The ethics of writing

[lobelia321]

Writing the orc-fic has been a very interesting experience.

First, it was interesting in the writing. Because it was my first fps and I was writing about people who were *not* actors and most of whom were not even people. It was cathartic. Slashing orcs meant that I could vomit all that shit and violence and killing right out onto the page -- things and issues that would seem much too OTT for rps, but that, in a funny, roundabout way, are actually much closer to real 'real life' than the romantic smut of rps. Because, alas, no matter what orcs do, it can never be as bad as what people do to each other.

Second, it is interesting in the feedback. Fb for fps is different (and not only because you get it from people you normally never hear of). People noticed different things, and orcs, I guess, are closer to original characters than anything else in Middle Earth - because there's so little canon to go with. Most readers say they started out squicked and ended up feeling sorry for the orc, and that got me thinking about:

Third, the ambivalence of evil and the ethics of writing. I discovered, when writing Average that I can't write about characters I do not empathise with and that I have an ethical commitment to writing in a certain way. So I knew that I could not write an Orc without trying to crawl into his head a bit and find some sort of connection. Because there is true horror in being at the mercy of evil but the horror is perhaps even greater if you *are* evil (like the orc). Pippin can escape but the orc can never escape. And that's what I mean by ethics: that as a writer I think one ought to try and crawl into characters' heads, without judging, and to capture all of the pathos and ambivalence that is there. Let the readers and the politicians judge, but not the writers.

And this is why writing the orc was good. Because there is more ambivalence in an orc than in, say, Billy Boyd. Of course, the orc's evil is very in your face; orcs are brutish thugs not masterminds of manipulation. But as an rps-writer, I find it almost impossible to write about more everyday evil. We all know it goes on and that so-called normal people harbour all sorts of dreadful secrets, but the nature of rps is such that I (at any rate) feel very reluctant to write anything that is really disrespectful of the rl actors and especially their families, or that could be construed as libellous.

Maybe the orcs will finally propel me into original fiction? Because if you can't impute evil to rl people, you may just have to invent it.

Comments

[andraste-oz.livejournal.com]

The orc-fic was interesting, and your post is interesting too. I've been mulling over some of these issues in my head too, over the past few days.

I was especially struck by this:

the nature of rps is such that I (at any rate) feel very reluctant to write anything that is really disrespectful of the rl actors and especially their families, or that could be construed as libellous.

I think it's good as an RPS writer to know that you have limits and exactly where they are. I'm squicked by things which are nasty about the actors' families, or which portray the actors themselves as psychopathic, far more than I was by the orc-fic. Although I was squicked out by that, but it was almost an indulgent, deliberate squicking. And I ended up feeling sorry for the orc too :)