Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

NB. Composed as an addendum to the story of Gimli and Legolas in the Appendices.

The Elf Maid and the Dwarvish Prince

It is said that in earlier times that there was another such pair of friends, although they were not borne of battle. In the last days of Eregion when the children of Eru and the children of Aulë had not yet come to their strife, a minor daughter of the Gwaith-i-Mírdain was chance acquainted with a Dwarvish prince from Mount Gundabad in those days before it fell to the orcs.

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 So months ago Todd dared me to write Galadriel/Earien, and oh how I have struggled. I have a few pages of misspent attempts at fic, and then I gave up and decided to make it verse. Goal: Silmarillion-esque. Reality: Who knows.

( (the silence) in the Hall of Lore )

Okay, so the Elves are concluding their wartime occupation of Harad clearly prematurely. I belatedly thought about the connection of how the cinematic adaptations of LOTR are concurrent to America's forever wars--like sure, FotR was 2001, but thinking about the Harad plot in 2022... Although again they have Europeanized that setting so who knows. Messy thoughts!!

Also how they Europeanized Harad, I assume to negate the racism of the original texts. I like that, but by removing the Eastern elements they are monoculturalizing ME, and that's less fun to me.

The series does demonstrate, beautifully, how fucking EASY it is to have a medieval-ish fantasy without abusing, brutalizing, or demeaning women characters. JUST SAYIN'.

Also:

So I'm reading The Fellowship by Phillip and Carol Zaleski, which is a pretty massive biography of the Inklings. It's good, but I'm getting tired how all of the women--or at least everyone but Mrs. Moore, who possibly was the lover of CS Lewis--are always offstage having babies and doing gods know what, while the homosocial literary meetings just happen. So I've decided to pretend that while the Inklings are having their meetings, Edith Tolkien is running an unnamed group where all the ladies share their fics. And that Lewis's apocryphal "Oh God, not another Elf!" comment refers to Edith's 400,000 word response to The Silmarillion that's really just all about polyamorous Elves.

If there isn't a full essay on this in the inevitable volume on Hobbit fanworks, I will cry.



I particularly like how it's a "Who's Who" of popular fandoms in 2014: Hobbit, Marvel (esp. Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man, Captain America), Batman, Game of Thrones, Star Trek, and Sailor Moon.

Also I'm ridiculously fond of that rock riff of "Misty Mountains."

How much do I love this? By a lot!

Sidewaysedly, with ithiliana's feedback I submitted the following paper proposal to the Tolkien area at Kalamazoo for next year:

Constructing Lothίriel: Rewriting and Rescuing the Women of Middle Earth from the Margins

Scholars of fan studies believe that fanfiction can be seen as an interpretive and analytical act that gives insight into the reception of a text by its audience. This paper will examine the depiction of Tolkien’s female characters in The Lord of the Rings and related works through the lens of fanfiction: How do Tolkien’s most loving and devoted readers, his fans, view the women of Middle-Earth? In the case of significant characters like Éowyn and Arwen, quite a bit is known and thus fan-writers have various resources to work with as source references, including the texts as well as the earlier drafts of the novels as published in The History of The Lord of the Rings. In the case of other characters such as Lothíriel, their presence is little more than (quite literally) a footnote. As a genre of literature, fanfiction functions both as derivative work (in that some writers conscientiously choose to ascribe to Tolkien’s canonical texts and display a wealth of knowledge of these texts, linguistically and historically) and as transformative work as writers choose to select, ignore, or rewrite those aspects of Tolkien’s work they find problematic. In the body of scholarly work on Tolkien and fanfiction thus far, little attention has been paid attention to how writers have chosen to characterize the women characters, or what stories, genres, and tropes have been used in these stories. By reading the poems, short stories, and even novels that fans have written inspired by these characters, a new picture of the women of Middle Earth emerges: one in which women aren’t always fabulously beautiful or amazingly brave, but take their place alongside the male denizens of Tolkien’s universe all the same. This paper will contain several case studies of how various fan-writers have adopted and adapted Tolkien’s creations to tell their own stories of these characters.


I'm not sure when I'll find out whether it's accepted or not, but I have my fingers crossed!!

I found an interesing blogpost on Rereading the LOTR appendices. I always found it about equally fascinating and annoying that Tolkien put so much of the actual STORY in the appendices: ALL of Aragorn and Arwen's love story, for instance, most of the real background and ending stuff...yeah. (And of course, per usual, Rohan gets ROBBED. *grump*)

My friend Anton also got me a copy of the audiobook of The Silmarillion which I started listening to last night. I listened to the first chapter and yeah, I agree that it really has to be listen to rather than read, plus all the Elvish is just so much more lovely and alive when vocalized. Looking forward to hearing more!!

So reena_jenkins linked this vid:



Only I'm hypnotized, cos I'm on sudafed and tired and also I'm easily entertained, and basically OMG PWNIES.

The bookish one is called TWILIGHT SPARKLE.

Anyhow, I started wondering what Eomer would think, because this is how my brain works. I'm sorry.

ETA ALL my friends uniform reaction appears to be:



And that just cracks me up more.