Today, while making my daily blog-reading rounds, I found this article on Slate’s Human Nature blog. The article is about female sexuality, and how new studies are discovering that, whoa, female sexuality is really complex! And not at all what we expected based on reading What Women Want columns in men’s magazines!

I come bearing excerpts:

During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. (emphasis mine)

Is anyone reading on this blog surprised by the fact that women are turned on by gay men (or by lesbians, for that matter), or surprised that women who are turned on by gay men (or lesbians) are not likely to report it?

Human Nature then goes on to discuss another facet of the study, which is that some women (a good number, based on the numbers quoted in the study) have rape/assault fantasies. There is much uncomfortable tiptoeing around the question of why. I get the feeling that all involved–the researchers, the blogger–are uncomfortable with this fact about female sexuality and what it might imply about the nature of women and (perhaps worse) mean in terms of fueling those cretins still intent on arguing against the right of women not to be raped, no matter what they wear, how much they drink, or how much the male perpetrator perceives that they “want it.”

But, again, I find myself utterly unsurprised by the study’s revelations. There is, after all, a niche of fandom that writes “rapefic” and “noncon,” and discussion concerns less the appropriateness of this (and never, to the best of my knowledge, dissects what went “wrong” with the authors and readers of such stories to make them enjoy this particular fantasy) but rather how to best flag such stories to protect victims, how not to be exploitative in one’s writing, and so on.

As I read about the study, I couldn’t help but to feel annoyed at the gape-mouthed surprise that some of the study’s revelations met with. None of the study’s conclusions seemed odd to me. Female sexuality is complex. A half-day in fandom would demonstrate that women really do want something more than rescue fantasies and to feel taken care of. If you can imagine it, I can guarantee that somewhere, in a dusty corner of the Internet, there is a woman writing it, probably with at least a handful of readers enjoying it.

I remember Bobby once got an issue of Men’s Health (or something along those lines) in the mail as a freebie to lure him into subscribing. Hey, I’m interested in men, so I picked it up. “What Women Want in Bed” was the subject of one of the articles. Now I was really curious! I wanted to know what I wanted in bed! (Or, at least, what I was perceived as wanting. This is the same urge as listening in on a conversation about myself when those talking about me don’t know I’m there so that I can giggle or blush or seethe later, depending on what was said.)

The only item on the list that I remember in retrospect was that women like it when men make them feel “secure.” The article suggested that men should support their partner’s buttocks or the back of her head to accomplish this. The back of her head?! This calls to mind the instructions given to not-kid-people like me when we’re required to hold babies: “Support the back of the head.” I always have this image that, if I don’t, the head will drop right off from its own weight and go rolling across the floor.

Needless to say, this particular piece of advice nauseated me. These people propositioning my husband wanted to teach him to use the same gestures with me during sex that he would use with a newborn infant, and for the same purpose? I felt vaguely horrified and offended and tempted to write whatever imbecilic (male) author came up with this ridiculous idea to tell him that, no, women do not want that! At least, this woman didn’t.

And I think that’s when I realized that women’s desires and sexuality can’t be neatly organized in the same way that you’d sort nails and screws when cleaning the garage. (Yes, that pun was bad, and intentional. Sorry.) Someone had given this poor columnist the idea that women like to be treated as infants in bed. So, sure, some do. But the thought of well-meaning guys everywhere treating their partners like infants sickened me.

Given the surprise that the whole homosexuality- and rape-kinks met with (and these are fairly common, at least based on the number of women in fandom who regularly write these sorts of stories), I don’t even want to imagine what these people would think about, for example, twincest or Morgoth-tortures-Maedhros-in-Angband fantasies. Or mpreg. Oh my Eru, mpreg. I can only imagine bloggers trying to twist evolutionary explanations for women who like to fantasize about Sam impregnating Frodo and then Frodo giving birth to his hairy-footed Hobbitling through his butt.

But you know what? For the first time possibly ever, I felt like fandom had let me in on a secret that the rest of the world was just catching on to. I felt somewhat savvy, flicking my fingers at the people gaping over all of this and saying, “Rape fantasies? Homosexuality fantasies? You ain’t seen nothing yet!” As someone whose “savviness”–at least in this community–is defined by the ease with which she can defend the morality of Fëanor’s actions using obscure textual quotations learned by heart, this sudden plunge into worldliness was surprising but not too uncomfortable. Having been through the knee-jerk “What? NO!” reaction to the fantasies of my fellow fans, and gotten over it, I imagine that there were a lot more “savvy” women (and probably even more men) squirming at the ideas presented in this study. I felt relatively cool and … well, cool, for once.

Then I got annoyed because it felt like, in the attempt to explain the results of the study, there was a need to defend or legitimize the fantasies and desires of not even some but a good number of women. There was the need to squeeze their fantasies into an explanation that was at once scientific and feminist. Pulling and tugging over the right to explain rape fantasies as “evolutionary” or “narcissistic.”

Feministe picked up on the same study and, in the post, I found a sentence that pretty much summed up why I was feeling annoyed:

There are people … who basically argue that women feel enough guilt about sex, and feminist critiques or evaluations or even explorations of rape fantasies are inherently anti-feminist, because, come on, people get off on all kinds of things and we should just leave it alone; if some women like rape fantasies, let ‘em like rape fantasies.

It seems to me that the same people shocked that women like watching gay men would not be shocked at the fact that men like watching lesbians. Or that some men like being dominated. Or that some men are turned on by pregnant women. I mean, all of this stuff is eight-o’clock sitcom fare. When we discover the same diversity among women, we wince and get tongue-tied and pull out the microscope.

Not for the first time, I find myself wishing the world could take a lesson from fandom and worry less about why people are different and–from each individual’s point of view–weird and just accept that it will always be that way and move on.

Filed under: Fandom and Online Life, Personal Musings by Dawn
11 Comments »

Maeglin the iPod died on my way to work today, so I was left alone with my thoughts for the whole of the hour-plus-long drive home. Amid the maelstrom of my thoughts on mythology and women and Tolkien and feminist revision (related to an end-of-term research paper due this weekend), I got to thinking about Mary Sue. And a couple of ideas occurred to me that I wanted to get out of my head before I forgot and, also, to see what others thought of them.

Point the First. To what degree are Lúthien/Beren and Arwen/Aragorn a male version of the Mary Sue fantasy? I’m not talking about character traits–the idea of both characters but especially Lúthien as a “canonical Mary Sue” is nothing new–but rather the influence the male characters have on these ethereal female protagonists as compared to the influence that female characters in fan-authored Mary-Sue stories have on the male canon characters.

I’ve often seen Mary Sue defined in this way: not as having purple eyes or a six-syllable “Elvish” name or possessing a unicorn but as the force she exerts on the personalities and motivations of the canon males. For example, Leilamelaniewë joins the Fellowship and, suddenly, Legolas is lovesick and emasculated; Aragorn is driven into a homicidal, envy-induced rage; and Boromir forgets the Ring and Gondor to pen love sonnets while his sword grows rust.

By the same token, are not Aragorn and Beren similar to Mary Sue as fantasies of male influence upon women? Think about it: part of the outrage against Mary Sue is the exaggerated influence she has on men who should be well above such frivolities; they are warriors and princes with kingdoms to defend, not carefree playboys with nothing to lose if they dash off to marry Leilamelaniewë while Sauron achieves world domination. Likewise, both Arwen and Lúthien should be above the influence of their respective mortal suitors. They, too, have a lot to lose. Both Beren and Aragorn are presented as somewhat bedraggled and beneath the ethereal and impossibly beautiful women they woo. Not only do Arwen and Lúthien “fall” for Aragorn and Beren, but they go so far as to forsake their immortality. Just like Legolas forsaking his father’s kingdom or Aragorn his crown, these women relinquish a birthright, a defining point of their identity for love of a man.

It’s no secret that JRRT liked to imagine himself as Beren and Edith as Lúthien. What a fantasy! To believe that you are loved enough by a woman that she would give up everything in the name of that love! … her family, her heritage, even her claim to life everlasting.

Yes, it sounds to me more like something out of the pen of a moon-eyed teenager than a curmudgeonly linguistics professor!

To make matters even more interesting is the opposite scenario of an Elven man smitten with a mortal woman. As part of Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, Andreth recounts her failed love affair with Finrod’s brother Aegnor, and Finrod says that he rejected her because,

This is time of war, Andreth, and in such days the Elves do not wed or bear child; but prepare for death – or for flight. Aegnor has no trust (nor have I) in this siege of Angband that it will last long; and then what will become of this land? If his heart ruled, he would have wished to take thee and flee far away, east or south, forsaking his kin, and thine. Love and loyalty hold him to his.

Which makes me ask, what of the kin of Lúthien and Arwen? These are very different standards, and the choice of Aegnor seems relatively easy compared to the choices and fates of Lúthien and Arwen, both of whom suffered immensely to outlive their beloveds. That an immortal prince would fall for a woman “beneath” him is very much a typical fairy-tale fantasy a la Cinderella. But Tolkien didn’t write it that way … for Andreth.

So, is this a male fantasy, to have beautiful and powerful women forsake it all for love of a man? Is it similar to the Mary Sue fantasy in this regard?

Point the Second. Is Mary Sue herself something of a feminist figure? I know that some will immediately leap up to point out that there is much about Mary Sue that defies feminism, but, again, I’m not looking at individual traits or behaviors but rather the force she has over the male characters and, in a sense, how her embellishment places her as an equal to them.

It seems to me that, if young women wanted to insert themselves as love interests into a story, imprisoning themselves in Barad-dûr to await rescue by their chosen hero would be one way to go about it. That they’re taking the journey with the male heroes, granting themselves powers that put themselves as equals or betters to already souped-up canon characters, suggests something different.

So, am I completely crazy in all this?

Filed under: The Crackpot, Tolkien by Dawn
20 Comments »

Every now and then, I encounter something written (usually online) that is so blatantly idiotic and offensive that, upon brief consideration of it as a topic for The Heretic Loremaster, I shrug my shoulders and move on because, given the people who read here, it would be preaching to the choir and not likely to generate much discussion beyond high-fiving as we nod emphatically in agreement with each other. But, this time, I can’t resist. For one, this guy is so blatantly idiotic and offensive that I can’t let him squeak by without giving an answer. For another, it’s been a busy week at school, I’m too tired to take on someone worth the argument, and I feel like cutting my teeth a little, so here goes.

Josh Tyler has written a post called We Don’t Need More Female Superheroes. (Thanks to Sinneahtes for first spotting it and to Juno Magic for the heads up!) This post was in response to a post by Thera Pitts that deconstructed the female characters in recent superhero movies, coming to the conclusion that women tend to be “characterized” toward the negative extreme of whatever role they occupy. “Did you ever stop to think that it isn’t just the actresses who sully your favorite movies but the comic book movie industry’s lazy attitude towards women characters in general?” asks Pitts. “The actress is only as good as her material, and the material is seriously lacking.” She notes that women overwhelmingly tend to be characterized as helpless victims in need of rescue, “moody emo-bitch[es],” or as the fateful She Who Ruins All by tempting, betraying, or distracting the hero unto his ultimate doom.

This is an insightful observation, and it echoes a broader trend across centuries of legend and literature. No matter what a female character’s role, she is shoved to the most negative extremes of that role. If she is strong and autonomous, then she becomes a bitch, a ball-breaker, a man-hater. If she is kind and compassionate, then she becomes weak; she is overwhelmingly the victim incapable of helping herself; she is the one who trips on a flat stretch of land and can’t do more than squeal and kick futilely as she is raped/murdered/abducted by her stronger male attacker. And then there’s the Eve effect: Women who, through their failings, bring about the destruction of the male hero, the kingdom, the world. From the rise of pre-Christian patriarchy, these one-dimensional negative archetypes have been women’s lot in literary life (for tempting Adam to the apple, of course). These archetypes are old enough to put the Old Testament on the New Releases shelf, and even as literary styles changed drastically over the centuries, this one thing did not. Women, when not being marginalized or ignored entirely, were maligned in literature, a trend that has extended to film as well.

Of course, when women done went and got uppity and started to complain about their shallow, scathing treatment in literature, men got all pie-eyed and innocent-like because it was only fair! It was only reality! It’s just the way that women were/are! They (the wise male authors) were being true to their subjects! And, anyway, what woman wants to read that ol’ fusty Tennyson when Danielle Steele has a new novel on the bestsellers list?

This is where Tyler’s post comes in. Rather than tackle Pitts’ argument (which is one of characterization and fair treatment in fiction to, oh, more than half of the human race), he attempts to nullify it altogether by … well, I don’t think I can paraphrase it well enough to capture the full wow-factor of Tyler’s words, so I’ll let him dig his own grave:

Men and women simply have different interests. Men are interested in action movies with heroes blowing things up and saving the girl. Men are interested in imagining themselves as ass-kicking heroes. Women are interested in movies about relationships and romance and love. Women are interested in imagining themselves finding the right guy and dancing till dawn. Little boys play with guns, little girls play with dolls. Neither version of play is superior to the other, it’s just different. Nobody is out there trying to force men to get interested in movies about romantic weekends in Paris, so why are we so dead set on forcing women to get interested in movies about beating people up? There’s something unintentionally sexist about it, it’s as if we’re saying women’s interests are somehow inherently inferior, and to be validated they must instead find ways to be more like men.

In the comments on this post, there is much hand-raising from women who did not spend their childhoods wiping the plastic asses of doll-babies but rather careened around the backyard on fantastic quests, using exhausted wrapping-paper rolls for swords and wearing bathrobes for ceremonial robes and converting a quarter-acre swatch of trees into a dark, deep, ominous forest as full of potential for danger and adventure as it was for conquest and reward. Okay … that was my sister and me. But I don’t think I need to go thrusting my hand into the air for playing Hero more than House, and I don’t think I need to poll the women reading here to know that far more of you got together with girlfriends, sisters, and cousins to go battling the hordes of dark minions in your backyard than to play princess tea party in order to prove or validate women’s interest in subjects beyond boy-meets-girl love stories culminating in domestic bliss.

Nor do I need to ask how many women here got far more excited this summer over the release of Prince Caspian or The Dark Knight than Sex in the City or Mamma Mia!.

Of course, this does not make stereotypically “women’s movies” or “women’s interests” inferior. In that sense, I agree with Tyler. But … I think his self-righteous defense of the fairer sex is a straw man bigger than the one in which Nicholas Cage was torched by a bunch of misbehavin’ womenfolk back in 2006. Hollywood doesn’t have a problem making the sorts of movies that Tyler believes serves the “female interest.” In any given week, there is a romantic comedy or somesuch in theatres that is aimed at women. Nor do women have problems going to these movies, if that’s their thing. Witness Bride Wars‘ quick ascendency to the #2 spot in U.S. box-office sales this weekend. Witness the fact that men being “dragged” to “chick flicks” by their excited wives and girlfriends is perennial fodder on primetime sitcoms. Tyler makes it out like Sex in the City was a come-from-behind indy flick and Hollywood reject, or as though there are lines of people pegging tomatoes at women as they walk into Nights in Rodanthe. Not hardly. In our family, the lists of new movie releases are, weekly, the source of first excitement, then scrutiny, then inevitable disappointment because neither my husband nor I are interested in this sort of movie, and they often seem to crowd out the independent and limited-release films that rarely make it as far as our rural corner of the world. Trust me, there is never a dearth of chick flicks, which means that there is no dearth of women lining up to see them. If it doesn’t sell, Hollywood doesn’t keep making it. (Which–as in the constant peltering of Friedberg & Seltzer spoof flicks–can often act as a sorry commentary on the state of our species.)

Nice try, Tyler. Pardon me if I’m writing this blog post instead of getting signs painted to march on the Mall this weekend in recognition of women’s unalienable right to see chick flicks or in defense of the women “forced” to see “movies about beating people up,” an issue that surely deserves its place right alongside my outrage at sex slavery. This feminist finds it far more frightening that, in the year 2009, anyone seriously makes the argument that one’s interests even tend to divide neatly along the same lines as the possession or lack of a Y-chromosome.

This kind of thinking–not arguing for more female superheroes in movies–is what is sexist and offensive.

It has nothing to do with validating women’s interests by how closely they fall to the interests of men. It has everything to do with perpetuating stereotypes that have, for centuries, been used to dismiss and subjugate women as inferiors to men. In the comments to Tyler’s post, a few people expressed outrage at his generalization about how girls play with dolls. He retorted by asking, where was the outrage for the little boys pigeonholed into violent gun play? And I’ll be the first to speak out against stereotypes, whether against males or females. But the stereotyping of women is more dangerous. It is more offensive. Why? Because the stereotyping of men and the interests of men is not used to excuse the subjection of men to women’s benefit.

(In fact, I must speak out against offensiveness in this post that goes beyond that which affects me as a woman:

Of course some women actually are interested in superheroes, just as there are guys out there who are really into touchy-feely musicals. Most of them are British, but even here in America you’ll occasionally run into a guy with a twisted love of Mamma Mia!.

As an American, I despise when my culture and language is thought automatically inferior because of stereotypes like the ones that Tyler is embracing here. For the love of all things heretical, stop with the chest-thumping, my-balls-swing-harder-than-yours nasty rhetoric implying that British/European men are less “manly” than we red-blooded, steak-eatin’, pickup-truck-drivin’ ‘Mericans because we like seeing things blow up more. It is “twisted” to enjoy a musical more than an action movie if you are a man. Veiled homophobia much?)

Inherent in Tyler’s argument is the assumption that women are predetermined to be softer, gentler, and more nurturing. They are incapable of strength, assertiveness, or competitiveness. This has been used to keep women illiterate, ignorant, without the vote, without rights, under the thumbs of their fathers, under the thumbs of their husbands, stuck in the home, barefoot and pregnant, married against their wills, out of schools, out of jobs … need I go on? Do you see, Mr. Tyler, why your opinions on female superheroes are so offensive? Why recognize the spectacular range of human interests–i.e., not confined to or deemed acceptable for one gender or another–when we can pigeonhole people tidily into interests based on what is most acceptable to the dominant patriarchal culture?

Ironically, Tyler’s argument ties back into the root cause of the phenomenon that Pitts’ observed in her post. Women have been maligned and misunderstood in literature–which now extends to that which is written for the screen–for a very, very long time now using arguments just like those that Tyler uses to dismiss a woman’s demand for better-written female characters. Women deserve no better than to be sluts, bitches, poisoners, traitors, witches, victims, and agents of downfall and destruction because we all know–as Tyler points out to us–that this is simply the way that women are. It is against our own best interests when we dare to argue otherwise. Thank you, Mr. Tyler, for the enlightenment.

Filed under: Literature, Rants in My Pants by Dawn
7 Comments »

I don’t like it.

It’s inaccurate. It should be just “fiction.” The addition of the word fan is not a comment on the writing but a comment on the writer that is being used to project judgment on the writing and set it inherently lower than “non-fan fiction.” This is an unfair, spurious judgment, and we should be less complacent in accepting it.

To begin explaining why, I think we need to start at literature’s roots, before it was literature or even writing. I do believe that our use of language and, most importantly, use of language to tell stories–whether of a successful hunt earlier that day, an ancestor’s triumphs in battle, or a completely made-up account of a colony on Mars–is one of the most important traits that defines us as human apart from our brethren in the Animal Kingdom. Prehistoric evidence shows that, as far as you want to go back, if there were people, then they were telling stories.

All over the world, for example, we see a rich tradition of oral storytelling among preliterate peoples. Because these societies did not yet have writing, then all of their stories were a form of what we now call fan fiction: If I am a storyteller, and I hear something that I like, then I retell that later. Only, because it was not written down, then I am less concerned with fidelity to the original and invent where I might have forgotten exactly how it goes or reinvent when I think that I like a different idea better. Or I reframe an old story so that it is more relevant to the present day: think of all the Christian elements in Beowulf, a poem about a pre-Christian Pagan civilization.

Nor am I the first to make this argument; Natasha Walter gave fandom its favorite quote to validate its existence when she said that “when it comes to fan fiction, the internet is giving us back something like an oral society, in which people can retell the stories that are most important to them and, in so doing, change them.” The SWG uses that quote on its LiveJournal community, and I see it resurface occasionally in an email sig line of some fan defending her dirty habit against the scorn of the literati. Fans are, I have found, really proud to “return to their roots,” so to speak, in engaging in collective and revisionist storytelling as old as the species. But there is actually a return to nothing. Writing based on the words of those to come before us never stopped. We are upholding a tradition of storytelling as old as the species, defending it against commercial interests.

It is hard to find a medieval fictional writing that does not have a source. Religious and Biblical stories, myths and legends, historical accounts, and the work of other writers formed the basis of much of medieval literature. If you look at Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, it is a poem made up of two plots, each coming from a different Celtic legend. Even in combining them, scholars can’t agree as to whether this was done first by a French author, and the anonymous Gawain poet was just copying what he’d read elsewhere, or if he’d originated the concept of putting two familiar stories together into one. Or, to put it into “fan fiction” terms: did the the Gawain poet invent the crossover?

That medieval literature largely derived from existing sources makes sense since much of medieval literature began as oral storytelling: Building upon, expanding on, and reinventing favorite stories was how literature was done. Nor was there copyright to complicate things. A story was “owned” by anyone who heard or read it.

But derivative and transformative fiction–fan fiction–did not end in the Middle Ages. The American author Washington Irving is credited with writing the first short story: “Rip Van Winkle.” “Rip Van Winkle,” however, was not Washington Irving’s story. It was a rewriting of the German story “Peter Klaus the Goatherd” by J.C.C. Nachtigal, which Nachtigal had transcribed from a folk tale. Irving liked it, so he retooled it a bit and wrote it in English. Yes, a fan fiction writer invented one of the most prolific genres in literature today: the short story!

Of course, conditions for writers were not ideal in the 19^th century. There was no such thing as international copyright, so an author could publish a story in the United States and discover it reprinted and selling like proverbial hotcakes in England (or vice versa), without ever having given his permission–much less earning payment–for the sale. This is clearly not ideal if we want to encourage a system where writers can make a living on their work (which, of course, allows them to produce more of the work that we love). So maybe one could argue that making copyright stricter in order to protect writers is what made certain kinds of fiction into fan fiction, a genre inferior to its brethren where the connection between it and the sources that inspired it are less apparent.

But fan fiction is not only being written but being published even today.

Neil Gaiman is regarded as one of the most imaginative authors in speculative fiction today. In his last short story collection, Fragile Things, he included a story, “The Problem of Susan,” that dealt with questions raised by C.S. Lewis’s Narnia stories. “The Problem of Susan” supposes a basic familiarity with Lewis’s writings (even though, like most good fan fiction, it can be read and enjoyed without it) and even uses Lewis’s characters. Gaiman could never understand why Susan, of all the Pevensie children, had to remain behind and never return to Narnia:

I read the Narnia books to myself hundreds of times as a boy, and then aloud as an adult, twice, to my children. There is so much in the books that I love, but each time I found the disposal of Susan to be intensely problematic and deeply irritating. I suppose I wanted to write a story that would be equally problematic, and just as much of an irritant, if from a different direction ….
Fragile Things, Introduction.

He writes about Susan’s life, long after Narnia, to address the questions the book raised for him.

This should sound familiar to fan fiction authors. The curtains close on a part of a literary history, only questions, even dissatisfaction, still linger in our minds. So what do we do? We write as though that curtain never dropped and consider the continuation of the story that the author never embarked upon. We use that author’s ideas to make sense of the story’s outcome, or not. My story Rekindling does this: Tolkien never described the ending and remaking of the world into Arda Unmarred. Using some of his early ideas, I consider one possibility. Keiliss’s beautiful and haunting Star’s End is another such story that looks at Arwen’s death and Maglor’s fate. MithLuin’s intriguing novella Lessons from the Mountain takes Maedhros’s story beyond where Tolkien left us at his death and tells of his rehabilitation in the halls of Mandos. Stories that consider Elladan and Elrohir’s choice between mortality and immortality fit as well, as do Legolas and Gimli’s Fourth Age adventures. Maglor in history and Frodo sailing to Tol Eressëa are common enough that they are practically their own genres.

So what is the difference between what these authors are doing and what Gaiman has done? Many of the authors of Tolkien stories like those described above treat the texts on which they are based just as thoughtfully–even more so–than Gaiman’s treatment of Lewis’s works “The Problem of Susan.”

Responding to a story by answering it with stories of our own is a human trait. We have been doing this since we have been. In every literary epoch, even as it dwindles as copyright tightens and “originality” becomes increasingly valued, we see writers engaging stories in this way. It is neither new nor primitive: It is simply human.

This is the first reason why I detest the term “fan fiction.” Until recently, fan fiction has simply been fiction. Creatively engaging another author’s story was no different than creatively engaging a philosophical idea, a scientific concept, or a historical event. That Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” was a rewrite of an existing German story didn’t make it subpar; it was simply a fact about its creation that didn’t impede enjoyment of the story any more than knowing that Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged about a free-market economy or that Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park about dinosaurs and DNA impeded enjoyment of those: These authors are all engaging aspects of their world and doing so creatively. Why is literature–ironically, of all subjects!–roped off from such inquiry?

I believe that the term “fan fiction” has nothing to do with the fiction and everything to do with the fan. In other words, it is not derogatory because of the kinds of stories it produces; I hope that I have adequately shown that these sorts of stories were and continue to be natural displays of human creativity. It is derogatory because of who the writer is perceived to be, and that is why we should be insulted by it.

What is a fan? It derives from the term fanatic: someone who is passionate to the point of irrationality about something. Think packs of men breaking off the necks of bottles to glass the opposing team’s fans after a sporting match. Think animal liberationists who throw fake blood on families visiting the zoo. Think religious zealots who leave tracts as tips as restaurants because they honestly believe that the words and hazy illustrations will benefit their underpaid server more than money to feed her family. These are not people who deal thoughtfully and rationally with anything where their subject of interest is concerned.

Fan derives from that. It has, of course, earned a milder meaning over time. I can say that I am a fan of the actor Ioan Gruffudd without worrying that I might be misconstrued as a stalker who is–as I type this essay on fan fiction–sitting outside of his house, waiting for him to emerge so that I can kidnap him a la Stephen King’s novel Misery. Or I can be a fan of country music, Japanese motorcycles, wine bars, or Marvel comics.

Our fannish interests as humans are unlimited, but they are invariably regarded as frivolous. Once I get into a certain realm of “serious” subjects, I am not longer a fan but maybe a student or a scholar. I don’t say, for example, that I am a fan of medieval literature. In that I enjoy it, in that I spend a lot of time and thought on it, it is much like the fannish interests I just listed. But to say, “I am a real fan of Piers Plowman!” sounds almost as ridiculous as saying, “I spend my weekends reading, fishing, and performing neurosurgery!” I think it is generally assumed that certain subjects eclipse fannishness and become matters of serious study.

So why am I a student of medieval literature but a fan of Tolkien’s stories? Actually, Tolkien’s works are a perfectly valid subject of study, and there are people who consider themselves not fans but students of his work. Why am I any different? Because, of course, one of my primary ways of dealing with the texts to this point has been through exploring them creatively: in pondering what Pengolodh’s authorship of The Silmarillion means for that text, I wrote a story about it; in trying to explain the story of Lúthien in mythological and historiographical terms, I wrote a story about that too. Who can take that seriously?

I remember that I once got a comment on a story on FanFiction.net from a reviewer who identified herself or himself as a “Tolkien scholar.” I remember nothing else about the comment except for that (and the fact that s/he misspelled the word gonorrhea). I remember, at the time, finding the comment hugely funny. What sort of “scholar” would come up with such wonky views about Tolkien and what sort of scholar would misspell gonorrhea? And, most importantly, what sort of scholar would waste her or his time debating with a fan-fiction writer? The idea of “scholar” and “FanFiction.net” could not be reconciled in my mind; it was contradictory, along the lines of “fighting for peace” or bombing clinics for “pro-life” causes.

When I think of myself as a fan-fiction writer, I can’t possibly take myself seriously. I see a parody of myself: a squealing little girl leaping up and down and clapping her hands until she faints for a lack of oxygen. That high-pitched squeal is all that I have to contribute to the discussion of his works; I am a fan and lack rationality and the perspective that comes with it. But I know that the study I’ve made of Tolkien’s works has been serious. There has been very little leaping up and down and no fainting. My study and writing about Tolkien has been largely grounded in rationality, in a desire to better understand something that I enjoy. Coupled with the human drive to express myself as a storyteller, my ideas take shape as fan fiction.

So what makes me a fan-fiction writer and Neil Gaiman simply a writer? Well, of course, he had proven himself as a writer long before writing “The Problem of Susan”: He had work published, he won awards, he sold lots of books. He’s earned his credibility in expressing ideas creatively, even ideas about works of literature that would ordinarily be corralled as “fan fiction.” With the few publications to my name all in journals or anthologies no one has ever heard of, I don’t carry that credibility. When I interact creatively with a text, it becomes a frivolity, even a perversion. It becomes something to be ashamed of and treated as subpar to so-called “original fiction” or to the derivative/transformative/(fan) fiction of proven writers like Neil Gaiman.

Even look at how we talk about ourselves. Of course, there is fan fiction and fandom and fannish, all words derived from that word fanatic, with all the implications of hysteria and irrationality intact. Then we are “playing in So-and-So’s sandbox.” We are not engaging the texts as fellow readers, writers, and critics. We are children, making silly artifacts that are easily stomped into nothingness. We are “fangirls” and “fanboys” (except for Juno Magic’s reimagined “fancrones,” which I love): again, children. Again, tiny, insignificant voices piping well below the range of adult hearing, sequestered away at a kids’ table where we need not bother the grown-ups with our nattering. We talk about ourselves as frivolous and in need of growing up but, no, I don’t believe that this is always true. I don’t believe that we have nothing to offer, either in analyzing the stories we write about or as writers of fiction independent of those stories.

I see the so-called “real” world of writing fiction as one where there is a lot of scrambling going on to assert the value of one’s work by devaluing the work of others, often without ever having read it. Genre fiction gets trod upon by the literary genre, and sub-genres get stomped by their mainstream counterparts. (Has anyone else ever heard the sneer in the voice of journals that, for example, accept fantasy and horror but “nothing with vampires or werewolves”?) I see the label of “fan fiction” as another way of devaluing a genre of writing. Except that “fan fiction” is perhaps the oldest genre of writing around; I think it deserves better than this.

And I think that we deserve better than this. The Internet is transforming how we write. No longer do we have to be “good enough” (read: unoffensive enough, mainstream enough, know enough of the right people) to be read. More people have probably read my novel Another Man’s Cage than have read all of my published writings combined. It must be scary, for an industry accustomed to acting as arbiters of quality and taste, to consider us. In reading arguments against fan fiction, it is inevitably mentioned that fan fiction has the potential to take a paying audience from a writer. We are cast as thieves. Implied in that fear is that fan fiction about a story may be better than the original. That as a series creaks on indefinitely, fans dissatisfied with the plummetting quality might get their “fix” of characters and a world that they enjoy through fan fiction, not through purchasing the original author’s books. Whenever I see literary snobbery in action, I hear a note of fear underlying it: that someone who we thought took writing less seriously than we did somehow managed, despite that, to produce a better story. What’s left after that but to discredit the story’s very existence, to claim it as inherently inferior?

“Fan fiction” is not inferior. It is a continuing form of storytelling that is older than writing itself; it is the way that humans always have and always will engage the stories that interest and inspire them. It is a way that authors celebrate not only their love for those stories but analyze, discuss, and otherwise make sense of those stories. What we do is not inferior or even immoral; this–not the idea of derivative or transformative storytelling–is the novel attitude, and it serves the commercial interest of those who would compartmentalize stories as saleable entities. We should be less complacent in accepting this, beginning by not willfully labeling our work as inferior.

Filed under: Fandom and Online Life, Literature by Dawn
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Back in late November, Stellaluna posted meta entitled Storytelling that I rather liked. It made the argument that stories aren’t “just stories” and authors can’t use this as an excuse for unwitting or insensitive depictions of typically disenfranchised groups. I liked it for this reason: I think it’s too easy and too common for stories to be dismissed as “just fiction,” as though what the author has used the story to say doesn’t matter. But it seems Stellaluna’s essay has caused quite a stir, and I’m not sure why. I think it’s being misinterpreted as saying something that it certainly is not.

Wemyss first seized on it in his rather cumbersome retort On the responsibilities of writers. Here’s a paragraph that sums it up pretty well:

The idea that it is a writer’s responsibility, if not to write to pattern, then at the least to go back and ensure that the work is politically Bowdlerised, is not only utter balls; it is the high road to writerly ruin. The writer’s responsibility is to write the story that clamours to be written, take him where it may, and to write it in the best possible English. The writer’s responsibility is to her story and its characters. Failure to remain true to that responsibility is always fatal.

But …

Stellaluna didn’t say that.

I think it’s fairly clear from the examples that she uses that Stellaluna certainly prefers stories that positively portray characters of color, women, and GLBT characters. But I find it difficult to see–even with Wemyss’s use of bold italics underline to show where Stellaluna transgresses into advocating for self-censorship–where she actually says that a writer must consider what a story says “between the lines” and that a writer must edit and censor a story to portray typically ignored or maligned groups positively.

Instead, it seems to me that she is saying that writers should be aware that their stories and their characters might be seen by some readers to carry a message about these subjects and that writers should keep this in mind when writing. She also makes the argument that readers have a right to analyze a story for such messages, even (presumably) when the author doesn’t wish them to do so. Not knowing Stellaluna personally or being familiar with her fandom(s), I can’t say for sure, but I suspect that she is directly addressing authors who find their stories undergoing critique for seeming, to some readers, to express support for racist/misogynist/heteronormative ideas and stereotypes and defend themselves by arguing that “it’s just a story,” hence trying to have their cake (keep offensive depictions in their stories) and eat it too (still be regarded as progressive and hip to prevailing fannish ideology). With that argument comes the assumption, then, that offensive, insensitive, or stereotypical depictions of characters belonging to a particular group don’t matter. Stellaluna argues that stories aren’t just stories, and these depictions do matter. I would agree with her.

However, I would not argue that authors should sanitize their stories in the name of so-called “political correctness.” Nor does Stellaluna–Wemyss’s post notwithstanding–make this argument. But authors need to take responsibility for what their stories say. If they write in a way that depicts all gay men as effeminate theater majors interested in sex with anything with a dick, then they need to take responsibility for the reaction that may cause in some readers. Does that mean that they need to change the story? Of course not. But neither does it mean that they get to act all pie-eyed and innocent and claim that, no matter how offensive the ideas their stories seem to support, that these ideas are meaningless because they are, of course, fiction and are, therefore, beneath discussion.

In the comments to his first post, Wemyss likes to draw the comparison to religious fundamentalists. Their ideas of morality are at odds in many ways with the ideas advocated by most people in fandom. Why don’t they have the right to make similar demands as those who are politically correct, demanding that all stories have to be revised “with a list of boxes to be ticked off” to assure that they meet a particular fundamentalist creed?

They do have the right to author stories that meet these standards, and they have the right to comment on stories with these ideas in mind. Who is saying that they do not? Actually, this sentence nicely summing up Stellaluna’s thesis could apply just as easily to a fundamentalist creed as it does to a “PC” ideology, once removed from her examples:

I need to think about what my story is saying the subtextual and metaphoric level as well as what’s happening in the surface action of the story; and I need to think about whether I’m making any unconscious assumptions regarding gender or race or sexual identity that I did not intend.

I have just written a story intended to uphold a fundamentalist ideology. In the story, I have two gay characters. Clearly, I want to portray their homosexuality negatively. However, in the course of also demonstrating that I “love the sinner, hate the sin,” they come off as too empathetic for my audience, who accuses me of a GLBT-friendly agenda. Just as Stellaluna cautions, I should have thought about “any unconscious assumptions regarding … sexual identity that I did not intend.”

If I was to make one critique against Stellaluna’s post, it would be that I don’t think there is enough emphasis on the fact that readers can be wrong. Not all readers will agree. And where one reader is applauding the depth with which the female characters are treated, another is complaining that the story is misogynist in places; one of my stories earned just this reaction. Who was right? Well, neither and both: each was correct in that no interpretation is wrong, but this also means that no interpretation can be universally correct either.

Ironically, Wemyss wrote a second, lengthy post in reply to comments on the first post. Now, I was not the only person who questioned whether he “got” Stellaluna’s post in the first place or was accusing her of a liberal agenda where he wanted to see a liberal agenda (versus where there was actually evidence of a liberal agenda versus generally good advice using examples clearly aimed at a liberal audience). Yet, he doesn’t address this point at all in the second post.

However, perhaps most revealing, he does use the second post to go off on a lengthy diatribe attempting to debunk the notion of privilege, using a definition of privilege that likens it to an abacus: earning privilege here and losing it there (+5 for being gay! -5 for being male!) to come up with a sum total at the end. This, I think, reveals that he not only misunderstands terribly the concept of privilege but also that he entered into this debate with his own agenda, which I suspect was baiting a contingent of fandom into an argument over the existence of privilege and “political correctness.” I could be wrong here and guilty–as I think Wemyss is–of reading too much into the words of someone with whom I clearly disagree politically, but I find it interesting that as many people questioned whether Stellaluna was saying what he thought she said, that their concern was ignored entirely in his rebuttal in favor of disproving privilege.

Regardless, I think it was much ado about nothing. I believe Stellaluna was saying that writers need to be conscious of the fact that readers may take messages from even the most innocent and frivolous of writings. Therefore, it is prudent to think about these things when writing and revising, and writers should be prepared to take responsibility for their words. I would mostly agree with this, subjective interpretation notwithstanding. And I really think that was all that she was saying.

Filed under: Fandom and Online Life, Writing by Dawn
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This semester, I am taking a course called Women Writers. Next week’s topic is Rethinking the Maternal, with lots of intriguing readings on how women can balance the selfish needs of a writer with the selflessness of motherhood–or if it can be done at all. Now, Bobby and I have chosen to be child-free, so this doesn’t impact me much personally, but it does in so far as it affects women writers whom I care about and whose work I enjoy who have chosen (or will one day choose) to have children, and of course, it affects the writing of women as a whole, which being a feminist, I care deeply about. So I find the topic fascinating, and I’ve been thinking about it recently, having never really thought of it before.

One of the thoughts that has crossed my mind and is currently sticking in my mind like a cockleburr and annoying me and refusing to be dislodged is how a similar conflict exists between writing and fandom. I say “fandom” because this blog is largely aimed toward fandom and because fandom is where I am most comfortable, but really, I think it applies to any sort of group that encourages (or is even based solely or primarily on) creativity and is maintained by a collective effort by members of the community. For example, I am also a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I find many of the same conundrums that I experience in fandom arising there as well.

Writing or creating artwork is a selfish endeavor. It is done alone, usually in solitude or silence (as, indeed, I am alone right now in the house with the only sound the humming of my laptop; even the dogs are outside). At times, the drive to write and escape from social obligations drives me to the brink of madness, and I become a truly unpleasant person to be around. Luckily, Bobby understands this and packs me off into an empty room with my laptop and a couple of hours to write. I am not the first writer to lament the words on the page and how they might have translated better into folded laundry or dishes put away or time spent in the company of others who might feel hurt that I am not around. I sometimes feel like an exceedingly selfish person for my writing. (In fact, I should be finishing a school paper right now and even feel a little guilty that I am writing this instead.) For the few years that I participating in NaNoWriMo, November was such a time of peace and relief. It was something official and even impressive-sounding (”I am a participant in this year’s National Novel-Writing Month” *polishes fingernails on the front of waistcoat*), and it was a good excuse to avoid other activities and write instead. I remember when Bobby was playing in a particularly far-off hockey league, and I used to go to all of his games so that he was not driving home exhausted and alone, and I used to take my laptop and write while he was playing. And, sometimes, people I knew would sit down with me and make conversation, and how I longed to say what I was thinking: “Would you just fuck off and let me alone to write?” Only that was exceedingly selfish, so I never did, and who knows how many words didn’t get written because of it. I feel guilty, even now, lamenting those lost words when, clearly, socialization was the right and proper and human thing to do, and people were just trying to be nice to the lonely eccentric woman over by the soda machines. But when NaNoWriMo was going on, everyone was warned up to a month in advance, and I was left alone, and I didn’t feel guilty about it. I was, after all, serving a project larger than myself; it was not so selfish as writing simply because I wanted to.

Fandom, on the other hand–or groups like the SCA–are entities that value unselfishness in the form of service to the community. Forget the above paragraph for a moment and meet Dawn the Archive Owner and Webminister and Volunteer. One of my most passionately uttered values is the importance, as part of a community from which one derives as much enjoyment as I do fandom and the SCA, of contributing in some significant way to that community. Fannish communities are built almost entirely on the contributions of members of that community; if, tomorrow, the co-moderators, volunteers, writers, and reviewers of the SWG all decided that they wanted to leave the time and effort that they spend on their various contributions to someone else, then there would be no SWG. That is the surest way to shut us down.

But the SWG (and many other fannish groups) is by name and definition a group of writers and artists, people whose work is by its very nature selfish and solitary. Almost four years after I formed the SWG, I’d have to say that my only regret, in creating this group for fandom and doing all of the service that that entails, is again, the lost words: the stories that I wanted to write and didn’t because obligations to the community. I am beyond proud, delighted, and thrilled with the SWG and what it has accomplished, and I would never ever unwish it, but sometimes–in the midst of doing the fannish equivalent of changing dirty diapers or playing stuffed-animal tea party–I lament the lost ability to be selfish and wonder what I could have produced in the last four years if I’d never created the SWG.

I have always been proud of my involvement with fandom–and this, quite unexpectedly, has increased the more that I study literature–because I see its collective, shared creativity as more of a return to the creativity that has been natural to the human race since our distant ancestors first started singing verses around the campfire at night, adding and changing where they saw fit. I see the recent turn that creativity–writing in particular–has taken, with its obsessiveness over possession and markets and profit, as the abnormality, not the desire to create based on what has already been done by others. But, at the same time, writing is largely a solitary act. How does that fit into a collective community? For me, I find that I have the same balancing act as that described by mothers who are also writers, who have to make the choice between a crying child and a whispering muse (1), only my choice is between the whispering muse and a webpage that needs updating, emails that need answering, a newsletter that needs writing, announcements that need posting … all of these things that need to be done in service of the fannish ideals in which I believe so strongly and which, almost always, trump my creative ideals, in which I also believe but are easier to defer: They are selfish.

The first creative communities, artists/authors produced songs and stories for the entertainment of an audience that was usually not artistic itself; the artist/author might find able subsistence from this audience: “singing for one’s supper,” if you will. In the modern “real” writing world, markets exist that seek and publish fiction to provide to an audience and, hopefully, these markets compensate writers fairly for their work (excuse me while I have a good laugh at that last point ………….. thanks, I’m better now). In both cases, the artist/author is independent from the majority of consumers of his or her work, and the “community” in which she or he operates is also maintained by people who are not usually themselves artists/authors. Therefore, the creation and maintenance of the infrastructure by which such creativity is produced and shared does not interfere much with the actual production of that creativity.

Fandom is different: The same people who are producing creative works are usually also those who are building and maintaining the communities necessary for that work to be produced and shared. Most archive and group owners are themselves writers; most of our volunteers (and all of my co-moderators) with the SWG are also artists or writers, and so whenever they give their time to their group, then that is taking time from their writing. The audience for fannish works is also, largely, the same people producing those works, so whenever I hear of people who review x number of stories for the MEFAs or review everything posted on a particular archive or community, then I can’t help but to think that that contribution comes at the expense of their own creative endeavors. But, of course, they are making a very necessary contribution.

What is the solution here? There is no solution. What is beautiful about our communities–that they are collective and run by those who are themselves artists and writers (versus those looking to turn a profit on the efforts of others)–is also to our detriment: Those who believe most strongly in service to their communities will feel the pull of both obligations, and it won’t always be pleasant, and the “selfish” and creative will most often lose out, which is itself a loss in words unwritten and ideas unexpressed.

I do wonder, also, to what extent this is a manifestation of fandom being a “female space,” as some like to call it (amid much controversy, of course). Most cultures teach young girls to be selfless, to be helpers, to put their needs below the needs of the group. In women, selflessness is still valued, as evidenced by the continued fervor of the debate over whether or not mothers belong in the workplace. Boys, on the other hand, are taught to value more their individual accomplishments, and it is understood that a degree of selfishness is to be expected. (I remember reading once, when I was very young, that American culture teaches us to see psychopathology in the mother who chooses her needs over those of her children but not in the man who uproots his family, takes his wife from her family and friends and his children from their peers and familiar home, in order to pursue a career that will not benefit that family in the least; in fact, might be to its detriment as the responsibilities of said career take him away from home even more than he already is and, possibly, to a city or living conditions that are ideal to no one but him. That might have been the moment when I became a feminist, being as this point has stuck with me across, literally, almost the entirety of my life. I only wish that I could remember where I read or heard it to give proper credit.)

I wonder how these values that are still taught to girls and esteemed in women have shaped fandom, and I wonder how this will affect our creative accomplishments. Is there a connection? I don’t know. There are, of course, men in fandom, and several Tolkien-based writing groups are run by men, and I do not intend to dismiss or diminish their contributions. But the Tolkien-based writing community is 95% female (at least) and so, presumably, the culture of that community is female as well. I wonder, sometimes, what male-dominated fandoms (and they do exist) look like compared to female-dominated fandoms, like the Tolkien fandom. Do they feel the same conflict between personal creation and contributing to the collective? And this goes, I think, beyond something so large as creating a group or archive. Do they drop everything to write a ficlet for a collection dedicated to a friend whose going through a rough spell? Do they read every story participating in an award or fest and leave comments for all the authors? Do they set their own work aside because a friend needs a last-minute “emergency” beta-read? Most of the people that I know in the Tolkien fandom–male and female–have done at least one of these things at some point, but the Tolkien fandom–being dominated by women–would of course have evolved a value system created largely by women.

To what extent are these values female and not merely fannish and expected parts of any collective community?

These are questions whizzing through my head lately.

An Afterword …

I don’t often write about my experiences as the owner of the SWG for the simple fact that such “confessions” seem to result in an outpouring of gratitude and back-pats that I think people feel are obligatory and that make me feel bad and slightly dirty, as though I have solicited something undeserved for an endeavor that I find very enjoyable and gratifying without people feeling the need to regularly prostrate themselves before me. I make a conscious decision to continue as the owner of the SWG because I love my group and am proud of what it has accomplished. I am breaking my personal rule about writing about my experiences with the SWG here because, as the owner of a mid-sized fannish group, I work well as an example for this topic; nothing more and nothing less. This is not a hint of dissatisfaction or a fishing for praise, pity, or gratitude, and I am going to request that people not turn this post into a session of the above. The contributions of members and associates of the SWG that have allowed us to accomplish what we have, despite being a small and very niche community, have been and continue to be gratitude enough.

References

1. Susan Rubin Suleiman, “Writing and Motherhood,” in The Longman Anthology of Women’s Literature, edited by Mary K. DeShazer, 621-637. New York: Longman, 2001.

Filed under: Fandom and Online Life, Personal Musings, Writing by Dawn
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My last post on whether or not Maedhros threatening to kill Elrond and Elros was canonical has generated a lot of wonderfully thought-provoking comments. Not surprisingly, many of these have been about canon: what it is, how it is defined, and at what point to we pass from “canon” to “AU.” This is a matter to which I have given a lot of time and attention over my years in Tolkien fandom, so in wake of the discussion on Take Pity upon Him, I thought I’d put some of my more recent ideas down as I continue moving toward that (perhaps unattainable) goal of defining “canon.”

When I first started studying Tolkien’s works and writing stories based on them, I had this idea that, as I studied more, I’d move closer to being able to define canon definitively; that is, to produce a final and unequivocal judgment on how things really went down. Instead, I’ve found that the opposite has happened. Pandemonium remarked the same in the comments on Take Pity upon Him: “As I’ve examined JRRT’s work, canon becomes more and more nebulous to me.” Yet, at the same time, I feel better equipped now than I did four years ago to analyze what JRRT wrote in terms of “canon,” even if–at the end of my study–I don’t end up with any answers at all.

Sometimes, I think that we discuss canon and how to define it without really differentiating the ways that authors use JRRT’s writings to form judgments on their relative truth. This leads to arguments where something that is clear fact to one author, debatable to another, and false to a third, and all three fans are trying to prove each other wrong without considering whether they might all be right. I don’t think that canon can be so neatly summed up as “is” or “is not”; it occurs on a continuum, and different people will draw the line between “canon” and “not canon” in different places–even multiple places–along that continuum. I am going to attempt to summarize some common ways–complete with made-up terms!–that I think authors put together information from the texts to develop their definitions of canon.

Defining Canon

Canon. “Canon is synonymous with fact. It is not arguable. An author who violates this canon unintentionally has made a mistake; an author who violates this canon intentionally has written an AU.

Precious little from JRRT’s texts are canon by this definition. That which qualifies tends to be basic facts that would either be difficult/impossible to distort or lie about (such as the date of a major battle in which a literate culture particpated) or which are so frivolous that no one would logically have motivation to lie about them. Hair color, if definitively stated, is one such detail, perhaps ironically since this fandom is prone to fights over characters’ hair colors. But if Fëanor’s hair color is stated definitively to be black (The Silmarillion, “Of Fëanor,” §6), why would a loremaster or historian have reason to lie about this? Geographical details, dates, and physical descriptions all tend to fall into this category … in other words, mostly boring stuff.

Personal canon. Personal canon is an individual author’s appraisal of what parts of the texts are “fact” and employs any or all of the analyses discussed below and then some. For example, some authors have determined from reading the HoMe that JRRT’s final word on Gil-galad’s parentage puts Orodreth as his father. For these authors, Orodreth as Gil-galad’s father is personal canon; it is not an indisputable fact and so not simply canon, but it is a detail in the texts that these authors have analyzed and found to be true. For other authors, their personal canon is that Fingon was Gil-galad’s father.

It is important to point out that personal canon must come from the text (i.e., is not paracanonical or extracanonical) and is different from personal verse.

Personal verse. Personal verse is the sum total of all that an author believes to be true about the world in which she or he writes. It involves facts from the text (personal canon), as well as facts that the author develops based on and independent of the texts (paracanon, extracanon et al; see below).

For example, a personal verse might use the personal canon that Orodreth was Gil-galad’s father. It might also operate on the idea that Maedhros and Fingon were lovers and that confusion about Gil-galad’s paternity arose because historians associated with the House of Fingolfin were encouraged to conceal Fingon’s homosexuality and so distorted facts when they thought they could get away with it so that it appeared that Fingon had a wife and fathered a child.

Paracanon. In my original comment to Rhapsody about this, I called this extra-canonical. I’ve reassessed this term and think that paracanonical describes better what I mean, but to keep things as confusing as possible, I am using extracanonical elsewhere for something different. Paracanon is arrived at by putting together facts from one’s personal canon and drawing conclusions based on those facts. Likewise, paracanon cannot conflict with other facts in one’s personal canon.

The important aspect of paracanon is that the conclusions are fact-based. They are not merely whims or inventions. The author has analyzed a body of facts from the text and has, from this analysis, developed a personal canon. In putting those facts together, certain conclusions can sensibly be drawn. This is paracanon.

Naturally, for every dozen authors, you will end up with a dozen paracanons!

The Maedhros/Fingon pairing is a paracanon. Any fan of this pairing can tick off a dozen personal canon facts that makes this pairing, for them, a logical interpretation based on these facts. The pairing comes from putting those facts together and deciding that romantic involvement between the characters is the preferred conclusion to draw from those facts.

At the same time, other authors will put together personal canon facts to develop the paracanon that Maedhros and Fingon remained close (platonic) friends throughout their entire lives. Both paracanons are justified with JRRT’s texts and don’t involve any invention on the author’s part.

Some authors will necessarily “stretch” further than other authors in developing paracanons. However, the mechanism is the same.

Extracanon. Extracanon develops ideas outside of but in accordance with the texts. In other words, extracanonical facts in an author’s personal verse do not have any strong basis in the texts. Neither do they directly contradict the texts that an author uses in his or her personal canon.

Original characters are perhaps the best and most common example of extracanon. Their presence does not contradict the texts in most cases, but the texts don’t give us any information about them either.

Pandemonium’s The Apprentice is a good example of extracanon being used in this fashion. Sámaril is not a canon character. But neither does his existence as an apprentice in the Gwaith-i-Mirdain defy canon in any way.

Other extracanons place canon characters in settings other than what JRRT described. Erestor gets a lot of extracanonical treatment. He frequently ends up in Gondolin; in my By the Light of Roses, he ends up in Formenos. There is no canon support for either of these ideas. Neither does canon dispute them, however.

Making Fëanor a chronic nail-biter or Túrin’s favorite color black or Amarië the daughter of an important Vanyarin scribe are all extracanonical.

As with paracanon, different authors will have different comfort levels when it comes to how far they’re willing to go in inventing extracanonical details.

Pericanon. Pericanon analyzes and interprets the texts using concepts from psychology, mythology, sociology, science, and other “real world” disciplines. Because JRRT intended his stories to serve as a history or mythology for our world, and Arda corresponds with our solar system, then much of what we understand about our world can also be applied to Arda and, thus, becomes a sort of canon.

Authors using pericanon might use it to choose one text over another for their personal canons (such as using the more scientifically accurate ideas from Myths Transformed in describing how Arda operated outside a mythological framework) or add extracanonical details (such choosing to have Maedhros threaten to kill Elrond and Elros based on his psychological state at the time).

My assertion that homosexuality is canon is based on pericanon: If Elves and Men are human (in JRRT’s own words [Letter 153]), and homosexuality is normal behavior among humans, then lacking anything in the texts that makes an exception for Elves and Men, homosexuality would have occurred in their populations as well.

Pretty much everything Pandemonium writes uses pericanon to develop and explain not only the science of Arda but its cultures. My Another Man’s Cage uses pericanon in that I was often informed by psychology in how I developed the characters extracanonically.

I should note that pericanon uses our understanding of our world to enhance existing information from the texts, not to challenge or contradict them. To challenge the texts requires …

Historiocanon. Historiocanon is the process by which some authors challenge the texts and develop interpretations that do not take the texts at face value. Historiocanon justifies deviating from the texts where historiographical analysis causes concern about authorial bias or inaccuracy.

Pericanon can influence historiocanon when our understanding of how the world works calls us to question the accuracy of the texts. JRRT acknowledges this himself in Myths Transformed (HoMe XII) when he expresses doubt that readers would believe that scientifically sophisticated cultures (like the Eldar) would believe primitive and implausible cosmogonical myths.

Historiocanon is based on an understanding of Arda as our own solar system and, also, the JRRT’s texts as an ancient history/mythology of our own world and so subject to historical analysis. Historiocanon can hinge on the following (please note that this is an incomplete list):

• the narrator possesses bias (such as Pengolodh’s vilification of the Fëanorians in light of his service to Turgon, who was opposed to them)
• the narrator is relying on hearsay or could not possess accurate knowledge about the subject (such as Pengolodh writing about Fëanor’s death, which occurred before he was born, or about Lúthien’s plea to Mandos, during which none from Middle-earth were present)
• knowledge of how the world works makes the event as reported impossible (such as Maedhros hanging on Thangorodrim for fifty years)

Pandemonium’s Risk Assessment uses historiocanon to offer alternate explanations about lembas. My An Ordinary Woman uses historiocanon to argue that Lúthien’s exceptionality in, well, everything was more a case of hero worship and wishful thinking by her people than truth.

Pericanon and historiocanon are both, of course, personal canons as well: They require accepting Arda as our own solar system and a world subject to many of the same natural laws. Historiocanon also requires accepting as personal canon that the texts are historical or mythological accounts and can be analyzed using historiography. I think it makes sense, then, that these forms of canon will be the most controversial in terms of concept alone (not individual use) and won’t be used by everyone. However, they are valid ways to develop interpretations of canon.

Alternate universe. By definition, alternate universe (AU) requires the deliberate changing of a canon detail to affect the outcome of a story. Juno Magic’s Lothíriel is an AU because it adds a tenth walker to the Fellowship. My For What I Wait is AU because it is based on the premise that Fëanor outlived all of his children.

Both of these stories change canon facts. There were nine members of the Fellowship; it is hard to argue–though perhaps not impossible–that a tenth would have been completely overlooked by the many people who observed or were involved with the Fellowship. That Fëanor died shortly after the Battle-under-stars is another fact that would be extremely difficult to argue against. The AU aspects of both stories are not justifiable using any of the above-discussed canons. They are simply changes to the canon that the reader will have to accept and that are essential to the story.

It is important to note that AU cannot be justified by canon. Positing that Lúthien was less than perfect, as I do in “An Ordinary Woman,” is not AU because it makes sense from a historiocanonical perspective, which can be defended using Tolkien’s texts. Deciding that Erestor grew up in Gondolin is not AU because it does not counter a canon fact; it is extracanonical. Writing Maedhros and Fingon as lovers is not AU because it can be defended using evidence from the texts. However, I think that the term and label “AU” is misapplied as often as it is used correctly.

When Does “Canon” Become “AU”?

I am hardly the first to tackle this topic. Earlier this year, we had a discussion on the SWG Yahoo! group about how to define AU. This prompted a series of posts and discussions elsewhere (many of which I didn’t even know about until researching this post). I will link these discussions throughout my post, but it seems that they come to some of the same conclusions.

First of all, that the “AU” label is misused in the Tolkien fandom. I’ll discuss this further in a moment.

Second of all, that there is a strong desire, in discussions of canon, to move beyond the “is canon”/”is not canon” dichotomy and to recognize at least a third way to classify ideas used in fan fiction. Marta called this “extra-canonical” in her post On Canon and Fanfic, and this term (and the concept it defines) was echoed throughout the discussions following her post. So my own idea of a continuum between “canon” and “AU” is hardly original to me.

So why so many differentiations when Marta made good use of the single term “extra-canonical”? Mostly as a demonstration of how many different methods fans use to arrive at the extra-canonical (by Marta’s definition of the term) details that they use in their stories. I don’t expect the terms I’m using here to make it into popular usage. They’re awkward and hard to distinguish between for anyone who doesn’t make a regular habit (as I do) of thinking and writing about these things. In other words, for most people, they’re useless.

However, I think there is an important point to be made with them. As I defined each term, I often qualified that different authors would have different comfort levels with how far (or in what direction) they wanted to take various interpretations. Perhaps the most salient example is that of the paracanon about Maedhros and Fingon. Proposing that the texts suggest close friendship requires less stretching than suggesting that the characters were lovers, even though both interpretations utilize similar analyses. Yet I know that readers and authors will consider some details “canon” and others “AU,” even when the same methods were used to construct them. People are fond of lamenting that AU is hard to define. I don’t think that it is, if we recognize that accepting all of the above as legitimate analyses of Tolkien’s texts and understand that our willingness to accept (or not) an interpretation derived from them reflects more about how we see canon than the actual canonicity of the interpretation.

I also wonder if people’s comfort differs between the different ways of interpreting the texts that I’ve mentioned here. For example, maybe I’m not willing to stretch far in terms of paracanon. Maybe I like my interpretations of the texts to as innocent and obvious as possible. But maybe I’m willing to accept more in terms of extracanon: If you want to add all sorts of original characters and off-the-wall facts about the canon characters, then this doesn’t bother me. So Maedhros/Fingon feels wrong to me, but I’m okay with Fingon having, once upon a time, studied herb lore, lived with the Fëanorians in Tirion, and been engaged three times to three different women before the Darkening. Looking at the different ways that we shape our personal canon from the texts will, hopefully, aid me in approaching these questions in the future.

Which brings me to the other point about the misuse of the term “AU.” There is the popular complaint that some authors use the “AU” label to deflect any criticism about the wanton flouting of canon in their stories. Several people made this point in the posts I’ve linked here; Roh Wyn goes as far in Can(n)on Fodder to differentiate between canon deviations: non-canonical, where “some important detail has been altered, and this alteration affects all the downstream activities events or characters so that the entire story is different from canon”; and un-canonical, “stories that essentially break canon. … [T]hey don’t merely change a few canonical details. These fics change the basic premises of canon, so that the ultimate story bears little relation to the original.” My understanding of Roh Wyn’s uncanonical is that these are those stories that change details from the text because the author doesn’t know better (or doesn’t want to do the research to find out) or because the author simply likes the changed version better than the textual version but doesn’t want to think about how to make the work within the general canon framework Tolkien has established; for example (to borrow Roh Wyn’s example) because s/he wants Aragorn and Boromir to be twins but doesn’t want to have to do the work to make that plausible. So it just is–much in the way that Legolas has been married off to many teenaged unicorn-riding princesses–and the reader is expected to accept it without explanation or question.

Others bring up how “AU” is used as a defense against the so-called “canon police” or “canatics,” who are depicted as fans who hunt through stories looking for any detail that does not jive with their particular interpretation of the texts. In a comment on her rantastic Is AU a negative label?, Juno writes,

In my rant I didn’t discuss the validity of labels such as “canon” or “AU” as such. They definitely can have their uses. But they also pose problems. There are no fixed, exact rules about what is and what is not “AU” or “canon”. Actually, there IS no one canon, really; canon is not determined by physical laws or divine laws, canon is always the result of the interpretation of an individual and thus … fluid. Therefore, labels can be misleading. Especially in LOTR fandom, especially about new authors I’ve noticed the tendency to label what I would call “canon stories” as AU, simply because some kind self-appointed canon-police scared them and made them feel insecure about their stories.

In my original post on the SWG that started this whole discussion, I admit to doing just that. I am not alone in this either. But I’m also willing to admit that this comfortable deflection of attacks from canatics does a disservice to actual AU stories and the very valid approaches to the texts that I and others take in developing personal verses that give thoughtful treatment to Tolkien’s writings.

All of the terms I discuss above are valid ways of approaching and interpretting Tolkien’s texts, and none of them are AU. Yet I’m sure that many of us can think of examples of each where the author or her/his critics would suggest such a label: the Maedhros/Fingon pairing (or Celegorm/Aredhel, for that matter), a story told by an original character or heavily featuring original characters, a story that challenges the truth behind Laws and Customs among the Eldar. I think the temptation–when encountering a story that uses an interpretation unfavorable to us as readers–is to discount that story as “uncanonical” or to suggest that the author needs to label it as “AU” rather than giving thoughtful consideration to the means by which authors use facts from the texts to arrive at different interpretations or conclusions.

And this brings me full-circle back to Pandemonium’s comment about how the study of Tolkien’s texts makes recognizing a definitive “canon” more and more difficult. Personally, in all but a few instances, I’m ready to be done with the term “canon” for good. It’s misleading. It doesn’t exist in the form that we think it does, though it’s a nice idea–that with enough study and effort, we can devise a compendium of facts about Tolkien’s world that allow stories to be graded in terms of canonicity–like many of the fancies to which humankind has been prone over the millennia.

I doubt that one humble heretic like me will ever have such influence, though. In the meantime, though, if I can encourage even a few people to resist the temptation to jab pointy fingers and shriek, “AU!!” and, instead, stop and think and question how the author arrived at a particular conclusion, then I will consider my overwrought analysis a success.

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The other day, I was reading a story about Maedhros and Maglor during the attack on the settlement at Sirion. Maedhros and Maglor search for the Silmaril. Together, they burst into a room and find not the jewel but the twin sons of Eärendil, Elrond and Elros. The twins try to defend themselves but they are too small. Maedhros lifts his sword to slay them and–

Then, suddenly, it occurred to me: That never happened.

The idea that Maedhros wished to slay the sons of Eärendil before his hand was stayed by Maglor is a popular fallacy in Silmarillion-based fiction. I was curious as to how many people thought that it was canon that Maedhros threatened to kill Eärendil’s sons at Sirion, so I posted a poll in my LiveJournal. As of collecting poll results on 17 November 2008, at 11 AM EST, just under 13% of respondents thought that “[d]uring the attack on the settlement at Sirion, Maedhros wanted to kill Elrond and Elros, but Maglor stopped him.” But, perhaps more intriguing than that, just over 28% of respondents weren’t sure if this was canon or not, which means that 41% of Tolkien fans who responded to the poll either thought that Maedhros’s threat to the boys at Sirion was either canon or possibly canon.

But this idea is a fanon, though I think the poll results underscore that it is a tenacious one. I remember encountering it in some of the first Silmarillion-based stories that I read. As attested by my recent experience, it is still making the rounds, and almost half of Tolkien readers don’t recognize it as AU (nor are authors writing stories based on this fanon particularly forthcoming about this fact, at least in my experience, which suggests that they likely believe its canonicity as well or believe that a fanon so deeply entrenched no longer warrants an “AU” designation … though tell that to Maedhros/Fingon authors!). This is intended in no way to reflect poorly on readers or authors who either believe this to be canon or who think there is a possibility that it might be. I would have to disparage myself as well, since at one point in my “career” as a student of Tolkien’s works I would have confidently checked the “Canon” option. When I first encountered this fanon, I was not well-versed in canon, so my mind adjusted what I read in Tolkien’s books to accommodate what enough authors wrote about that, surely, it must be true. Right?

Defining canon is difficult for any of Tolkien’s works, but that difficulty is compounded when trying to make sense of The Silmarillion. The Silmarillion was published posthumously. It was an incomplete and ever-evolving work that Tolkien had literally spent a lifetime writing. Christopher Tolkien took what drafts and scraps he could find and attempted to create from it a coherent history that he felt represented his father’s last word on many subjects that had never achieved anything near to finality in JRRT’s lifetime. With the publication of The History of Middle-earth series, fans and students of JRRT’s work were given access to the same materials with which Christopher Tolkien had worked–and then some–and the unique opportunity to Monday-morning-quarterback CT’s version of The Silmarillion. Hence, it is not at all uncommon to find Silmarillion authors who don’t use parts of The Silmarillion as their primary canon but prefer the “HoMe version” that they feel probably better represents JRRT’s final word on a subject. Therefore, when discussing matters of “canon” in The Silmarillion and how fanons evolve from the texts, it is important to consider not only The Silmarillion but the portions of The History of Middle-earth on which it is based.

What does The Silmarillion say about Maedhros and Maglor’s relationship with Elrond and Elros? It’s pretty straightforward:

For the sons of Fëanor that yet lived came down suddenly upon the exiles of Gondolin and the remnant of Doriath, and destroyed them. In that battle some of their people stood aside, and some few rebelled and were slain upon the other part aiding Elwing against their own lords (for such was the sorrow and confusion in the hearts of the Eldar in those days); but Maedhros and Maglor won the day, though they alone remained thereafter of the sons of Fëanor, for both Amrod and Amras were slain. Too late the ships of Círdan and Gil-galad the High King came hasting to the aid of the Elves of Sirion; and Elwing was gone, and her sons. Then such few of that people as did not perish in the assault joined themselves to Gil-galad, and went with him to Balar; and they told that Elros and Elrond were taken captive, but Elwing with the Silmaril upon her breast had cast herself into the sea. …

Great was the sorrow of Eärendil and Elwing for the ruin of the havens of Sirion, and the captivity of their sons, and they feared that they would be slain; but it was not so. For Maglor took pity upon Elros and Elrond, and he cherished them, and love grew after between them, as little might be thought; but Maglor’s heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath. (1)

Nowhere in this account is Maedhros said to have wanted death for the young sons of Eärendil, much less that he tried to accomplish it.

However, there is one portion of this quote that I suspect is the basis of the fanon that Maedhros attempted to slay Elrond and Elros before being stopped by Maglor: “… [Elwing and Eärendil] feared that [their sons] would be slain; but it was not so. For Maglor took pity upon Elros and Elrond” (1). “Maglor took pity” … surely that implies a darker fate for the sons of Eärendil, does it not? Furthermore, Elwing and Eärendil had reason to fear that their sons would be killed by their captors.

To address the points out of order: of course Elwing and Eärendil thought the Fëanorians possessed the capacity and motivation to kill children. Elwing and Eärendil are certainly not partial to the Fëanorians, nor would they be particularly inclined to give them credit for mercy, much less justice. I think it’s important to distinguish between the point-of-view of The Silmarillion’s narrator–who possesses some distance if not complete impartiality–and the points-of-view of the characters, who certainly held the considerable bias expected of anyone who survived two attacks from the same people and would have lacked the emotional distance to overcome this. To them, the Fëanorians would have been inhuman, barbarian, capable of slaughtering small children simply to exact vengeance. Elwing, also, lost both of her brothers to the “cruel servants of Celegorm” during the attack on Doriath; would she even have known of Celegorm’s death and Maedhros’s attempt to save her brothers? (2) Furthermore, it is unlikely for reasons of propaganda: When trying to convince the people of Sirion of the justice of their cause in withholding the Silmaril from the Fëanorians, it would not have behooved Elwing or Eärendil to acknowledge their foe’s capacity for mercy. Short of painting Elwing or Eärendil as liars (which I am not willing to do), this makes it very likely that they would have come to believe this themselves, a belief that likely would have strengthened the more they invoked it.

So Elwing and Eärendil’s belief that their sons’ lives were in danger is neither surprising nor a reliable statement about the Fëanorians’ intentions.

Maglor’s taking pity on the sons of Eärendil really does not say anything about Maedhros either. In light of the fanon that Maedhros wished to slay the boys, of course, it applies quite neatly. But that is hardly the only interpretation to which that statement fits. A council might have met to decide the boys’ fate, at which Maglor spoke of his pity for them and his intentions to foster them. Perhaps the children were to be held as captives but for Maglor’s pity. Perhaps they were to be left in their settlement with the few survivors, but Maglor feared that this might cause them hardship or death and, pitying them, wished to offer them a better chance. Maybe they were to be fostered to someone else–say a mother with several children already–but Maglor chose to raise them instead. The interpretations into which that passage will fit are endless.

And, in fact, I would argue that the popular fanon under discussion here is one of the least logical interpretations, given what we know about Maedhros.

What do we know of him in The Silmarillion? His detractors will be quick to point out his oath and his role in three kinslayings, as well as the fact that he sat at the head of the House of Fëanor through all of the First Age and, therefore, would have borne primary responsibility for the kinslayings at Doriath and Sirion, which could not have happened without his consent. These things are all true. But there are other equally valid facts that temper his characterization. Of his house, canon shows him to be most concerned with unity and peace. At the Fëanorians’ first landing on Beleriand, he stood up to his father and asked that the ships be sent back for the House of Fingolfin. He relinquished the high kingship to Fingolfin not long after. He, with Maglor, attended the Mereth Aderthad. Canon shows him maintaining friendship with both the Houses of Fingolfin and Finarfin. He orchestrated the Union of Maedhros, which might have been successful but for treachery. Prior to both the kinslayings at Doriath and Sirion, he attempted diplomacy and was turned away both times. If we place credit for the kinslayings most solidly on his shoulders as the head of his house, so we must place credit for the diplomacy that, had it been accepted, would have avoided need for the attacks.

But perhaps the most compelling evidence against the fanon in question is Maedhros’s action after he discovered that the sons of Dior had been left to starve in the woods by Celegorm’s servants: “Of this Maedhros indeed repented, and sought for them long in the woods of Doriath; but his search was unavailing, and of the fate of Eluréd and Elurín no tale tells” (2).

If he was indeed repentant and went so far as to search “for them long in the woods of Doriath,” why would he slay out-of-hand two other young innocents in an almost identical situation?

I’d go so far as to argue that, based on what we know of Maedhros, to depict him as willing to slaughter two children without cause is out-of-character. Yes, a writer can make a case for something happening between the kinslayings at Doriath and Sirion that would make what we know of him based on almost six hundred years’ (3) evidence of statesmanship and mercy no longer applicable. But that writer will have to make a strong case for that and, frankly–given that most stories employing this fanon plop us right into the room with the sons of Eärendil or, at best, the battle–most stories do not. The assumption is that Maedhros is nasty enough to contemplate such an act, which is terribly out-of-character.

But, as I noted earlier, not all authors consider The Silmarillion as their canon. I think, then, that it is also necessary to look at what The History of Middle-earth has to say about this event and Maedhros’s role in it.

Elwing’s choice to withhold the Silmaril from the sons of Fëanor is one of the oldest ideas that was maintained consistently through to The Silmarillion’s publication and first appeared in the Nauglafring in The Book of Lost Tales 2. In fact, in Christopher Tolkien’s commentary on the next History of Middle-earth volume, he states, “The Sons of Fëanor have previously all been named only in the Tale the Nauglafring,” making their involvement with Elwing and her Silmaril as old as they are (4). At this point, however, The Book of Lost Tales lacks any mention of her children and the Fëanorians’ treatment of them.

But the idea did not proceed without changes. We see the story emerge again in The Shaping of Middle-earth (HoMe, vol. IV) in the summary “Sketch of the Mythology”:

Their son (Elrond) who is half-mortal and half-elfin, a child, was saved however by Maidros. When later the Elves return to the West, bound by his mortal half he elects to stay on earth. Through him the blood of Hurin (his great-uncle) and of the Elves is yet among Men, and is seen yet in valour and in beauty and in poetry” (5, boldface mine).

So, in the earliest version as this story takes shape, it is Maedhros who takes pity on Elrond, not Maglor.

“Sketch” was then expanded into the Quenta Noldorinwa, or simply Quenta. For the section of the story concerned, there existed two versions. In the first version (Q1), we see the continuation of the idea in “Sketch” that Maedhros rescued Elrond: “But Maidros took pity upon her child Elrond, and took him with him, and harboured and nurtured him, for his heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath,” where we also see some of the language of the published Silmarillion taking shape (6). The second version (Q2) at first continues this idea of Maedhros-as-savior. However, revisions to Q2 introduce two important changes. Elrond is given a brother, Elros. And Maglor and Maedhros switch roles, with Maglor becoming the children’s savior. The Earliest Annals of Beleriand and The Later Annals of Beleriand, which are believed to be slightly later than the Quenta, echo the changes in roles between Maedhros and Maglor. (See Notes for a more detailed analysis of the addition of Elros and the likely sequence in which the primary source texts were written and revised.)

And this, so far as we know, was Tolkien’s final word on the subject (7).

“After the hasty ‘Sketch of the Mythology,’ … the Quenta Noldorinwa [Quenta] was in fact the only complete version of ‘The Silmarillion’ that my father ever made,” writes Christopher Tolkien in the Prefare to The Shaping of Middle-earth. JRRT was interrupted in his work on The Silmarillion to write The Lord of the Rings. He simply never got back to it in its entirety. The fact that the wording used in the Quenta is almost exactly what would be published in The Silmarillion for the account of Elrond and Elros makes sense, given this: It was the final version that CT would have taken as “canon” when putting together The Silmarillion. So, in the HoMe, there is no mysterious expansion on the account given in The Silmarillion of Elrond and Elros’s fostering by Maglor that shows Maedhros to be ruthless in excess of what we observe throughout the rest of the published Silmarillion. In fact, we see quite the opposite: JRRT’s original conception of Maedhros was as the twins’ rescuer, not potential murderer. The reassignment of this role to Maglor came rather late and was only repeated in the Annals of Beleriand before Tolkien ceased to write any further on the subject.

I think that this is significant, not so much in asserting that Maedhros and Maglor were mis-assigned roles in the published Silmarillion (because Maglor-as-savior does appear to be a final and reliable revision) but to lend further proof to the fact that Maedhros behaving without mercy towards the twins is terribly out-of-character. With few exceptions, JRRT established early the roles the Fëanorians would one day have in the published version. Maedhros and Maglor–just as in The Silmarillion–stood out for their guilt and capacity for mercy as compared to their brothers. In the several versions of the “Silmarillion” found in The Shaping of Middle-earth, these traits can almost be said to become these characters’ foundations. Not only are they involved early in the sparing of Eärendil’s sons, they go so far as to forswear their oath following the desertion of Dior’s sons. They attack Sirion only reluctantly and under pressure from Amrod and Amras, who earn their deaths in that battle much as “the 3Cs” earn their deaths at Doriath:

In annal 210 it is said that Maidros actually forswore his oath (although in the final annal he still strives to fulfil it); and this is clearly to be related to his revulsion at the killing of Dior’s sons in the annal for 206. Damrod and Diriel [Amrod and Amras] now emerge as the most ferocious of the surviving sons of Fëanor, and it is on them that the blame for the assault on the people of Sirion is primarily laid: Maidros and Maglor only ‘gave reluctant aid’. This develops further an increasing emphasis in these texts on the weariness and loathing felt by Maidros and Maglor for the duty they felt bound to. (8)

As a self-proclaimed “Fëanatic,” attempts to vilify the Fëanorians beyond what their canonical deeds already accomplish for them tends to annoy me because of the flat characterization it produces, if nothing else. And part of me wonders if this fanon has been seized so eagerly by authors who don’t like the Fëanorians and are quick to assume the truth behind any besmirching of their names that isn’t dismissed outright by the canon.

But, then, a more reasonable voice replies that fanon is fanon, and there really is no reason to assume bias much less maliciousness at work behind this particular fanon.

After all, as MithLuin remarked in a comment on my original LiveJournal post on this topic, this fanon does add tension to an event hastily sketched in the published Silmarillion:

But conflict makes for good drama, so in a story, it works better to have them argue over this before he agrees, rather than writing:
“I want to keep them!” ~ Maglor
“Okay.” ~ Maedhros :)

This is an event of enormous historical and symbolic significance to people who study and write about Tolkien’s works. Its cursory treatment in the text belies the enthusiasm people feel for writing about it, and with good reason. In this event there is an intersection of the three ages that receive the most treatment in fiction set in Tolkien’s world. There are Maedhros and Maglor of the First Age, committing some of their final acts before going to death and self-exile, respectively; this event, in many ways, represents the closing of the chapter on First Age history. There are Elrond and Elros, who in the Second Age will aid in developing their respective Elven and mortal communities, in many ways representing here the beginning of the chapter on Second Age history. And, of course, all of this will culminate in the Third Age, the epic events of that era being impossible without this moment in distant history, when Elrond’s house and especially the heir of Elros (Aragorn) will aid in banishing Sauron from Middle-earth. It comes as no surprise to me, in looking at stories about this topic, to see an enthusiasm for tales about Maedhros and Maglor’s relationship with Elrond and Elros among fans of both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings. There are few better examples of the continuity and connectivity of Tolkien’s several works than this.

And, at the same time, there is emotional power there as well: two kinslayers at the ends of their lives who still have love and mercy enough in their hearts to aid two orphans. There is symbolism in the loss of their twin brothers Amrod and Amras in the same battle in which the twins Elrond and Elros are found; there is the deeper connection to those twins Eluréd and Elurín lost during the second kinslaying and the chance to make amends, especially for Maedhros, for that terrible deed. Perhaps this is the reason for my distaste for this fanon. In Maedhros and Maglor’s mercy toward Elrond and Elros, Tolkien has created an event that serves as the climax to one story at the same time as it acts as the preface to another, as well as providing an apt example of the complexity of character in The Silmarillion that makes writing about the book such a delight. Thrusting one of the characters undeservedly into the place of villain ruins this.

Works Cited

• 1. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, “Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath.” Return to first in-text reference
• 2. Ibid., “Of the Ruin of Doriath.” Return to first in-text reference
• 3. This figure was computed using the final dates in The Grey Annals and The Tale of Years, both found in Volume XI of The History of Middle-earth: The War of the Jewels. These are JRRT’s most up-to-date timelines and fit together without contradicting each other, so can be used in conjunction to get fairly accurate chronologies for the First Age. I measured between the burning at Losgar (4997 YV or 47,871 Sun Years after the arrival of the Valar in Arda) and the Fëanorian sack of the settlement at Sirion (531 FA or 48,432 Sun Years after the arrival of the Valar in Arda) for a total of 561 years. Return to first in-text reference
• 4. J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth. Vol. III, The Lays of Beleriand, ed. Christopher Tolkien, “Commentary on Part III: ‘Failivrin.’” Return to first in-text reference
• 5. J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth. Vol. IV, The Shaping of Middle-earth, ed. Christopher Tolkien, The Earliest ‘Silmarillion’: The ‘Sketch of the Mythology,’ §17. Return to first in-text reference
• 6. Ibid., The Quenta §17. Return to first in-text reference
• 7. Ibid., The Earliest Annals of Beleriand, introductory material. Return to first in-text reference
• 8. Ibid., The Earliest Annals of Beleriand, Commentary. Return to first in-text reference

Bibliography

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth. Vol. II, The Book of Lost Tales 2, ed. Christopher Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth. Vol. IV, The Shaping of Middle-earth, ed. Christopher Tolkien.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of Middle-earth. Vol. V, The Lost Road and Other Writings, ed. Christopher Tolkien.

Notes

Annal 329 of The Later Annals of Beleriand reads, “The folk of Sirion were taken into the people of Maidros, such as yet remained; and Elrond was taken to nurture by Maglor.” This seems almost a reversal on the addition of Elros in the Quenta, until one considers that the multiple sources under discussion here are believed to be written close in time to each other, and it is not always possible to accurately date the revisions made. CT’s Commentary on the Later Annals of Beleriand, in the commentary to Annal 325, makes note that, “The order was then inverted to ‘Elros and Elrond’. No doubt at the same time, in annal 329, ‘Elrond was taken’ was changed to ‘Elros and Elrond were taken.’ This isn’t entirely relevant to the topic under discussion but is more to satisfy the curiousity of astute readers who note that my conclusions do not match exactly with the text proper of The Later Annals of Beleriand. Given all of this, I consider the following timeline as far as the composition and revision of JRRT’s various primary sources:

• The ‘Sketch of the Mythology’: Maedhros as savior of Elrond
• Quenta Noldorinwa, version 1 (Q1): Maedhros as savior of Elrond
• Quenta Noldorinwa, version 2 (Q2): Maedhros as savior of Elrond
• Q2 revised to reverse Fëanorians’ roles: Maglor as savior of Elrond
• The Earlier Annals of Beleriand: Maglor as savior of Elrond
• The Later Annals of Beleriand: Maglor as savior of Elrond
• Q2 and The Later Annals of Beleriand revised to add Elros: Maglor is now the savior of Elrond and Elros, and the final version has taken shape (Return to post)

Filed under: Tolkien by Dawn
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During the kerfuffle a couple months ago involving FanHistory.com, I found myself growing skeptical of the site, not so much because of the kerfuffle itself (which involved its owner Laura Hale’s refusal to remove a fan’s real name from the site) but because of what else came out concerning Ms. Hale’s intended use of the site and the information she was gathering. Yet, I wasn’t ready to pass final judgment. The outcry against FanHistory.com and Ms. Hale in particular was deafening … and indeed, that was part of the reason for my reluctance. I am suspicious of mobs, and there was a definite mob mentality in those weeks. So while I ceased my activity on the site (in part because I started school and now have little time for fannish activities outside of the SWG), I did so while waiting to see how things would play out. I halfway hoped to push back against the mob on this one. I liked the idea of FanHistory.com, just not its owner’s purported obsession with making money off of fandom. And–as the purpose of this blog will attest–I like advocating for things in which I believe that go against popular opinion. FanHistory.com, I was rooting for you, I really was.

Then, last week, Michelle sent me a link to a post on the FanHistory.com blog called Fandom as a Business. FanHistory.com and I are kaputs. It seems that the fundamental aim of the site is not why I got involved. The fundamental aim of the site is something with which I strongly disagree. And this time, all of this is in the site owner’s own words, removing the need to get swept up in any bloodthirsty, vindictive mobs in order to make my final decision about my involvement with this site.

Aside from the fandom-for-money debate, which I don’t feel legally qualified to wade into right now (although I know that, personally, I want no part of it for various reasons), I take issue with several statements that Ms. Hale makes in her post Fandom as a Business.

• “[A] lot of fans who are in fandom for pure enjoyment, they have a general goal of not making waves, of finding ways to participate that don’t create additional strife for themselves, where they can express their love of canon, of finding a ways to enjoy the source more, of connecting with like minded [sic] people.”
• “If you’re a fan, you might shut your mouth and avoid controversy at all costs. If you don’t, your enjoyment of fandom might decrease.”
• “If you’re a fan, the rules might be that you might be constrained by personal relationships. You don’t want to offend your friends, alienate people who could help you be happy in fandom. These rules on a micro level mean you can’t say and do certain things.”

Throughout the post, there is a tidy dichotomy: You either are in fandom for fun and, therefore, have the luxury of going with the flow, or you’re in fandom for profit and don’t have that luxury. As the owner of a moderate-sized group and website–not-for-profit group and website, I must add–I take umbrage at this. Ms. Hale’s depiction of not-for-profit fandom as a bunch of happy-go-lucky lemmings is not the reality of fandom for me, nor is it the reality for many other people in fandom either.

Over the course of the just-over-three years of the SWG’s existence, I have had to make many decisions based on criteria well beyond “a general goal of not making waves.” People have left the SWG because of decisions that I’ve had to make. People don’t like or agree with everything that I do. People don’t like me because of decisions to do with the SWG. I’ve had to reprimand friends and defend people whose behavior or ideals I usually do not approve of. I’ve even lost friends over SWG-related incidents. Do I say all of this to elicit pity and pats on the back or praise for my efforts? Not at all. I say all of this because, in light of it, I find the idea of not-for-profit fandom as all roses and sunshine downright laughable, with the implication that by swimming against the popular currents, for-profit fandom has earned a right to make money on what they do. The rest of us in our happy fannish Utopia, of course, are too busy singing harmony on the “Tra-la-la-lalley” song from The Hobbit to understand that.

And, as I said, I know that I am not alone in my experiences. Quite the opposite. The SWG is not what one would call a controversial entity; that I have had such intensely negative experiences as part of my founding and governing it speaks less about my struggles than it does about what other group/site owners experience who have found themselves more often amid controversy. For example, as part of the MEFA and ALEC writing competitions, both Marta and Alassante open the workings of these events to public scrutiny and critique. I’m sure that they don’t do this for “pure enjoyment.” Nor do I suppose that either enjoys having her hard work belittled by fans who are vocal against fandom awards altogether. And both admins, I know, have at times made decisions that go against what a friend, an influential person, or even the majority of the group were asking for because it was the decision that needed to be made. How is this compatible with not offending friends? With “avoid[ing] controversy at all costs”?

I’m sure that in the heyday of controversy over HASA’s review system, the owner, admins, and most visible authors on that site didn’t always enjoy a comfortable fandom experience. When I first became involved with fandom, I heard HASA trounced by more people than had neutral or positive things to say about the site. And, no, at the end of the day, those who spent their time and energy building a fannish home for those who wanted it didn’t get to curl up around a healthy profit or dismiss their choices as “business decisions.” Despite the headache and heartache, fandom was still “only a hobby.”

I could keep going with examples from nearly every group where I know the admin(s) relatively well. Many of the people reading this blog are or have been leaders in fandom in some way. And I have no doubt that most of them know exactly what I am talking about.

In the end, Ms. Hale is correct: She cannot hope to run her site based on the contradictory and fickle impulses of “fandom.” But pretending like she is alone in that reality as a for-profit site–with the implication that making such a sacrifice entitles her to her spoils–is deeply unfair to fans who have faced similar controversy and pressure and censure in the process of creating fannish spaces and fanworks for the love of it and who don’t even register such terms as “bottom line” and “product” and “profit” as part of what they do.

Furthermore, I have to wonder exactly how secure Ms. Hale is in making decisions based on business models (versus being motivated by a push for comfortable popularity, like the rest of us) when she makes posts like this in the first place.

“The ten percent unfavorable are not part of our potential audience,” she writes about FanHistory.com’s latest decision to add LJ users to the site using a bot. Then at whom is the extensive defense she writes aimed? Surely, that hypothetical 90% don’t need to be persuaded to accept her business goals before participating; in fact, I don’t see how it is advantageous to make them think too hard about fandom-for-profit at all. If I am competing in a beauty pageant and a judge says, “Dawn, you have a lovely face!” my first response will not be to point out what has been identified again and again as my biggest flaw by saying, “Did you notice the purple wart beside my nose? People tend not to like that, but I think that purple warts can be pretty too, don’t you?”

Or, to put it slightly differently, consider another business that I do not frequent: WalMart. I do not shop at WalMart because I do not support many of their policies and am uncomfortable giving my money to the company as a result. Now, WalMart surely recognizes the presence of conscientious objectors like me and counts us as a loss unlikely to be recovered, just as Ms. Hale does her obstinate naysayers: Unless WalMart changes some of its core business practices–those which allow it to profit in the first place–then they will not have my patronage; unless Ms. Hale abandons her business model, then she will not have the support of many in fandom. Neither is an option, given their goals.

But WalMart does not try to woo me. They do not argue against my points. They do not try to convince me. They ignore me entirely. It’s best to pretend I don’t exist. By engaging me in a debate about their labor practices, fair pay for women, and the importance of small businesses remaining viable in a community, then they will invite people who otherwise would not have questioned these things to pause and say, “Hey, wait a minute …” This may well lose them more current customers than it will earn them new customers.

I think that fandom provides some interesting case studies to this point. Fanfiction.net is a for-profit site. Their blinking, garish ads generate grumbles, but few protest the idea of Fanfiction.net using banner ads to make a profit on the site and, therefore, the fanworks hosted on the site. Even I have stories hosted there. I don’t think of it as “a for-profit site” but as “a site with lots of readers, some of whom are thoughtful reviewers.”

Then consider the now-defunct FanLib.com. FanLib.com did not hide their hopes of making money on their enterprise. They were more forthright about it than Fanfiction.net, but–I think–more importantly, they took issue with any fan or group that challenged their “right” to make money off of fanworks. I know plenty of people who signed up for FanLib accounts when the site first debuted. They weren’t naive to FanLib’s purposes, but these were secondary to the possibility of finding a broader audience for their work or discovering a vibrant new fan community. It wasn’t until FanLib admins starting picking fights with fans and invading forums that questioned their policies that many of the people who were willing to give the site a try–for-profit or not–decided that they wanted no part of it.

For me–and, I suspect, for a lot of other people as well–FanLib’s primary association was not as an archive or a community but as the strongest symbol of the fandom-for-profit movement. Supporting the site came to mean supporting the philosophy on which it was built. And, because I was and am opposed to fandom for profit, then I had trouble seeing past that to enjoy what else the site had to offer.

I’m afraid that FanHistory.com has become similarly tainted for me. I got involved with the site because I agree strongly with its professed aim as a project “dedicated to documenting the history of fandom” and, like any good fandom member, I recognize that if I want to see a goal reached then I must do my part in achieving it. When I think of FanHistory.com now, I no longer think of that. I think of the debate about whether making money off of fanworks is acceptable, and by Ms. Hale’s continual defense of her right to do so, I think of my choice to participate on FanHistory.com as an assertion that I agree with her. She likes business models, so my choice to discontinue participating on her site because of her “product”–not because of any personal grievances that I have with her (because my sole communication with her was pleasant enough)–shouldn’t upset her, right? Nor should my decision to give my time and efforts to what I see as a superior “product”: FanLore.org. That was simple.

Filed under: Fandom and Online Life by Dawn
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There has been a recent spate of posts on Metafandom and elsewhere about whether or not academia–and academically inclined fans–should have a role in fandom. So far, it hasn’t even been a matter of how much of a role, or when academic analysis is appropriate, but a black-and-white, YES-or-NO debate such as is rarely seen in fandom.

I find the argument of those most vociferously in the NO camp to be a little disturbing.

Because what is an “academic” reading–which, based on the posts I’ve read, is being defined as detailed analysis of whether and why a story works–of fanworks if not simply one of many ways to approach a very broad and diverse topic?

Swatkat24 put it best: “I find the anti-aca/fen debates that make the rounds in fandom every now and then worrisome, and very opposed to that aspect of fannish culture I’ve come to cherish over the years: tolerance of other people’s weird obsessions.“

The argument against “acafen” (those fans who enjoy and engage in academic analysis and discourse about fanworks) seems to revolve primarily around the idea that to analyze a work too deeply ruins it. In K.A. Laity’s original post that spurred this current round of discussion, one commenter put it as, “Funny thing I’ve found– when you cut the living dog into pieces, it never acts the same afterwards, even if you put the pieces back where you found them.” Twistedchick drew a similar parallel with, “I have never liked dissections and vivisections” and goes on to write,

See, when you take all the living bits of a story apart, out of context, skin them and stake them out and dance around them while they’re drying, what you’ve got is something that you’ve killed, and it’s dead. It might make stew, but it’s not a story any more. You haven’t ‘controlled the narrative’, you’ve slaughtered it, and it’s attracting flies and smelling pretty bad. You can say you’ve got Einstein’s brain, in a jar on the shelf, and you can measure it and figure out what shade of pinkish-gray it is this week, but it’s not a living mind any more, is it?

These are pretty extreme reactions, I think, when one considers that under discussion is a single way to read and interpret literature. We are not, in fact, talking about cutting apart living, sentient beings. The argument against literary analysis in no way parallels the argument against vivisection. (Take it from one who has spent a good part of her life firmly in the camp making the latter argument.)

The above arguments fail to account for the fact that a story analyzed by one reader does not leave that story in shambles for subsequent readers. If one takes apart that hypothetical dog, then that dog can be wholly restored for no one. It’s not as though you can cut him to pieces and I can adopt him and take him home, healthy and whole, the next week.

Which gets to a second issue that is being discussed in this context. The comments on Twistedchick’s post reveal both hurt and anger about having work discussed in such a fashion without consent and her own opinions being disregarded because she wasn’t thought capable of understanding the discussion because she was not an academic.

With the latter, I have to empathize … but I don’t think that it’s the same question as to whether academic analysis is appropriate when applied to fandom or fanworks. Such experiences as Twistedchick describes don’t belong to academics. They belong to assholes.

Can academics be assholes? Sure.

Can non-academics be assholes? If ff.net proves one thing, it is that stupid people can be jerks too.

Telling someone that she is not intelligent enough to understand the discussion of a story that she crafted takes a galling amount of condescension. Providing someone with unasked-for critical analysis of a story is a completely different can of worms and not that much different than the ongoing discussion/debate about constructive criticism and whether or not it is polite or appropriate to critique a story where the author has not given his or her permission to do so. Publicly critiquing a story is even more of a touchy issue.

Why should the question be any different if it is an “acafan” talking down to me about my competency as an author or a barely literate commenter on ff.net who can nonetheless lecture me on the myriad complexities of eschatology in Tolkien’s world?

Personally, I’m inclined to write off both as socially inept and possessed of overinflated senses of self-importance and to seek constructive comments from those whom I trust to provide a kind of critique with which I am comfortable.

But the reality of publicly posting online is that, with it, one opens himself or herself to public comments and “use” of the material as inspiration, example, and so on. I touched on this in a previous post, The Many Faces of LiveJournal, about how some LiveJournal users want their public posts to remain available to a public readership … but to simultaneously inhabit some nebulous twilight realm as far as commentary and fair use of that material goes. My feelings on this remain mixed, to an extent, but I find myself leaning toward regarding this outlook as an example of wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too: If public authorship confers benefits that locked/limited or private authorships do not–such as an increased readership and level of discussion or positive attention from peers–then it seems a bit unfair to ignore the negatives that come with public authorship, such as negative attention or fair use of one’s words for purposes with which the author may not necessarily agree, as when one LJer discovered that her public LJ posts had been referenced in a published book. At the same time, I do understand that a nuanced understanding of commenting on and using another fan’s work–even when that work is public–has been not only tolerated but encouraged in fandom. So while I find myself raising my eyebrows at the writer who would publicly share a story and yet expect that story to remain off-limits for certain kinds of critique, then I nonetheless do understand from where such an attitude derives.

Rolanni brings up a related point about the appropriateness of academic study and discussion of “genre” fiction, particularly science fiction, also related to Laity’s original post. I think this is relevant to fan writings. “Genre fiction” has long been derided by many in the “literary fiction” arena; my writing program in university made its utter disdain for “genre” shamelessly explicit. But authors of both types of fiction have found common ground in their hatred of “fan fiction,” those derivative works that are subpar and escapist at best and theft at the Robin-Hobb extreme of the worst. It is a typical example of defining ourselves not by what we like but by what we hate and stomping down other people’s work to make our own stand taller.

Yet, despite the long loathing, both genre and fan fiction have found academics suddenly peering past thresholds they once wouldn’t be caught dead crossing. Rolanni writes, “Science Fiction has had an Inferiority Complex almost since its mass market birth, when it was viewed (by academics, my mom, high school English teachers, and other Right Thinking People) as being on the same intellectual level as porn, and was often displayed on the same spinners in the newstands,” and goes on to argue for the value of escapist fiction.

With which I would agree wholeheartedly.

But, again, I am puzzled by the assumption that a piece of writing must be one or the other–either worthy of analysis or simply “escapist”–and cannot exist as both to different people or even the same person. I read Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness for pleasure and loved every minute of it. I didn’t attempt to analyze it or figure out what it means. Yet it is a science fiction novel that could definitely be analyzed and could also hold its own against many works of so-called “literary” fiction. Likewise, I was rivetted by the plot, characters, and world-building of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, not with trying to figure out what she was trying to say. She was definitely trying to say something, but it wasn’t why I read the book. Oh, and Margaret Atwood is definitely a “literary” author.

For that matter, are novels so easily dichotomized as “literary” or “genre”?

Part of the reason that I insist on using the annoying quotation marks each time I type those words is because I don’t believe in the pure existence of either form of fiction. Really, what separates “literary” from “genre”? When I inquired in one of my writing courses about how science fiction is defined, I was told that it takes place in a dystopian future and uses “formulas” of the genre, like unrealistically perfect protagonists. In this case, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (which is celebrated in literary circles) can be dismissed as “genre” because it takes place in the future (and that future is definitely dystopian)?

And the acceptable “literary” stories written by my classmates–which inevitably dealt with divorce or alcoholism or prematurely dead friends–no matter how bland the writing and tired the subject, were not formulaic?

The more I write and the more I study literature (and–full disclosure–I am not an academic: I have one Bachelor’s degree in psychology and am working on a second in English, and my money is made doing work related to neither for the government; I do, however, hope to earn advanced degrees in my studies someday), the more I balk at classifying literature as one or the other of anything. Literary, genre; serious, escapist; original, derivative … I think that every story falls somewhere on a continuum between these extremes (and where on this continuum will vary from reader to reader), and no story can be wholly one and none of the other.

So, my point is that while I won’t fault Rolanni for her pride in her “escapist genre fiction,” I think that attempting to define what this is is essentially pointless: It will vary from person to person. For example, plenty of people write off Tolkien as escapist, genre tripe. And yet plenty of people also see Tolkien as a serious author with Something to Say that is worth studying.

Therefore, excluding a work from study because it meets one individual’s classification of “escapist genre fiction” is just as pointless. I may think that your escapist genre fiction really and truly does have something to say.

But, later in Rolanni’s post, she goes on to say,

What seems not to be understood is that academics don’t study and write articles in order to Validate the object of their study. Academics study and write articles in order to Validate themselves. As more and more people become academics, they must look further and further afield for subjects, and lo! suddenly Science Fiction isn’t genre trash anymore; it’s a way to secure tenure.

Ouch.

Considering that she froze and eventually made invisible the comments to this post, I suspect that I’m not the only one who takes umbrage at this point.

Clearly, if I think your escapist genre fiction has something to say–or your fan fiction, for that matter–then if I wish to study it, then this has little to do with my own enjoyment as a reader or curiosity as a researcher as it does attempting to strike into new territory and being hailed as pioneer in my discipline, presumably with great personal gain (i.e., tenure). This sort of broad-sweeping ad hominem attack is not only untrue but terribly unfair.

And, here, I think the argument about academia and fandom comes full circle.

The heart of the debate really has nothing to do with ruining fiction by “dissecting” it or ignoring its escapist purposes to search for something deeper (which, apparently, does not exist, no way, no how). It has to do with an intense dislike of academia and academics and–perhaps beyond that–intellectualism or finding pleasure in analysis. Here is where I come back to my original point that this is a disturbing argument.

It is disturbing because, as Swatkat24 pointed out in the above-referenced quote, fandom is obsessively tolerant of all sorts of people and ideas. While it is generally accepted that everyone be permitted their preferences in what they do and don’t like to read, it is frowned upon in most fan communities to attempt to bar someone from writing what they wish, be it smut or slash or AU. Or academic “dissections” of stories. People are trusted to avoid what they don’t like. And fandom especially stresses the importance of critiquing stories and not authors. Attempting to exclude a person from participating in fandom as an author or a reviewer because of his or her sexual orientation, race, religion, marital status, or gender identity would cause an uproar.

So why are fans sitting idly by and allowing fans to be excluded based on their chosen careers, fields of study, and level of education?

If I stated that people without college degrees should refrain from commenting on stories because their comments are inevitably shallow, uninsightful, and useless, I would (rightfully) be derided because I am not judging a review but a reviewer, much as telling an author that “Young authors like you should wait until you have more life experience before trying to write love stories,” I am not critiquing the story but the writer, and we generally accept that this is irrelevant and wrong.

Here, I find a rather intriguing connection to real (read: outside of fandom) life, at least in the United States, where there is lately an ever-escalating debate on “intellectualism” that increasingly attempts to cast the opinions of those deemed as “intellectuals” as unwelcome or inferior to those of “ordinary folks.” As the current presidential campaign really got underway, I found myself baffled at how many people I heard scorning Barack Obama’s “intellectualism” as somehow making him unfit to serve as President of the United States. “Why so?” I often wanted to ask; it seemed to me that devoting one’s life to careful thought and reasoning and problem solving was an asset in a presidential candidate.

But, as I delved deeper into this debate, I found aspects of it striking … and remarkably similar to the “acafen” discussion going on in fandom. It seemed that many people proudly titling themselves “anti-intellectuals” often spoke of suffering hurt and condescension from those whom they considered intellectual. Slate magazine’s XX Factor blog had a discussion about this, and conservative blogger Melinda Henneberger wrote of how “I did work for an intellectual at one point—and I know this because he spoke of it constantly; in fact, he talked so much about his own heapin’ helpin’ of smarts that one wondered, as he would have said, how wide-ranging his great thoughts really were.” Rachael Larimore–also conservative–wrote that, “What makes people angry, and blood-thirsty, if we must go there, is when elites and intellectuals condescend to everyone else and belittle their views.”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

And whether applied to politics or fandom, this view is troubling because it excludes people based on perceived intelligence or preferred way of interpreting information. It does not analyze the merit of what they have to say but judges that, whatever is said, it will be offensive simply because of who is saying it. Being an “academic” isn’t a guarantee of asshattery, nor do academics and intellectuals hold monopoly on being jerks.

I don’t believe that all authors need to encourage or even welcome an academic reading of their work. Just as intellectuals aren’t the only pains in politics, I’m sure we could all name certain kinds of review(er)s that we find annoying or detestable and would prefer not to receive. In some spaces–like on LiveJournal–an author can control this, screening or deleting comments that she or he finds contrary to her or his purpose in writing, and I would not protest that right. But I think that it is quite a leap–and a dangerous one–to say that a certain type of thinking or people who enjoy that type of thinking are wholly unwelcome in fandom or their preferences any less worthy than anyone else’s.

Filed under: Fandom and Online Life, Literature by Dawn
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