 (say, in the sense that, relative to worlds in which Stalin fits the orthodox account of his activities, Stalin is crueler than any other dictator in the actual world). (2) is intended to be a substantive claim about how Stalin actually was, not a claim about how he might have been. In addition, a possibilist reading like (1P) makes it hard to make sense of the attitudes we hold towards fictional characters (Kroon 2008: 201, 2012). Our belief in Holmes’s great cleverness explains our admiration for Holmes, just as our belief in Anna Karenina’s suffering explains our pity for Anna Karenina. It is hard to see how our belief in Holmes’s possible cleverness could do this. In reply, Priest has insisted that this is precisely how we should understand such claims: Holmes is admired for the things he does in the Holmes worlds, while a real individual such as Mandela is admired for what he actually did (2016: 217). But this seems to beg the question. Surely the mere fact that there are possible worlds in which Stalin dedicates his life to rescuing migrants from death in the Mediterranean sea, say, does not make him worthy of admiration in the actual world, although it may make him an object of admiration to people in these other worlds. Why should it be any different with Holmes?