I want to be a kid again. See me staying home, bunking school. Knowing wrong from right just rules…

[draegonhawke]

Life, finances, writing, and the Fall Semester of classes at the University of Iowa have been kicking my ass with no end in sight, so I guess it's time for a philosophy post ramble. The theme today? One which has been eating at my brain recently: issues and considerations in morality/social responsibility when doing horrible things in roleplay

Comments

[eclective]

I'm having a similar issue with this myself right now, so this post particularly affected me.

In my case, I'm writing the backstory of a character who swings between antagonist and protagonist roles, but basically got quite a typical villain upbringing: was an experiment, was treated with clinical detachment to a level that most people would consider child abuse, etc. Right now I'm writing email conversations between the people who created her, and they are not pleasant things to write. I dislike my characters and I dislike writing my characters, and a big part of my discomfort is that I just don't like going there in my mind.

I used to not care. My opinion always used to be "it's fiction; indulging in this won't sap my morality". And then somewhere along the line I realised that very attitude was proof that it had, that I didn't care that I was thinking up all these horrible forms of torture in my head, that that didn't strike me as problematic at all. So nowadays, I try not to do it. But this story requires it, in order to be what

[draegonhawke]

*nodnod

[eclective]

Yeah, it's tricky. On the one hand, you risk desensitising people by presenting really awful things in an entertainment context; on the other, if you don't show how horrible they are people will get the feeling that these things are okay, which they're not. And then there's your own personal gut feelings about it, as complex as those can be, to factor into it.

Fiction can be a harsh mistress. :(

[starletfallen]

It's a hard line.

On the one hand, on a purely personal level, I get a strange enjoyment out of playing these... painful, terrible things. Not because they're good, but because I need to hurt. I'm a fucked up person, I know this. I'm extremely masochistic in many ways, very morbid in many ways, used to cut... Hurting my fictional characters as deeply as I can is, sometimes, my alternative to cutting.

But that's just for me.

On another, broader level, I know that this is part of a story. It's part of a character transformation, it's part of exploring the depths that people can go to without having to risk the people we see every day. Granted, you could take it too far, start emulating your characters... but we are rational people. We don't think what we're writing is good (morally), or right.

...I don't know, I ramble now.

[starletfallen]

But that is the difference between genius and insanity.