Tolkien's legendarium presents a challenging landscape for fanworks about women. The lack of women characters, the missing names and details, and the sexist leanings of some of his writings can all act as barriers to creating women-centric fanworks.
This month's Cultus Dispatches column is one of our Fandom Voices columns, where we present a question or two to the community in an attempt to capture a range of fan experiences with a topic. For this round, we focused on the experience of creating (and reading/viewing) fanworks about women. What is it like to make fanworks about women in the Tolkien fandom, we wondered, and how has this changed (or not) in the decades of the fandom's existence?
We received twenty-two responses by the time we compiled the article, which highlights some of those responses with light analysis (and includes the entire collection so that you can draw your own conclusions). Participants highlighted the challenges of writing about women in the fandom, a major part of which was the fandom itself. While not a universal experience, many observed that the Tolkien fanworks fandom was overtly hostile to writing about women in the first decade of the 2000s, a status quo that fans have worked to change, resulting in a climate that is more openminded today. However, the lingering effects of that hostile history continues to impact some creators, and many respondents see ample work that still needs to be done.
You can read "Fandom Voices: Women in Fanworks" here.
Remember too that our Novelettes Book Club is running as we speak! See below for more information on how to join in this event.
SWG News
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Let global architecture be your inspiration in this challenge, where you will work with a prompts that are architectural styles, locations in Arda, or both.
Instadrabbling Sessions for July, August, and September
Instadrabbling continues on the first Saturday of each month on our Discord server.
New Fanworks
Explain This by Elrond's Library [Writing]
Melkor demands an account of Mairon’s failures.
Read more ...Message in a Bottle by StarSpray [Writing]
Over the course of his very long life he had found a handful of messages in bottles, but it had been a very long time. So when he found the glass bottle on his little stretch of pebbly beach, he picked it up with the intention of tossing it into his recycling. But it wasn’t, he found, just another beer bottle.
Read more ...Nerdanel/Nienna moodboard by Independence1776 [Artwork]
A Nerdanel/Nienna moodboard.
Read more ...Updated Fanworks
The Stars of Home by Idrils Scribe [Writing]
Elrohir has been found after his long abduction by the Black Númenóreans of Umbar. He comes home to Rivendell, but all is not well: the Elf-child that was taken is now a Man grown. War and darkness have left Elrohir deeply scarred, and even at home there is danger...
An alternate universe for the Under Strange Stars series, in which Elrohir goes with Glorfindel instead of running away from him after the events of Under Strange Stars. This story can be enjoyed without having read the original.
Many thanks to Grundy and Marchwriter for their excellent beta-reading and brainstorming.
Read more ...A Thousand Winds that Blow by StarSpray [Writing]
When uneasy dreams bring him back into Beleriand, Daeron finds a pair of twins who have lost their home, and an enemy who has lost himself. The Shadow's reach is growing ever longer, and if they are to survive, they must do it together.
Read more ...From That Rubble by StarSpray [Writing]
Fëanor shrugged, studying the contents of his wine glass. “Something must be done about that house. It will fall down eventually.”
“It does not follow that it must be you that tears it down single-handedly. Are you sure you do not want help?”
“It’s not as though I have much else to do. I need to build something new there,” he said after a few moments. “To do that, I must first clear away the old and broken things.”
Decades out of Mandos, too many things in Fëanor's life remain broken. He can't do anything except wait for his sons to come to him, but he can do something about the old and crumbling house where they once lived.
Read more ...Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael [Writing]
This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously thought on the matter who the Ainur are, who Eru is, how he matches our own religious pantheon, and this has been conducted after serious research of many esoteric teachings of our own planet's heritage.
Read more ...Around the World and Web
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Gigolas Week is a tumblr event focusing on the relationship between Legolas and Gimli
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Tolkien Sapphic September is a month long event focusing on Sapphic relationships and characters in Tolkien and adjacent materials.
