Going too far and backing off (in writing)

So I wrote book two in my "Lycanthropy Journals" series a couple of years ago, finished the book in its entirety, and just sort of put it to the side. Never read over the rough draft, never reviewed it at all. It was just sitting there gathering digital dust on my computer. I guess I got distracted with writing "Whirlwind" (my paranormal romance book – yeah, I actually wrote one of those, and it's actually pretty damn good), and with finishing my Halloween anthology. So I have recently been going back, reading over the draft of this book and editing it, because I need to write book three (it’s a trilogy, damn it. They come in threes). I don't remember most of the story. As I read it, it all sort of comes back to me, still not completely sure how the events led up to the finale, but then I got to this one chapter, and I basically freeze. I have no problem with excessive violence and pushing the edges with shit, but I read this chapter, and I could not believe I went as far as I did with pushing the lines. Maybe I was just trying to be "edgy" with my writing, I don't know. But I read it, and I did not even remember ever writing it, and I was almost in shock at what I had written so long ago (I'm taking out the chapter, or at least deleting most of it),  and it made me think of when shows try to push the limits, and as a result they go too far.

The show Hannibal is pretty good, but my wife stopped watching it after a scene where a psychopath (or sociopath – I really need to learn the actual difference) who is obsessed with making his sister miserable, has some surgeons give his sister a hysterectomy when he finds out she is pregnant.

It makes you kind-of glad the guy got his face cut off.

I still watch The Walking Dead, but it almost went too far with the two girls (about ten years old). One of them was psychotic, and killed her younger sister to prove that zombies are still people, and Carol, who is one of the two truly bad-asses on the show (the other being Glenn, not Darrell, damn it), takes her in a field and shoots her in the head.

Don't fuck with Glenn.

And Shameless – well, if you're easily offended, don't watch Shameless – it's in the title.

I guess sometimes you can push the limits but sometimes it just turns people away. I thought it was pretty messed up when Anakin went in and killed a bunch of children who were Jedi-in-training in episode III of Star Wars, but they didn't show this in detail, they just told what happened. In my book, I was building up just how crazy this psychotic killer is, but I guess some things need to be left out, and just implied (maybe I'll leave the chapter for the unrated version or something), but it just shows how forgetful a person can be about something they write in the past. Also, sometimes you don't realize what you've written when you've been drinking a lot and have just watched some independent horror film on Netflix (or ABC's of Death - don't watch that shit).