Not like I thought about this over lunch or anything.

Well I need more hours in a day as well, but then again… why not? I might have a few annoyed male elves who will stomp their feet and will pout that they want in too…

(Now you’ve given me a little idea…*grin* (No, not an archive by itself, but… hmm. *goes off furiously to think*)

I don’t feel right telling someone they are wrong in a public post, unless it’s a discussion or a debate.

I wanted to cheer when I read this. I have had this view for years, that unless I know the person wants public concrit, then I always handle it privately and, then, only after asking. From a purely selfish perspective, I don’t want to take the time to write an in-depth critique of a story the author has no plans of editing! From a less selfish perspective, not everyone is trying to be the next Ursula K. LeGuin, and I respect those who are just writing to have fun. My opinions are not so pressing that I can’t keep them to myself.

But I suggested in a discussion of concrit once that it is a good idea to ask before offering concrit, and people were aghast! I don’t think it’s rude, necessarily, but the same people who complain that writers ignore their concrit might get better mileage, I said, if they asked the author first if she cared for concrit.

Anyway, I’m glad that there’s at least two of us who do it this way.

I also once recieved *unsolicited* “beta advice” that a certain word I used was wrong–it was “too modern” and “too American”! I was able to show the person a citatation that the word was in use in England as early as the 17th c. I was huffily informed that perhaps it was, but it wasn’t common and it didn’t “look” right.

Valar. Don’t even get me started on the whole “American versus British English” debate. I’m a U.S. citizen, and I write in the language I have used my whole life and that is part of my identity as an author. Or the notion that if a word was not around before or during the Renaissance, then it is off-limits to Tolkien authors. The books were written as “translations” of other, older (imaginary) sources, so to write in the actual language of the sources, they’d have to be in Westron, Sindarin, or Quenya. JRRT’s early 20th-century British voice is just the voice of another translator; my voice in my stories is my (21st-century U.S.) voice as a translator.

I am sometimes tempted to write a Tolkien story in Middle English. Concerned that a word isn’t old enough or English enough? Well there ya go.

@Larner: *applauds* Well said!

I am, at times, tempted to set up an archive for stories about the women of Middle-earth. If only I had more hours in the day …

There’s no question that there are a lot of books and stories and movies and such that focus on male characters, and certainly the vast majority of the major characters in LOTR, the Sil, Children of Hurin, and the rest of Tolkien’s Arda-based works are male. And at the moment I’m working on a short story that has five male characters and two female ones, four of the males canonical and the two females OC. That the two females are ponies is perhaps lamentable.

But the plot of the latter part of the story looks at the females we know as names in family trees, and how they might have related to Frodo Baggins. I hope that although they don’t appear in person in this particular story, still they have had an impact and, I hope, are seen as individuals worthy of respect and even honor. And I’ve tried to do this with the other stories I’ve written as well: I hope that my version of Arwen isn’t seen as retiring and wimpy, and that my Eowyn isn’t too one-dimensional; I’ve tried to make Esmeralda Took Brandybuck and Menegilda Goold Brandybuck into women we can admire even at the times they might exasperate us; I’ve written Eglantine Banks Took as a bit hysterical and yet at the same time I hope sympathetic so that we can begin to appreciate just why she tries to reduce Pippin’s accomplishments to “he was safe, my little boy!” I’ve tried to give Gilraen reason to feel frustrated and fearful, having given so much hope to others she’s left none for herself. I’ve even tried to give Lobelia and Lalia a human side so that although they are the characters we love to hate, we also can truly feel sorry for them because they are so much less than they could have been, and much of that due to their own choices–and yet there is the chink in their selfishness that allows for one to see how they might find their salvation, as we know Lobelia in the end did.

Tolkien and Lewis and others within the Inklings felt that since they couldn’t find the types of stories they wanted to read available in the world, then it was up to them to write them. And I think that the same is true for us. If we want stories of realistic women, we need to write them! Most fanfiction writers in our fandom are female, after all; we all know both good and strong and weak and wimpy women–let’s get them depicted.

I believe I’m doing my part in making this happen, and I know that Barbara is doing so and most others who’ve written to this thread.

It’s up to us to write the types of stories we want to see if we are going to lead the way to others leaving off writing basically male-based stories. Tolkien managed to prove that fantasy is a viable genre to write for adults, against all the conventional wisdom at the time that dictated that fantasy was strictly for children to read or to be read TO children. Well, if we want Arda-based stories in which richly characterized women abound, it’s up to us to put them there if others won’t do it for us!

I absolutely agree. When I first began to write fanfic, from the very first story I wrote, I received advice and encouragement from those who were already writing and posting, whose stories I read and admired. That generous response made me determined to do the same for others.

I always cut a brand new writer a *lot* of slack, in terms of writing, storyline, style and canon. I try to leave encouraging and welcoming comments, and if there are some points in the story I think could be improved, and I have the time for it, I will PM the author and offer my services as a beta. And unless I know an author extremely well, I also put concrit in a PM. I don’t feel right telling someone they are wrong in a public post, unless it’s a discussion or a debate.

If I can’t say *something* postitive about a story, I don’t say anything about it.

Dawn said: The funny thing to me–and I’ve been saying this for years and never had a canatic answer me on this point–is how many people will ding a “canon mistake” without providing a quote from the book to prove what they’re saying. I have never had a canatic say to me, “This is wrong canonically,” and back up her/his words with a quote or even a rough cite from the book. Even after I’ve asked for clarification, I am answered with silence. I’ve had discussions with people on canonical interpretation in my stories where they bring their quotes and I bring mine, but never have I been told flat out, “This is wrong,” and shown proof that it actually is.

I do. I’ve been known to email someone and tell her “There seems to be a timeline problem with the story–according to the Family Tree, so and so was not yet born/ was dead/ was too young, and could not have done what you showed in your story.” I wouldn’t dream of being so rude as to call someone out on an error without something to back it up. If the author shows interest, I try to help her figure out a way to handle the correction, or simply advise her to label her own mistake. (If you put an Author’s note at the front of your story saying “Yes, I know that Gorbadoc was still Master of Buckland, but for the purposes of the story I needed to have Rorimac already in that position.” then you avoid having someone else point it out to you. *grin*)

But I’ve also been on the receiving end of that sort of thing, so I do know people do it– I have had more than one canonical “error” pointed out to me, and I usually just quote my source in my reply. I also once recieved *unsolicited* “beta advice” that a certain word I used was wrong–it was “too modern” and “too American”! I was able to show the person a citatation that the word was in use in England as early as the 17th c. I was huffily informed that perhaps it was, but it wasn’t common and it didn’t “look” right.

I didn’t change the word.

An interesting case study might be to see what the fandom’s reaction would be to similar fantasy stories written by boys.

I do not know if the *author* is male or female, but I do know that there is at least one “BOY falls into Middle-earth and joins the Fellowship” story nominated for a MEFA this year. The story falls about midway in the spectrum of such stories– it’s not brilliant, but it’s not all that bad, either. Yet if it had a female protagonist, I doubt if it would have been nominated at all.

So perhaps that does demonstrate something to do with the bias against a female protagonist.

I’m not exactly certain what.

I do read so many variations of Maglor and what he’d gone through. Since his fate is pretty much open ended, I cannot help but to love to read what others come up with. When I read hobbity fic with Frodo for example, I just as much love to read what became of Frodo once he returned home for example: the more variation the merrier. Or Bilbo or Merry or… you get the picture. I really find it hard to disqualify a story on intepretation, a story has to be really poorly written before I turn away.

To paraphrase the old saying: “Don’t attribute to malice that which is probably caused by thoughtlessness.”

Yups!

On CFCs and OFCs: I think that people should write what they want. But, like Niki (I think we share a brain sometimes! ), I do think that the trends in literature–including fannish literature–are fair game for discussion and contemplation; in fact, I think they should be discussed because it’s easy to uphold the status quo in one’s writing without meaning to simply because it’s hard to pick up on. It’s simply what we’ve become used to seeing/reading.

@Larner: I had to laugh–albeit bitterly–at your rant on HASA reviews. I’ve had similar experiences (not on HASA, where I’ve only put up three stories for review, two of which for the express purpose of being curious if they’d pass!) with canatics calling me out on mistakes that aren’t.

The funny thing to me–and I’ve been saying this for years and never had a canatic answer me on this point–is how many people will ding a “canon mistake” without providing a quote from the book to prove what they’re saying. I have never had a canatic say to me, “This is wrong canonically,” and back up her/his words with a quote or even a rough cite from the book. Even after I’ve asked for clarification, I am answered with silence. I’ve had discussions with people on canonical interpretation in my stories where they bring their quotes and I bring mine, but never have I been told flat out, “This is wrong,” and shown proof that it actually is.

To me, this would be the first and least that a person could do, especially if that “ding” carries with it a degree of power, as with a HASA review. It’s one thing to remark in someone’s LJ, “I don’t have time to look it up, but I don’t recall it being mentioned that Pippin lived on a farm.” It’s quite another to leave a scathing public review on a story for that “error” or, worse, to use that “error” as reason to deny a story reviewed status.

On the occasions where I find a “canon mistake” in a peer’s story, the first thing I do is look it up. And know what? I’m usually wrong.

@Dreamflower: I totally agree with you on “nerdery of the highest order”! Back when I still insisted that I liked reading Silmfic but would never write it, I read a piece motivated by the writer’s desire to show that “Maedhros is the true villain in The Silmarillion.” That felt like slander to me. It was like hearing a friend’s tribulations minimized by someone who didn’t know better. I was so angry that I wrote my own story in answer, and 350,000 words later, I had my novel AMC.

So talk about irrationality and nerdery of the highest order! That writer had every right to her opinion and interpretation, just as I have every right to mine … I was just unable to see past my regard for that particular character to accept it as just a difference in opinion and not an insult.

I think many of us–if not all–have at least to a degree that character, scene, or concept that it is difficult to be rational about. I don’t think that we should suppress that; I think that we should be conscious, though, of how we react to the fictional “slanders” against our favorites. I wrote a novel in answer to the anger that I felt. Plenty of people write stories defending a character or interpretation, inspired by those with opposing viewpoints. Then there are those who flame and insult and attempt to suppress what they don’t like. (And I am absolutely not lumping into that group those who express their personal opinions about a particular subgenre or interpretation as part of a discussion like this where … well, preferences for particular subgenres or interpretations are the whole point of the discussion! ) It comes back, for me, to constructive and destructive ways to respond to stories and interpretations with which one does not agree.

On Mary Sue: Yes, most of them are awful. I don’t think that I would have done better at that age. I remember writing stories when I was in middle school and seeing characters less as people and more as archetypes: the bad girl, the nerd, the innocent default narrator.

The problem I have with how Mary Sue is perceived/treated in fandom has less to do with vindicating them as good fiction and more to do with being troubled with 1) the level of vitriol against these stories and 2) the underlying reasons behind it. To borrow from Juno’s past rants on the subject, it’s usually pretty obvious from a story’s summary that a story is a Mary Sue. If the story happens to have a brilliant and deceptive summary, it’s usually perfectly clear without having to read much of the story, at which point one is welcome to make use of Ye Olde Back Button. Yet adult readers will click on these stories and read them anyway just so they can … put a teenage writer in her place? I’m not sure I understand what that is supposed to accomplish. I doubt I wouldn’t have written much better than a Mary Sue at that age, yet now my stories are often praised most for their characterizations. Since I started writing fanfic when I was 23, it only took me ten years to evolve to that point.

What troubles me is not the attitude that Mary Sues are bad writing (because to most grown-up eyes and minds, I’ve no doubt that they are) than the attitude that Mary Sues are bad because they allow the author to “invade” the fictional world too deeply. OSA’s guidelines on Mary Sues illustrate pretty much every example that I could give. Now, again, I respect the right of one who pays the bills on an archive to post only what s/he wants, but some of the language here troubles me.

At the heart of Mary Sue, I think, there is the writer’s desire to enter a world she loves. That really isn’t any different from the motivations of many fanfic writers. A young woman creates a fictionalized version of herself and sends herself to Middle-earth. JRRT’s vision of Middle-earth makes it a man’s world; it is the Fellowship, after all, for a reason. The writer endows herself with magical powers in order to keep up with the rest of the Fellowship. Who also, largely, have, if not magical, at least supernatural abilities. Of course, she is beautiful. But then, so are most of Tolkien’s good guys.

A young woman places herself in a man’s world as an equal to those men. What is the response to that? To insist that she doesn’t belong; she shouldn’t do that. The underlying theme of those guidelines I linked to is that “A young girl can’t contribute anything to the story or the characters’ mission!” That misses the point that it’s a fantasy and, I think, a pretty cool one for a girl to have, that she has the ability to be an equal to Aragorn or Legolas or anyone she likes.

An interesting case study might be to see what the fandom’s reaction would be to similar fantasy stories written by boys. The guidelines I linked try to stay gender-neutral but, I think, reveal their aim to be at Mary Sues more so than Gary Stus at the end when they talk about the “Girl Falls into Middle-earth” subgenre and begin identifying the “culprits” as OFCs, not OMCs. What if a bunch of 13-year-old boys started invading Middle-earth, going off to Helm’s Deep (to maybe appear in lieu of Haldir’s Elves! ) and joining the battle with their magical swords and keen fighting abilities? Would the response to those stories be the same as to Mary Sues? It’s impossible to know, and it could be that those stories would receive equal vitriol in response. In which case, fandom proves its disdain not for girls imagining themselves as powerful equals to male canon characters but for young people in general. In either case, it’s not a glowing indictment, I don’t think.

And the need for some adult members of fandom to seek out these stories and put the writer in her place remains troubling.