Snowflake Challenges #4 and #7: Add Something to Your Fandom's Canon. Interact.

[dawn_felagund]

snowflake_challenge #4 is especially intriguing:

In your own space, add something to your fandom’s canon. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Oh, I've gone around and around about this. I'm not just a Tolkien fan but a Silmarillion fan, which is a text constructed entirely from partial, unfinished, illegible, and undated drafts in varying contradictory forms. Tolkien left a lot of threads just ... trailing off into nothing. Wouldn't it be nice to have some of those threads resolved? Or to get his final word on a few things that are subject to particularly strenuous debate??

At first, I was like, "Pengolodh!!!" Y'all probably know that I have a thing for Pengolodh. He consumes a lot of my nonfiction and fiction writing. I thought, it'd be nice to have more information about him ... or more definitive information at least. If I had to choose, this would still probably be my answer to the question. (Which foreshadows that, perhaps, I am not going to choose??)

Then, along the same lines, I thought, "Christopher leaving Pengolodh in The Silmarillion!!!" But I immediately nixed that because Monday-morning quarterbacking Christopher's editorial choices is a particular fannish peeve of mine.

Next thought was The Shibboleth of Fëanor, which—despite being called The Shibboleth of F ë a n o r—goes into details about the names of everyone BUT the dang Fëanorians. How nice would it be if Tolkien had finished that and explained where the mother-names came from in more detail or why the Fëanorians alone have those matching nicknames of their father-names (Nelyo, etc)—what's up with those? When were the used and by whom? What did he have in mind when he decided to give them all those types of names?

But (as I hinted above), I ultimately decided that I don't want extra stuff on any of those things. Part of the fun of the Tolkien fandom and the Silm in particular is the mystery: the fragmentary nature of the canon and the need to piece things together and make inferences to get the full story, and then of course, we end up with different inferences and different interpretations and that is ... fanfiction. Or fanworks, more broadly. And this type of creative work has brought me so much joy over decades now, not least of all because of the intellectual exercise it entails: analysis coupled with creative expression of the ensuing ideas, with a significant dose of socialization with people who enjoy similar types of thinking and creative work, i.e., not people whom I feel like I have to hide or perform around.

Then there's also the fact that I've become attached to the characters of first Tolkien's and then my and others' imaginings: like finding out something disappointing about someone you thought you knew well. Or finding an old friend has changed ... not even for the worse. Just not the person you thought you knew. When The Nature of Middle-earth came out, I was nervous about what it might include that would upend the characters and world as I had come to know them/it. I remember early in fandom, when the Harry Potter novels were still being released, looking at their fandom and being so grateful that I was part of a fandom with a settled canon, and I do continue to like that.

---

Okay, so on to Challenge #7: "In your own space, interact with a community or a fic."

This is an easy one. As one of the SWG mods, this is part of my everyday, in addition to the regular socially oriented interactions that I have. Let's see how I interacted today:

• I've been talking off-and-on all day with my SWG comods on our mod channel on the Discord.


• I responded to a member request on the Discord by updating something on the website.


• Unfortunately, I had to have an exchange with another member, privately, about taking greater care with their words on the Discord.


• I sent out Volume 18, Issue 2 of the SWG newsletter to 81 subscribers.


• I reblogged this post on Taxonomies of Fandoms and applied the OP's ideas to Tolkien fandom.


• I reblogged this post showing a bound book someone made that included a story I collaborated on and tagged the other authors in the story so they could see it too.

So that's not bad for someone who frequently describes her existence in recent years as "like a hermit" talking for the very first time.

Comments

[galadhir]

Yeah, one of the things a fandom needs in order to be fruitful for fanfic is holes the author hasn't filled in, and Tolkien gave us several whole universes full of holes :) And also lots of half finished beginnings of stories we could finish ourselves. It's no wonder it's such a fruitful canon.

[dawn_felagund]

Exactly! And I find the fact that the texts can be taken as historical texts/artifacts to be endlessly inspiring. He wrote to Christopher about the "unattainable vistas" being what made a world and story feel real. He definitely achieved that!

[galadhir]

Oh yes, exactly! Oddly it's both more realistic (because history really is like that), and also more magical, because the seen is always less numinous than the unseen. I've always leaned in to that when trying to write his elves - always trying to leave space for wonder. Which is convenient because it means you can suggest the awesome without actually having to show it, knowing that the reader will fill in the gaps for you.

[hhimring]

You do so much that we are only sort of aware you are doing, every day!
Sorry you had to warn somebody to mind their choice of words. I know it must happen now and then, inevitably, with such a lot of passionately invested people chatting away, but it can't ever be pleasant.

[dawn_felagund]

It doesn't happen a lot, thankfully, but it does happen and is part of the job, as they say. It happens to be something I'm okay with; my RL work involves a lot of telling people who think they know everything that they need to do better with their social behavior. :D

The hardest part for me, honestly, was realizing that I don't have to accept abuse from people who are angry that they are expected to follow the rules on our Discord. (And it's always Discord. I never had to moderate interpersonal issues on any of our platforms prior to Discord, which is why I was a bit of a slack mod on Discord at first too; the immediacy of the conversations mean they heat up faster even than on a fast-moving platform like Tumblr, and I wasn't expecting that.) I have always had the view that, since it's "my" site (as in, I founded it and hold the highest level of keys to it), I would take on the more difficult members and never ask my comods to do that. (Some of them still do! But I never want that kind of interaction to become a job requirement.) Early on, we had a person join the Discord who was having a hard time following our rules and respecting our culture, and I took on communications with him, and I allowed him to abuse me over DM for far too long before kicking him out*, figuring, well, he's not doing it on the server. He's not doing it to my comods. (My comods, in fact, really helped me to see that my approach was pretty fucked and being willing to run a group like the SWG doesn't entitle people to use me as a punching bag when they're dissatisfied with their experience on said group!)

* (ETA ... I'm actually remembering I never did ban him! I finally gave him the ultimatum of "one more fuckup and you're gone" or "quit before you're fired," and he chose the latter. But he could still technically return to the server, if he decides he's ready to respect people new to Tolkien and not try to impose gatekeeping on a group that explicitly forbids it.)

Since then, it really is very similar to addressing behavior issues in my classroom: Here's what I see. Here's what I need to see. If you can do that, excellent! Please stay; we love to have you. If not, let's agree to part ways. (Obviously, I don't get to "part ways" with students, but I can send them to take a break.)

Anyway! Maybe more than you want to know (and maybe TMI about Dawn's Struggles to Assume Self-Worth :D), but it's really become pretty straightforward.

[hhimring]

Also, about your taxonomies of fandoms post: not disagreeing, of course, but there are always exceptions. There were dedicated drabble communities (and at least one is still hanging on) and I know at least one writer who pretty much defined themselves as drabble writer.

[dawn_felagund]

There are of course exceptions! My post said "there was no archive for just drabbles," which is true as far as I know (and I want to know if it's not! So I can add it to Fanlore! :D) And yes, in a fandom that was probably thousands-strong in the early aughts, I'm sure there were individuals who defined themselves all sorts of ways as creators ... but I do stand by the claim that the predominant "taxonomy" was character group and genre (slash, gen, het), which is shockingly simple in a fandom so large.

[hhimring]

No, I wasn't suggesting what you said was not true! As far as I know, there never was an archive for drabbles.

[elennalore]

I loved to see the casual list of fandom interactions, and now I think I could make this kind of post in my own blog too (although my interactions are perhaps not so many).

[dawn_felagund]

It was kinda fun to break down! It's just such a part of my everyday by now (the member issue was handled on my phone, sitting in my car, while waiting for my husband to finish an errand) that I don't often think about it, but most days involve at least a few of these sorts of interactions.

[spiced_wine]

Then there's also the fact that I've become attached to the characters of first Tolkien's and then my and others' imaginings: like finding out something disappointing about someone you thought you knew well. Or finding an old friend has changed ... not even for the worse. Just not the person you thought you knew. When The Nature of Middle-earth came out, I was nervous about what it might include that would upend the characters and world as I had come to know them/it. I remember early in fandom, when the Harry Potter novels were still being released, looking at their fandom and being so grateful that I was part of a fandom with a settled canon, and I do continue to like that.

Yes, and honestly after this amount of time, there would be a degree of ‘well my canon is settled so adding this in isn’t going to change anything.’

I love the gaps, the hints, everything about it. There are other books that I love but there seems nothing to add really.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Part of the fun of the Tolkien fandom and the Silm in particular is the mystery: the fragmentary nature of the canon and the need to piece things together and make inferences to get the full story, and then of course, we end up with different inferences and different interpretations and that is ... fanfiction.<<

That's what makes history interesting. Tolkien was accurate in so many ways, and this too is part of that. History is always fragmentary. My notes are fragmentary, because no matter how fascinated I am by a world, I can never write down all of it. Just pieces.