Anghraine

My icon has grey eyes and black hair just for Tolkien :P

So. I generally dislike Tolkien fandom's "canonicity discourse" (yes, I'm doing it anyway) and the idea of imposing a specific ranking of texts. That said, it's occurred to me that one of the reasons I feel deeply out of step with Tolkien fandom is that The Silmarillion (as in, the published book, not the in-story accounts) is on a drastically different level of canonicity for me than basically everything else with JRR Tolkien's name on it.

I don't dislike The Silmarillion or anything. I quite enjoy it! But for me, it shows its age—not in ~a man of his time~ sense, but in an editorial sense. Christopher Tolkien did an enormous amount of spectacular editorial work over the course of his life and we are deeply indebted to him. But I think he did pretty clearly get better at it over time, and particularly at presenting his father's mass of notes and documents and so on in a way that makes the texts as accessible as possible. At the same time, in later texts, he clearly differentiates between actual words JRRT wrote (whether in the main body or in notes) and his (CT's) own understanding and explanations as JRRT's confidant and literary heir. I do give a lot of credence to Christopher Tolkien's understanding of his father's work, actually, and I deeply respect (and am grateful for) CT's efforts to carefully and clearly explain things like dates of composition (and how this can be determined), direct context, how a given point relates to his father's broader work, etc, throughout these texts.

(Tangent: Facebook keeps recommending defensive Jackson stans griping about how Christopher Tolkien just didn't get his father's work like Jackson did and was so horribly ungrateful to the filmmakers and such an inferior scholar blahblah for the crime of disliking the films. FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE!! I am not uncritical of Christopher Tolkien, and neither was Christopher Tolkien, but I think we owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to him. Also, even to me, his response to the films seemed harsh at the time, but at this point, I think he was pretty much right, anyway, and correctly judged the films' impact and reflection of pop culture understanding of JRRT's work.)

So what is my issue with the published Silmarillion?

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It's always kind of morbidly fascinating how much online Tolkien fandom is so powerfully shaped by the Jackson LOTR films, widespread Silm fanon based on brief and usually ambiguous scraps (if based on anything other than "stuff fandom BNFs came up with"), and bits and pieces from random documents Tolkien actually wrote (including things he explicitly discarded). And it's like—there's nothing wrong with liking the films, for all my gripes with them. I disagree w/ a lot of particular takes on them and resent their stranglehold on the fandom and the incessant glorification of that stranglehold, but they're powerful movies and I myself likely would have taken much longer to get into the book if not for the atmosphere created by the films.

But the posts about how wonderful it is that Tolkien fandom has moved past those silly days of yore when fanon spliced with the films spliced with decontextualized scraps wasn't the main mode of Tolkien fandom engagement, and how the Peter Jackson filter on everything Tolkien is right and good and maybe even a matter of social justice (?????) and so on are definitely frustrating. Without even getting into specific discourses, Tolkien fandom can be profoundly alienating if you're not into 1) the Jackson films or 2) popular fanon. And yeah, ultimately that's just a fandom misalignment between my personal interests and that of much of the larger fandom, and obviously they can and will do fandom in whatever way makes them happy. That's fine. But the active celebration of fandom pressure to conform to the interpretations of people who had no more impact on Tolkien's work than me is pretty deeply grating, ngl.

And the idea that incorporating popular bits and pieces of Tolkien material to augment the fanon+PJ!LOTR version of Middle-earth just proves that Tolkien fandom has left their movieverse days behind and is really about love for the books these days is like ... what. How does that even make sense? Fandom does not have to be about love for a specific source material and there is plenty to criticize and correct in Tolkien, yes. But there's a way in which I can respect people who say "I'm here more because I love the LOTR movies and the material created by the Tolkien fandom community than for most of what Tolkien actually wrote" (something I have seen people say!) far more than these saccharine celebratory posts about how Tolkien fandom has come so far by driving out book fans and, idk, desperately searching for a woman to blame for everything that goes wrong in the First Age.

(I recently encountered the theory that Celegorm's actions towards Lúthien are not driven by anything stated but by a desire to avenge Aredhel's rape/imprisonment by Eöl. Silm fandom quickly seemed like the Mirror Universe version of the Silmarillion when I got into it years ago, but at that point, I was just like "okay, Celegorm trying to rape Lúthien is actually Aredhel's fault? Sounds like a perfectly typical Silm fandom take.")

Anyway. There are definitely corners of Tolkien fandom that aren't like this and mutual disaffection is how I met most of my friends in the fandom, etc. But BNFs patting themselves on the back over how fantastic the current atmosphere is for everyone who matters :)))) does absolutely set my teeth on edge.

I talked a few days ago, under f-lock, about some painful RL experiences around being perceived as deeply boring and incapable of feeling pain (or feeling most emotions, really). And I wanted to make an addendum to that, one that I don’t think really needs the f-lock.

I’ve made many complaints about various fandoms + multifandom spaces and trends over the years, and I still consider most of those complaints valid. Nevertheless, fandom has typically been a much less bleak environment for me.

If someone in fandom finds me boring, they usually do not tell me so, or treat me in a way that makes this apparent. They simply don’t interact with me. And people who do follow me or interact with me don’t do it because of my family’s involvement, or because I’m a package deal with more interesting/attractive/charismatic friends, or because of some other figure in my meatspace life at all. In fandom, none of that matters. At least, it hasn't for me.

Even the followers who don’t particularly care about me as a person are following me for my own sake in some capacity, rather than for the sake of someone else. Sure, some of these will leave if I get super into something they find dull, or stop posting or whatnot, but their interest in my opinions about the thing they’re into is still about my opinions of that thing, or how I express my opinions, or something about my online persona.

And there are also people who don’t share my preoccupation with a current fixation, or don’t find my take on it interesting, and are thus kind of bored, but they like me personally enough to stick around, anyway. This doesn’t usually trigger my “oh no I’m being boring” issues, because if they’re invested enough to stay, despite disinterest in my current thing, they’re evidently still engaged at some level with me.

Beyond that, people in fandom don’t typically lecture me on my general demeanor. It’s happened, but not often. In fact, while fellow fans sometimes express respect for my—let’s say, often rather severe manner of presenting myself and my opinions, they don’t generally act like it is required of me to be that way or that it somehow precludes a capacity to feel. We’re all in fandom because we feel things!

And that’s been very powerful for me. I wasn’t diagnosed as autistic until I was well into my 20s, while I’ve been directly or indirectly excluded or distanced from many RL social circles ever since I was a child. I’ve certainly been treated as if I and the things I care about are objectively dull and emotionally unengaging.

But throughout my entire adult life, there has always been one glaring exception to this. There really was a social sphere in which my experience of others and of myself could be different. There was fandom.

For all of online fandom’s many, many flaws, this has been part of my experience of it from even before I was an adult—in fact, from the time that I made my first post. At the time, I was extremely shy and anxious, so I lurked a lot, and was very worried about breaking some rule somewhere if I actually said anything on the big scary Internet. But I had feelings. I was in high school and I had such feelings.

Many of these were Pride and Prejudice feelings. In high school, I started collecting copies of P&P just so I could read the introductions/editorial content and see what other people thought about it, since nobody I knew IRL cared about it the way I did. This was both my first step into academia proper and a sort of proto-fannish activity. But my Austen feelings were not actually the ones that propelled me into breaking my self-imposed Internet silence and detachment from online communities. A lot of Austen fandom didn’t really seem like my people. I was also into Harry Potter, but HP fandom similarly did not seem like my people.

Actually, speaking of boring other people, I’m going to be really self-indulgent and rewind even further for THE FULL SAGA of what brought me into fandom.

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I genuinely hadn't remembered that I'd already talked about the peculiar subordination of Faramir's arc to other characters' once Denethor is dead—I made a post about it not long ago, with no memory of saying in the previous crosspost:


Something that's both intriguing and frustrating about Tolkien's treatment of Faramir in the book is the extent to which the narrative structure around him is very "woobie" in some ways while also utterly denying his ... um, woobiedom in others.

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Petty whining:

The movieverse’s generic fantasy crown of Gondor is super inescapable and … /sigh.

I get that the canon helmet-crown is much less generic fantasy crown, but that’s fine? Gondor is allowed to have a distinctive aesthetic???

It’s one thing in movieverse art, but it shows up in a lot of things that ostensibly aren’t, and bleh.

Tagged: #i remain convinced that tumblr tolkien fandom is mainly movieverse+silm fanon fandom #like #people are allowed to have fun in different ways etc etc #but i'm going to sit here grumbling in my trashcan about it

kungfunurse on Tumblr asked:

Hiya! I’ve got a LOTR question and I’m hoping you can help me - when I read ROtK I’d assumed that Arwen’s life would be the same length as Aragorn‘s. In Peter Jackson’s movies it seemed like she would live on in grief for ever into the modern age. That doesn’t seem very mortal to me? Like if she’s gonna be alive that long why doesn’t she hop on Legolas and Gimli’s boat and head to the undying lands with them? What’s the best way to interpret Arwen’s lifespan? Thanks!!

I replied:

No problem! In “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen,” Arwen leaves Gondor after Aragorn’s death, goes to Lothlórien, and dies there before the following spring. She’s not immortal.

I was searching f_fa for stuff on Númenor and instead found a nonny earnestly arguing that the Númenórean men in Rings of Power being hotter than Elvish men apart from Arondir is a serious problem of sexism.

Like, it's one thing to be a purist nitpicker (I am a purist nitpicker about many things!) and to be bothered by breaking the lore. I mean, IMO, it's actually a very minor breaking of lore as far as Tolkien's writings (rather than Silm fandom vibes) go. Tolkien fandom tends to downplay the weirdness of Númenóreans as Tolkien wrote them, where they're essentially a bridge between Elves and other Men—he wrote that they were barely distinguishable from Elves in appearance and in powers of mind. If you actually care about ROP being ~true to Tolkien's vision~ or whatever, you'd want Númenórean and Elvish characters to look more like each other than like anyone else (and, personally, I think visually associating Númenóreans and Elves could lay some important groundwork for the ultimate Númenórean resentment of being "denied" Elvish immortality—their very similarities are what feeds Númenórean bitterness over their mortality!). But I've yet to see anyone complaining about ROP who thinks the problem with (debatably) more attractive Númenórean men is that Elves should look like them. Instead it's about how Elves should be drastically and distinctly more beautiful than any and all Men (Túrin Turambar whomst, I guess).

How one group of male characters being cast with more conventionally attractive actors than a different group of male characters = sexism is beyond me. Elf stanning is serious business, I guess.

(Note: I do think there actually is sexism and racism in ROP's casting, in that the female actors, and actors of color, are largely stunning while the white male roles go to just about anyone. That's markedly superior to the endlessly glorified PJ films' casting, but the pattern is still worth discussing! The comparative hotness of Númenórean and Elvish men has fuck-all to do with it, though.)

people: it’s not fair to have any serious criticisms of the LOTR movies because they were made with love!

me, a book Denethor fan:

I reblogged a detailed sketch of a possible design for Boromir's armor and the Stewards' iconography from lesbiansforboromir on Tumblr. In the text, they (rightly IMO) criticized the design for Gondor in the Jackson films as "bland unsaturated fantasy medieval europe."

I reblogged and added:

#sing the song of my people #it's like..... tolkien explicitly said that the inspirations for gondor were ancient egypt + byzantium + italy #which would be SO COOL #and they gave us... that #anyway these designs are gorgeous :)

lesbiansforboromir at Tumblr made a post about loving Gondor, and someone else unnecessarily responded with a complaint about how Gondor is too stony and devoid of greenery/trees except the dead White Tree for them, and they prefer Rohan (this person had not read the book). lesbiansforboromir responded with a headache graphic pointing out that this is entirely on the Jackson films and book Gondor is a fertile, verdant land nourished by the largest river in Middle-earth.

I said:

This is one hundred percent me. My greatest bitterness is over Lebennin. I mean, after Denethor, Faramir, etc. But LEBENNIN. Yes, sure, maybe there wasn't time to show Lebennin itself, but they certainly could have included actual Gondorians in the relieving army. But God forbid that Gondor is something other than a conveniently placed fortress + a vague land for Aragorn to be rewarded with.