Protecting One's Self

[Thinlómien]

I think it's very interesting how so many of us share a certain sense of privacy when it comes to our relationship with Tolkien's works - yet we're here sharing this with each other.

I think personally I am into very many books, movies or even tv shows that have active "fandoms" but I don't feel the need to partake in them. I'm really not so interested in anybody else's interpretation and feelings about Tolkien; just about my own, and perhaps that of people I care about. And even then, I don't think I necessarily care about - for example - what my partner thinks about The Lord of the Rings because it would be an insight on LotR, I would care because it's an inisght on my partner himself.

It goes for all fandoms to a degree, but Tolkien the most. So in that sense I'm grateful I joined the 'downs when I was still a fandom extrovert looking to connect with more people, not the fandom introvert I am now that just wants to chat with her buddies. (Which all 'downers are, incidentally, whether we know each other well or not at all. <3)

What I enjoy the most about fandoms is the creativity that comes with them - fan art, theatre / music / film productions, humour, even fan fiction to a degree, and for that the community is great. But I feel that even with those these are periods where I'm more receptive and periods when I'm less receptive to this "outside influence". And I think that's okay.

Also, I don't have that experience that much with Tolkien and the PJ films, but it sure is complicated being a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire without not having much interest in (the recent seasons of) Game of Thrones. No, I don't want to discuss why I like Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth with you if you've only seen the show, because both the characters, their relationship, and the whole worldbuilding around them are not the same in the show as in the books. Likewise, I wouldn't have any interest discussing say, Aragorn's character arc with somebody who's only seen the movies, or maybe seen the movies 20 times while having read the book once 15 years ago. I don't want to advocate gatekeeping or fandom snobbery, but when it comes to things where people equate the original books with their very popular movie/tv adaptations, my heart always bleeds a little. (And I'm not saying I don't do this myself. I would be more likely to be interested in discussing The Witcher Netflix show than the books, and probably The Witcher book purists would hate to discuss The Witcher with me. And that's okay too. We live in an era of oversharing, but not everything needs to be shared with everyone.)

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

Originally Posted by Thinlómien

Also, I don't have that experience that much with Tolkien and the PJ films, but it sure is complicated being a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire without not having much interest in (the recent seasons of) Game of Thrones. No, I don't want to discuss why I like Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth with you if you've only seen the show, because both the characters, their relationship, and the whole worldbuilding around them are not the same in the show as in the books. Likewise, I wouldn't have any interest discussing say, Aragorn's character arc with somebody who's only seen the movies, or maybe seen the movies 20 times while having read the book once 15 years ago. I don't want to advocate gatekeeping or fandom snobbery, but when it comes to things where people equate the original books with their very popular movie/tv adaptations, my heart always bleeds a little. (And I'm not saying I don't do this myself. I would be more likely to be interested in discussing The Witcher Netflix show than the books, and probably The Witcher book purists would hate to discuss The Witcher with me. And that's okay too. We live in an era of oversharing, but not everything needs to be shared with everyone.)

I have actually refrained from reading the books, simply because I enjoyed the show so much (at least until the later seasons). I did not want to taint that experience with knowledge about how the characters and show "ought" to be.

[Formendacil]

So, I finished rereading the "What Breaks the Enchantment?" thread and this is my third attempt to write a response out of that. First I tried replying, but the topic of self-identification with the text kept pushing me here, then I tried a new thread, but that post was about to be a tangle of nonsense (didn't help that I was playing WW, having a Real Life™ conversation, AND trying to do that). So I'm here. I think it might work best here.

The long and the short of the giant argument that drove that thread to four pages in the halcyon days of 2005 was whether the enchantment being broken was the fault of the author for not writing a perfect text or the fault of the reader for bringing in outside thoughts or failing to "read up to" the text. My drowned attempt to start a new thread would have been an attempt to re-ask the question: "without passing judgment on who is responsible--Tolkien or yourself--what breaks the enchantment?"

"Breaking the enchantment," by the bye, is how LMP, as the progenitor of that thread, termed the moment when the reader's "suspension of disbelief" fails--the moment when you stop being IN the fiction and are mentally knocked out of it.

The reason that I couldn't successfully reply there, and why simply re-asking that question as a new thread, failed is that my answer is much too simple: I really don't find that the enchantment breaks for me anymore. Mind you, it never REALLY did, but in some of those earlier years, when I was no longer a child but was still being opened up to critical thinking and analytical reading (so... my early years here, really), I did FEAR that it might.

But, somehow, I've passed through two degrees and writing a published paper (to say nothing of 16 years here) and a mellowing of my firebrand-edged youth into an almost agnostic complexity... and the enchantment still hasn't broken. Part of this is definitely because there is still that fence about heart: I'll happily talk your ear off about geopolitics of first millennium of the Third Age for hours, but I avoid talking or discussing what Tolkien means.

It's easy to divert this into "allegory vs. applicability" (not least because that is Tolkien's own feint), or to start self-analyzing myself ("does this discomfort stem from a recognition that Tolkien, whom you have idolised, is actually deeply problematic?"), and I kind of AM doing that: I'm saying that Middle-earth and everything around it is so much a part of the story of me that I don't want to break it apart lest I break myself apart.

But the reason I couch all this in the "what breaks the enchantment" question is that I've realised I have something of a middle ground on the question--it's not a cut-and-dried "nothing breaks it" answer suggesting complete imperviousness, as the answer might have been in 2005. But as I've spent more and more time with the critical side of being a Tolkienist (and have become more of a "nonfiction" person in my life generally--I read 20 nonfiction books a year, preferably 600-page tomes with copious footnotes, and shy away from any new fiction), I've returned to reading Tolkien to discover that I'm simultaneously both inside and outside the enchantment.

In this respect, the ability to be more "in and out" strikes me as a kind of self-understanding: as I get older I understand myself better (I think--also realising just how much I dissemble and am a construct even to myself), and this sort of dualism: being inside myself and being able to analyze myself is where I'm at with "the enchantment" too.

So... I don't know where this post should have landed in the end, but I figured this is the newer thread and the shorter thread and, what's most important, I actually FINISHED the post here.