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Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc
I don't know and I wouldn't be so hasty. Caustic LotR community is certainly more visible. However, I don't know about you but at least I have not been a part of any Harry Potter community, so I can't tell, however I can imagine something similar happening there to a degree. It only depends how much. I assume LotR community is obviously bigger, so that would influence also the absolute amount of caustic fans present. But I have no data to say whether the LotR community is simply 350% bigger and therefore 350% more caustic, or whether it is actually 350% bigger but in fact 500% more caustic.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc
I don't know, I also wouldn't make such statements before checking some Austen forum... I can imagine someone being "in this adaptation, Elizabeth has wrong hairstyle!!!" or even "it CLEARLY states: 'the shadow of his coat spread from wall to wall like vast wings', OF COURSE Mr. Darcy had coattails!!!"
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These are fair points--I am very much writing from WITHIN the Tolkien fandom, so even where I may at times being a more pan-fandom environment (LiveJournal 15 years ago, Tumblr now), I more attuned to mentions of Tolkien than I would be to, say, Rowling or Austen.
That said... I don't actually think I'm overstepping the bounds of the probable: there is something about the Tolkien fan experience that rewards detail-oriented fans more than most fandoms and this creates a higher rate of pedantry--it's more baked in.
I don't think it's UNIQUE to Tolkien, but the best analogies for "rewards detail-oriented fans" are otherwise going to be the giant, corporation-made fandoms like Star Wars or Marvel. But while there's certainly acrimonious fans in fandoms like that, and while they certainly do have their grumpy pedants, the fact that the acrimony can be pointed towards a particular corporate scapegoat changes the dynamic: Tolkien fans are quite unlikely to direct ire at Tolkien himself and insofar as any adaptation may be wrong (howsoever they perceive it to be wrong), the easiest thing to do to discredit it is to APPEAL to Tolkien.
I actually think there is some of this with Star Wars fans, because George Lucas can be seen as the author--the problem is that his work has never been perceived as a unity in the same way as Tolkien's (I'm thinking of the big split between the original movies and the prequels), and his work was always the product of many minds and hands, no matter how involved he was.
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Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc
And another trap - against which LotR itself is a warning - is the desire to own, and to control (in this case: to own and control Middle-Earth), as opposed to just watch and enjoy the beauty. That is, I believe, also what we should constantly ask ourselves about when replying here or there.
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"The [fans] delved too deep [into the footnotes of
The Nature of Middle-earth."