Here in the Corner, All by Myself

Before I begin, I some housekeeping: Now that I am freelancing full-time and have more writing time available to me (in theory), I am hoping to get The Heretic Loremaster off of the ground again. When I first created this site, I wanted it to be a place for discussion of “heretical” views of literature and the fandoms that grow up around it. So far, the posts have been a one-woman show, but that is not what I want this site to be. So I am looking for more writers to join me on this site.

I have a whole page devoted to my expectations for this site and other writers who join me. In a nutshell, the HL looks at literature and book-based fandom. You do not have to like or write about Tolkien to write for this site. In fact, I would love some posts on Harry Potter other book-based fandoms about which I know little. You do not have to agree with me on everything (or anything!), although this site looks at literature and fandom from the perspective of people typically oppressed or sidelined in mainstream literature and discourse. All posts do not have to address that angle, of course; just looking back at my posts will show that I ramble about all manner of things. Two posts per month are adequate, though more are welcome, of course. My posts are generally long, but this isn’t a requirement. 500 words would be a good minimum to aim for in most cases.

Email me at DawnFelagund@gmail.com or leave a comment on this post if you’re interested and we’ll take it from there!

(Also, guest posts are welcome, so if you’ve written an essay or meta and think it might find an audience here, please contact me and we’ll see about getting it posted as a guest post!)

Now for my real reason for being here. The other day, I was reading another Metafandom post on remixing, since that has been a recent subject of discussion here. The post itself pretty much agreed with my thoughts on “unauthorized” remixing (and, by that, I mean using the universe or characters created by another fan-writer without permission, not lifting whole sections of story and changing the bits you don’t like). What caught my intention was a rather offhand remark made by Angiepen: “Except for Harry Potter, the vast majority of fictional-person fandoms are based on TV or movies.”

Initially, this provoked a “Bwhuuh?” sort of reaction because I don’t think that over 45,000 Tolkien-based stories archive on ff.net exactly makes it a fandom to sneeze at. However, once my initial surprise at being so casually overlooked wore off, I realized that, yes, actually, Angiepen was completely justified in not mentioning us. Tolkien-based fandom is somewhat isolated from fandom in general. It’s not that we’re invisible. It’s more that, in the big noisy banquet hall that is Fandom, we’re off in the corner playing by ourselves.

I’ve always wondered a bit at this. I’ve even talked about it before, in comments here at the HL and on LiveJournal, with some of you. Tolkien fandom seems to differ in a lot of ways from fandom in general, the majority of which is media-based. Here are a few differences that I’ve observed. I’d be interested to know of any others that people can think of.

• Reliance on fandom-specific archives versus LiveJournal (and clones, most notably, lately, Dreamwidth) and general fandom archives like ff.net and an Archive of Our Own. The whole LJ strikethrough incident that happened a few years ago sent far deeper tremors through fandom in general than it did Tolkien fandom. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if most Tolkien fan writers either didn’t know about strikethrough when it happened or didn’t really care, as it didn’t affect independent archives where most work is kept.
• More authors and artists are single-fandom. Reading on Metafandom, it seems to me that in most fandoms, people either create work for multiple fandoms or move on fairly frequently as their tastes change. In contrast, many people I know who create fanworks based on Tolkien’s books have never participated in another fandom and/or have no interest in participating in other fandoms. (Both would be true of me, for example.) Those who do seem to choose fandoms similar in nature to Tolkien–Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia, for example.
• Motives for writing vary. A reason I hear Tolkien writers give a lot of times for why they write and read fiction based in his world is a love of the world and a desire to stay there a bit longer. I’ve never seen this reason given for why people write in other fandoms. I’m sure it exists, but it doesn’t seem to be such an overwhelming reason as it is in Tolkien fandom. Instead, other fandoms seem to focus more on issues like social justice that are touched on by only a small contingent of writers in Tolkien fandom. Sexual expression also seems a much stronger motive in general fandom than in Tolkien fandom. While there are certainly Tolkien authors who write primarily for reason of sexual gratification (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, for the record), the vast majority do not. Again, too, fandom in general seems much more open to exploring contemporary issues relating to sexuality (gender identity, for example) than we Tolkien writers are.
• Critical discussion or “meta” has an internal rather than external focus. Tolkien writers tend to focus more on “canon” and how to interpret and communicate details within the texts. I’ve seen exhaustive (and exhausting!) conversations on character hair color, eye color, family trees, and timeline nitpicks. There are certain questions occurring within the texts that we will never have an answer to and never tire of arguing over. How long did Maedhros hang on Thangorodrim? Was Legolas a blond? Was Celegorm? Did Fëanor & Sons go to the Everlasting Darkness? Et cetera. In contrast, most fandom discussions focus on how fictional universes and our depictions of them communicate about the world beyond the fictional universe. Tolkien fandom does not often discuss issues of race, gender, sexuality, and ability, or of oppression and privilege, and when it does, does so only with great discomfort. In other fandoms, these discussions happen much more frequently and willingly.

What are the reasons for these things? I think there are a few.

• Tolkien fandom is old. Many fans have been active for years, so there was already an infrastructure and some community ties in place when the Internet became more widely available and gave more people access to fandom and allowed new fandoms to be created. Other older fandoms–Star Trek and Star Wars come first to mind–also tend not to be involved in general fandom, at least not that I’ve seen.
• The source material for Tolkien fandom is much more complex than some other fandoms. I do not intend that to insult or diminish other fandoms, but we are talking about, literally, a man’s life work which was, in turn, built on centuries of myth. The published source material itself is complex and contradictory, to say nothing of the reams of unpublished or hard-to-find materials. And then there are the works that are clearly related and cast light on Tolkien’s canon, like looking at Celtic myth to better understand the Elves. It’s no wonder that much of our discussion focuses on resolving our own understandings of those works.
• Because Tolkien fans don’t tend to participate in other fandoms, we are less aware of discussions or issues affecting fandoms outside of our own.
• There tend to be more conservative fans in Tolkien fandom than elsewhere. There are pockets of fans who prefer to look at Tolkien from a Christian perspective and who expect stories written about it to reflect conservative values. These people are also less likely to want to participate in discussion about oppression, and their presence (even if they are a minority) in the fandom make starting such discussions much more challenging when participants aren’t even on the same page about whether or not oppression exists or is important to discuss. When you’re arguing with one person about whether homosexuality is a choice, it’s hard to maintain a discussion with someone else about whether slash fiction is exploitative. So we argue about canon, where the same progressive-conservative divide can also be seen but occurs at one extra remove and, to many, probably seems less uncomfortable. After all, we’re arguing about whether sex between half-first cousins would have been acceptable in Elven culture, not about whether it’s okay to write Maedhros/Fingon in the first place.

Am I missing anything?

I am less certain about whether I would want Tolkien fandom to have more involvement in discussions and issues that are considered important by fandom in general. On the one hand, I think that many of the issues discussed by fandom in general are deeply important and need to be discussed. I have learned a lot from reading meta posts written by people in no way involved with Tolkien fandom. And because I don’t tend to mind confrontation, I wish that we could confront some of the biases in our own fandom rather than having to cloak everything in canon discussion all of the time.

At the same time, I like becoming deeply involved in the discussion of this world. Must the two be mutually exclusive? Not necessarily, but one is likely going to distract from the other.

Filed under: Fandom and Online Life by Dawn