Desiderius Price

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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.)

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.

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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

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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.

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).

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