mainstream reality, translated:

[thene]

(From the grauniad):

With such a sensitive topic, what makes you feel that you have the right to go in there and fictionalise these events?

I completely respect and understand how upsetting a book about a real person can be, though the concept rather than the content is perhaps the controversial aspect of Richard. But it is not setting any literary precedents. Half of Shakespeare's output took real people as starting points, and then dramatised their lives. Writers such as Norman Mailer or Truman Capote have done it in the true crime genre, so have hundreds of film-makers. Mailer can't have possibly known what was going on in Gary Gilmore's head, but that didn't make The Executioner's Song any less valid. Richard tackles very recent events and features people who are still around so, of course, it is a raw and emotive topic. Some people have said "How can you write a book like this having not known Richey personally?" to which I have responded "If I had known him personally there's no way I could have written it." I think it sometimes takes an impartial outsider to get to the heart of matters.

...the translation being that it's totally acceptable to write squicky real person fanfic about people who've died in the recent past provided you're a guy. Guys can write anything they feel like, it's called culture!