everything but the girl

So I'm replying to a question from someone in FictionAlley Park, and the Google Ad at the bottom of the page - which I can't screencap because for some reason my MS Paint program is MIA - says the following:

Fanfiction Writing
Learn to write like a pro from HarperTeen editors and authors.
www.harperteenfanlit.com

It links me over to this page where Harper is using FanLib to encourage teens to write a story in pieces, using the FanLilb system where multiple people can submit sections or chapters, and then people vote and choose the one they like best and that becomes where the story goes next. Meg Cabot posted about it on her blog a few weeks ago, too. It's not the contest per se that I find intriguing.

It's the fact that Harper's is advertising it using the tag word fanfiction, even though it really isn't - it's original fic.

Is it another example of Fanfic Becoming Mainstreamed, or TPTB Knowing About And Being More Or Less Ok With At Least Some Fanfic? Is it another way to make Lee Goldberg's head explode as he surfs teh intrawebz?

I'm not sure. I don't know what Harper's google-ad people were envisioning when they wrote "fanfiction writing" and "learn to write like a pro" in their ad.

But it's really damned interesting and I'm wondering (a) what people who feel/want to feel that fanfic is a subversive/subculture/hidden thing think about yet another moment where a Really Big Company is Sort Of Jumping On The Bandwagon, and (b) whether people think this is a Bad Thing or a Good Thing.

Me, I'm all about the good. I think TPTB knowing about fanfic is terrific and fine and excellent as long as they don't try to bar it or shut it down, and when one uses fanfiction as a positive in an ad like this, it's (and her I get legalisticish again) a smidge of evidence that fanfic is a permitted act, or deemed a form of fair use, or allowed under an implied license unless an author explicitly states otherwise. Not a smoking gun, but a smidge of Good And Positive Support. And that's all about the good.

I hope.

ETA: Yes, I said as long as they don't try to bar it or shut it down above. As long as they don't try to bar it. As long as they don't try to shut it down.

This was a bit of a linguistic shorthand-abbreviation for my it-would-take-many-paragraphs-to-explain feeling about fanfiction as a matter of law, but so nobody gets the wrong idea, here's my take, based on copyright and trademark law today, October 25, 2006: I think that noncommercial fanfic (meaning fanfic that isn't sold like books are sold or where people have to pay to read; I believe that the lines surrounding whether one makes money from fanfic are blurrier where Google ads appear on the page, or a link to an Amazon or WB store is there, or there's some other potential financial support for the entity hosting the fanfic, but in circumstances like that experienced by the Harry Potter fandom, WB has consented to such links/ads/t-shirt sales/conference registration fees), as a general rule, falls under the Fair Use provisions of the Copyright Act because it's commentary on the source text, and qualifies as noncommercial usage under the Lanham Act and common law trademark laws for purposes of trademark infringement, but I haven't yet given enough examination to the recent dilution laws signed by Bush this past month to determine the full potential impact on fanfiction, although I'd be completely entertained by the Can Voldemort Be Tarnished? hypothetical. For more on law and fanfiction, I recommend Meredith McCardle's 2003 law journal piece (it's a PDF) as well as Rebecca Tushnet's 2004 Yale Law Journal piece, Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech and How Copying Serves It (also a PDF).

Excerpts from a dialogue I've been having with someone on HPfGU

I suggested, as I am wont to do, that if Draco ever gets over his Supposed To Be Evil thing, then he and Hermione might make a good match in canon, much in a manner that parallels Darcy & Elizabeth in Pride & Prejudice.

Various people who think Draco is Evil And Unredeemable laughed at me, as they are wont to do, which I can deal with. I make my arguments, they say they don't see it in canon, and eventually they might agree on the tiny tiny issues of Should Crouch As Moody Have Smashed Him From Floor to Ceiling (correct answer: no) and Was He Evil When He Reported Harry For Rulebreaking (correct answer: no).

But one person seems to have become incredibly confused about what I was suggesting, and posted:
**I'm fascinated by the widely divergent interpretations of canon on
this list, although I worry that sometimes fanon is making the water
very muddy.**

Erm. In other words, I have become muddied by reading so much fanfic that I now can only see canon through the prism/prison of all the fanfic I've read, when the truth is, (a) I am canon-obsessive with regard to fanfic, such that Lori, Cassie, Eb, Rhysenn and others use me to make sure their fics are canon-compliant, and (b) I;ve actually simply turned by personal take on canon into fanfic.

She replied
> I think that any time people use fanfic examples to support their
> opinions of canon, they are mixing apples and oranges. They are
> taking characters that share the same names as JKR's, making them do
> and say things that JKR has never had them do, and then
> extrapolating arguments from this new, artificial construct.
> Am I the only one bothered by this?

And I said...

I'm not sure what you mean bby "using fanfic in this way". I did not use any
fanfic in my original post when I suggested that in a manner that parallels
Pride & Prejudice, Draco might find it in him to overcome the elements of his
attitude and behaviour that would preclude a relationship with Hermione (see
various Draco Redemption threads). I admit that in rereading the books back in
2000, I did look at the narration and events from other perspectives - as the
book is told almost entirely in third person limited and from Harry's
perspective, we rarely know what the other characters are truly thinking, as
we see everything more or less through Harry's eyes.

Canon itself plays with perspective in a fascinating way - on your first read
of Goblet of Fire, for example, the reader likely sees Moody as a good guy
almost all the way through the book - but on a second read, knowing that Moody
is really Barty Crouch, faithful servant of Voldemort, things he does which at
first seemed delightful or at least benign take on a sinister glow - things
like giving the book to Neville (obviously) but also things like his physical
abuse of Draco (slamming him from floor to ceiling, moreso than the
transfiguration) - and while we have a perfectly good explanation of the
former (he wanted Harry to get access to the gillyweed information), the
"obvious" explanation for the latter is somewhat sketchy. That explanation
would be that he wanted to be on Harry's good side by showing himself to be an
enemy of Draco's. But that doesn't really explain it all, to me - it seemed
clear to me that he had a vendetta against Draco as the wealthy, at least
superficially pampered child whose father was a Death Eater who walked free,
and who kept his stature when even Crouch's own father lost face because of
his familial relationship to a "convicted" Death Eater.

My conclusion is borne out by canon at least as well as any conclusion that
Neville is under a memory charm, but I have seen far fewer claims that making
a conclusion like that about Neville is fanon based or stems from reading too
much fanfic or that those who believe such things are getting confused between
things written by JKR's fans, and by her, herself.

I do admit to being troubled when people garble things from canon and fanfic -
I've seen people wonder whether Orla Quirke or Aiden Lynch were fanfic
characters (they're not, they're both in GoF) or be sure that JKR has said in
the english-language versions of the book that Blaise is a girl or a boy, or
state that Ron and Hermione kissed in GoF. It does bother me when people mix
up their fictional "facts".

However, it never bothers me when fanfic causes someone to think about a
character a little differently, or to view a scene from a different
perspective. JKR makes it SO EASY for us to do so, it's almost as if she wants
us to examine certain things from the book from multiple perspectives! Just
look at the debate about the Shrieking Shack Prank! Snape sees it one way,
Sirius another, and Lupin probably a third. Or even look at Sirius' take on
the real Moody, versus what Snape thinks about him - Sirius says that Moody
didn't use unforgivable curses unless he really had to; anyone want to bet
that Snape thinks Moody may be more like the police officer who says he had to
shoot the unarmed suspect because he *thought* said suspect had a weapon? Is
the latter conjecture? Possibly - but it's an entirely canon-based conclusion,
just like a conclusion that Lily and James died young.

I went back today and paged through Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys' novel which
has been called a literary masterpiece. It's Jane Eyre fanfic - even the
premise behind Rhys' writing of it is the same as many of those of us who
write fanfic have. I found a comment in a literary journal today that said,
"Rhys was always fascinated by Bronte+IBk-s novel +IBM especially the underlying
story that was never told. Who was Mrs. Rochester, that mad woman locked-up in
the attic? What was Rochester+IBk-s terrible secret? In Antoinette, Rhys has
recreated that imprisoned woman, providing a haunting, tragic portrait of the
fine line between love and madness." It also noted that there has been no 19th
century wife more demonized than Mrs Rochester. By creating a "redemption"
scenario for her, has Jean Rhys somehow ruined Jane Eyre for those who've read
her book? Debatable. Is she making Mrs Rochester do and say things that
Charlotte Bronte never intended? Certainly! Is that wrong or ruinous? Not from
my perspective - but then again, I've always loved Rashamon and Rashamon-esque
things.

To give a less "highbrow" example, look at Anne Rice's Interview With a
Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. The former is entirely from Louis'
perspective, the latter from Lestat's - and the cover, to some extent, the
same scenes and acts. We learn when reading Lestat that many things that Louis
assumed about him - his background, his motives - were incorrect, and it's
fascinating to go back and reread the first book, knowing the other point of
view as you do once you've read the second one.

---

I am convinced that she thinks I am arguing things based on what I've read in fanfic, or what I've written into fanfic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just
because someone doesn't see an argument as canon-based doesn't mean that it isn't actually just that. We're all reading the same books; none of us is reading them exactly like anyone else.

What is wrong with speculating, anyway?