I was promised donuts.

glorfindel:

ecthelion:

littleshebear:

glorfindel:

lotrconfessions:

I don’t understand the spirit of gatekeepership that seems to be taking root in the Tolkien fandom, especially regarding fanworks. There are different ways of displaying appreciation and respect, and if you are morally opposed to some it’s possible to give them a wide berth. Branding their creators as bad fans or trying to impress particular morals on the rest of fandom ultimately contributes to nothing except an environment of shame and hostility. I wish more people would recognize that.

I guess I’ve been out of the Tolkien fandom or, at least, comfortably peripheral to it, that I haven’t encountered much by way of gatekeeping. That, or I’ve wilfully ignored it. 

I’ve written gen, het, slash. I’ve participated in some seriously crack-addled and beautifully creative Tolkien RPGs. I’ve created OFCs and OMCs. I’ve written Glorfindel as a drug addict, Erestor as an admin assistant. I’ve written a lot of Dagor Dagorath, apocolyptic stuff. I ship Glorfindel/Ecthelion, Aredhel/Celegorm, Curufin/Finduilas, Amillo/Falathar and Gil-galad/Dior (ask me how). 

I’ve loved the Tolkien fandom. It’s introduced me to some of my very, very best friends on this whole goddamned planet. It saddens me to hear that it’s not the friendly place I knew. 

Huh. I’ve always felt there was an element of gatekeepership in the Tolkien fandom. I’ve always found it quite hierarchical in that there are a certain fans who go out of their way to show how much they know about the canon and that anyone who deviates from it is a bad fan and need to be edumacated. I’ve always thought that sucked the fun out of things (I mean, if you’re feeling the need to annotate you fanfic with pages and pages worth of footnotes to justify how VERY CANON your fic is, there’s something wrong. It’s fanfic, not a fucking Saul Kripke essay). Then you’ve got the long-standing book fans who look down on the people who got into it from the movies, the slash fans who look down on the het fans, the gen fans who look down on them and so on. 

And then you get the people who get ridiculously protective over “their” corner of canon and throw a hissy if someone else writes it differently from them (Protectors of the Plot Continuum? And my peeps, remember the saga of the One True Pharazon?).

I agree. I don’t have much enduring interest in the fandom outside our little collective, really. It’s not that I feel all that protective of it myself. It’s more that I don’t have the patience for people who shit on others’ stuff because they don’t think they’re “real fans”.

omg Laura, the PCP. I’d  forgotten about those people. I figure I’ve just hermetically sealed myself into the part of fandom I like. And that’s the part of  fandom that hung out in Dublin in November in 2012. 

Oh, remember the “Bookish Movement?” Those people who were campaigning against the movies because they were bad and evil and no good could come of them and any fan who liked the movies was NOT A FAN and must be excommunicated from all things fandom.

glorfindel:

lotrconfessions:

I don’t understand the spirit of gatekeepership that seems to be taking root in the Tolkien fandom, especially regarding fanworks. There are different ways of displaying appreciation and respect, and if you are morally opposed to some it’s possible to give them a wide berth. Branding their creators as bad fans or trying to impress particular morals on the rest of fandom ultimately contributes to nothing except an environment of shame and hostility. I wish more people would recognize that.

I guess I’ve been out of the Tolkien fandom or, at least, comfortably peripheral to it, that I haven’t encountered much by way of gatekeeping. That, or I’ve wilfully ignored it. 

I’ve written gen, het, slash. I’ve participated in some seriously crack-addled and beautifully creative Tolkien RPGs. I’ve created OFCs and OMCs. I’ve written Glorfindel as a drug addict, Erestor as an admin assistant. I’ve written a lot of Dagor Dagorath, apocolyptic stuff. I ship Glorfindel/Ecthelion, Aredhel/Celegorm, Curufin/Finduilas, Amillo/Falathar and Gil-galad/Dior (ask me how). 

I’ve loved the Tolkien fandom. It’s introduced me to some of my very, very best friends on this whole goddamned planet. It saddens me to hear that it’s not the friendly place I knew. 

Huh. I’ve always felt there was an element of gatekeepership in the Tolkien fandom. I’ve always found it quite hierarchical in that there are a certain fans who go out of their way to show how much they know about the canon and that anyone who deviates from it is a bad fan and need to be edumacated. I’ve always thought that sucked the fun out of things (I mean, if you’re feeling the need to annotate you fanfic with pages and pages worth of footnotes to justify how VERY CANON your fic is, there’s something wrong. It’s fanfic, not a fucking Saul Kripke essay). Then you’ve got the long-standing book fans who look down on the people who got into it from the movies, the slash fans who look down on the het fans, the gen fans who look down on them and so on. 

And then you get the people who get ridiculously protective over “their” corner of canon and throw a hissy if someone else writes it differently from them (Protectors of the Plot Continuum? And my peeps, remember the saga of the One True Pharazon?).

silentstephi:

nug-wrangler:

that doesn’t make any sense, sten

/DED

I’m hearing this in his voice and it is PERFECT.

(via shadowpiranha)