Comment by tptacek
5 years ago
Do you weep for every member of John Updike's family? The same stuff happened to them!
The reality is, you don't; you never once thought about how Updike used his own relationships and those of his family and acquaintances as fodder. You care about this particular story for reasons other than principles. That's fine, but we should start by being honest about it.
I'm not sure what inconsistency you're pointing out; if I was related to John Updike I would not be happy if I ended up as a villain in one of his books. Wouldn't anyone not enjoy that?
As a relatively famous silicon valley person, it might actually happen to you some day, and although it would probably never happen to me I can imagine empathizing with you if you ever ended up as the bad guy in a short story.
I assume whomever bases a fictional character after me will at least get the detail right that I live in Chicago, not Silicon Valley.