Protecting One's Self

[Morsul the Dark]

With regard to being a fan of something I’d like to paraphrase a tiny bit of an article I just read. It’s behind a Patreon Paywall so I won’t post the whole thing out of respect to their work. If you want the rest look up Jeff May on patreon.

Jeff’s post is directed towards Comics fans specifically and is all about how to be a better fan.*

Do you read comics?” question.

*It usually goes one of the following ways:
“Yes, I read comics and I wish to discuss those comics with you right now and possibly in the future.” Hell yeah, new best friend!

* “No, I do not read comics, but I would like to start” with a sense of piqued curiosity.

*”No, I do not read comics” with a sense of slight shame at being called out for being some kind of nerdy imposter.

* “No, I do not read comics, ew, I am being incredibly judgy toward a stranger” with a surprising sense of derision at the idea that they would ever waste their money on something like a comic book.

So I think To put this in Tolkien Context:

Those who’ve read the books, possibly seen the movies but enjoy discussing it.

Those who’ve seen the movies and want to learn more from the books.

Those who’ve seen the movies and feel put down for not reading the books yet.

And folks that have watched the movies but think reading is too nerdy.


So while yes those in the fourth group exist and are the types of fans I feel are being talked about when talking about being protective I do think the other two types of film fans need to be considered.

I honestly don’t remember if I read the books first or joined the Downs first. I do know I saw the Fellowship first at the very least. I even remember me first introduction to LoTR it was the trailer. When Gandalf says “It wants to be Found” I was hooked, heck I just got a slight chill thinking about that line.

The point is yes there was an influx of new members from the films myself included. And while I know I’ve seen talk of “Legolas Fangirls” and strong opinions on the films I Do think this community was welcoming to those that were willing to learn about this new world opened to them.

I don’t think fans should be Protectors of their passions rather they should be Ambassadors for it.

*Jeff May’s Original Post

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

I don’t think fans should be Protectors of their passions rather they should be Ambassadors for it.

Talking of Protectors touches on the whole concept of fandom gatekeeping and that is... yeah, that kind of Protectionism is not good or healthy for any fandom. I think it's to the credit of the Downs as a community that although it predated the Movies and has always skewed Book-centric, it didn't retreat into a complete "ew, Movie fans" disdain, but held to its core values. One need only look at some of the acrimony brought on in the Comic Book or Star Wars fandoms by excessive gatekeeping.

Ironically, since gatekeeping often takes the form of trying to weed out the unworthy by appealing to the amount of knowledge one has ("oh yeah? Well, if you're a real fan, tell me who..."), I think the amount of sheer lore around Tolkien as well as its many shades of authoritative status (published, posthumous, early drafts, late work, footnotes, wastepaper bing, only published in Parma Eldalambion...) makes it a lot harder to use knowledge as a pure source of gatekeeping. Certainly, I don't associate this community with that kind of gatekeeping--we can be testy about the Movies, but I think the harshest feelings have been reserved for things like Priya Seth's disciples: all the lore and none of the comprehension.

All that being said, while I quite agree that Protectionism as Gatekeeping is bad, that doesn't necessarily mean that Privacy is bad. Just as it's possible for the near-pacifism of the Shire to be allied morally with the stalwart and military "Tower of the Guard," so too can outgoing "oh man, you love this stuff too!"-ism be allied with what I mean when I say "a sense of protectiveness."

Both are manifestations of love. It would easy enough to say one is the extroverted mode and one is the introverted mode--so I will say it. But it's also true that there are different levels of engagement. I think if one encountered someone, ala Boro's Dernhelm, in the wild, the excitement would be genuine, but it might still be surface-level compared to the depths of one's feeling for the subject. We expose our tender underbellies when we show off what we love, and even if, like Smaug, we love our bejewelled underbellies, we're still unlikely to expose them completely and openly to admiration unless we truly trust and/or know the other party.

Which is, I think, where those of us tending towards the introverted mode have found the Downs a home: it is easier to go beyond the surface-level fandom toward the "protected" feelings because this is a community that is known and trusted, but because it's technically public and because other members shade from "my wife" to "my inner Internet circle" to "friends of friends" to "usernames," it's still not QUITE all the way toward full exposure.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

So I think To put this in Tolkien Context:

Those who’ve read the books, possibly seen the movies but enjoy discussing it.

Those who’ve seen the movies and want to learn more from the books.

Those who’ve seen the movies and feel put down for not reading the books yet.

And folks that have watched the movies but think reading is too nerdy.

...

I don’t think fans should be Protectors of their passions rather they should be Ambassadors for it.

Morsul, I wish I could rep you for this post, it is so well said. Apparently I've repped you too recently though, however impossible that seems.

Simultaneously though, I also relate very much to what Form and Greenie have said about Privacy, and exposing something that's very dear to you. I can easily call myself a fan of other "fandom-generating productions": Doctor Who, Game of Thrones (until it's disaster of an ending at least), Star Wars. I would call myself a fan of other authors, like Jane Austen or Orson Scott Card. But though my love for Tolkien has been much longer and much stronger than the rest, I somehow hesitate to call myself a fan in that regard. Reflecting on it, I think the answer is two-fold. Firstly, for better or worse, LOTR fans did become intertwined with the PJ movies, and that might not be an association I wanted to support, albeit subconsciously. The second part though is that if I am a "fan" of things like Star Wars, surely that word is simply inadequate to describe my relationship with Tolkien's works, with the Downs, with all Tolkien-associated ties I've made. I appreciate that there are much more "hard-core" fans than myself in those other fandoms, I am a relatively superficial skimmer, but I really do get squeaky-happy whenever I see a reference to them - doubly so if it's a crossover reference. But Tolkien means so much more. I'm not just a fan of his work, it's been a part of my life. The fact is, though I've been on otherwise themed forums before, and I might have some non-LOTR figurines cluttering my bedside table, none of that comes close to the relationship I have with Tolkien and other Tolkien lovers (thank you, Downs!). Calling myself a mere "fan" seems to cheapen that, bring it down to the level of creative memes and figurines.

And I also have that element of privacy in that I won't display my Tolkien devotion in the way I do to the rest. Those I would proudly wear on a T-shirt, whereas LOTR I would think very hard about before displaying. And I think the reasons for that are the same - wanting to not create a false association of what I love, and deeming it too precious to expose. But I'm starting to come around on that slightly, I think. I recently found a box of LOTR figurines I used to play with as a kid, and I thought I'd put them up right next to my mini-Tardis. If I have to justify or explain my position to others, so be it. Why shouldn't I have them up, even if I am not such a fan of the movies? In my games they had adventures and hunted Shelob, they are as much a part of my LOTR life experience as the books were at that age. And I'm warming up towards the movies too in that way: sure, I dislike a lot of what goes on there, but they played their own role in my relationship with Tolkien and it wasn't necessarily a bad one.

It's funny, I never really thought of this, at least not consciously put it into words. What it means to be a "fan". The protectiveness against both too much and too little flexibility. It's interesting to see how much shared feeling there is, even though no one quite agrees on the details of when and why the feeling is applied. Thank you Formy for an excellent thread!

[Morsul the Dark]

I certainly don’t advocate for shouting from the rooftops, as much fun as that may be. I simply mean inviting those that find the group on their own. Tolkien has always felt more reserved than Star Wars and such. There are collectibles of course but the Merch side of Tolkien never really manifested. Fantasy seems to have not made that same leap like SciFi.

There does seem to be a certain stigma to fantasy in general and Tolkien is THE go to touchstone for most, so that definitely is part of it. So why? Why is Fantasy stigmatized? Damned if I know. Perhaps because we tell kids fairy tales and therefore any story that has a wizard is “for kids”. A comparison would be animation. People think Cartoon=Kids.
Obviously Animation is simply a medium, and Fantasy is just a genre with plenty of room to breathe.

I realize some of you have said you’ve become more private about it as you’ve gotten older, but I’ll pose this question, not as an argument, but out of curiosity. Do you feel Game of Thrones had any effect positive or negative on your stance?

My thought, barely formed as it is, GoT could go two ways if it did have an effect at all.

1. To show people Fantasy can be for adults, we know Amazon plans its adaptation to air more on this side. This making the stigma less because now it’s not just “kids’ stuff”

Or

2. To make fantasy more stigmatized because now instead of kids’ stuff fantasy is overcorrected to just be Bewbs with dragons tossed in.

I guess my overarching question do you protect yourselves from people knowing you like LoTR or from liking Fantasy in general.

Edit: PS G55 you reped my Boots post

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

I realize some of you have said you’ve become more private about it as you’ve gotten older, but I’ll pose this question, not as an argument, but out of curiosity. Do you feel Game of Thrones had any effect positive or negative on your stance?

....

I guess my overarching question do you protect yourselves from people knowing you like LoTR or from liking Fantasy in general.

Game of Thrones is enough outside my sphere of interest, as either book or show, that I really shouldn't say it has had any effect on how I feel about Tolkien. But you also asked about fantasy in general...

And Game of Thrones was the very least the nail in the coffin of me calling myself a "fantasy" fan. As a teenager, I would have said I was a fantasy reader--obviously, Tolkien was the driver of that, but he wasn't alone: I chased all sorts of authors off the library bookshelves in the hopes of recapturing that thrill. Of course, nothing ever really measured up, but I enjoyed enough things in different ways that I still thought of myself as a fantasy reader generally.

I don't really think that way anymore, and my attempt to make it through A Song of Ice and Fire in 2012 basically ended it. I burned through two and a half books in about a week, and the strongest emotional response was somehow exactly halfway between the enchantment high l was chasing and being completely rubbed the wrong way. In other words, Martin soared high enough on the exact register I was looking for, but did all the wrong things and two things sort of clicked:

1. (Which, really, I already knew but could never quite admit) There is no other Tolkien and if you look for "fantasy" when what you really mean is "Tolkien," then you'll ALWAYS be disappointed.

2. I understood better than I ever had what Tolkien and Lewis meant when they made their not-entirely-successful deal: "no one's writing what we want to read so we'll have to write it ourselves."

All of which is not to say that I haven't read any other fantasy since, but when I have it's like watching Star Wars: I enjoy it, but I enjoy it (or don't) on its own terms, rather than chasing Tolkien.

And I probably would say that the cultural impact of the HBO Game of Thrones has made me a bit more reticient to reveal I'm a Tolkienist, if it's had any effect at all, since it has sucked up enough cultural oxygen that people, when they think of fantasy tend to foreground that in the zeitgeist, and it just... isn't... part of my experience. I don't bear GoT any ill will, but when the other person's reference point is excitement over that show and they're trying to get to book-Tolkien me, it's a giant case of conflated terms and it's just easier to avoid it.

[Mithadan]

Interesting thread. A lot of different things to discuss here. I prefer to not be disjointed, so I'll try and focus on one subject; the thread as titled.

Growing up, I knew virtually no one who really read Tolkien. Yes, the Hobbit was read by a fourth grade class (not mine), but I do not recall it ever mentioned after that. So when I began to really devour LoTR over and over again, "to protect myself" from ridicule I did not speak about it. Easy enough, since I knew no one else who was interested.

By the time I got to college, I sometimes would meet a somewhat kindred spirit, but generally, discussion or analysis did not take place. Perhaps, the others were also "protecting themselves." After all, I recall seeing the Bakshi movie in the theater. Several rows back in the not very crowded cinema was a long-haired, ill-groomed person sitting alone eating popcorn and audibly saying "gollum" over and over again. Can't be like that... Must protect myself...

So it was not until I found that the internet could be used for something other than research or the news, that I began to let down the mask and participate in on line forums and discussions, primarily here. But only while hiding behind a screen name. One must protect one's self...

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

There is no other Tolkien and if you look for "fantasy" when what you really mean is "Tolkien," then you'll ALWAYS be disappointed.

Ironically, it's just this hunger for "something like Tolkien" or "more like Tolkien" which created the market for what the Encyclopedia of Fantasy calls genre fantasy: a genre of fiction using external trappings and storytelling templates derived from Tolkien, but lacking the spirit, scope and imaginative power of his work:

Originally Posted by John Grant in Encyclopedia of Fantasy(1997)

In short, GF is not at heart fantasy at all, but a comforting revisitation of cosy venues, creating an effect that is almost anti-fantasy. An allied point is that GFs cater in large part for unimaginative readers who, through the reading of a GF, can feel themselves to be, as it were, vicariously imaginative. This goes exactly counter to the purpose of the full fantasy, which is to release or even to catapult the reader into new areas of the imagination.

(If you think this is too uncharitable a view, go read the whole article, it's actually quite balanced.)

In other words, "something like Tolkien" may perhaps be more readily found in works that don't outwardly resemble Tolkien's at all.

I think it's useful to distinguish, following Clute & Grant in the EoF, between fantasy as a genre of fiction (generally set in a faux-medieval or otherwise pre-modern secondary world, populated by [some variation of] elves, dwarves, dragons, wizards, and often including a conflict of good vs evil, order vs chaos, or the like) and fantasy as a mode of fiction, which can be anything dealing with creatures, concepts or other elements not found in contemporary consensus reality to startle, amaze, delight or disturb the reader. These days I wouldn't call myself (or think of myself as) a fantasy fan in the first sense (although I used to, and I still hope GRRM will live long enough to give ASoIaF a proper ending!), but fantasy in the second sense will always be dear to my heart.

As for being a fan of anything and fandom in general, I get being a fan of a band or a football club, but I don't think fandom is a useful approach to literary works, or cultural phenomena in general. Fans tend to be over-protective not so much of themselves (although that probably too, in an indirect way) than of the things they're fans of, and prone to knee-jerk reactions when the object of fandom is criticised. It happens to the best of us, even on these Downs.

Then again... Like Mithadan, I grew up at a time and in a place where other Tolkien readers (let alone as avid ones as myself) were few and far between, and by the time I went to university in the '80s Tolkien, and fantasy in general, was still very much A Secret Vice (TM), so being able to come out of the closet as a fan and confess to myself and a digital world of kindred spirits 'Hey, I really dig this stuff!' was actually quite liberating. Thank you all, and TBW Himself, for that!

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The awesomeness of Galadriel's opening monologue has come at a price though...

But then, there's the thing: the movies start to go wrong right at that very point, and never get back on track. Overlooking the vile neologism of "gifted" as a verb, note that the entire monologue (with opening line lifted from Treebeard, for whom it is more appropriate than Galadriel), goes on with "for none now live who remember it." Now that is just silly, whomever the referent of "it" is, empty-faux-profundity; but then it gets worse: the Great Rings "were made." They "were given." Passive voice all the way; no indication who made them, or who gave them, and as to the why- well, the unnamed smiths created them to contain "the power to rule each race"-- unadulterated rubbish.

The book is, even at a surface plot level, being distorted out the gate by PJ and his co-conspirators, even before we get to "Men, who above all else desire power:" a greeting-card cliche (Philippa Boyens' hallmark), and about as wrong as is possible (Tolkien on umpty-leven occasions said that Men above all else desire immortality.) And given that he also said, on umpty-leventeen occasions, that what the book is really about is death and the desire for deathlessness, we can see how wrong things are going- even before considering aspects of this theme manifested, such as the temptation and horror of the Nazgul (which of course PJ gets completely wrong).

I could go on with a line by line and scene by scene fisking, but the point is- one could, I suppose, look on the movies as a sort of analogue of Classics Illustrated comics, a gateway drug to reading the real thing- but CI never presented its adolescent reader base with a warped and distorted version of the original, which they would have to unlearn if they are to understand what they read.

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Ironically, it's just this hunger for "something like Tolkien" or "more like Tolkien" which created the market for what the Encyclopedia of Fantasy calls genre fantasy: a genre of fiction using external trappings and storytelling templates derived from Tolkien, but lacking the spirit, scope and imaginative power of his work:

Indeed, it's almost Shakespearean in its irony.

I like the distinction between Fantasy as a genre and Fantasy as a mode. I think what I like particularly is the marriage of the two, but if we're going to separate out of the chocolate and the peanuts, I want the chocolate--i.e. the mode, not the sword-and-sorcery trappings.

(I fear to speak malignantly of Dungeons & Dragons, for I have never once been involved in tabletop roleplaying and thus must admit to a great deal of ignorance, but it is my impression that for all the enjoyment brought about by those games, they have very much furthered the proliferation of the fantasy-as-a-particular-setting and--tying it back to the topic at hand, my instinctive protectiveness of Middle-earth has made me bristle at it.)

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

In other words, "something like Tolkien" may perhaps be more readily found in works that don't outwardly resemble Tolkien's at all.

Indeed, I find the most like-unto-Tolkien satisfaction these days in what might be more properly called his sources than his heirs: Beowulf, Malory, Morris. Not for mere aesthetic pleasure is the quote in my signature "I prefer history, real or feigned."

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Then again... Like Mithadan, I grew up at a time and in a place where other Tolkien readers (let alone as avid ones as myself) were few and far between, and by the time I went to university in the '80s Tolkien, and fantasy in general, was still very much A Secret Vice (TM), so being able to come out of the closet as a fan and confess to myself and a digital world of kindred spirits 'Hey, I really dig this stuff!' was actually quite liberating. Thank you all, and TBW Himself, for that!

There is definitely a generational difference there. Even before the 'Downs--indeed, even before the movies--I recall meeting adults of my parents' generation excited to see that I had delved into books they remembered quite fondly (I never encountered anyone with a 'Downsian level of sustained interest until AFTER I joined the 'Downs), but it was always someone discovering me.

I love the idea of Tolkien reading as "A Secret Vice"--there's something there that captures what I mean when I speak of the "Protective" quality.