Medium Dawn Felagund of the Fountain

The independent archive survey ran from 23 June through 7 July 2023. Eighty-two respondents took the survey during that time. The survey asked about interest in independent archives and included a section for participants interested in building or volunteering for an independent archive. The survey was open to all creators and readers/viewers of fanworks.

What is an independent archive?

The survey defined an independent archive as "a website where creators can share their fanworks. What makes it 'independent' is that it is run by fans but unaffiliated with any for-profit or nonprofit corporations or organizations. Historically, independent archives have grown out of fan communities that create fanworks."

On Tumblr, I am using the tag #independent archives for survey results and ongoing work to restore independent archives to fandoms that want them. This master post will collect data as they become available. I will post twice per day to Tumblr, so it is very likely that, during that time, this post will have data not yet available there.

How you can use these data

I welcome sharing and discussing the data here. Please credit me as Dawn Felagund with a link to this post. You do not need to ask for permission. I am giving permission right now.

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( Do you currently post/share your fanworks on any sites or archives other than AO3, Fanfiction.net, or Wattpad? )

( If an independent archive existed that accepted some or all of your fanworks, and where you were comfortable with its policies, governance, etc, would you consider posting there? )

( What types of fanworks would you consider posting to an independent archive? )

( If an independent archive existed that accepted fanworks you were interested in reading or viewing, would you consider reading or viewing fanworks there? )

( Would you consider building or otherwise volunteering for an independent archive )

( How interested are you in building or running your own independent archive? )

( Which of the following would interest you as options for building an independent archive? )

( What would worry you about starting an independent archive? )

( What skills do you already have in web design, web development, or site-building? )

( How would you prefer to learn new skills to build an independent archive? )

( In what other ways might you be interested in volunteering for an independent archive? )

( What concerns about independent archives do you have? )

( What concerns about OTW/AO3 do you have? )

( Free response field )

I have lately been diving back into Tolkien Fanfic Survey data, as well as reading Abigail De Kosnik's Rogue Archives, and the combined endeavor has made me eager to visualize some of the data on how fanfiction archive use has changed over the years in the Tolkien fandom. Hence, the above. As the title to this post suggests, it is not complete. The archives listed are those that Maria and I included in the 2020 Tolkien Fanfic Survey, and Fanlore has expanded its offerings in this area since then, and I hope to add those in to the graph as well. But this is a start.

( Some Takeaways ... )

This last week has brought an epic level of fandom monster-shouting.* The short version is that the Tolkien Estate updated their website (and their FAQ, as one does, not wanting dusty outdated documents on a shiny new site), and someone realized that the FAQs were there and freaked out because the Tolkien Estate doesn't like fanworks. Which, to anyone even vaguely familiar with the Tolkien Estate--or Tolkien, since he didn't like fanworks either--it is rather laughable to consider that anyone might have thought otherwise, seeing as the Tolkien Estate has played the role of that purse-lipped parent who talks sternly in the company of other parents about how strict and old-school they are, and then lets their kid do whatever the fuck they want, within reason. In other words, the Tolkien Estate has wagged their finger about fanworks for a long time and yet there are millions of them around and very easy to find.

*I didn't invent the term. In Stephen King's The Stand, there is a minor character referred to as "the Monster Shouter" whose entire role is shouting that the end of the world is coming. I coopted the term years ago for people in fandom who use an incident--minor or not--to shout about how the end of fandom or fanworks or whatever is coming. (Apparently I am not the only one to use it.)

Anyway, I've heard from multiple people now that this frightened them enough that they were considering taking their Tolkien fanworks down, and at least one person did. And this is on the basis of a social media post from someone most of them didn't even know. This is the power of misinformation, folks. Lest we think it is susceptibility only of "those people," whom we like to imagine as less educated and less enlightened than we are, or old and out of touch (okay, Boomer), let me state directly what just happened: We had an incident of viral social media misinformation in the Tolkien fanworks fandom that not only distressed hundreds, if not thousands, of people but caused some of them to consider--or even make--disastrous decisions concerning their own creative work.

I don't want to judge or shame anyone who panicked because of the original post (including the OP). I'd wager everyone reading here has jumped on misinformation at least once before. What always bothers me about monster shouting, though, and misinformation more generally isn't that people mess up, which people are wont to do, but that people who mess up then become very "eh" about correcting the record that they helped perpetuate. I get that it's difficult and sometimes embarrassing to say "I was wrong," but people are deleting their work over this; a reblog without comment ain't a big endeavor. The SWG wrote an article (here on Tumblr) in response to this incident, to explain why there was no reason to panic. As of this writing, the original post has well over 16K notes; the SWG post has 83. I realize there are reasons why something goes viral that has nothing to do with the content itself, and I didn't expect this post to--I even remarked cynically to my comods when I posted the article yesterday that I was interested to see how few people willing to spread misinformation were willing to reblog the correct information--but I find myself less aggrieved by the sharing of misinformation than the unwillingness to correct it.

This admittedly makes it harder to generate the sympathy I want to have for monster shouters: that they made a mistake and were sincere in sharing information they thought would help. It comes off instead as enjoying the emotional tumult of a situation and wanting to crank the outrage machine absent anything constructive.

Which, again, is not a surprise--we all live in the era of Facebook--but I find value in saying it outright. Food for thought.

It even started to devolve into conspiracy theory-making, my personal favorite that this is all because of Christopher Tolkien's death because he was a real champion of fanworks.

I always struggle personally with how to respond to monster shouting. I am not a media specialist, but I do teach media literacy, so I teach young adults how to identify and avoid misinformation, and I want to monster shout exactly what I tell them: that anytime something you read online makes you feel a strong emotion, STOP. Stop and think about it and make sure it is correct before responding or (especially) sharing because misinformation works (and is sometimes engineered, though I don't think that was anyone's intention here) to create a strong emotional response and literally the fate of a free and democratic society depends on you making the right choice. Seriously? The world might actually end if you share the wrong piece of misinformation./s

But then it feels patronizing to say to adults what I say to middle-school kids and in fact have on a Google Slide at the ready at all times to use when discussing current events in class. Stop. Take a break. Think. Research. Then respond.

Nor do I know it will make a difference because, as I said earlier, cranking the outrage machine is super satisfying and becomes almost a form of community bonding. Again, I'd bet most if not all of us have done it at one time or another. But it comes at a price.

It's never good when I outdo myself in terms of working hard. Between Monday and Tuesday, I worked 28 hours: two 14-hour days. I'm not as tired as I probably should be, but I still did not allow myself to bring work home tonight. I felt like a turtle without my shell coming home without my backpack, but here I am.

We had our first ski day at Jay Peak on Monday. It went pretty well, aside from a lack of information and some general disorganization from the staff. I led the group that does Nordic for half the day, then ice skating for half. Except we were told the wrong order, so we snowshoed in the morning and then couldn't go ice skating in the afternoon, so I read to the students in the lodge while they colored and passed around my phone playing Woody Puzzle. They were not happy snowshoeing; we'll go cross-country skiing next time, which will be its own brand of struggle. We went 4.5 miles/7 km, which was too much for them. Which is sad: I'm three times their age and handled it just fine. (Admittedly, I did intentionally take them up what I knew was a huge hill. >:^))) And Vermont is the fittest state in the U.S.!

So I'm going to wade into the DNW discussion because I'm partly to blame for starting it. independence1776 has a post here that articulates a different perspective from mine on the matter of ficswaps and DNWs in particular. Some of you probably figured out that I was the person Indy was carefully not referring to by name, so here is my perspective on the subject, under the cut for people uninterested in Tolkien fandom or hearing more about this.

( Read more... )

Fandom Snowflake Day 5 asked participants to "post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create." I went *ahem* a little above and beyond. I did ten. I've been reading a lot of Tolkienfic lately--it is one of my goals for the year to make time for reading, as it is often one of the fandom pleasures that falls first to the obligations of running a website--and I wanted to share some of my favorites from among what I've read. I feel like I need to make up for a few years of rarely reading and commenting while I was in grad school. Most of these stories are Silmarillion-based, but there are a few that are from The Lord of the Rings.

Please check them out and, if you like them, consider leaving the author a note letting them know.

The Choice by Keiliss. Thank goodness the prompt that inspired this story gives away the ending or I don't think I would have been able to take it. I still teared up at multiple points in this tenderly written and beautifully human story about Elladan and his daughter making their choice about whether or not to sail for Aman. Few of Tolkien's unanswered question have inspired the speculation, angst, and fanfic as the question of whether the sons of Elrond sailed, and Kei's story deserves a place at the top of the heap. Her characterization, too, of characters who only appear in passing speak of why she is one of the giants of Tolkienfic. This story is simply wonderful.

Elendili by hadastheunseelie. I picked up this story for the Fandom Snowflake challenge that asked participants to reach out to someone new. I'll admit that I hesitated. It mentions a teenage girl and glitter in the summary, and while I totally support teenagers writing fanfic--a lot of my students do and I think it's awesome!--I also reserve the right not to read said fanfic when it's not one of my students! And the story was long. But, in the Snowflake spirit, I gave it a go and OMG. OMG, y'all. It is probably the strangest story I will rec here--which anyone who knows me will know I mean as a compliment--but Hadas is one of those writers with a gift for wielding words like a knife between my bones where they actually hurt. The imagery is stunning: sometimes gritty and very anchored in Modern-earth (where this story is set) and sometimes ethereal and otherworldly, making that familiar world of colleges and coffee shops Elvish somehow.

Eyes Bright with Honor by heget. Heget is working on telling the tales of the ten companions who died in the dungeon with Finrod in defense of Beren. The Beren and Luthien story has never particularly entranced me (Finrod's on the other hand ... *ahem*), but I walked away from this story getting it: getting some of the magic that people (including Tolkien) see in that story and in the character of Beren in particular. The story meanders through time, mostly looking back to the life of the OC Consael whose story Heget tells in this piece, and it is a story where the pieces all coalesce and make beautiful sense in the end. This is one of the most horrifying episodes in The Silmarillion to me, yet I could walk away from this story with a rare sense of feeling uplifted and hopeful instead of imagining those eyes kindling in the dark ... Heget plans to write about all ten companions, and I will be checking out the other pieces in the series on the strength of this one.

Galadriel: There and Back Again by Himring. If someone were to task me with writing the life of Galadriel, I would sweat over it for a year and turn out a sprawling, half-million word epic. And I still don't think I could top this story. Himring is perhaps one of the most underappreciated masters of Silmfic, and this story shows why. Her Galadriel manages to be stubborn, strong, and vulnerable with a no-nonsense wisdom that probably explains her survival alone (almost) of her family. And in well under 2000 words! Every wrenching, poignant word counts in this piece that stitches together the Galadriel who competed with (and feared) Fëanor and she who gave Frodo the light of Eärendil that saved him.

Home for Midwinter by Tallulah Red. I will echo Tal's several reviews on the LotRGenFic community--this was written for their annual Yule Exchange--who praised the world-building in this story. The story was written for Indy, who wanted to see Maglor adopt a family from among the Avari. Although a short piece, it sparkles with believable characters and culture, taking a different take on the Avari than most writers do. And in a fandom that has a Maglor-walks-by-the-shore-and-laments trope, it was refreshing to read a story that allows him happiness in the future while also not shying from his history.

Journeys by Independence1776. This story was written for me, for the MPTT/LotRGen Yule Exchange. I remember writing a story once for a friend that she described fitting like a pair of gloves that could only be selected by someone who knew her well. This is such a story. It is Maedhros and Maglor and a conversation in a cave, yet the dialogue simmers with much more than can be seen on the surface, and Indy achieves an easy camaraderie between the brothers that is delightful to read. It is simply wonderful, like Indy dove into my mind and extracted a story I would have loved to have written for my own verse. I'm officially adopting this one into the Felakverse.

The Purple Dress by Avon. This story gave me chills. Set in Númenor, a young woman flouts convention in her choice of dress color ... but this story is so much more than that. It is one of those pieces that unspools in slow revelations so that, as a reader, you're never entirely on steady ground. And once you realize what is going on, you're not there yet; the ending simmers with delicious double entendre. There's A LOT going on in this short piece, and every word and image count.

Though the Road Darkens by Marta. Marta's story tells the tale of Gorlim the Unhappy through the eyes of his companion Gildor. The voice in this story is simply magnificent; you feel like you are sitting at the fireside, hearing Gildor tell his tale. A complicated story, it brings in folklore, myth (Middle- and Modern-earth), and questions the historical tradition, offering different look at Gorlim's story. Oh, and it's beautifully written, the kind of words you want to lean back and savor like wine. If you're thinking--like I probably would have if Marta hadn't asked me to read this story--that you'd never be interested in a story about Gorlim, take a chance and prove yourself wrong. (I'm happy to admit that I was! :)

Winter Came Earlier by Oshun. She calls this "just a bit of fluff" in the summary, but saying this is "just" fluff is like saying the Grand Canyon is "just" a sidewalk crack. This is a layered and thought-provoking story in which Elladan faces, through Arwen and Aragorn, his own worries about mortality and what it means to be Peredhil. But don't let my summary scare you into thinking that this is a deep, heavy story that one can only read in a bright-lit room. This is Oshun, after all, and her work is as ever sweetened with romance and humor that balance perfectly with the deeper themes of this short, lovely work.

Winter Sons of Gondor by Elwen. It was my turn this month on MPTT to archive the challenge stories. This necessitates skimming each piece so that I can add the meta-data to it about character, genre, et cetera. Most of the time I do just that--skim--and I started to do so with this story but got hooked in despite my intentions to make quick work of posting it. Young Boromir and Faramir are coping with the pressures of their father's growing madness when they decide to escape for a morning to enjoy a rare snowfall. But their journey takes an unexpected turn. This story is a page-turner, and I could not have left off reading it and gone back to skimming if I'd wanted to.

In true Fandom Snowflake tradition, I have fallen behind. Fandom is, appropriately enough, the reason I have fallen behind. The beginning of the month is filled with posting challenges and compiling newsletters. My free time at home for the past two nights has been entirely consumed by fandom chores. I'm still not 100% finished and have a beta to do, but I'm taking a break to get at least a little caught up.

Day 3's challenge:

In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Man oh man *rubs hands together* I love setting goals! I'm going to set three in different areas of fannish participation.

1. Start writing the prequel to Another Man's Cage. I've actually started writing it twice now. Once, I got four chapters in and the files corrupted. (This was pre-Dropbox, which tells you how long I've been promising this prequel.) The second time, the magic just wasn't there. Three's a charm, right? I've been promising this story for years, so it will be my next long work, just as soon as I can wrap up Tamlin.



2. Solve the eFiction problem. This feels so super ambitious that I'm kinda scared just writing it. But I am hoping that it will also focus me and allow me to make this work a priority.
   
   The "eFiction problem" is that we do not currently have a good option for fanfic archives. eFiction was a gift that was probably too good to last. It's beginning to show its age. Yeah yeah yeah, eFiction 5 is in the works, but I'm not encouraged by how long it's taking and also reluctant to go to the work of changing to something that would also become obsolete if the developer also abandoned it. Once bitten, twice shy.
   
   What I'm trying to do is to figure out how to make a fiction archive using a CMS. I've been studying Drupal and have looked into Wordpress as well. (I have to admit that I am in love with Drupal like whoa. I think I've been a casual Wordpress user for so long that I don't really recognize its full potential, so I need to give it a fair chance too before committing to Drupal.) Whatever I figure out--because I will figure this out, y'all--I will share what I learn so that as other archives want to transition from eFiction, they hopefully can do so. We need to keep our small archives alive.



3. Finish and send out that historical bias paper. Attainable Vistas was initially almost twice as long because it contained quite a bit of original research demonstrating historical bias in The Silmarillion. The editors advised that I cut most of that and submit it as a separate paper to JTR or elsewhere. I'd already felt it was two papers and so was glad to accept this advice; I had worried that the paper might be rejected for lack of evidence and so thought to cover my bases many times over. Probably a rookie mistake.
   
   Anyway, because of this, I have an academic paper basically written. I need to finish that and send it somewhere. I have no idea where. My current plan is my usual plan of aiming as high as I can and being prepared to cheerfully aim lower if my hopes are thwarted.

I am going to try to do the Fandom Snowflake challenge this year. Like all of it. I usually do a day here or there, but I've liked journaling daily as part of the photo-of-the-day (although if my performance on that is any indication, then I'll miss a few days of Snowflake as well).

Day One's challenge is:

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

So *rubs hands together* ... let's dive in!

I've self-recced stories for Fandom Snowflake and other challenges before, and my stories are the first place my brain tends to go when asked for self-recs. But I'm going to mix things up a little bit and also, in the spirit of the Snowflake Challenge, break the rules a little by only reccing two things. But they are two big things! So maybe that counts for something.

I am reccing the two sites that I built and that I currently help moderate: the Silmarillion Writers' Guild (which I also founded and own) and Many Paths to Tread.

Really, as far as fanworks that define me as a creator, here you have it. Yes yes, I've spent many hundreds of hours writing stories, and I'm not going to play coy and pretend that some of those stories haven't been important to the Silmarillion fandom, but deciding to turn my energies to learning web design now more than ten years ago was life-changing and--I like to hope--something that shaped the Tolkien fandom in positive directions.

For anyone who doesn't know the story, I decided to found the SWG after a night of insomnia in which I decided that the Internet needed a Silmarillion-only group and I should be the one to build it. I chickened out immediately upon setting up the SWG on Yahoo! Groups (remember that?!) and LiveJournal, but thankfully I was found by Uli/ford_of_bruinen, who would become my first comod, and pushed me to follow through on my dream. When SWG members wanted an archive, I set about learning to do what I'd need to do to build one. I taught myself HTML and CSS from books and started working with eFiction. This led the LotRGen moderators to approach me about building a site for them. I was impressed with the fact that, as a genfic group in an anti-slash point in fandom history, they were open to allowing any stories at an R-rating on below on the site, regardless of the orientation of the couple(s) in the story. So I agreed to help them build their site, and that brought me to MPTT.

I say all this because I've been in the Tolkien fandom for a long time now, and I'm seeing things start to change in ways that I don't like, namely that Tolkien fandom is becoming increasingly comfortable with centralization, and many fans are losing their self-sufficiency in the process. Back in the day, there were dozens of homegrown groups owned by people in the Tolkien fandom, and it wasn't particularly extraordinary to do what I did and learn specialized skills in order to run fandom projects. Plenty of people who couldn't do much more than switch on the computer when they started in fandom learned to write HTML, design graphics, and manage online communities.

There are disadvantages to local control, whether in government or fandom and I won't pretend this was always utopian, but one thing was certain: We did not depend on the blessing or existence of anyone but ourselves and our own minds and hands to have our communities. I will be blunt: I dislike how centralized Tolkien fandom has become. I dislike the snide way people look down their noses at websites like mine because we're not as advanced as AO3. I dislike how everything is on AO3 or Tumblr now. And let me be perfectly clear: I am on AO3 and Tumblr both myself. I have no problem with either site. I like both sites. I was an extremely early adopter and supporter of AO3 and continue to think that they are very much a needed part of the fan community. Notice I said "part." Because AO3 and Tumblr are not the Tolkien fandom, y'all. WE are the Tolkien fandom. These sites will not represent and defend our interests when they are different from Fandom as a whole. If you need proof, just look at the AO3 piped tag debacle, in which AO3 told Tolkien fandom to go fuck itself rather than listen to feedback about a usable system for tagging characters and pairings. And our fandom is weird. Tolkien-based fanfic is more than fifty years old; we have a history and a complex canon that is unlike any other fan community. Our needs are and will continue to differ from Fandom as a whole, and we deserve sites run by people from our own communities that listen to our needs and interests.

For my part, I plan to continue to fight to keep my sites alive and relevant. They are my proudest achievement in this fandom, and I continue to believe strongly that they are needed and important. I hope Tolkien fans reading here will make more of an effort in 2017 to support a Tolkien fandom site or project. Post your stories to a Tolkien archive; comment on something that isn't on AO3 or Tumblr; volunteer to help with an event or challenge. It doesn't have to be the SWG or MPTT, but do something to keep our Tolkien fandom institutions alive.

Important ETA: Over the past few days, I have been in correspondence with other Tolkien archive admins and the abuse team on AO3. It seems that my initial fears that this incident was "bigger than us" were well-founded. This person has been found on several Tolkien archives (although they don't seem to have posted as widely anyplace but the SWG) and may be linked with a chronic plagiarist on AO3 and ff.net. That makes vigilance more important than ever for all of us. Readers, if you see a story on an archive that looks familiar but isn't by the author you recall writing it, please say something to an admin. It is worth pointing out that we were able to catch and quash this person on the SWG as quickly as we did because we had several members who saw something that didn't look right and reported it. Finally, many, many thanks to everyone who has spread the word. I know it's been a lot of you. (This post was in the LJ Top 25 for a while!) /ETA

As some of you already know, we recently had a major incident of plagiarized work being posted to the Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Given what my comoderators and I discovered during our investigation, I have reason to believe that this is not an isolated incident on our site alone, nor is this person confining their activities to the Tolkien fandom. I have contacted the authors whose work was stolen, and my comods and I have also reached out to the admins of other Tolkien archives (MPTT, Faerie, SoA, OSA, and NaN*) and the abuse team on AO3 to share our findings.

*I couldn't find a contact address for LOTRfanfiction.com, if there is even an active admin on that site anymore. If anyone has one, I'll forward my findings there as well. ETA that Keith has been brought into the loop ...

I am sharing this information publicly here with the intention that it be shared with other admins and authors. Please feel free to link, share, and repost any of the information here. You don't have to ask. I don't care if you credit me (although doing so is probably practical so that anyone with questions about our findings can contact me directly). The important thing in my mind is making sure that this person is shut down before they can do more harm and empowering both admins and authors to do so. If your actions are done with that goal in mind, trust I am going to be cool with it.

A brief summary of what is going on:

• Multiple accounts were used on the SWG to post plagiarized stories. These stories were stolen from multiple authors.


• The person or persons behind this was/were responsive to feedback from our moderation team concerning what was allowable on our archive and actually exchanged emails with me on a couple of occasions. They were clearly not part of the Silmarillion fandom (I'm fairly certain they don't even know what The Silmarillion is) and may not be familiar with fandom and fanfic at all. But they were good enough at impersonation that it took us two weeks to catch on to them.


• They appear to be stealing stories mostly from AO3 and Fanfiction.net. However, there is evidence that they are stealing from other sites as well, and we know for a fact that they have started their shenanigans on OSA. (We've contacted the OSA admin.)


• They appear to be stealing primarily stories that are recently posted or updated. Again, however, this is not 100% the case.


• They were insistent of their innocence, even after we found overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I don't know the motivation behind that; it doesn't appear that they were invested particularly in the works they had posted but seem to have selected them somewhat at random.

A version of this post has also been posted to the Stop Plagiarism community on LJ and is in the queue to be reviewed by a moderator.

ETA ... it is now also posted on Tumblr.

( What Happened )

( Screencaps and Links )

( Summary of Usernames, Emails, and IPs )

Well, when it rains it pours, in a good way this time. Some of you might remember a few weeks ago when I had mad deadlines for things and was biting my fingers till they bled (how I react when stressed out!). Both being due simultaneously meant that they were both published within the past two days.

My article "Fictional Scholarship: How the Peter Jackson Films and Fandom Archives Make Tolkien Fan Fiction Writers into Competent Critics" is out in Mythprint 52:1. It is a shortened version of my Mythmoot paper (which will eventually be available for free online in the proceedings) but does introduce some new data and expands on some of the points I couldn't really delve into in my Mythmoot paper because of time. Unfortunately, I don't have a link for this one, but Mythopoeic Society members will get it as part of Mythprint. There were no strings attached on this article, so I can reprint it wherever and whenever I want, and I will post it on the Heretic Loremaster in a couple of weeks. I just want to give Mythprint the courtesy of having it first for a while.

And my article In a Stone House by the Sea: The Founding and Governing of the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild is available in Signum University's Eagle. (Here is the entire March edition of the Eagle.) The timing on this was perfect because, believe it or not (and I am still having trouble believing it), the SWG's tenth begetting day* is tomorrow.

*Just like an Elf, the SWG has a begetting day and a birthday because I set it up on March 15 and then chickened out about doing anything with it until later in the year, having been utterly unqualified to start anything of that scope, even as I imagined it then. Uli pushed me in the summer to try to actually, um, get people to join, so I count the end of July as its birthday.

Finally, I wrote an essay, We Are Fëanor? Thoughts on Reading Moral Ambiguity into the Characterizations of the Fëanorians, which I posted to the Heretic Loremaster and also Tumblr. (Also a reminder that heretic_lore_feed will display HL posts on your friends page. I don't use the HL very much these days but it [and the entire Midhavens site] will be getting a facelift and some renewed attention once my MA is done and then I hope to have regular updates from me and People Not Me.)

I had to let the video upload on YouTube run overnight because of my current Internet situation but--at last!--the video of my presentation on Saturday at Mythmoot is finally ready. The full title (which is too long to fit in the title field) is "Transformative Works as a Means to Develop Critical Perspectives in the Tolkien Fan Community." The paper covers the history of Tolkien fan fiction, the development of online communities, and the use of Tolkien fan fiction as a means for writers to not only learn more about the texts but to become more analytical and critical readers. This is probably not news for anyone here, but keep in mind that I was presenting to a general (and not necessarily fanfic-friendly) audience at a fantasy studies conference.

The handout for the presentation can be found here. An audio-only version of the presentation can be found here.



Thoughts and reactions are most welcome, of course! :)