As the primary author of the Cultus Dispatches column, I will confess that I love the months I get to write columns for the Fandom Voices project, in part because there is really not a lot of writing involved. Fandom Voices is a sub-project of Cultus Dispatches that poses an open-ended question or two and invites Tolkien fans to share their perspectives and experiences. When the time comes to collect responses, I copy and paste the responses into a document, color-code them based on subtopic, and then string those responses (written by people who aren't me) together with a few words of my own. It makes for a easy simple column.

The responses for the "Defining Canon" Fandom Voices? Were anything but simple. There were more of them than usual, and the responses were much deeper than usual, but that wasn't the issue. The complexity around the topic is what made this topic not only challenging but illuminating to write about.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise. In the early years of online Tolkien fandom, debates over canon escalated into flame wars. Today, they have (mostly) simmered down into a more reasoned, intellectual discussion of the many ways different people turn the same vast set of contradictory facts into an understanding of the legendarium.

In the end, I decided to break the column into two parts. This first part will look at the many considerations fans bear in mind when defining canon. Next month, I'll share responses, with some light analysis, around how fans use Tolkien's canon to make fanworks. (Note that all of the responses are available now with the first part of the article.) This also means that if you missed getting your response entered before the article, it's not too late to get something in for the second part. (Response forms never close, and I will update the response collections as new responses come in, but this is the first time I've been able to extend the offer to be included in the article. The "Defining Canon" response form is here. Let's break even more records with this one.)

You can read the first part of "Fandom Voices: Defining Canon and Using Canon in Fanworks" here.