Fandom Snowflakes: "Mary Sue" History Meta, Arda's Unreliable Historians, Some Goals

[dawn_felagund]

I'm catching up on some of the snowflake_challenge prompts ...

#10. Create a fanwork. I researched and wrote a post for the Tolkien Fandom History blog about the concept of "Mary Sue" in the early 2000s Tolkien fanfiction fandom, emphasizing primary source texts from Tolkien fanfiction archives and websites: A Girl Falls into Tolkien Fandom History ...

I have lately been having so much fun on old Tolkienfic sites on the Wayback Machine that I started feeling bad for my perceived overuse of it and sent them a donation. I am still turning over in my mind the best way to store/track WB information from these old sites; some of it is very specific to me and not necessarily appropriate for Fanlore. I really need to get my own website back up and running; then I can build things to keep there without worrying about pleasing anyone else. It was fun to research this piece, though posting it to Tumblr was murder, as Tumblr kept eating links from my drafts and once, after I used COMMAND+Z to undo a mistyped sentence, watched as half of my post deleted, not to be recovered by a matching COMMAND+Y. 😱 So I actually probably wrote this piece three times over, by the time Tumblr cooperated. (I will not be writing in Tumblr in the future; it just seemed easier to manage with all the images I wanted to post. LMAO.)

#11. A favorite trope or theme. Okay, this is absolutely the Unreliable Historians of Arda trope, which I did not invent but have certainly exploited in my own work. In a nutshell, this is the idea that the narrators of the "Silmarillion"* are unreliable and biased, being only human,** so fanworks can reflect other perspectives that challenge those potential biases and still remain within the bounds of "canon."

* As in the myriad texts that make up the prehistory of LotR, not the published volume.
** Yes, Virginia, Elves are humans.

I do love this approach to Tolkien-based fanworks for a number of reasons.

• I have made the comparison multiple times in academic writings between Tolkien's concept of "unattainable vistas" and his use of biased narrators. The "unattainable vistas" were a metaphor he used in a letter to a reader and also alluded to in a letter to Christopher Tolkien, attempting to explain why Christopher found an attraction to the character of Celebrimbor. I think both excerpts are beautifully written and it's my journal, dammit, so I'm going to quote BOTH:
  
  

  Part of the attraction of The L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background : an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed. (Letter 247)
  
  A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving. I think you are moved by Celebrimbor because it conveys a sudden sense of endless untold stories: mountains seen far away, never to be climbed, distant trees (like Niggle's) never to be approached – or if so only to become 'near trees' ... . (Letter 96)

  
  
  I GET this on a deep level. I have been known to "pore over a map." As a kid, nothing excited me more than opening a book to find a map before the story began. (As a teacher, I begin each region studies until with a deep dive into maps of that region, though I'm not sure my students are as enthused about this as I am!) And as a reader, nothing excites me more than stories that make use of mysterious and unseen places (particularly if those places are underground, though that's rather tangential—but certainly Felagundish!) And the biased narrator creates a similar effect for me‐suggesting perspectives that can be inferred but are never actually revealed—which makes sense since my other weakness as a reader is complex characters, and this technique can be used to complicate characters: the villain's secret heart and the hero's secret vice. Within Tolkien's world specifically, this recognition has given me almost two decades of joy now in thinking, reading, discussing, and writing about what those perspectives might be.



• This approach also unlocks characters' perspectives that are missing entirely from the original text. It debunks the idea that Tolkien's books are "war stories for/by straight white dudes," which is a rather uncharitable rendering of what I've been told by a couple of fellow fans when I've pointed out the lack of women. (Emphasis on the "fellow.") Okay, so let's assume that's true (I don't actually think it is, but we can cede this particular battle); it still doesn't negate that other perspectives exist and are worth considering.
  
  Of course, this is true for any narrative, right? It's basic enough to become a common writing exercise for students in the age group I teach: rewrite a scene from another character's perspective. BUT I think the difference in Tolkien fandom specifically is that the unreliable historian—being canonical—actually invites those perspectives—almost requires them. Tolkien fans (particularly the kind who make the war-story argument) typically love them some canon. Even the most wildly irreverent fanfiction writer generally cares about getting minutia like family trees and geography and timelines impeccably correct. So locating the possibility of carefully constructed narrator error/bias and the implication of different perspectives in canon carries a force in this fandom that it might not if we fell back solely on "well all stories have a PoV and other PoVs but therefore also exist." As I find fanworks that assume those unseen perspectives to be highly appealing, the Unreliable Historian is a favorite approach to the legendarium for me.

#12. Set some goals. Speaking of Tolkien's fictional historians, I have been working on a massive project to document them across all of his works for years now: lots of tiny penciled marginalia and a big-ass Google Doc. It is always being put on the backburner to work on other projects. BUT! At the moment, I have no other major pressing projects. For the first time in years, I am not writing/preparing a manuscript for a publication or preparing for a conference. Given that, I am hoping to make some progress on this work this year.

I'd also like to start writing fiction again. Fiction-writing and site-building work, for whatever reason, don't seem to coexist easily in my brain, which has meant that the stories dried up because of the nonstop work the SWG has needed these past few years, but now that I'm not working almost every day on hardcore site-building, I'm finding the stories are coming back. I'm thinking it will be most likely original work, but who knows. Noldor can be insistent.

Comments

[galadhir]

Yes, I think that Tolkien's histories of Middle-earth are very believable as histories partly because, like histories in the real world, they're full of biases and incomplete information and sometimes even contradictory information.

I built five years worth of stories on an entry in one of his dictionaries which suggested that the Sindar called the Noldor the Golodhrim, which meant 'sorcerous elves', and that the Noldor didn't like it much. Which was the thing that opened my eyes to the fact that the Noldor perspective on history wasn't necessarily the only one.

And then I was off writing the history of the world from the Sindar's perspective. So yeah. One hint opened up a whole new way of reading the text for me, and I can't help but feel that he kind of knew that would happen.

[anerea]

Is this is where I get to admit that I never twigged about the in-world historians (other than the tale-tellers in the Cottage of Lost Play, whom I never related to the Silm) until I discovered some of your writing, and later on Discord discussions, which was a revelation for me! What absolute freedom it gives. After struggling with thinking how to write in "current time" (not sure the correct term for this) I accidentally discovered how much easier it is to have a character relate a story to another, and how it solves so many problems! And the unreliable narrator even more so, and also opens up so many more possibilities.

Your project sounds enjoyably interesting and I look forward to reading the results!

[independence1776]

Tumblr is a giant PITA. If I need to insert pictures, I'll put [insert picture here] in what I'm writing and add it when I copy/paste what I wrote to Tumblr.

** Yes, Virginia, Elves are humans.

I have given up on pushing back against the perception they're not, but I want to headdesk every time I see it.

I have been known to "pore over a map."

I am still disappointed when I open up a secondary world fantasy and there is no map. The book I just finished could honestly have used one because the geography was important to the plot but not sufficiently described I could picture how the continent was laid out.

I think the difference in Tolkien fandom specifically is that the unreliable historian—being canonical—actually invites those perspectives—almost requires them.

Yes! My sticking point is always, always the Avari. Not the ones that kinda wander in at places, but the Avari elsewhere in the world. I cannot stand how the Silm text speaks of them and the narrator bias is right there for me to point to: they never talked with the Avari, how the hell would they know anything, much less make sweeping judgements on them?