Census of Homophobic Silmarillion Beta Readers on Fanfiction.net

[Rivvy Elf]

A beta reader is essentially like a proofreader for fanfiction. When I was looking for beta readers for my fanfic (which can be found on the plaza in the Cottage of Lost Play), I filtered the many beta readers registered on fanfiction.net (a big hub for fanfiction) for those who could beta-read works relating to the Silmarillion up to the "Mature" rating. My fanfic is rated "Mature," which means it's not for everyone and can be triggering to people. I filtered specifically for Silmarillion peeps rather than just plain LOTR peeps because the nature of humanity's fleeting relationship and its contrast with the permanent relationship elves have with middle-earth is one of the biggest themes in the Silmarillion. These themes are also central in my work as well. There were 89 people that made the filtering cut.

.... And to my disappointment quite a few beta readers' profiles weren't willing to even consider any work containing homosexuality, which my fic has. To my greater disappointment, quite a few had homosexuality on the same level as gore, horror, and necrophilia.

These beta-reader profiles are on Fanfiction.net, and weeks later I did a bit of census to figure out how many of the 89 were in some way homophobic. I counted 23 people, which is 25%. In other words, 1-in-4 people. That's less than I thought, but it's still a large percentage. Now some of these beta readers have been around since the early 2000s, but the fact they still have that on their page...

Tolkien makes it clear that humanity is only guests in Middle-Earth and their Fea (souls) leave and go to parts unknown after the body's death, which I believe contradicts his Catholic views. It's the elves that are more in-line with his religion than humans. So there isn't a meta-support for homophobia in the Legendarium. Perhaps people are unwilling to read outside what they know? Only a handful of people express ignorance of homosexuality as a reason though. Most flat out don't want to beta-read it with no explanations given.

I have other thoughts on this, but I want to open the floor to the forum. Why is there still a sizable amount of people who are homophobic in the Silmarillion fanfiction field?


Here's my raw data. Please ask me if you are unclear with some of my shorthand:

23 out of 89 beta-readers on fanfiction.net who can beta-read Silmarillion fanfiction are not willing to read beta-read fics containing homosexuality.

Does not beta homosexual stories: 13 people

Overboard Homophobic: 2 people.

Fine with F/F but not M/M: 2 people (Dependent on quality), (will beta-read M/M if it is "mild"),

Does not beta M/M stories: 1 person

Does not beta F/F stories: 1 person

Only exceptional homosexuality fics: 1 person

No Aragorn/Legolas, rest depends on quality: 2 people

"As long as it's tasteful": 1 person

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Rivvy: How did you come by these data, out of curiosity from my side? Did you research yourself and analysing? As I feel people wouldn't share this in a questionnaire?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

yeah, with what Aiks asked. it makes some difference if people are checking boxes like 'will you beta F/F stories' or if they are expressing such preferences on their own initiative. if the first, you have to wonder how much the fan fiction selection categories encourage people not to challenge their boundaries.

But as to your question: "I have other thoughts on this, but I want to open the floor to the forum. Why is there still a sizable amount of people who are homophobic in the Silmarillion fanfiction field?"

You open up the kind of question that the Internet demands of each one of us who have a deep personal relationship with Tolkien's Middle-earth: why are so many others who are *not* like me attracted to the same stuff? I grew up reading LotR in the late 1970s and thinking Frodo Baggins was counter-culture; and have spent the last two decades taking stock of my own presuppositions, as well as those of so many unexpected others.

I understand that this experience was painful. But looking at it from the outside I find some light, because while this beta-testing seems to operate in the wrong way, the fact is that Middle-earth provides a place where people with such different beliefs and values *could* - and elsewhere do - meet, and in theory recover a little more of themselves in the process.

[Hanasian]

I just want to make sure I'm understanding you right. Let's take the 13 people who do not beta-read homosexual fanfiction with no explanation given. Are you saying that these 13 people who don't beta-read homosexual fanfiction are by default 'homophobic'?

[Dungeon Delver]

From my experience (take it with a grain of salt as I'm not on fanfiction.net or A03) there will always be a homophobic/transphobic/etc. group with the Tolkien fandom. They will exist wherever they can find a place, even in a place like the Plaza. I can't speak for the above sites, but social media is rife with them, as we re-learned with the airing of the RoP.

"Why" is a very easy question to ask but as I'm sure you know, an impossible question to answer. Much like the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, there is no one reason, no clear-cut point to which we can say "here it is" but I will give my two cents. RadCaths are a prominent group of fans that believe, logically or illogically, that Lord of the Rings is a Catholic allegory (yes, we know how the professor felt about that word but that will never stop certain subgroups) and if anything doesn't align with that allegory it is ignored or reinterpreted.

As to the data you collected, I think it does show a trend, but more studying of that data is necessary to come up with a strong conclusion. It's a good start though.

[Androthelm]

Seconding some of what Laurence said — unfortunately, the style of T's work, his medievalist influences, and his own Catholic identity are always going to attract some folks who truly believe that the Legendarium belongs to their tradition, i.e. a radically conservative and reactionarily nostalgic — and therefore homophobic — one.

This is silly, of course — gay people have been around forever — but one of the big tricks of reactionary homophobia is to pretend this is all very new and therefore doesn't 'fit' in a medieval story.

Sorry you had to deal with this Rivvy. Thanks for the data, though — I'd be interested to see how the trends hold in broader samples, across LoTR and the site broadly.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Laurence - i love that signature. had to look up the song, which seems appropriate: 'There's a storm out there.'

Got to look things in the face here. Gay people being around forever is less the point than Tolkien's own Catholic identity, as @Androthelm has it. What we are talking about is the Christianity, in Tolkien's case the Catholicism.

Personally, I am not a Catholic nor even a Christian, so it is perhaps problematic for me to speak on these themes. But I think that one has to be bold and make a statement because otherwise essentialism creeps in on the other side - without saying so a premise to our discussion emerges such that: 'All Catholics are homophobic' or 'All Christians are homophobic.' But when put like that, it is obviously and evidently not true - which is the real point.

It does seem to be the case that Christianity is behind - or present in - many (by no means all) homophobic readings of Tolkien. But we know that Tolkien was a devout Catholic and was not homophobic - yes, he was old-fashioned, conservative, used language differently than we do today, but he was not homophobic (nor antisemitic, for that matter).

Therefore, Catholicism is not inherently homophobic. Tolkien shows that. No?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true? Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshipped them, even worshipped those most deformed by their authors' own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their sciences and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice. Abusus non tollit usum.

Tolkien, 'On Fairy-stories' (1947)

[Androthelm]

@Chrysophylax Dives I appreciate the quote from Fairy-stories — I wrote something recently for my patreon thinking along similar themes, might end up posting it here someday. To speak to your previous post, as someone who was raised Catholic-ish, who has a lot of Catholic family, and who is working towards a degree in studying Religion, the truth of it is that lots of people do lots of things — lots of Catholics are homophobic, lots of Catholics are gay — and its rarely as simple as saying a group holds one belief or another (as I think you're already saying).

Rather, lots of people who are both homophobic and Catholic — and for whom their Catholicism plays a role in justifying their homophobia — fall to Tolkien because there are lots of things which can be read towards their goals, right? Its part of why I think it's so important to take a kind of reader-response-y approach, even in fan discourses — everyone is competing for their reading of the text to be the "true" reading (for Middle-earth, for instance, to be a place in which gay people could not ever exist), and remembering that we're all doing interpretive work either to liberate or reconstruct oppressions has been helpful for me.

[Rivvy Elf]

@Aikári Salmarinian Yes. There's a list of beta readers on fanfiction.net that can be easily accessed and filtered out here: https://www.fanfiction.net/betareaders/

As defined, "a beta reader (or betareader, or beta) is a person who reads a work of fiction with a critical eye, with the aim of improving grammar, spelling, characterization, and general style of a story prior to its release to the general public."

Beta-readers are not supposed to be co-authors. Consider them more amateur editors than anything. I'm currently a beta-reader for 2 works, both in genres that I am completely fandom blind in.

Each person has a page with a Beta-Reader description. So yes, this is done through essentially a questionnaire. Here are the prompts:

"
Beta Bio: general description as a beta reader

My Strengths: beta, writing, or reading strengths

My Weaknesses: beta, writing, or reading weaknesses

Preferred: types of stories I prefer over others

Would Rather Not: I do not beta for these stories

"

Then underneath that are what languages they can beta, content ratings, categories (stories they authored for), and genres (genres they authored for). I focused on the "Would Rather Not"

I specifically filtered out 89 beta-readers who could beta-read the Silmarillion, fics in English, and K-M fanfics. Originally there were 120. This was filtered out into 89. Of the 89, 23 wrote how they would not beta fics containing homosexuality or specific parts of homosexuality. To see a more specific breakdown, please look at the OP.

I opened up 89 different profiles, and looked at each one of them, specifically at the "Would Rather Not" section, but a lot of times other sections to see if there was anything interesting. Sadly, people totally shared this information in the questionnaire.


@Chrysophylax Dives Thank you for your comments and thoughts. Welcome back, by the way!

As shown above, beta-readers express preferences on their own initiative. It's their choice on how little or how much they want to write in their bio on what they do or do not prefer. Being a beta-reader has really flexible boundaries. A beta-reader can say "I specialize in grammar and usage. I prefer not to beta-read works in which I'm not familiar with the source unless you're fine with me being fandom-blind and you want me to focus on grammar, usage, and readability." The boundary is set, but the person requesting beta services knows why the boundaries are placed there. There's some boundaries which don't need elaboration. Others... like not willing to beta-read "slash-fics (fics containing homosexuality)" needs elaboration because the person did not say why they implicitly are fine with reading heterosexual romance or any other type of romance.

I find it fascinating you found Frodo Baggins to be counter-culture. Any link to somewhere in case you already mentioned it somewhere else?

The experience was aggravating and annoying. Even though I'm not part of the LGTBQIA2S+ community, yeah, it was painful to know that there still is a sizable population who is homophobic. A sizable population who read The Silmarillion, where one can find a lot of examples in there that would poke holes in terms of a Catholic allegory. Particularly how the human afterlife is unknown... and if one read the Athrabeth, the in-universe belief of even Wise humans like Andreth think that there is no afterlife for humanity, that human souls are bound to their body and dissipate on death like a blown-out candle. If anything, one can find it easier to create a Buddhist allegory...

@Hanasian Thank you for analyzing my data. I appreciate it! Yes, because if one is declaring themselves a beta-reader, they kinda have to have an explanation for things that they write that would merit one. To be more clear, a lot of the profiles I read said "no slash," with no explanation given as to why. "Slash" in fanfiction means homosexuality. But why don't they put "no relationships" or "no romance"? So, by default, they are "homophobic" because they chose not to elaborate as to why they don't want to read it. So... if one wrote down "I do not want to read fics containing homosexuality because I've read and edited countless of those works already and I want to expand my scope to beta-read other types of work," then I wouldn't categorize them as homophobic.

Hopefully, that helps explains that. Let me know if you have any more questions.


@Laurence Yeah... it's actually becoming a bigger problem in certain fandoms from my browsing of the Fanfiction Reddit sub-forum. A lot of them use the "protecting canon" reason but they're going out of their way to bash instead of... ignoring the fics.

I actually wrote a 20 page essay in undergrad arguing that internal corruption was the primary reason for the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, but yes you are right. An impossible question to answer! Sad about the Catholic Allegory group. I'm pretty sure Tolkien would've been a victim of the Inquisition if they read The Silmarillion.

Yeah, the data is a starting point. There's a much bigger sample in the LOTR category. There's about 1200 people who are beta-readers for that fandom on fanfiction.net. That data... will take more time and effort for me to look at.


@Androthelm Yeah, I agree. I mean, there's an entire wiki article on Homosexuality in China where there was a historical study indicating that clear-cut systemic opposition to homosexuality in China only occurred starting in the 19th and 20th centuries, probably due to influence from the West. Although Ruism was big, and having a family and children was considered very important, side-lovers were a thing. So long as one fulfilled the obligation of having children, one could love whoever they wanted. And we don't have sources for the majority of the illiterate in Chinese history (which were the supermajority). There were Emperors that had male lovers. Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the most celebrated novels, has homosexuality in there.

As stated above, there's a bigger sample in the LOTR category that I could look at when I have the energy to do so (time-sink away from my other writing and beta-ing.)


@Chrysophylax Dives I love that quote, and I will point out a specific part of it.

"It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true?"

And this is why the fate of humanity in Tolkien's Legendarium is a gift, and not a curse. Because Middle-Earth is an example of a "fallen world." It is Morgoth's Ring, marred to the point that its destruction and recreation are necessary. Humans are not bound to Middle-Earth, and they leave it after they die. In the long-run, the evil humans make will fade, because once Middle-Earth is uninhabitable, no humans can live in Middle-Earth. That is an elven perspective, as they will be here even after the world ends. Nobody knows where humans will go, all they know is that they do not return. Even after the possible recreating of Arda, humanity's fate is still implied to be leaving Middle-Earth, only being a guest of it. Now I was raised Protestant, so I can point out from a Protestant perspective that Tolkien's interpretation here on humanity's fate isn't really Christian. There is no rewards-punishment for good/bad behavior after death by Eru. There is no promise of eternal life or even living a fixed world. And most importantly, it is unknown what a human's afterlife even is in his legendarium.

@Androthelm Yeah, everyone is competing for the interpretation of the text to be the "true" reading. The key, of course, is how much they are relying on their own conjecture and their own creative boundaries compared to the boundaries Tolkien made. Like I can see a loose Catholic allegory argument for elves using info from Nature of Middle-Earth and the Athrabeth, but I don't see it for Tolkien's humans (using the Athrabeth). But to others, they may see it as clear as day.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Rivvy: Thanks for your explanation. I will read the link also when I am online. I read through all other replies as well.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

"It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true?"

And this is why the fate of humanity in Tolkien's Legendarium is a gift, and not a curse. Because Middle-Earth is an example of a "fallen world." It is Morgoth's Ring, marred to the point that its destruction and recreation are necessary. Humans are not bound to Middle-Earth, and they leave it after they die. In the long-run, the evil humans make will fade, because once Middle-Earth is uninhabitable, no humans can live in Middle-Earth. That is an elven perspective, as they will be here even after the world ends. Nobody knows where humans will go, all they know is that they do not return. Even after the possible recreating of Arda, humanity's fate is still implied to be leaving Middle-Earth, only being a guest of it.

Now I was raised Protestant, so I can point out from a Protestant perspective that Tolkien's interpretation here on humanity's fate isn't really Christian. There is no rewards-punishment for good/bad behavior after death by Eru. There is no promise of eternal life or even living a fixed world. And most importantly, it is unknown what a human's afterlife even is in his legendarium.

Hi Rivvy, remind me please on Frodo as counter-culture, but what memories that stirs are eclipsed by what you put here. This seems to hit the nail on the head, and should - I believe - be accepted by any Christian reader of the legendarium. It is a deliberate design, but I don't think it contradicts the teachings of the Church - at least not as Tolkien saw it. He is deliberately drawing a world that has not received any tidings of the teachings of the Church and seems quite ignorant of the very idea of Eternity outside the walls of the world. Yet this is the imagination of a Christian who imagines a world that might one day receive the Christian Gospel, the teaching that death has been conquered. So I don't myself see how what you say here - which is wonderful - undermines any (well-taken) Catholic position.

But to be honest, I simply fail to see on what credible grounds someone - Catholic or no - can seek to justify a homophobic reading of Tolkien's stories - which probably means that i am missing key terms in all this wider discussion. Like the old Ent said above, good and bad apples are found in just about all groupings, and all of us make use of what is to hand to justify our values, good or bad. I don't doubt that traditional religion is behind and bound and wrapped up in a fair amount of evil speak out there.

[Dungeon Delver]

@Chrysophylax Dives Zeal & Ardor has been a mainstay in my rotation since 2016's Devil is Fine. Glad they grabbed your interest.

@Rivvy Elf I don't to say it's all because of radical traditionalist Catholics, as easy as that could be. It would derail the conversation and only look at one part of the root cause of homophobia in the Tolkien fandom. My own very negative thoughts about Catholicism and Christianity aside, they're only close to the issue because of Tolkien's own. I've seen people in the fandom who are as resolutely non Christian as I am and say and do homophobic things that make the Catholic stuff pale in comparison.

Another factor, I think, is the tradition of hyper masculinity in fantasy, something it inherited from sword and sorcery, and has no idea how to deal with. I have nothing to back this up other than my own suppositions, but I think it's something we should all take note of at least.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Frost: Interesting hypothesis. Hypermasculinity in fantasy? Hmm perhaps. Depends on the theme, setting and character if it is bothersome or not. I like a balance between masculinity and femininity in both men and women. I would broaden it up to outside the world of fantasy, into genres as fiction and drama. Women aren't overly portrayed in the whole Tolkien Legendarium. There are an equal amount of them mentioned, but they are just names. Who were they, one might ask? I think how a thing like hyper masculinity and femininity is experienced is how you yourself experience it. How do you stand in the subject? That borders off a lot what your preferences are to read. To feel an instant connection to something you're at certain level familiar with. The Nine Walkers are nine different characters of person. There is always one of them who you feel the most connected to instantly you see/meet them in the tale.

In the Legendarium I don't see any of todays religions. Aragorn never "told" me there are Catholics or Protestants around via his clothes, his gestures, his ideas, his performance or his love for Arwen. It is inheritantly a tale of a lost prince fighting for his throne and get his princess, if all goes well. Ìt is an act of oldfashioned Romanticism.

Chrys: What you say, "But to be honest, I simply fail to see on what credible grounds someone - Catholic or no - can seek to justify a homophobic reading of Tolkien's stories - which probably means that I am missing key terms in all this wider discussion...." I fear this is my problem as well, as I don't see either homophomic reading in Tolkien's stories, or can find grounds. And if it is in there, it is just so delicately written, you don't detect it. Which is often with romans from the 19th and early 20th century, otherwise it was not suitable to be published.

[Hanasian]

@Hanasian Thank you for analyzing my data. I appreciate it! Yes, because if one is declaring themselves a beta-reader, they kinda have to have an explanation for things that they write that would merit one. To be more clear, a lot of the profiles I read said "no slash," with no explanation given as to why. "Slash" in fanfiction means homosexuality. But why don't they put "no relationships" or "no romance"? So, by default, they are "homophobic" because they chose not to elaborate as to why they don't want to read it. So... if one wrote down "I do not want to read fics containing homosexuality because I've read and edited countless of those works already and I want to expand my scope to beta-read other types of work," then I wouldn't categorize them as homophobic.

Hopefully, that helps explains that. Let me know if you have any more questions.

No further questions. You explained yourself quite clearly. Thank you for that.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

But to be honest, I simply fail to see on what credible grounds someone - Catholic or no - can seek to justify a homophobic reading of Tolkien's stories - which probably means that i am missing key terms in all this wider discussion.

Just to say, I'm in the middle of a fascinating essay on Tolkien fan-fic (here) and am discovering quite how naive is that statement of mine above. My problem is that I don't read much fan-fiction - but I begin to see that it is an ideological minefield that makes Tolkien scholarship look like a picnic in the park!

[Rivvy Elf]

@Chrysophylax Dives Thanks for bringing up this scholarly article! I'm midway through the article, myself. Historiography is up my alley because I have a Masters in History. It's been a refreshing read so far, though I'm skeptical how someone can conclude that it was Elrond, rather than Rumil and Pengelodh, that was the main historian who wrote the histories. It's blatantly clear there's a bias against the Feanorians by simply not mentioning their lands in detail. It would also be more favorable to the Feanorians because...

"For Maglor took pity upon Elros and Elrond, and he cherished them, and love grew after between them, as little might be thought"

And I found this on Reddit, there's an earlier version of the legendarium...

"For Maidros took pity on Elrond, and he cherished him, and love grew after between them, as little might be thought; but Maidros’ heart was sick and weary with the burden of the dreadful oath."

Elrond would've taken a more balanced approach by elaborating more on Maglor and Maedhros', at the very least.

But based upon what I'm reading so far, instead of a writer having a solid foundation of soil or rock if they did not take historiographical bias in the equation and believed everything Tolkien wrote as a fundamental truth like a religious text, it's really a foundation of sand. So one can have a homophobic reading of Tolkien's stories... One can think that there is indeed a reference to Jesus in the Athrabeth, yet the interpreter is really on their own here as their support doesn't come from Tolkien, but from fictional fallible historians created by Tolkien.

The silver lining to this, is that one can do the converse and have a non-catholic and non-homophobic interpretation of Tolkien's Legendarium. I'm an example of that with my fanfiction. For instance, instead of the solution to humanity falling into darkness being the Gospel, one of my solutions in my fanfiction is enlightenment in understanding who one truly is and seeing death as merely a gateway to an even greater adventure (sort of a modified Buddhism), as a way to fight against humanity falling into darkness.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: I have always known it is an ideological minefield out there which made my maternal grandmother (1916) and my paternal grandfather (1911) sure I knew about from a real young as perhaps four or five years old. Recently I came upon an interesting article on the BBC, Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and what Churchil tried to ban in 1943. It intrigued to me watch and found it on Youtube. The movie sums up exactly about the changing attitudes, that what my grandparents grew up with, told me about and I call these days the "Old World", and the "New World" that emerged from the ashes of WWII. In Holland the very last war that was fought was the Eighty Years War and ended in 1648. The next one is WWII. Between 1648 and 1940 lay three centuries of peace and stability and the establishment of an international oriented society on Dutch soil. This reflects back in my lineage across those times. People in 1648 likely said 'war never again' and this explains the chosen neutrality of 1914 honoured by Kaiser Wilhelm, and the second try of neutrality in 1940, which was not honoured then.

I have read this Abstract of Dawn Walls-Thumma. And downloaded the entire article "Attainable Vistas" what I will try to read and reflect on it later. Still about 64 pages long.

Rivvy: Aye, I noticed your silverlining in your fanfiction. It is intriguing and keeps me on reading when you upload a new chapter.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, the article is long! but a large part at the end is bibliography. i find it truly illuminating as a meeting point of Tolkien scholarship and Tolkien fan-fiction. As with what Rivvy says.

But based upon what I'm reading so far, instead of a writer having a solid foundation of soil or rock if they did not take historiographical bias in the equation and believed everything Tolkien wrote as a fundamental truth like a religious text, it's really a foundation of sand. So one can have a homophobic reading of Tolkien's stories... One can think that there is indeed a reference to Jesus in the Athrabeth, yet the interpreter is really on their own here as their support doesn't come from Tolkien, but from fictional fallible historians created by Tolkien.

The silver lining to this, is that one can do the converse and have a non-catholic and non-homophobic interpretation of Tolkien's Legendarium. I'm an example of that with my fanfiction. For instance, instead of the solution to humanity falling into darkness being the Gospel, one of my solutions in my fanfiction is enlightenment in understanding who one truly is and seeing death as merely a gateway to an even greater adventure (sort of a modified Buddhism), as a way to fight against humanity falling into darkness.

Yeah, I think that is pretty much right. Because what is presented by Tolkien are traditions rather than a narration by a God-like narrator (and even when we have a narrator in say LotR the narrator is a figure in history, with inevitable biases) therefore anything and everything can be read in different ways.

I'd go further and say that the exercise by Tolkien almost invites all of us to explore these different possible readings. As you say, there is nothing inherent in this secondary world itself that dictates that the solution is the Gospel. And the deeper meanings of all these different teachings can be explored and illuminated by fan-fiction in a way that scholarship seems unable to do, or at least Tolkien scholarship.

The only thing I'd quibble about in the above is the 'foundations,' because I have a sense that behind all these writings is also some design (no doubt shifting) on the part of Tolkien. It is true that I've never read a Tolkien scholar who could explain that design in a way that made sense to me, and so if there is a solid foundation nobody seems to have found it, but I do think it exists and could be articulated - but maybe then only by story? I'm not sure.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Crossreferencing is something I never have done in either Tolkien fanfiction of myself, or my non-Tolkien stories, mixing/merging our world ideas into that of Tolkien or from any other writer. Personally I don't like it. A story is a timestamp, even the moment of writing has nothing to do with the plot itself. But back in Tolkien's Legendarium there is a morality to it from the time the novels were created. It is for a reason that hundred years old novels feels weird to me, just as older novels are. They date from another century. I feel I need to understand those times in their complexity with their morals and ideals, facts and worldviews. Often enough I have felt resentment (caused by my own morals), and there appears then a learning curb for me to go beyond this resentment and learn a new understanding how those times were experienced (leave my morals behind).

As will be seen in the various ways Silmarillion fan fiction writers respond to the historical bias detectable in the texts, the views of participants in the Tolkien fan fiction community are not so simple. Some writers adhere to the typical view of fan fiction writers that, if their experiences or desires for the direction a story should take contradict that of the original creator, they still possess the authority to write the story as they believe it should have been written. Other writers, however, concede greater authority to Tolkien, believing that fan fiction based on his books should hold to the facts, worldview, and even morality that he uses them to present.

This quote sums basically up the introduction of the paper. How people are approaching the Silmarillion in general is not that interesting to me. Neither are the scientific data on the fanfic writers. It is a bit hard what is really a new chapter, as they aren't used in this 64 pages length paper. From the chapter: Achieving the Unattainable Vistas you get to the heart of the research, and explain a lot of the approach of fanfic writers.

Conventionally, if a detail from a fictional world contradicts a reader's experience of how the world works, that reader must nonetheless accept the author or editor's authority as greater than that of their own experience and accede to the author's view.

Interestingly this is how I feel about stories older than from my lifespan and what I am known with from personal experience.

The longevity of Tolkien-based fan fiction — an avocation ongoing for decades, whose practitioners sometimes spend years honing their craft — attests to the success of historical bias in creating the depth that Tolkien desired for his imagined world. Writers and readers routinely create and enter the vistas that this depth presents. Historical bias also serves to maintain the relevance of Tolkien's world for a twenty-first-century audience that is more diverse than Tolkien likely ever envisioned. Bias amounts to fallibility in the in-universe narrator. While the appropriate role of the author's authority remains a source of disagreement and even conflict in the Tolkien-based fan fiction community, the presence of historical bias in the texts sanctions the shift of authority from the author (and his fallible narrator) to the fan: After all, if Tolkien wrote from a deliberately biased perspective, that brings with it the implicit acknowledgement that myriad other perspectives are equally possible and valid. The interest many authors show in writing about characters disfavored by the in-universe narrator and characters erased from the story shows that bias provides an entry point for these writers to provide a more just and egalitarian vision of Middle-earth. Fans who might otherwise feel that their experiences are excluded from the narrative — that the story "isn't about me" — are able to use fan fiction, the transformation paradigm, and the authority both grant them to achieve a greater inclusiveness and, with that, a sense that Middle-earth remains relevant even in modern times, even for readers who are certain they don't belong in the audience Tolkien envisioned.

Here I don't agree with, for the simplest of reasons. The characters in Tolkien's universe I chose to write in the past were never an offspring of myself. They were entities of their own, adapted to the narrative of the era they live in. The circumstances they live in, have no connection to my own. Nor are the characters in non-Tolkien stories I wrote, such as Dependent, about the prehistory and future and non-SW sciencefiction tales. Unless it is telling told by myself, a biography about my life. The foundation to me is the existence of the Legendarium itself and Tolkien decided to give his tales to the world in a series of novels. We don't know if Tolkien wrote in a deliberate, biased perspective as he never voiced this. We might think he did. It is an assumption in this research of Dawn Walls-Thumma. It is just by 1957 that the patriarchal society begins to disappear as law came into practise men and women had same legal rights and no longer needed a legal male guardian, who made the decisions for her.

Storywriting for myself shifted towards our RL world. It is more interesting. So events that happen are often a subject for my poetry or an essay. I like to leave some documentation on how events left the impression on me.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Crossreferencing is something I never have done in either Tolkien fanfiction of myself, or my non-Tolkien stories, mixing/merging our world ideas into that of Tolkien or from any other writer. Personally I don't like it. A story is a timestamp, even the moment of writing has nothing to do with the plot itself. But back in Tolkien's Legendarium there is a morality to it from the time the novels were created. It is for a reason that hundred years old novels feels weird to me, just as older novels are. ...

Here I don't agree with, for the simplest of reasons. The characters in Tolkien's universe I chose to write in the past were never an offspring of myself. They were entities of their own, adapted to the narrative of the era they live in. The circumstances they live in, have no connection to my own. Nor are the characters in non-Tolkien stories I wrote, such as Dependent, about the prehistory and future and non-SW sciencefiction tales. Unless it is telling told by myself, a biography about my life. The foundation to me is the existence of the Legendarium itself and Tolkien decided to give his tales to the world in a series of novels. We don't know if Tolkien wrote in a deliberate, biased perspective as he never voiced this. It is an assumption in this research of Dawn Walls-Thumma.

Aiks, that is really interesting, thank you. I think you dismiss Dawn's argument too quickly - there is a difference between texts that are presented as composed by an all-knowing narrator and texts attributed to an individual. Any text in the legendarium supposed to be a report by someone invites a questioning of the point of view of the individual (that is what I have been doing with the Red Book and possible Hobbit biases on the question of stairs).

On the other hand, I think you bring something to the table that is missing in Dawn's essay. The essay seems to place all the emphasis on fan-fiction opening up the vistas that marginalized readers wish to see - which is fair enough. But you observe that it is not all one way, the fan-fiction writer also has to do some work to meet Tolkien, this requires - as you point out - attempting to understand elements of the stories that are alien to us. There must be a whole side of the writing that is about going beyond oneself, not simply drawing Tolkien to us.

At least that is what it seems to me, who have only written one story!

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: Thanks, you have summarised basically together in a good statement what I was saying. Yes, I do put Walls-Thumma's argument partly aside. It is not something I fully disagree with, but what I disagree with. As newbie twenty years ago I made the most grandious mistake (godmoding) by merging a computer in my first IC posts not understanding how far Tolkien's World stood apart of my own. This was pointed out to me as a beginning writer's mistake. I had written it 'as I believed I thought it ought to be written'. This taught me to seperate both worlds, literally severe the ties. It had to be the opposite. I had to check my facts, before I wrote my posts, read Tolkien's books, letters, appendices, articles and interviews. The people who said this to me are not longer around. They were largely a generation 'that conceded a greater authority to Tolkien', he was the creator, we were his guests to enjoy his adventures by roleplaying them. It was however forbidden to lay public claim it was your work. That was only allowed in the forum part "the Cottage". Except they roleplayed, they enjoyed also discussing lore at great lengths, what was a field to me not accessible at the time.

Yes, you have to make an effort for it. From a feminine perspective I am greatly marginalised by Tolkien's tale. There is not much for me to hook into there in the narrative of the Legendarium. For example all main characters are masculine in the Third Age narrative. Fan-fic offered to have a feminine elven character (Aikári), but it had to be consistent to the way the Eldar operated. Men and women were okay, something else nah. After 2009 I shifted to a male character (Quennar), because it was more consistent and easier operating and I had much lesser PM debates. Also I have tried lots of times just to draw elements from real life to myself in my fortyeight years, but then to be bashful corrected what the real truth was. I am trained to think in the conventional approach storywise aswell real life wise, yet I am critical. I don't take things for granted.

It is an interesting article and thanks you shared it. Good food for thought.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Just to throw in another online article on the JRRT, which i've just started reading. Personally, after The Hobbit movies I was so discouraged by Tolkien fandom in general (who disliked the trilogy but did not hate it with the passion that respect for the author demands) that I stopped any online engagement for a whole while and have never seen any of the Amazon series. So I'm just catching up really. But this is on the backlash against the Tolkien Society seminar on diversity in 2021.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Culture Warrior: The Alt-Right's Crusade against the Tolkien Society's 2021 Summer Seminar on "Tolkien and Diversity"

Tldr edit: so i've just read the essay, which does what it tries to do very well. But even in my innocence i know about the wider cultural wars raging out there, and not only in North America. What the article says is that the local fan-rage against the Tolkien Society seminar got swept up in a more general 'alt-right' discourse that is identified as a mode of modern fascism.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: I don't know. I rather remain outside of discussions articles and researches like this bring up. The Nazism ideology didn't die with the end of WWII and still lives on today. I group these kinds of people under a label "living in another unaccessible reality". They pound their fists and shout to be heard, but marginal they are a very few, on all those who admire and love Tolkien's work and want nothing to have to do with them. Evil ilk is always out there on the sidelines of society somewhere. I tend to ignore it. They are impossible people to have a talk with, at any length at all. What I said above in my earlier posts remains unchanged. So there is not much I have to say or share.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

@Chrysophylax Dives Thank you for your comments and thoughts. Welcome back, by the way!

I find it fascinating you found Frodo Baggins to be counter-culture. Any link to somewhere in case you already mentioned it somewhere else?

Hi Rivvy, I did not reply to this at the time because i had not mentioned it anywhere else. But i have since given some background with my anarcho-punk posts on the Plaza Art Competition. The punks were on the surface a reaction against the hippies, and in the 1970s it was the hippies in the UK who embraced LotR. I recall going to a music festival around 1984 and walking past all these Gandalfs - old men with the beards and dressed in robe and pointy hat and all living the part. So no punk would ever admit to having read LotR. But as the years went by what I worked out was that the anarchists among the punks were very often Tolkien fans. It kind of makes sense, I think, because they essentially rejected the modern world in a way that I think Tolkien did.

In 1996 I was involved in a campaign to stop the building of a road bypass in a place called Newbury. It was one of the most beautiful bits of England i ever saw. There were lots of trees and 100s of protestors occupied the trees. This followed a recent legal ruling that a tree-house counted as an abode, and therefore the occupants of a tree-house could only be removed by due legal process. All over the route were little camps, and above were all these tree-houses connected by ropes so that one could walk between 'houses.' Obviously, it was great fun. But I remember looking at everyone around me - this was a sort of post-punk vegan activism world by then - and just knowing, without any shadow of doubt, that at least 2/3 of them were doing a Lothlórien fantasy.

(Here, if you are interested - check also a little earlier the arrest of the pantomime cow.)

Edit. i watched the rest of that video later. it was a real nostalgia trip for me (as have been many of my posts of late). but i think the point is that in England in the last two decades of the 20th century - which is all i know - Tolkien was a MASSIVE yet oddly silent influence. The Youtube video i linked to basically shows a bunch of pre-movie Tolkien fanatics. I was leaving England just when the movies began, and have not lived there since, so i don't know what then happened. But my sense is that the movies evaporated this counter-culture's Tolkien thing by making LotR mainstream. Also, i don't want to make out that Tolkien merely inspired these people. Rather, he and they (including me) were tapping into a similar sort of rejection of the modern world and love of the English countryside, including its history, and also its trees (and not only the oaks).

Looking back on this from such a distance in time, what really strikes me is the Cold War and the Marxism. On my Cottage Competition i point to the split between the Clash (mainstream punk) and Crass (anarchists). The context of the split was the rise of neo-nazism, and ultimately it was a good thing that the Clash came out against racism. But there was a sense in which this was the hijacking of the punk movement by the revolutionary Marxists, who wished to impose their own 1930s' narrative and meet the skinheads on the street with marxist street fighters.

This at any rate was my problem. On the one hand, my childhood and teen obsession with Tolkien was shared by many (it turned out) and naturally translated into a kind of anarchism, which anyone with a brain could see might be a good social creed but was utterly empty as a serious political idea. On the other hand were the revolutionary communists - who talked hard dialectical facts about the class system and exploitation of the workers. In retrospect, I see now that the Marxists had even less credibility than the anarchists! There were in reality no right options, or none that i found.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

All this biography i've spewed out on the plaza of late, which = history of UK social activisim 1977-1999 = punk, and what happened next = Tolkien fans before the movies, has been a lot of navel-gazing on my part, for which i apologize. but it was all so long ago that Rivvy's question elicited some reflections - which bore fruit, of course, in the mushroom art of Undertowers. But a final reflection, if i may.

Looking back, i still identify myself as a punk and not as one of these Elvish eco-warrior vegan activists, who were always alien to me. On the surface, they had everything right - as Aiks pointed out, the 1977 videos show a place with almost no women visible, while by 1995 that was all sorted out. And you gotta realize the hidden continuity. Conflict and all of that anarcho-punk scene were hardcore VEGETARIANS. When they sang songs about 'direct action' (= illegal activities) they meant in practice the ALF (Animal Liberation Front) = highly organized raids on scientific labs to rescue the animals caged for vivisection, and such like. Somehow - and this i still find fascinating - this full-on ethical stance was the foundation of all the rest, in terms of credibility. I don't get it, but that is how it was. And at the same time, Crass and this anarchist-punk movement, while they made a very good claim to be the 'true punks' (with Pistols and Clash = sell-outs), and while their craft was supreme, were a bunch of humourless fanatatics who took themselves way too seriously.

So by the time of Newbury, to me and the other cider-swiggers sitting round the fire on the ground, occasionally catching a falling leaf from the tree-tops above, those new-gender vegan Elves were simply the new generation of anarchist punks, with the self-righteous sanctimoniousness of their parents now turned up to almost unbearable levels.

Truth is, I have enormous affection for the types of people seen in that video. But i cannot stomach them. Hearts in the right place, and the collective brain-cell seriously worked, at least for the duration of that campaign. But frankly, the eggs in those treetop-nests were not worth the climb up a tree.

Edit. But the contradictions are just so supremely odd and fascinating. It began with the Sex Pistols LP 'Never Mind the billferny', which spawned a 1000 slogans and 1 neat attitude. A high court judge rules that 'billferny' is not an obscene word after a Professor of English (and an Anglican clergyman) explains that the word once meant a 'clergyman' (of the Church of England) and so came to mean 'a lot of nonsense'. Crass the founders of anarcho-punk make Christianity a prime target and go out of their way to be charged with blasphemy, but 20 years on and the situation on the ground is that via the Sex Pistols and Crass we have a sub-culture that has made an art of talking billferny. Those people are the real Church of England, or were, and my word did they talk a lot of nonsense!

This is why, in my reading of English History, i stick with Tolkien. He had far more sense and far more wisdom and knew far more about this sort of thing than anyone else i ever read.