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.

There are pairings that I wouldn't seek out. If you look at PolyRecs, shrift has generally been reccing the Snape/Harry, and I've been reccing the Sirius/Remus. However, I'll read *anything* Resonant writes.

(Tries to stifle caveat. Fails.)

Except RPF.

"The Familiar" was hysterical and insightful.

I can't help it that I'm a Snape ho.

I'm realizing that wasn't too coherent.

I'll read pretty much anything. It's just that some things trip my trigger more obviously.

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.

This was what I was referring to when I included Joyce on the list. No - he wasn't writing RPF. I never said he did. However, he is part of a literary tradition of including real people in his work when he was pissed at them. Revenging himself through literature. Whether he got sued is moot. He did not have a scruple against portraying real people in his fiction. So with Joyce I wasn't talking about Nora/Molly, but the fact that he got in a legal wrangle with some guy who pissed him off and wrote that person into Ullysses as a total asshole. This is what Stoppard plays with in Travesties.

Writing a thinly veiled roman à clef where the names have been changed but the personal details exposed is enough of a literary tradition to have its own name.

My only point about this is: there's no hard line in regular literature about this (excepting libel). But there is a tradition of it.

My only point about this is: there's no hard line in regular literature about this (excepting libel). But there is a tradition of it.

But what's the point of that point?

But what's the point of that point?

Referring back to my early post, saying that my personal squick against RPF is nonexistant since there's plenty of precedent, and I think writers are crabby little hos who have always abused ethical boundaries for the good of fiction.