The Uncanny Valley is a fascinating concept. It is written for things close to a human but not quite there. When I first read about it, it talked about emotional attachment. As graphics got better, starting with stick or cartoon characters and moving into CGI, viewers established stronger emotional attachments to the characters.
Image from the Wikipedia site.
But, then there is this magic point where suddenly the images are too real and the attachment drops sharply. We've seen that in animated CGI movies. We started with very cartoon characters and got more realistic. Somewhere around the point of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, things started to break down. The characters were very realistic, but it got close enough that the human brain wanted to start looking for the non-verbal cues: heart beat, twitches in the skin, three-dimensions, and the million little things we use every single day. And, since the computers couldn't get there, we ended up feeling that something was just “wrong” with the characters and then lost that attachment.
The animation industry has adapted. If you notice the more recent Disney movies, they've consolidated on a plastic-looking figures. No doubt the results of a lot of market research on the viewers. They mapped out the valley and found the best place that covers the widest amount of their audience.
So, what does that mean to me? Well, I have a huge valley. Like the Grand Canyon of Uncanny Valleys. What other people find charming and wonderful, I think is completely wrong. I remember one point I was standing in the middle of the Chicago Museum of Art getting freaked out by a painting. An oil painting was too “real” for me.
I don't like false realism. Most attempts at making something realistic bother me. Disney's plastic characters are actually right on the edge for me. They bother me greatly, when I watch them, but the characters and plot manage to gloss it over. If I didn't have the story, I wouldn't watch anything since Lilo and Stitch.
This applies to erotica and stories too. I love over-the-top blood and gore. I like vampires and werewolves (I really, really like werewolves). But, more than anything else, I like anime. I love drawn characters and settings. Places that could never be in reality and actions that have no basis in our world. That is my comfort level when it comes to the Uncanny Valley.
You may notice that the covers of my novels are drawn instead of stock photography. That was intentional. I don't want a creepy cover for me and stock photography bothers me. I dream and write in illustrations, images that can't happen in reality. If I could describe my dreams, anime and hentai would probably be more accurate than any Hollywood movie.