Protecting One's Self

[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.