Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT - Strips 4731-4735 (28th February to 4th March 2022)

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flondrix:

--- Quote from: Thrillho on 28 Feb 2022, 05:18 ---Several people I know are major influences on characters in a novel another friend of theirs wrote.

I have it on my shelf to eventually read, as it includes two characters based on my partners, but one of the other people in had the common indecency to die of a heart attack unexpectedly a few weeks ago despite only being 39, which makes that book some of the last of him last in the world, and I'm not sure how to feel about it.

I've never been one for fanfic, I don't really get it, but a lot of my friends are. I would have thought that being too particularly conscious of people you know showing up in your fiction would be a little bit 'not done', as it were, especially if it is sexy fanfiction.

I'm also not sure it's entirely fair to refer to all slash as a toxic cesspit?

--- End quote ---
I heard an author being interviewed on NPR, who had written a novel that was more or less based on his family.  The novel had been turned into a movie, and he had tried to avoid his mother seeing the movie, without success.  She asked him, "Why didn't you want me to see your movie?"  "Well, your character has a sex scene."  "Yes, but it's with Richard Gere."

shanejayell:
As a fanficcer, no I wouldn't use real people as OCs. I HAVE occassionally used real life events as basis of stories, so I could sorta see that....

Wombat:
I'm guilty of writing real life fanfiction (or friend fiction, thanks Tina Belcher), but it was in high school. My friends who were aware of it were on board, anyway. (Those who weren't aware tended to be friends' crushes, which featured as plot points in the story.)

John Allenson:
I don't agree with the divide between "fanfic" and "fiction".  The ethics should be the same whether it's Margaret Atwood or Hanners.

Real people get put into fiction all the time; Shakespeare and Vincent van Gogh showed up in Doctor Who.  Fictionalized versions of the British Royal family are quite popular. 
I know authors who ask people for permission before using versions of them in stories.  I'd be careful about making caricatures or emphasizing unpleasant features.  I'd be careful about creep factors, (I know a murder mystery writer whose killers and detectives are fully OC but whose victim are thinly disguised versions of acquaintences.)

flondrix:
Public figures are fair game.  Public figures such as Donald Trump have no rights whatsoever.  SCORCHED EARTH!

I have wondered how it works for authors of alternate history, though.  Suppose I write an alternate history in which the Beatles never made it, and Prime Minister Lennon is embroiled in a scandal in which it has been alleged that he has been cheating on his wife Cynthia with an avant-guard artist named Yoko Ono, which is actually a smokescreen diverting public attention from the less titillating financial misdealings he has been involved in.  Meanwhile Paul McCartney's score for the latest Star Wars installment has been panned by critics as "insipid" and "highly derivative."  Ringo Starr has been portrayed by a robot since the early 2000's in every timeline, regardless of whether "The Beatles" exist or not.  How much trouble am I in?

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