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Suppose the soft line here is a) real person is already a public figure, on a “stage”, consistent to their public behavior, and it’s incidental to your story, vs b) main-character back at the hotel room, vs c) somebody you knew back in high school. For B/C, even if I base it on a real person, the name’s being changed, with enough details tweaked to avoid doxxing. For groups, I’ll typically do a rename too.

An emotional rollercoaster day: two losses; two gains. Cheers to a calmer day tomorrow for everyone.

After a rather disturbing moment in archive cleaning, I can most honest say that I will not be telling anyone how to get to Sesame Street.

Somehow, I’m intrigued to the details… maybe I’ve got a dirty mind, but it could be like one toxic review/spam-advert I received on FF.net that was… NUKE, NUKE, NUKE, not only the review, but also wiped out the notification email too. (And normally I let the notification emails linger.)

Yeah, mine is that the character is watching the actor speak about their appearance in Playboy (which is a real thing that happened with the actor), and my fictional character suggests that they were hot and how they sorta looked like their fictional character.

I could imagine a historical rally/speech, or a fictional character getting an autograph at a convention. I do have a generic… “the Queen’s motorcade drove past my characters near Buckingham Palace” in my potter fanfic. So, this is why I can’t say never, never. Within my originals, it’s near future, not today, so I can make up new shows & celebrities

You’re right, never say never but I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would. The closest that I’ve come is mentioning real people in my fics. For instance, in one of my fics, I had a character watching TV and they were watching a celebrity interview with an actor who was actually an actor in the show. It’s more of a throw away line. I’ve also done things like named OC characters after the actors that I like, whether they’re part of the fandom I’m writing about.

Well, flip the tables around and imagine it’s a fanfic with YOU as the central character. It’d be a fictional narrative putting events/actions into your own personal history/future, yeah, that’d be disturbing. (And if it’s derogatory/slanderous, the author opens themselves up to a lawsuit too.) Normally I bend over backwards to NOT associate my stories with real people/buildings/etc. So, I’ll make up town names, or at least scramble the road/street name the homes are on to avoid the Goonies House effect. It’s a fine line, but as a viewer, I know I was irritated when a show like Dead Like Me films in Vancouver BC and tries to pass it off as Seattle… it broke the immersion because I knew it was off.

Desiderius Price "I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to writing, usually because saying “never would” becomes an inducement to do just that." That's the absolute truth. It's because of that, I try to turn things I dislike, into challenges that broaden my imagination and world view. I also agree that writing about real people, is something that I would probably refrain from. However, with the rise of characters that are fictitious representations of real people, both directly and indirectly, there are even some shows, that I would rather avoid writing about, just because they toe, a palpably, unpopular grey line. For instance, I actually enjoyed the cartoon, The Prince, (I hate myself for admitting that), and I wanted to write a fan-fic to resolve it's cliffhanger ending. But I never wrote one, because I feel, that grey area, is essentially the same as writing about real people. And I'm not alone in the sentiment, that writing about characters who act as fictitious representations of real people, is essentially the same, as writing about those real people. I know that most people agree with me, since the decision to make prince George the main character of that show, was so overwhelmingly controversial, that the show's run, was ended, before the episodes were even aired.

I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to writing, usually because saying “never would” becomes an inducement to do just that. That said, involving a real person based fanfic would have a certain level of ick to it, likely invite lawsuits depending on what you’re depicting, so probably best avoided. REFERENCING a real person, can be alright though. JKR famously put Rupert’s first name into HBP (when Slughorn was trying to remember Harry’s friend’s name…). I’ve had Harry visit Graceland, so the name of Elvis comes up. Also when I wrote about my Harry getting a flood of hate mail, I put some addressed to the actor’s name with “Who’s …?” I’ve also loosely based some characters on real people before (won’t give names).