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Andromeda Romano-Lax's avatar

I have no answers but many of the same concerns and I appreciate hearing an author muse while she is *in the middle* of these questions, without certain answers or a fixed conclusion. A great conversation!

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Natalie McGlocklin's avatar

This is so so interesting. I feel like it’s just the beginning of the conversation. It’s scary to bring these things up because if you are on bookstagram or booktok, you know the community can be extremely self righteous to the point it shuts down discussion.

I see this forming into two bits - one about profiting off someone else’s story, and two about the manipulation of truth into fiction. Obviously they go hand and hand but they could be seen as two distinct crimes against subjects. It makes me think of all the insanely obvious Law and Order episodes that are so clearly based on real life cases. We all knew. To me it was removed enough it still felt like fiction, but I could absolutely understand the pain of someone who sees their own distorted truth in the image.

What do we owe public figures? What do we owe to our readers?

I don’t really know where to go with this but it’s got me thinking for sure!

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