The plot thickens in fan fiction

Harry Potter and Hermione are lovers. Or maybe Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter are lovers. Or Harry has a cousin named Rae who is a wizard, too, and he's going to attend Hogwarts next year. Or Harry is dead, murdered in the war against Voldemort, but his friends must soldier on.

Why wait for the fifth Harry Potter book to be released June 21, when there are tens of thousands of alternate -- and unauthorized -- new Potter sequels already written?


		David Badders / P-I

Devotees of the J.K. Rowling books have taken the Potter world into their own pens, writing "fan fiction" stories and novels that continue, alter, or extrapolate from Rowling's universe.

And the Potter stories -- more than 70,000 archived on one Web site alone -- are just the latest in a prolific tradition that has been around at least since the "Star Trek" TV show's cult following began more than 30 years ago. Once limited to mimeographed copies and small-press zines, the fan-fiction genre has stratospherically exploded along with the rise of the Internet.

While science-fiction and fantasy books still are favored themes, there are now thousands of public writings posted for the most popular books, films, TV and comics.

"It's clear that the Web has expanded access ...," said Henry Jenkins, director of comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leading scholar on fan fiction. "It's expanded the pace, it's expanded the scale, it's made it more accessible to a broader range of people, it's led to greater diversification."

Some of the fan writings spin off literature (consider this take on Harper Lee's classic, posted on www.fanfiction.net: "Many years after the events of 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' Dill and Scout are happily married with children of their own. ...")

Some take on popular, even factory-line books: (A fan of the never-ending "Sweet Valley Twins" series for kids presented "An alternate ending to the flawed SVT #85, 'Elizabeth the Seventh Grader.' ")

In some cases -- in a shift Jenkins said was "totally verboten" before the Internet age -- the fanfics aren't even dealing with fiction. Anne Frank, in a crossover with the "Touched by an Angel" TV show, comes back in one posting to see what life is like for the next generation. (She travels to Duluth, where she sees her first shopping mall.) Fans write voluminous stories about real-life "characters" including Britney Spears and 'N Sync.

Reasons for writing vary, but writers frequently cite the welcoming and interactive "fanfic" community, as well as their love for the original source material.

Gwena Lanish, the pen name of a 21-year-old bioengineering student at the University of Washington, jokes that she reads "entirely too much fan fiction to escape all the calculus."

A bookworm and a Harry Potter fan, she began reading Potter fan fiction online, then co-wrote a playful online encyclopedia with her roommate. She began writing her own works after getting into a discussion "of all the things we had never seen" in fan fiction.

"It's a community ..." she said. "We had ideas, and wanted to share them, and also reviews (from readers) are addictive."

For Melissa Crady of Portland, 19, the craft "gives me a chance to better myself as a writer," and isn't necessarily an end in itself.

"Hopefully (it) will help to develop the skills to create your own characters someday if you are serious about writing," she said.

For overall quality, Jenkins noted that fan fiction generally follows Sturgeon's Law (science-fiction author Ted Sturgeon's rule that "90 percent of everything is crud.") With the quantities of postings online, that allows plenty of absolutely ghastly writing -- but also some that's fine and remarkably rich. Nearly every major science-fiction writer in the country, Jenkins said, started out writing for fandom.

Lanish has no professional aspirations, but said reading fan fiction adds to her enjoyment of the original "canon."

"I find myself more interested in parts of the book which had originally been secondary," she said, such as explorations of the character of Professor Severus Snape, and "this obsession" with Draco Malfoy, Harry's boy nemesis, who many fan-fiction writers believe has a hidden good-guy side.

Historically, said MIT expert Jenkins, storytellers have always felt that urge to expand and explore popular characters, such as Robin Hood and King Arthur.

But the objects of the current folk traditions, unlike the Arthurian legends, are under copyright protection, leading to an ongoing debate about whether fan fictions are legal -- or even fair to the characters' creators.

While many authors (including Rowling) have kind words for fan authors or take a don't-ask-don't-tell approach, several others try to impose restrictions on what can be written, while many others try to ban it entirely.

Orson Scott Card, a popular and prolific science-fiction writer, writes on his Web site that the work "while flattering, is also an attack on my means of livelihood. It is also a poor substitute for the writers' inventing their own characters and situations." He promises legal action against those who post it.

There's been no definitive case to decide the legality of fan fiction, experts say, and opinions differ on how permissible it is. Professor Justin Hughes of the Intellectual Property program at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, who has written on fan fiction, said the works generally are legal but cover a broad range of activities that "may cross the border into copyright or trademark liability."

A person writing fan fiction "almost certainly" infringes copyrights on characters and some trademarks, he said. But so long as the writers are not selling their work, and so long as the stories really are new, they are probably free of liability under "a strong fair use defense" in the law, he said.

Fans say the rise of the Internet has increased the corporate crackdowns on fan fiction as well. The online distribution doesn't make the works any more or less legal, but "copyright holders are more concerned with electronic media, because it is easier to reproduce, distribute and broadcast," said Professor David Ensign, who teaches copyright law at the University of Louisville.

Corporations and authors also can get more riled up when the fiction takes an X-rated turn. For instance, according to inside.com, in 2001 Warner Bros. threatened sexually explicit Harry Potter sites (a particular concern because the heroes -- although imaginary -- are all minors), but has since backed off, at least publicly.Legal or not, a large percentage of fan fiction stories focus on romance and sex.

Sharon Cumberland, a professor at Seattle University who has written on the topic, believes fan erotica is a way for women -- who she says are still the primary authors of fan fiction -- "to express desire in ways that have been socially prohibited in the past, and which continue to be publicly and generally taboo for women in our society."

The anonymity of the Internet, paradoxically combined with the welcoming fan fiction community, provides a safe way for women to explore desire, she said in a scholarly article.

After all, all fan fiction is all about exploring areas left unexamined in the original work.

"It reconstructs the characters into something the fans themselves would like to see, but the studios will never do," she said.

SAMPLING OF FAN FICTION SITES

A sampling of fan fiction sites. Warning: Some sites may contain adult sexual content!

www.fanfiction.net -- An exhaustive index with links to every kind of fan fiction from "Little House on the Prairie" to Shakespeare to Garfield. Separate categories for books, movies, anime and more.

www.fictionalley.org -- Bills itself as the largest fan fiction site in Harry Potter fandom, with more than 22,000 registered users. The thoroughly organized site also includes fan art, message boards and more.

www.harrypotterfanfiction.com/ -- Includes descriptions of and links to dozens of Harry Potter fan fiction sites.

Want a guide to Harry fan fiction? Check out this hilarious encyclopedia, written by two University of Washington students: www.riddikulus.org/authorLinks/Rugi_and_Gwena/

Looking for a child-appropriate site for Harry Potter fan fiction? Join an online list-serve such as http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Harry_fanfiction, which encourages parents to review content and mandates it all be rated G or PG. Yahoo Groups (www.yahoogroups.com) features hundreds of other list-serves for all varieties of fan fiction.

http://writersu.s5.com/ -- Called a "comprehensive guide to fan fiction," it's apparently inactive now, but still archives useful articles and tips. A highlight: guide to which authors and corporations allow fan fiction and which threaten legal action.

http://go.to/godawful -- Tired of separating the fan fiction gems from the chaff? The Godawful fan fiction site provides the chaff for you, including a "Star Trek" fanfic that reads more like a Seattle-area travel guide.

FAN FICTION TERMS

Mary Sue -- An uncomplimentary term for a character based on the fan-fiction author, frequently a character who is gorgeous, saves the day, and/or has a romantic liaison with one of the fictional heroes.

Slash -- Homoerotic fan fiction (the phrase originated from old "Star Trek" works that were described as Kirk/Spock stories; that is, Kirk-slash-Spock). The lesbian version is "alt" fiction; the heterosexual version is "het."

Beta reader -- Like the beta testers of the computer world, a beta reader looks at fanfic stories in progress to offer constructive critiques.

P-I reporter Rebekah Denn can be reached at 206-448-8190 or rebekahdenn@seattlepi.com.

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