I do not consider it essentially different in the sense that they are different types of fiction. But I do find one essentially reprehensible and ethically problematic, and the other not.

Bwahaha! Try and stop me.

Hee. I love Evil Hec.

Hee. I love Evil Hec.

Speaking of which, I let Emmett watch Fellowship of the Ring tonight. During the fight against the cave troll? (and ita will like this) Emmett was chanting with great animation: "War! War! War!"

It doesn't quite have the exceedingly glib quotient of "Violence is cool" but I think the bloodlust is there. Also, true to form, Emmett thought Sauron (as glimpsed in the early flashbacks) was cool.

That reminds me of my cousin, who one day as a little kid announced to his mother, "I want to watch some violins." She was delighted, and helped him flip through channels until they found an orchestra, or something; but he started to twist with impatience again. No, not that; he said. Turns out he'd said he wanted to watch some violence.

Nevermind. t /Emily Littella

Man, I miss Gilda.

Heh. Sax and violins.

Also, Emmett tried to do Gimli's accent as the troll attacked and heaped all kinds of pseudo Dwarvish abuse at the troll.

Sax and violins.

BWAH!

Did you make that up?

I need that on a T-shirt. Or something.

Did you make that up?

Awww, kid, that's older than vaudeville. Which is itself so old as to be dead.

And just so Nutty doesn't think I am merely glib, and before Misha beats me about the head with 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannia (the scholar's edition!) - I want to say that I don't think there is a clear bright line. Everybody fudged at one point or another with exceptions to the No Real People Rule. But they were different exceptions at different places.

Once you have crossed the line to appropriating the characters then you have already entered the ethically tricky place and it gets slippery. Fic is subversive. Once you've allowed that, then you've moved away from one of the clear boundaries: authorship. Gut instinct is a useless indicator, because YGMV.

Really I don't have much to say about RPF. But I do have something to say about James Joyce. Bear with me, or hey, go ahead and skip it.

The James Joyce comparison really really doesn't work, on many many levels. First, he wasn't writing RPF, he was doing the very in vogue thing at the time, mining his own life for his writing. There was no one more exposed on that page than he. Second, as Michele (I think) said, he didn't write fictional tales about real people, he did the opposite, incorporating real, often very private, moments and reinventing them as fiction. Moreover the exceptions to that, the moments when he included "characters" that shared the same name as real historical people who did the same things those real people were well known to have done, he got his ass nailed to the fucking wall. The libel charges brought against him were at least partly to blame for why the book was banned in Ireland for so long. Third, the fact that he wrote great art doesn't mean that his methods weren't unethical. They are entirely separate issues in my book.

Now like I said, I don't have much to say about RPF. Go ahead and write it, don't write it, read it, don't read it, read it but feel dirty, whatever. No skin off my nose. Just don't compare it to Joyce, please.

Okay, I just don't get Snape/Harry slash. I don't see why anyone would want to write them, and yet Res along with many other of my favorite writers are doing so. Someone clue me in?

I don't see why anyone would want to write them.

Er. Isn't this a case of Your Pairing May Vary? Snape and Harry have a long enmity, but we know they're both on the side of the good. Conflict generates interest and subtext. Some people like to write Draco/Harry, others can't resist the Sexy Bitch that is Alan Rickman.

Also, it's a challenge, because it's a lot more difficult to write believable Snape/Harry than, say, Sirius/Remus or Ron/Harry. Lately, I've been writing stuff that I intentionally find challenging -- just for shits and giggles.

On a personal note, I find Snape to be the most interesting character in the books, but then, I been firmly in the Morally Ambiguous corner for decades.

I often get told, "I don't normally read this pairing, but --" in feedback. I'm such a bifictional fannish crackwhore that that sort of thing doesn't always compute.