Some Fandom Things! (Journal Article, Couple of Stories, Wiki Page, Tolkien in VT)

[dawn_felagund]

I have been busy with fandom stuff over the past month or so. Some of this stuff is going to be old news to the people who are reading here. But for everyone else, here's a month's worth of fannish things!

First of all, my paper Affirmational and Transformational Values and Practices in the Tolkien Fanfiction Community has been published in the

Comments

[marta_bee]

That's an interesting topic for the research article. I will say (not having anything other than my own experiences to go on, and having only a very rough idea of how those terms are likely being used), I do think you're on to something.

It makes sense, at least. For one thing, Tolkien fandom has an extremely large (and by this point pretty well set) canon. There aren't the predictive conversations about how the canon will change in the future at this point, and there aren't the factions taking a stance on (say) whether Holmes/Watson will be canon, or whether the Harry Potter series would lead to Ron/Hermione or Harry/Hermione. Because of that... it kind of is what it is at a certain level, and you don't have large groups of people "buying in" to the fandom only to have it roll out a different way and feel like the universe is "wrong." You just have geeks who found a corner that speaks to them and are eager to share it.

It also helps that Tolkien has a fairly well-defined and well-known biography, quite a lot of which I don't approve of, but that I'm also not surprised by. And I'm not learning the minutia in real-time through social media posts or interviews. There's a sense in which I can't be turned off by some revelation about this particular creator because I always knew he was an Edwardian and old-fashioned (to be polite about it) for his time. So while I won't agree with all his beliefs and life-choices, I don't get to feel betrayed. I knew all that before I got involved in the fandom, I guess?

All of which means, while not everyone will like everything about Tolkien's world, it makes sense that there wouldn't be large groups who either dislike the canon enough to want to change it, and also may have thought the canon was trending in one direction only to be disappointed. So my gut reaction (as I said, no real evidence beyond my own experience here!) is, what you're describing seems to make sense.

**********************

Really looking forward to reading the Celebrimbor fic, too. He's such an interesting character, and Ost-in-Edhil is such an interesting world, and I think we can *all* understand the pressure of adapting family traditions all too well. Perhaps that will be even more readable now that the holiday busy-ness has passed.

***********************

And I'm so sorry to hear about Lancelot. I've not been reading a lot of LJ posts, particularly ones longer than a paragraph or three, so I think I was only half-aware of that news. Maybe I'd registered it as a low level? Regardless- I can appreciate how hard that must be, and I'm glad you found a bit of a constructive way to remember him, through completing the project.

*hugs* all around, friend.

[dawn_felagund]

*hugs back* Thank you. It was a rough holiday. We put him down on December 22, which colored a lot of traditions. Even today, I bumped into an acquaintance at the Dollar Tree and we were talking about dogs, and I said, "I have two Goldens," then had to walk it back. So my brain, in many ways, still expects him to be here, and it is still a shock when he is not.

In terms of the canon stuff ... as much as I've thought about this over the years, I'd never considered the importance of a "fixed" canon to Tolkienfic fandom's rather conservative approach to the canon. (This is a risk of being monofandom, I guess! :D) I found your remarks so insightful. I think you are 100% correct that having a canon that is not going to change in major ways turns a fandom into one where an "affirmational" orientation toward learning and mastering the canon makes sense. As you noted with the example of Tolkien's biography, there's not a whole lot to be surprised about re: the original creator! The immediacy of responding to, say, JKR's announcement that Dumbledore is gay just isn't there; there aren't those kinds of clashes with the original creator. Who are we even going to argue with?! Even Christopher is gone now. I know when addressing social justice issues in the canon when writing meta, I sometimes feel a little ... silly? I mean, some of the stories are over a century old now; contesting the sexism/racism/homophobia of books that are swiftly coming to belong to a bygone era doesn't have the force of pointing out the same when something is being actively created. (I still point it out because I think there is value in the fandom recognizing it and responding to/repairing it with fanworks, but it does have the feel of tilting at windmills at times.)

Further supporting your point is, I think, the volume and sometimes vitriol toward the films, which show that Tolkienfic fandom--when provided with a living human or humans to argue with--has no compunctions against taking them to task! :D