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.

Ah. Lots of things that squick me have plenty of precedent.

Lots of things that squick me have plenty of precedent.

Sure. Vivisection, Steve Gutenberg, soy-based meat products. It doesn't make it right. But it does lessen any potential squick I might feel since I presume the very nature of the writing process (or creative process) has always included the Real Person itch, which has been scratched in a variety of ways. Faulkner had a famous quote that given the choice between rescuing grandmas or masterpieces from a burning museum he'd take the paintings. Nobody has yet written a piece of puppyslash (I'll presume) worthy of compare to Ullysses. But there's no reason it couldn't happen. And if it did, I'd say the privacy issues are secondary.

An actual example might be Todd Haynes Superstar where he did Karen Carpenter's bio using barbie dolls. The movie is illegal - he doesn't have the legal right to tell her story. But that movie is a better work of art than the Carpenter's entire recorded legacy, and it's my assertion that the art trumps the legal or moral issues (in that instance).

Might I suggest, Hec-o-mine, that you're trying to argue a bunch of people out of their own ethical choices, and that, as such, you're gonna fail even if you turn out to be Jesus Christ on a stick with divine revelation on your side, and all you're doing is testing tempers.

Cause, you know, ethical choices, personal squick levels -- these aren't necessarily tied to things like logic, tradition, precedent, "subversion", or anything else you can argue. Are you going to try to convince me I should like foie gras next? (Yes, I hate foie gras.)

Burrell, that's interesting to know about Joyce. (I know practically nothing about Joyce.)

So. How about that fanfic?

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.

Or the point Burrell made earlier. I'm just saying unethical artists make great art and I'd rather have the art than the ethical artist.

Might I suggest, Hec-o-mine, that you're trying to argue a bunch of people out of their own ethical choices,

Honestly, I'm not. I think ethics is a very individual, almost private act and no less than your primary responsibility as a thinking person on this earth. To know and understand your own choices.

and that, as such, you're gonna fail even if you turn out to be Jesus Christ on a stick with divine revelation on your side, and all you're doing is testing tempers.

For which I apologize. I don't mean to stomp through everybody else's morality telling them to Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics (C.O.Y.O.T.E.) - and maybe I have. Truly, I respect everybody's ethics and arguments here.

But I'll stick to my note at the top of this post: more important to have great art than ethical artists. They're not exclusive, but there will be times when they are in conflict. I wouldn't close that door to an artist on moral grounds. It's more important that Superstar be available than Karen Carpenter's estate be respected.

more important to have great art than ethical artists

More important to you, I'm assuming. Or are you positing that it's more important for humanity?

I'd rather have ethical art, myself. Much like I'd rather have ethical, say, medical research. Because it's not all about me, and what I experience. It's also about (in my own little worldview), about who suffered unwillingly to get me to that experience.