An unexpected journey - getting into the Tolkien fandom by daughterofshadows

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Fanwork Notes

For the diving prompt in the Olympics challenge: Experiences in the Tolkien fandom

Fanwork Information

Summary:

A short exploration of my time in the Tolkien fandom: How did I get here, why did I stay, what did I learn.

For the Middle-earth Olympics Diving prompt.

Major Characters:

Major Relationships:

Genre: Nonfiction/Meta

Challenges: Middle-earth Olympics

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Check Notes for Warnings
Chapters: 1 Word Count: 871
Posted on 29 July 2021 Updated on 29 July 2021

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

An unexpected journey - getting into the Tolkien fandom

Contains some mention of upsetting fandom experiences mainly due to arophobia

Comments

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Thank you very much for sharing your experiences! Some of what you said about the text strongly resonated with me.

I am sad to read that you have had bad experiences in the Tolkien fandom as well as good ones, but glad to hear that good experiences with Tolkien have outweighed the bad as much as you say they have!

 

If the good experiences had not been so much stronger and more impactful than the bad, I wouldn't have stuck around, and I think that would have been quite sad.

I'm glad that I stayed long enough to find places like SWG where I feel a lot safer posting things aro headcanons (despite there not being any right now. They're coming. There's just TRSB to finish first...), because the people here are great, and welcoming, and I'm very happy I found my way here.

Really interesting. My own experience of fantasy and sci-fi fandom in the late 70s was so off-putting to women that I didn't realise that communities like SWG existed until recently. Thank you for sharing yours. 

I absolutely loved this. It felt so familiar to me in some ways and so brave and insightful in others, in identifying the ways the texts support aro fans, the way the fandom sometimes does, and the way the fandom also often doesn't.

I had a lot of the same experiences, from diving in deeply at a vulnerable time in my life (though a full decade older than you were!) and feeling that tension in the community--people who made me proud to be a Tolkien fan and people who only seemed to echo the hate I saw/felt in other places in the world--and ultimately building/choosing my own community.

Thank you so much for sharing this. <3