Fic and current news events.

[silver_sun]

No, there's nothing about fan fic in the news, rather this is about writing fic that has a suject matter that could be seen as similar to current events on the news.

Basically I've got a part finished fic (Started a few months ago) of which the later parts deal with a massive disease pandemic where a lot of people die (It's not apocalyptic style fic where only 1% or men or women or those under 18 etc survive, it's something that lies roughly halfway between the Black Death and Spanish Flu).

I'm not likely to get it finished soon as I've got two current fics I'm working on Northern Lights and Lives are for Living, and after that I've got the House of the Dead fic to do. So I'm looking at early in the New Year for this one.

So my thought is with Ebola in the news and likley to be for some months, would it be in bad taste to write a fic about disease pandemic? The disease in the fic isn't in anyway similar to Ebola and death rate from infection isn't anywhere near as high, it is mostly based on the Spanish Flu 1914 - but set current day.

What are peoples thoughts on this? Have any of you held off writing/posting a fic due to things in the news?

Comments

[asia27.livejournal.com]

If I may, since I'm a reader, not a writer, I don't see much wrong with this and for myself, I appreciate you're asking for people's thoughts. In fact, you might give the story a new twist. And sometimes, things in the news can inspire a fic with a valid opinion that might be held by many, many others.

The only time I felt blindsided by fanwriters' fic was 9/11; my Army son was there with his unit searching unsuccessfully for survivors ( I DID call his commanding officer at the base and left a specific message only he would understand). I worked in both Towers at different times, the last time being on the 79th floor at a firm that lost 2 people. I was fortunate to have left there at my request several months prior but it was unnerving, to say the least, to return the day they reopened the North Tower after repairs from the previous bombing; I cannot describe to this day the feeling that crawled up my spine as that elevator went up. I understood that writers wanted to pay tribute to those lost but sometimes, in that horrendous situation and its aftermath, it could bring up some unwanted memories.

[silver_sun]

Both writers and reader opinions are always welcome. I'm not sure I'd really be doing a new twist on something, more it's about the characters getting on with their everyday lives (which admittedly involves magic, but it isn't the kind of magic that can be used to cure people or prevent them from getting ill in the first place).

It's not a distaster movie style fall of civilisation as we know it and it isn't 'out dashing heroes race against time to save the world and find a cure'. The world goes on, people find a way and the main characters in the fic have to get on with living, dealing with ghosts, rogue wizards and making sure those doesn't end up in the official version of police reports.

Looking at it like that maybe it is a different take from the usual kind disease epidemic fic after all.

[jo02]

I wouldn't have any problem with reading a fic of this type in the near future. As you say, Ebola is all over the news these days, but it has been massively blown out of proportion because that is the way news media works. I don't mean to sound dismissive of the havoc it has caused in one small area of West Africa, but the only reason it is in the news at all is because it can be sensationalised, and as such has nothing to do with any story you are writing.

[silver_sun]

The media alway do massively inflate the scale and danger of things to sell their own particular brand of truth as they see it.


I think it's that part of what I've got written of it ( a very rough section or two, started back in May and left) the whole thing of the media blowing it about of proportion and it turning out like Bird Flu/Swine Flu - a whole lot of hype and thankfully few few deaths.

The story itself is about the characters (Rivers of London) getting on with life and trying to do their job in increasingly difficult conditions during an epidemic. And topics of media hype, people either being panicked by it or dismissive 'heard it all before, i'll come to nothing', airport screening and quarantines, and final things like curfews and limiting where and when people can meet.

(Not connected to this story but one day I will have to write something with Jack and Ianto meeting Nightingale and Peter, and Jack and Nightingale recognising each other because both of them look the same as they did back in the 1940s. There would have to be something about suits, Ianto's and Nightingale's.)

I tend to steer clear of a lot of the mainstream media for anything other than just the raw figures, and go to things like National Geographic for information. And I do find the raw data more worrying than the newspaper reports - I know they have an agenda, just the figures on their own don't. The number of cases are doubling about every 25 - 30 days dependent on country, and have been since the start of the outbreak, and unless a lot more international effort is put into helping those countries effected the figures for dead and infected are by the end of the year likely to be in the region of 16,000 -20,000 dead and 30,000-35,000 infected. These are lower than the figures the newspapers are shouting to get their sales, (which is 100,000+), but they are still terrible figures none the less.

It's going to be a while until I've got time to get on with this story and post it, so I think that I'll have to take a wait and see approach. If the situation in West Africa comes under control I'll go ahead and write, if it gets much worse and spread to other countries in large number then I think I would put on on hold for a while longer and write something else. For the sake of the people in the countries that are effected and the doctors and nurses from around the world that have gone their to help I hope that they manage to contain its spread and the number of new cases will soon start to fall.