Fandom Voices: Filmverse Fans by Dawn Walls-Thumma

Posted on 26 August 2022; updated on 17 May 2023

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Responses: The Lord of the Rings Films

All responses we've received to the above question are collected here without curation or commentary. Responses have been lightly edited.

Did you start participating in fandom due to the films? We're still collecting responses and will update this page as new responses come in.

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I'd loved the books since my early teens but had no idea fandom existed till I went looking for pictures of Elrond from the movies and accidentally found the Vanilla Elf site and drowned in fiction. Never looked back.

~ Keiliss, response collected 30 April 2022

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I joined maybe ten years after the LotR films came out, in large part because of the films. I watched the films before I read the books, and that prompted me to read the books. And then I got social media and got into the fandom. I would say I was a new fan but I wasn't new in the same way as people joining in 2003, etc, etc ...  I think my experiences were overall pretty positive. I think fandom is really what got me into the meta analysis of Tolkien's work, and comparative analysis of the books versus the films. I think I missed the worst of the book fan versus movie fan debate, which I've only really heard about. The fandom was pretty tolerant of my learning curve in terms of meta analysis, canonicity, etc, etc.

~ Sam, response collected 30 April 2022

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I became a LotR fan from watching the movies very young, but didn’t join the fandom at that time.

~ Anonymous, response collected 30 April 2022

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I am going to use the term fandom loosely here. But I originally read the books because of the films. It would be years after reading the books that I would join the fandom properly. I was a young child when the first films came out (5). But by the time the last one came out, I had watched them. In fifth grade (around age 10), I decided I wanted to read the books so I got a boxed set. It probably took me three years to fully read and understand them for the first time. It wasn’t until I joined Tumblr in 2011 that I became a part of the online fandom. By that time I was very much a books fan, but my first experience with Tolkien will always be the movies as a young child.

~ Anonymous, response collected 30 April 2022

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I was a young teen when I joined, and I remember going on the internet looking for a fansite or similar that would talk about Lord of the Rings. It was quite an emotional watch and it struck chords I didn't now I had up until that moment.

~ Anonymous, response collected 30 April 2022

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I remember joining in a forum in my country (non-English fandom) which was very canon-based, with no room for interpretations beyond what was in the books. I was 16 and such a fan, I couldn't conceive something that would come in the way of Tolkien's religious view of the world (gay Elves didn't even cross my mind, but I was also very anti-Fëanorian at the time lol). Anyway, I have fond memories from all the chatting, the endless discussions of whether Balrogs did or did not have wings, if Sam was more a hero than Frodo, if Gollum or Fëanor were truly evil, etc. It was in this forum that I also met one of my best friends to this day.

~ firstamazon, response collected 30 April 2022

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Excellent! I lived in a relatively small city and met some previous acquaintances at the only movie theater that was showing the movies; they were my first introduction to the fandom. Brazil had a decent Tolkien community even back then, with local groups which met in person, some published magazines, and online forums.

~ Juliana, response collected 30 April 2022

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I watched them before I even knew what a fandom was. I fell in love with Middle-earth and the story and tried my hand at The Hobbit, then LotR, and finally The Silmarillion, which then lead me to Tolkien's other works and the fandom in itself.

~ Anonymous, response collected 30 April 2022

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I don't participate in the fandom, I'm more a silent fan, but I read a lot about canon/headcanons, ideas ...

~ Anonymous, response collected 1 May 2022

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The connection is quite a loose one. I had already been a Tolkien nerd before. But I had pursued that interest in a comparatively solitary fashion, apart from the occasional conversation. The films revived my interest after a short hiatus, and shortly after that, I discovered the existence of fanfiction online as a reader. I started by reading stories on HASA but as a determined lurker (being wary of internet interactions) and did not really become aware of fandom as a community right away. It was still to take me some years before I joined the fandom more fully. By that time, fans that had joined immediately after the films already regarded themselves as well-established or even "oldies". Many of the fannish discussions of the years just after the films had already become fandom memories.

~ Anonymous, response collected 1 May 2022

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It's a very long time ago now, but I think the communities I joined were mostly also new/film fans; there was a huge flurry of fic, particularly, and most of it was set in, or at least inspired by, the movieverse (I still write in a hybrid of movieverse and bookverse, mostly movieverse).

~ likethenight, response collected 10 May 2022

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Felt very welcomed.

~ Anonymous, response collected 10 May 2022

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The films were my first exposure to LotR at all. By the time I watched them, all three were out on DVD, and I devoured all three over the course of three days. I loved the story, so I sought out the books and devoured those too. At the time, I wasn't comfortable diving into fandom spaces, but I started poking around for occasional fanfiction to read or fan memes.

~ Anonymous, response collected 10 May 2022

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My brothers have always been into LotR and finally convinced me to watch the movies last December. I couldn’t find a lot of current content (especially on Tumblr, my main fan content platform) at first, so I wanted to write fanfic to contribute to that, but I felt like I didn’t know the world/characters well enough and decided I should read the books. Well, five months later and I’ve read the books, seen the movies again, and joined multiple thriving (if small) online communities of other people who love to talk and create about this world and these characters!

~ Ari, response collected 10 May 2022

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When I was thirteen, my dad showed my sister and me the Lord of the Rings trilogy films. I was enamored by the sword fighting and grand high fantasy of it all. Once we were done, I went on the internet looking for all the content I could find of it and was introduced to the classic crack videos on Youtube ("They're Taking The Hobbits To Isengard"). After that, I found my first LotR fanfiction on DeviantArt—a Legolas whump fic. I'd never seen anything like this, and read it with rapt interest. After that, I continued seeking Legolas-centric fanfiction and became an avid reader/writer of (gen) Legolas & Aragorn fanfiction. I met a lot of friends through the Fanfiction.net PM feature. As I got more involved in the fandom, I began to feel a sort of imposter syndrome having not read the books, so I hastily read through all of The Lord of the Rings books, then The Hobbit, and then The Silmarillion. By the time I finished them I was about sixteen? I fell out of the fandom for some years, but have recently rediscovered it after rereading The Silmarillion and enjoying it 110% more than I did the first time, with the benefit of maturity and understanding.

~ L. Chan, response collected 15 May 2022

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I was fairly young at the time (11 when RotK came out) and didn't speak much English, so I don't have much experience with the international fandom. There were a few fanfiction sites (mostly for Harry Potter originally, but they also hosted some LotR content), and I had friends I could discuss it with. It was in that period of my life when I refused to watch an adaptation without having read the book first, so I sped through the trilogy in something like a week (our cinemas had this event where they replayed the first two movies when the third came out, so I saw all three in two days). I was the only one of our fan group who not only read the books but also looked at some of the appendices, so I was the resident Tolkien expert until we got a friend who read The Silmarillion about five years later. The whole time I was supremely confused by the Aragorn/Legolas shipping happening around those times. We had passionate debates about whether cutting out the scouring of the Shire was a good decision.

~ Anonymous, response collected 15 May 2022

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I first discovered this world when the Fellowship came out in the cinema. I liked it sooo much that I read the books after that. 

I started to read and write fanfics on fanfiction.net and made friends in the French-speaking part of the fandom. We made a forum to share things (Le Poney Fringant) I also loved going on TheOneRing.net but didn't interact much.

I'm still friend with my forum friends. We had a real-life meetup in Paris, and since then, we meet regularly. Tolkiendil were always warm and welcoming ... Well people would tease Legogirls but it wasn't done in an unkind way. Purists would scold us if we took too many liberties.  

Through fanfiction.net, I also connected with other people who wrote in English about Éomer and Lothíriel. We shared via reviews.

~ Lady_Elwing, response collected 15 May 2022

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My parents made us go to see the first LotR movie. When I got out of the cinema, I just had to buy the books immediately.

~ Anonymous, response collected 15 May 2022

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I've always participated in the Tolkien fandom as a "lurker"—when I first watched the films and would have probably dove into the fandom, I was still young enough that my parents kept my internet access limited for my own safety. I remember eagerly browsing TheOneRing.net, though, and buying all the Legolas merch I could get my hands on. As an adult, I made one attempt to participate more actively in fandom through a big bang event but found the community there not very welcoming. Overall, I haven't felt very eager to join the Tolkien fandom proper because it seems to me from some probing to be very over-serious and full of people who want to get into big academic debates as opposed to having a more lighthearted attitude to canon that I perhaps picked up due to my film-first exposure. But I do enjoy viewing fanart, fanfic, and movie fanworks (like gifsets) on Tumblr even if I don't create content myself or engage too heavily.

~ Anonymous, response collected 15 May 2022

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I was pretty young, so I didn't participate in fandom as such in that way, but I remember my dad reading me the books and we'd switch off reading each chapter, keeping a dictionary nearby as we did, all because he knew I'd liked the films so he wanted to share the books with me too. I got into fanfiction online, eventually, and I think likely found fanart on DeviantArt, but I never really reached out and interacted with other creators.

~ Anonymous, response collected 15 May 2022

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Before the third Hobbit movie came out, I discovered that my mother had bought the LotR extended version collector DVDs in the early 2000s and watched them instantly, and that's when I fell in love with that universe. And since I was quite young, I was discovering fandoms and fanarts, so my first fanart was a drawing of Thorin.

~ Anonymous, response collected 18 May 2022

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I was very young, my friends and I would find message boards to learn Sindarin, we'd bake lambas, and dress up together playing in the woods.

~ Anonymous, response collected 18 May 2022

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I knew of fandom before the films came out, but I had only read the books at that point. The films gave me the realisation that other views were justifiable and enjoyable.

~ Caitlin, response collected 21 May 2022

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Liking the films made me want to read the books, so I read The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings, and after that I joined some communities in social media. Those communities always referenced First/Second Age stuff, which made me want to read The Silmarillion. That’s when I became more of a fan. This was around twelve years ago. Communities were more open to new fans that were willing to read the books as opposed to fans strictly of the films, and I think it’s still the same nowadays.

~ Anonymous, response collected 22 May 2022

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I was in 8th grade. I had just moved to a new school, and my new friend was obsessed. All she talked about were horses and Merry and Pippin. We watched the first two films (the third wasn't out yet) and I was hooked. I loved the story, and as a teenaged girl, I loved Legolas.

~ Stephanie, response collected 26 May 2022

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I "joined the fandom," a.k.a. became a fan in the dark ages, decades ago, a.k.a. right after the movies were first released, so there wasn't all that much to participate in, especially since English isn't my first language, and I wasn't as fluent in reading it as I am now. :) I mostly remember lurking in LiveJournal communities (not specific ones, just in general, there being such) and reading really crappy fanfiction on Fanfiction.net.

~ Anonymous, response collected 2 June 2022

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I had never read Tolkien when I saw the first film in Peter Jackson's trilogy in the movie theatre. It made an impression. But it wasn't until I saw the second film, a year later, that I went online, looking for additional information. Predictably enough, it was Orlando Bloom's portrayal of Legolas—otherworldly, beautiful, androgynous—that was the spur. After scrolling through some promotional photos, I stumbled across the Library of Moria archive and read my first slash story. It was like being hit by lightning. I was instantly hooked. Within a few months I had read the Lord of the Rings books, had joined the fandom, was writing my own stories and had "met" (and eventually met) some good friends. Shortly after, impressed with the canon knowledge of some of the fandom's top authors (AC, Tyellas, Claudio, aka Darth Fingon), I read The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, and bought some HoMe volumes for reference purposes. Within about a year, I considered myself a "serious" fanfic writer, in that I was serious both about the craft of writing and about being true to the source material. But because I started out reading fanfiction rather than solely the source texts, I always had great respect and affection for my fellow fans' stories.

I was going through a tough time in my personal life back then, and fandom was a real saving grace—the stories, which were wonderful escapism, the writing, for which I found I had a talent and which saved my sanity, and the people, who were kind and supportive. I found my corner of the fandom to be great, although I know that there were other corners that were more "purist" and exclusive. I was never a purist—I felt I had no right to be because I had started out as a movie fan. I had a LiveJournal account and interacted mostly with my LJ "friends"—and extended circle of like-minded people, who were lovely. I participated in some fandom activities: Fellowslash 2003 (held in a Vermont hotel), the Gathering of the Fellowship in 2003 (in Toronto)—where I met Gil-galad in person, effectively launching my Gil-galad/Elrond ship—and the LotR Exhibit in Boston in 2004. Met up with fellow fans at all three. At Fellowslash, I met AC, who impressed the socks off me as a genuine fanfic author and who served as something of a mentor in my early fandom days. She hosted my web page (Maggie's Place) on her website (Ithilas), which has since gone offline. By about 2006, my offline life got busy and I had less time for fandom. Eventually I simply stopped posting, reading, and writing. When I stumbled back into fandom earlier this year (2022), I found it to be vibrant and just as lovely as ever. A lot is new and different (and LJ's demise is a real loss), but the love is the same.

~ Maggie Honeybite, response 1 September 2022