"Uinen," Fee for Fandom, and Other Such
First of all, I have authored this month's SWG character biography on Uinen for anyone who wants to take a look. I chose her because I thought she'd be easy. Ha! I know 
heartofoshun will relate to the growing sense of panic when the essay you thought you'd easily finish five days ago somehow keeps growing because you keep getting so many damn ideas about this character and how she connects to this, that, and the other. Uinen! The seaweed goddess!!! Who knew.
While working on it, some thoughts really clicked into place that had been sort of amorphous in my head prior to this point. For one, I noticed for the first time that the kinds of descriptions in the Books of Lost Tales that I'd often described as "whimsical" bear a striking resemblance to the kind of "diminutive" fairy-stories that Tolkien would later hate on regularly. The descriptions of the houses of the Ainur are the most salient example to come to mind; I mean, in "On Fairy-Stories," he quotes from a particularly awful (in his assessment) story that includes the imagery of a roof made of bat wings ... and he uses that exact same image in describing Nienna's halls in BoLT1! ("... the roof, instead of slats, / Is covered with the wings of bats" vs. "the roof was of bats' wings" ... HMMMM.) These details came out when he rewrote the Silm in the 1930s. I feel like we're seeing that moment so many of us have had as a young writer where we 1) do things because we've watched enough other writers to know we're supposed to and 2) eventually come to realize that we don't actually have to.
Then of course is my long-running theory that, over time, Tolkien decreased the moral complexity of the Silm characters and tended to push them more firmly toward Good or Evil rather than letting them muddle about in shades of gray in the middle. Uinen keeps with this trend.
On a completely other note, the SWG mods have been having an interesting discussion about fee-for-fandom. On the one hand, as an archive owner myself, I get the need to have costs covered. The SWG's costs aren't that high so I can cover them myself ... but I'm not sure that's ideal in most circumstances. (Maybe not even the SWG's. I can't be unbiased on the matter.) Fandom shouldn't be owned by the highest bidder; obviously, it is better when it is a collective, democratic endeavor. Yet the other side of me lives in an impoverished community and knows that a fee or book or whatnot that's "not that much" is a lot when you're struggling to meet basic needs, and many people are. Add in that fandom is an international community dealing largely with first-world economies, and the issue of exchange rates becomes especially salient: the price for entry for many of our friends becomes unattainable.
There is also the fact that, according to the demographic data in the 2020 Tolkien Fanfic Survey, there are two large groups of "missing" fans, i.e., demographic groups that appear in the Tolkien fandom in much smaller numbers than would be expected: fans of color and fans without college degrees, the latter of which often translates into working-class and lower-income fans. Obviously, fanfic is free, but other aspects of fandom life are not, and especially the shelf full of hard-to-find books that is often perceived as a necessity. (I think there are other issues at work too, but I suspect this is part of it.)
I don't know the answer, but I do believe that asking the question of what we can do differently or better is worthwhile. Do we want the lack of $20 to exclude someone from a membership or resource or event they would otherwise attend? Can we reach a point, as a community, where the loss of that person and the perspectives they might bring is worse than the loss of the 20 bucks?
Last thing and briefly personal: Our new house has arrived and we move in next week. It has been an ordeal, but it is finally almost over. This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
https://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/450010.html
heartofoshun will relate to the growing sense of panic when the essay you thought you'd easily finish five days ago somehow keeps growing because you keep getting so many damn ideas about this character and how she connects to this, that, and the other. Uinen! The seaweed goddess!!! Who knew.
While working on it, some thoughts really clicked into place that had been sort of amorphous in my head prior to this point. For one, I noticed for the first time that the kinds of descriptions in the Books of Lost Tales that I'd often described as "whimsical" bear a striking resemblance to the kind of "diminutive" fairy-stories that Tolkien would later hate on regularly. The descriptions of the houses of the Ainur are the most salient example to come to mind; I mean, in "On Fairy-Stories," he quotes from a particularly awful (in his assessment) story that includes the imagery of a roof made of bat wings ... and he uses that exact same image in describing Nienna's halls in BoLT1! ("... the roof, instead of slats, / Is covered with the wings of bats" vs. "the roof was of bats' wings" ... HMMMM.) These details came out when he rewrote the Silm in the 1930s. I feel like we're seeing that moment so many of us have had as a young writer where we 1) do things because we've watched enough other writers to know we're supposed to and 2) eventually come to realize that we don't actually have to.
Then of course is my long-running theory that, over time, Tolkien decreased the moral complexity of the Silm characters and tended to push them more firmly toward Good or Evil rather than letting them muddle about in shades of gray in the middle. Uinen keeps with this trend.
On a completely other note, the SWG mods have been having an interesting discussion about fee-for-fandom. On the one hand, as an archive owner myself, I get the need to have costs covered. The SWG's costs aren't that high so I can cover them myself ... but I'm not sure that's ideal in most circumstances. (Maybe not even the SWG's. I can't be unbiased on the matter.) Fandom shouldn't be owned by the highest bidder; obviously, it is better when it is a collective, democratic endeavor. Yet the other side of me lives in an impoverished community and knows that a fee or book or whatnot that's "not that much" is a lot when you're struggling to meet basic needs, and many people are. Add in that fandom is an international community dealing largely with first-world economies, and the issue of exchange rates becomes especially salient: the price for entry for many of our friends becomes unattainable.
There is also the fact that, according to the demographic data in the 2020 Tolkien Fanfic Survey, there are two large groups of "missing" fans, i.e., demographic groups that appear in the Tolkien fandom in much smaller numbers than would be expected: fans of color and fans without college degrees, the latter of which often translates into working-class and lower-income fans. Obviously, fanfic is free, but other aspects of fandom life are not, and especially the shelf full of hard-to-find books that is often perceived as a necessity. (I think there are other issues at work too, but I suspect this is part of it.)
I don't know the answer, but I do believe that asking the question of what we can do differently or better is worthwhile. Do we want the lack of $20 to exclude someone from a membership or resource or event they would otherwise attend? Can we reach a point, as a community, where the loss of that person and the perspectives they might bring is worse than the loss of the 20 bucks?
Last thing and briefly personal: Our new house has arrived and we move in next week. It has been an ordeal, but it is finally almost over. This post was originally posted on Dreamwidth and, using my Felagundish Elf magic, crossposted to LiveJournal. You can comment here or there!
https://dawn-felagund.dreamwidth.org/450010.html