece, so I'll simply say keep biases out. For readers I wish to note the fact something bad's happening to characters doesn't mean it's character bashing.

Banned Fandoms: None. There should though be no crossovers unless one is talking a Creepy Pasta due to the fact Creepy Pasta is actually based around urban myths and is thus fair game for crossing over. Do some research though as it would be weird for an American urban myth to show up in a series which takes place in Japan. In those cases do some research into Japanese urban myths.

Bonus Challenges: None.