Yeah, that's my feeling as well. I'd been looking for official reports on the efforts to rehabilitate these people, and my main interest was in exploring the psychological reality of the experiences. But at the time it was in direct response to a class I'd taken on UN Peacekeeping missions, and thus the subject matter wasn't that widely discussed in fandom (at the time). So I thought it might also be an opportunity to raise an issue a lot of people didn't have a lot of familiarity with.
So now I'm thinking, y'know, that it's kind of weird that I'm only hesitant to tackle it because of its immediate topicality. Yet that's usually the way--people are far more ready to write about tragedies of the last century, for instance, and regularly mine these horrific events for inspiration. Time and emotional distance play a role here.
I still find the subject matter really interesting. And I do think there are ways to approach it from outside that particular framework (within the verse there's still room for psychological exploration of the characters, just not in terms of DDR). I have to decide now if it was wrong for me to want to appropriate this sort of setting and these kinds of experiences, and if it was only in regards to it's sudden immediacy that I felt any sense of reticence at all. This is a good check for me, as there's always a need to understand what responsibility a writer has to the subject matter when the material in question is someone's real life suffering.
So now I'm thinking, y'know, that it's kind of weird that I'm only hesitant to tackle it because of its immediate topicality. Yet that's usually the way--people are far more ready to write about tragedies of the last century, for instance, and regularly mine these horrific events for inspiration. Time and emotional distance play a role here.
I still find the subject matter really interesting. And I do think there are ways to approach it from outside that particular framework (within the verse there's still room for psychological exploration of the characters, just not in terms of DDR). I have to decide now if it was wrong for me to want to appropriate this sort of setting and these kinds of experiences, and if it was only in regards to it's sudden immediacy that I felt any sense of reticence at all. This is a good check for me, as there's always a need to understand what responsibility a writer has to the subject matter when the material in question is someone's real life suffering.
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