So the classic obscenity rules for the stage? If it's too horrific it must be off stage even if you can still hear what's happening?
Hmm. Very interesting question that kept my brain occupied during a long bus trip, so thank you.
Normally I would say the key question is whether the violence/horror is included to achieve a particular artistic or storytelling effect, or whether it's just there as gratuitous indulgence.
Speaking strictly about my own personal preference, and not imposing it on anyone else: I do generally prefer extreme violence/horror to be kept offstage or left up to the imagination. I'm not really a fan of Black Library novels for this reason. I'll put up with it for the sake of a good story, though, or when it's employed to achieve a particular effect (GRR Martin's
A Song of Ice and Fire, Mary Gentle's
Ash books, etc.)
The first Alien film knew when to keep the horror offscreen (most of the deaths) and when to show it front-and-centre for maximum impact (the chestburster scene). On the other hand, I didn't like the way the violence was handled in the
Starship Troopers movie. It felt like it was just there because hey, why not.
Obviously YMMV, as TV Tropes says. (One person in my family loves gory zombie flicks, which I can't stomach--while another can't even watch the
Lord of the Rings films due to the battle scenes, which seem quite tame to me. Different strokes...)
However...
Black Library books are a tricky case because they're tie-in novels. This means they're quite restricted in what they can and can't do. Or at least they were when I read them back in the 2000s. They may have loosened up a bit these days; I'm not sure. But I doubt their writers have the artistic freedom that the author of an ordinary fantasy or sf novel does.
My general impression is that when you pick up a BL book, there's an unwritten understanding that you're gonna get a) a lot of fighting, with b) a lot of blood and guts. That's part of the appeal for a lot of people. I don't think it's a matter of 'Hey, no censorship! You can show the violence!' You
must. It's like the reverse of the stage obscenity rule. The reading audience expects it.
Contrast this with, say, Star Wars tie-in novels, which are a lot more sanitised, in keeping with the style of the films.
(Meanwhile BL books--or at least the few I've read--
do follow the stage obscenity rule when it comes to sex and swearing, which makes for a weird mix sometimes.)
So to my mind a lot of the violence in BL novels is gratuitous in one sense... yet in another way it's essential. It's there whether or not it serves the story--but if it wasn't there, the audience would feel cheated. Like a musical with no actual musical numbers. You wouldn't be getting what you were paying for.
If you got that level of violence in a Star Wars tie-in novel, you would likely feel repulsed, because you don't go to Star Wars for litres of blood or the brutal realities of war.
In the case of
Survival Instinct I suspect that Chambers may not have been able to make an artistic choice about whether to show Donna's choppy-chop scene or not. It would simply be a given that if Donna does something violent, it must be shown.
This doesn't mean he would have left the scene out if he could. I'm fairly sure he had no problem with it. He seems like a cheerful fan of the good ol' ultraviolence.
It just means we can't necessarily assume the scene is so graphic for purely artistic/storytelling reasons--to show the full horror Donna is capable of, or whatever. It may well be there because that's just how BL books work.
The question then becomes: if we must show her cut the guy up, how exactly do we describe it without losing the reader's empathy for her?
A scene like that runs the risk of making the reader lose interest in finishing the book, because they just don't want to spend any more time in that character's head. This can happen even if the character's actions make perfect sense in the context of the story. (The first Thomas Covenant fantasy novel, published in the 70s I believe, was infamous for this due to a rape scene. Another common no-go zone is cruelty to animals, especially pets.)
IIRC the guy Donna chops up betrayed her earlier and nearly succeeded in getting her killed. Plus she's repeatedly described as being completely unhinged and insanely violent. So what she does to the guy is perfectly in character and plausible. Yet I felt my enthusiasm to keep reading wobble dangerously. I almost shut the book and gave up at that point. I'm glad I didn't, because I enjoyed the rest of it. But I think it could have been better handled. I felt the descriptions crossed the line into torture porn at some points.
There was one sentence in particular about Donna feeling 'almost orgasmic joy' that was way over the top. (Quoting from memory here.) Again, it's totally in character for Donna to feel that way. It's just that I was like, 'Wait, I'm meant to take this psycho's side and care about their problems and follow them through this story? As the protagonist/hero, not the villain? Yeah, nah.'
Stabbing the noble creep in the eye with a fork? No problem. Shearing off that Goliath's head with broken glass? Fair enough. But hot chainsword on toe action was beyond my personal tolerance zone.
(I also remember raising an eyebrow at the fact that they could include that in a BL book, but not an everyday non-torture-related orgasm. Like I said, a weird mix.)
And yet... as mentioned, I've never heard anyone else complain about that scene. Why not?
It might be because the BL readership is self-selected. If you're not a fan of violent stuff, you probably won't read the book in the first place. It's not like the aforementioned Thomas Covenant example, which was probably read back in the day by every single person who liked
The Lord of the Rings and were expecting something similar. More like horror flicks--if you don't like 'em, you just don't watch 'em.
And the subset of people who would read a Necromunda novel during the game's comparative obscurity in the 2000s is smaller still. So you've narrowed down the audience quite a bit. Someone like me, who reads the occasional BL book because they love the worlds but aren't really into the bolter porn, is probably an outlier.
TL;DR--it's not you, it's me
