Mentions of suicide, slavery, and brainwashing.
Creating short-lived characters for writing stories is unethical. However, what if the characters didn't mind dying? What if an author made characters that just want to play their part in a story, and then die? Wouldn't writing a story with them just be respecting their wishes?
First of all, death is bad, even when someone actively wants it. I will not say that someone should not have the choice to die, if that is really their final decision, but it's better when people can live lives that they enjoy enough that they don't want it to end.
In other words, even if you respect the wishes of people who choose to die, creating a person and then deliberately making them crave death seems unethical.
Second, most characters will have friends. Their friends will presumably also be characters in your story. Therefore it's not enough to make characters who want to die; you'd have to make characters who also want all of their friends to die.
Imagine you had technology that could create actual physical clones just by pressing a button. Now let's say you also had the capacity to brainwash them to be your willing slaves, also just by pressing the button. I think it's pretty clear that this would be unethical, and I think this is analogous to creating a character whose only purpose is doing your bidding.
You intended your characters to want to die, but maybe you will make a mistake. You are not in full conscious control of your characters at all times, and they can surprise you. It's a very real possibility that they will change their mind about wanting to die. Therefore, even if you believe that it's okay to create a character who wants to die, doing so is very dangerous.
Don't create characters who actively want to die. Please.
Date: 2021-01-12
Author: Emys