Complaints for Hobbit Fandom

[demonessryu]

1. Kili (or some other dwarf or Bilbo but I'm going to talk about Kili because I read about him the most) is not a character to channel female authors' fantasy! I've gotten sick of all the fics where he's portrayed as a damsel in distress! There's a difference between putting a character is an unfamiliar and troubling situation and turning them

Comments

[paranoid_fridge]

Late comment is late, but that kind of rant was long overdue. I'm kinda surprised things are still so calm in the kink meme - when sometimes I end up scrolling through 3pages of prompts or fics (on Ao3) and there's nothing worth reading. :-/

I have developed a particular aversion to rule 63 fics and I did enjoy those in a lot of other fandoms. But many of those just take the gender change for an excuse to make the characters display behaviours more common to bad romance novels or movies. And that just makes me upset on a level beyond badfic.

And then there's the fantastic "children-fix-everything-because-they-are-cute" trope. I wonder if those authors have ever seriously read up on what they're writing about. >.< Also I'm a bit disturbed at how often kids and pregnancy become plot devices (I mean it's good that even taboo topics like child death come up, but handling those ~ well. I don't think I've seen that done well yet, and usually most other tropes get decently addressed by at least a few authors).

Also sometimes a straight self-

[demonessryu]

God, yeah. Hobbit kink meme is very vanilla. It's more like a space to throw plot bunnies and/or challenges for other people to write. Actual kinks are rare

[paranoid_fridge]

I don't actually mind that there's a lot of general plot bunnies on hkm, but i can see how that might discourage others from prompting kinkier stuff. And that's a bit sad for those that are looking for this - since there are few other places to go to and Tolkien fandom in general can get homophobic and xenophobic like hell (sometimes I get comments like "I'm so glad this wasn't slash" and well, it just comes across a bit awkward, regardless of the intention behind it).

And yes, rule63 can be awesome. It can explore that funny relation between gender and character and identity; and also expose just how different people react. Sadly though, if it's used for a romance plot and to make characters subject to roles - errr, nope. Anyhow, I think that's also a differentiation you grow more aware of the older you get (and the more you read). And there are obviously some very young writers on hkm...

(And in a way we're all projecting what we know on characters. But once you have some practice with writing its the trick at keeping the character'

[demonessryu]

I stopped reading after the 7th prompt or so. It was getting repetitive. I felt that it became 'I want A and B doing it in this spot in this position' x100.

Thankfully I haven't met any homophobic and xenophobic fans. Maybe because I mostly write for the movies instead of the books (and because I clearly write slash). My impression of fans of the books is they could be too, uh, rigid in their faithfulness to the canon. (I think I understand the meaning behind that comment, but yeah that's not a good way to phrase the sentiment at all).

Sometimes I think the writers genuinely want to explore the possibility of characters being different gender, but many then falls to the trap of inserting themselves. Projection is definitely inevitable, and it's a trickier thing when it's fanfic because you already have certain characterization to work with instead of building your own from the scratch. It's all about balancing your plot, yourself, and the characters.