--Tejal, London, England
A.B. Replies: As much as I would like to confirm the notion of celebrities as earthbound gods who know all and see all--including that wicked fantasy the B!tchling posted last night imagining a chain-mail bikini-clad Natalie Portman steering the Galactica into victory over the hordes of Mordor--I can't.
According to fan-fiction editors and others who keep their pointy Spocklike ears to the ground on matters like this, celebrities remain largely ignorant of fan fiction. Moderators of fanfic sites have told me they rarely hear any complaints or comments from celebrity lawyers or subjects. And presenting fan fiction to an idol is strictly verboten among these folks--bad form or something.
"My general impression is most stars don't know about fan fiction," says Chris, chairman of an annual fan-fiction convention, who asked this B!tch not to use his last name. "Certainly, if they do, they keep it to themselves."
Ian "Gandalf" McKellen once posted an approving note on his Website about fan fiction--but beyond that, stars have barely acknowledged the genre over the years.
For those who are lost, here's a primer: It's a genre in which amateur writers--usually female, usually under 20--reimagine the lives of characters from their favorite books, movies or TV shows. Think Captain Jack Sparrow versus the Uruk-Hai of Isengard. The writers usually post their stories on Web pages such as fanfiction.net.
Sometimes fanfic writers bypass the whole character façade and place the actors themselves at the center of the story.
"They break apart with the alacrity of the guilty," reads one online tale featuring Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Caribbean costar Keira Knightley. "Keira, her heartbeat loud in her ears, face flushing, cannot look at Johnny. She feigns heat exhaustion and escapes to the refreshment table to gulp cool water and not think of his eyes and hands on her..."
And the sickly ridges of her greyhoundlike ribcage rubbing up against Depp's sword like the love-rasps of a giant cricket in the throes of...where was I?
Oh, yes. The adults-only subsector of fanfic is called slash. Slash has been around since 1974, when a woman named Diane Marchant penned a short story called "A Fragment Out of Time." The wording was vague, but the them and him in the story are generally understood to be a randy Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.
Boy bands are a favorite fodder for slash. An online community called slacken_ties focuses on the lads of Franz Ferdinand. One widely circulated report claims lead singer Alex Kapranos shouted out his approval of the site at a gig in London: "Slackening ties for the girls at slacken_ties!"
That said, Tejal, Natalie Portman probably has no idea about that chain-mail bikini.
"You hear a horror story now and then about a fan presenting fic to actors, but those stories are passed around fan-fiction circles with a certain amount of dread and embarrassment," Chris tells this B!tch. "The notion of fan fiction...is something that's not to be brought to the attention of the powers that be. People don't want to see cease and desist orders start popping up all over the place!"