Fanfiction is an interesting thing. It is a thing where people like to take properties of which they have no ownership interest – Harry Potter is one – and write stories that explore things that the original author didn’t. Some authors take it seriously and are really good. I’ve read quite a few fanfics in the past that were actually pretty good and I liked a lot. And then there are others…

One thing I’ve noticed is that different properties have different prevalent types of fanfiction. Harry Potter tends to explore the world of Hogwarts, and usually takes it pretty seriously. “Bocchi the Rock” seems to like to force a pairing between Bocchi and Kita (which is a pretty standard theme in fanfiction – creating “ships” where there aren’t any). And K-On… well, they seem to like to pair Ritsu and Mio, and make Ritsu a “futa”.

Why… I have absolutely no idea.

Anyway, I was just kind of poking at that fandom, seeing what people would come up with, and someone wrote a horror story about Azunyan. It was a supernatural horror story, of what might happen if her wish at the end of the series were to come true – that none of her friends had to graduate. It ended bleakly and, well, horrifically.

And it didn’t sit right with me at all.

Now I don’t like horror. I missed the fact that it was horror, because it was well tagged, but I don’t like it in general. Especially supernatural horror. And I realized that the reason I don’t like it is that it makes you entertain impossible situations. Meaning, situations that cannot occur if Jesus is lord.

Now, horror situations can occur in this world. People chasing you around with chainsaws, torture… all that stuff does happen (but even then, not as frequently as horror might have you believe). But after you die? Well, the truth is, that horror stops here. There is no such thing as supernatural horror (hell, whether it exists or not, notwithstanding). You won’t find yourself waking up in a time loop, being tormented by fickle demons. None of these scenarios are possible as long as Jesus has authority, and putting yourself in a mindset where you’re disgusted, terrified, or disturbed by these kinds of stories really does absolutely nothing for you except for imagining a world in which Jesus is not lord, and frankly, that’s demonic.

Because, at the end of the day, that’s exactly the kind of world that demons want and desperately try to convince people that it exists.

There are some things that just don’t help. And horror, particularly of that kind, is one. I’m not saying it’s a sin or anything like that (I try to avoid classifying anything directly as a sin because, most of the time, that’s not my call) but it’s definitely one of those things that will not help.

In that story, Azunyan tried to call 119. What if she’d just asked Jesus for help? But you won’t find that in horror. Because it tries to get you into a mindset where you’re seriously considering scenarios where you are literally, completely, and eternally alone. There’s not much more demonic than that.

I personally think fanfiction itself really isn’t all that useful anymore, much as I think anime really isn’t all that useful, but… I suppose it does have its purposes. I love reading, but at the end of the day, it kind of takes away from other, more useful, creative pursuits. But that’s for another day).