Sorry, the thinly-veiled thing is what I mean. It's a legal [Principle. Principle principle principle. AAAARRRGH.] that you can't libel the dead, right?

Dana speaks for me. RPF, and in particular RPS, is a car-wreck waiting to happen. If you (generically, not a Buffista) choose to write it, so be it, but I think it should be done in full awareness of the possible consequences. And I'm sorry, but I'm not going to leap to your defense.

Well, libel is premised on the fact that the statement in question can injure someone's reputation, which injury would have a real impact on their life. Can't really injure the dead. So no, no libel against the dead, although I'm unclear about situations like the Karen Carpenter thing. I'm very fuzzy about the rights of an estate to the likeness and so forth of a decedent.

At any rate, I don't think anyone's worried about defending the reputations of Justinian or El Cid from Guy Kay. I mean, how many readers really know the history well enough to figure out who he's talking about?

Can't an estate sue for libel, based on potential damage to the estate's future earnings off the dead person's image/likeness/reputation? (Because if someone accused Audrey Hepburn of being a child molester, I can guarantee her image wouldn't be licensed for those high-end watches.)

Then again, when Fred Astaire's estate licensed his image so he could dance with a Brand-Name Vacuum Cleaner, I know there was a lot of "Oh god, I think I may barf" behind the scenes, and some public wrangling. So that kind of post-mortem licensure, especially with interactivity, may be the "official", legal version of RPF. By which I mean it has nothing to do with art, and everything to do with money, but it makes people bristle in a similar way.

This is gonna be a long response post:

However, he is part of a literary tradition of including real people in his work when he was pissed at them.

That’s a different thing entirely than what I was referring to, actually. I can think of incidents where Joyce references real people who pissed him off, or influenced him (thin line for that guy), albeit in fictional form, with fictional names, etc., and I can think of scenes where he did what I said, included a real historical personage & recounted the actual history of what happened, but I do not think he necessarily knew those people himself. Plus, such scenes can only be described as incidental and not at all central to the narrative. I can think of only one or two scenes where Stephen confronts a historical person, for example George Moore, in a fictional scene. Again the scene is short, incidental and in no way can one argue that the scene is central to the narrative.

As far as I know, in RPF the RP is a central character, right? So I still have to argue that Joyce is doing something else.

Hec, if you want to argue that such fiction is a traditional genre, why not invoke a text that actually participates in RPF, such as Don DeLillo’s Libra? Is that not tony enough for you? And I can think of numerous films (although I can’t recall any titles) in which one or two of the main characters are historical figures. Joyce is a bad example, so why bring him up when numerous good examples abound?

I'm just saying unethical artists make great art and I'd rather have the art than the ethical artist.

Sometimes unethical artists make great art, but sometimes they just make bad art. Likewise sometimes a great work of art is also very ethical in its representation of other people that the artist knew. There is no demand that great art be unethical. For example, Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Like I said: separate issues. Conflating them makes things messy.

Yes, I am saying this. It was wrong to ban Ullysses even if Joyce was immoral to libel people.

By English law, it was libel. By American law, it wouldn’t be, because he wrote the truth. Also, illegal and immoral are not synonyms. Personally, I do have some ethical qualms about some of what he wrote, but those scenes are not among them. Even so, I think that calling Joyce’s an unethical artist is an unfortunate oversimplification, but as you can see, I have quite an investment in him.

Ah, but Ullysses wasn't banned for the libel, it was banned for the obscenity. (Or so I have always understood.)

In the US it was banned for obscenity alone. In England in Ireland, there were libel issues as well.

Kind of jumping in with a tangent, but what about people like David Sedaris? Who write presumably non-fiction, about real people with their real names, but embellish and generall make shit up to make it a better story? Where does that fall in the continuum?

Most creative non-fiction is actually truthful. I mean, by definition it’s all supposed to be truthful, but some of it fails the sniff test.

Dante's Inferno doesn't exist without him putting all of his (still living at the time) enemies in hell.

My memory was that he put all his then-dead enemies in hell, along with some of his then-dead friends.

RPF is all about telling fictional stories about real living human beings who are in no way involved in the fictional process, who don't know the writers, and who don't even have the choice as to whether they'll be fictionalized. Novelists who salvage bits and pieces from their own lives and those of their families and friends are generally doing more than this.

Yes, ITA. That’s why I think it is inappropriate to characterize Joyce as writing RPF. Go ahead and argue for RPF, but don't bring in an example like Joyce and then say that all puppyslash fic is simply following in his footsteps.

Can't an estate sue for libel, based on potential damage to the estate's future earnings off the dead person's image/likeness/reputation? (Because if someone accused Audrey Hepburn of being a child molester, I can guarantee her image wouldn't be licensed for those high-end watches.)

Nope. They might be able to sue for something having to do with diminishment of trademark/copyright, depending on the licensing arrangements, but not libel. Can't libel the dead, at least not under US law.

Also? Ulysses. Ulysses. Ulysses.

The Pedant Patrol thanks you all.

Michele, you funny. :-)

It's the one "L" thing again, come back to haunt me.

As far as I know, in RPF the RP is a central character, right? So I still have to argue that Joyce is doing something else.

I don't know if it needs to be a central or minor character. I used Joyce as an example of somebody who used real, living people in his fiction. That example was only one of many to establish that using RP in your fic cannot be the sole criteria of judgement. I didn't argue that Joyce wrote RPF. I asserted that there was a literary tradition of using real people to literary ends, that the issue was not solely a function of fanfic. People do not object to Ulysses on the basis of him using once-living humans as set-dressing.

Hec, if you want to argue that such fiction is a traditional genre, why not invoke a text that actually participates in RPF, such as Don DeLillo’s Libra? Is that not tony enough for you? And I can think of numerous films (although I can’t recall any titles) in which one or two of the main characters are historical figures. Joyce is a bad example, so why bring him up when numerous good examples abound?

DeLillo's tony enough for me. Let's put Joyce aside. I can put the whole discussion aside if you like - I don't know if I have any other points to make.

But I have to say y'all are conceding a lot of territory that makes it difficult to simply argue that RPF is morally wrong (if anybody wanted to make that case).

As one example, if Consuela thinks it's okay to write about dead people, then what of the instance of Ulysses (sorry Burrell)? They were alive when he wrote it. They're dead now. Now nobody cares about that issue. That doesn't make the point moot, it tends to support my argument that the value of the literature culturally is far greater than the infringement on the individual at the time.

Ultimately, the question for me is this: is there forbidden content? There are certainly things which will cause trouble if you write about them (the practical objections to RPF). There are legal questions of ownership (which fic-dom as a whole merrily tramples over every day in every way, sly disclaimers aside). But should any subject matter be forbidden to the artist? Nobody is compelled to read things they find reprehensible (or boring), but I don't think the line is drawn before the writer, but in front of the reader.

I don't think the line is drawn before the writer, but in front of the reader.

Which falls pretty much in line with most opinions here, right? With the understanding that the writers here are free to place their line wherever they want ...

I'd be surprised if you thought anything was okay "for art". I certainly don't. I just can't (and won't) do much about it.