Affirmational Fandom, Transformational Fandom, and Two Old Tolkien Fanfics by Dawn Walls-Thumma

Affirmational Fandom, Transformational Fandom, and Two Old Tolkien Fanfics

In 2009, a fan using the Dreamwidth handle obsession_inc proposed a framework for understanding fandom that would become a key concept in fan studies:

I'd like to propose my own definitions: affirmational fandom vs. transformational fandom.

Before doing so (and at the risk of becoming too twee to stand myself), let me just say that I see both sections as celebrational fandom, first and foremost, and that there is a lot of joy and effort and creativity put into both, and that there is a certain amount of crossover. These are just the majority trends, as I've seen them. [Apply giant grain of salt.]

Affirmational fandom, according to obsession_inc's dichotomy, "tends to coalesce toward a center concept; it's all about nailing down the details." This is fandom that tends to be strict in its interpretation of the rules of the canon and respects the original creator's authority. For affirmational fans, it is the mastery of the canon that matters, and affirmational fans tend to be the sanctioned fans: the ones who receive positive attention from the original creator. Affirmational fans are stereotypically male. A subset of affirmational fandom is curative fandom: fandom that centers on collection, whether of artifacts or canon details.

Transformational fandom "is all about laying hands upon the source and twisting it to the fans' own purposes." Transformational fandom locates authority within each individual fan, allowing for a vibrant range of interpretation of canon, and while discussion and debate of these differences is far from verboten, transformational fans lack a single set of "rules" and so tend to tolerate views different from their own. Transformational fans have no problem with altering the canon to suit their purposes, whether to align the source text more closely with their personal tastes, alter the text to reflect their experiences, or leverage the source to make a statement. Transformational fans are (stereotypically) the fanworks creators and tend to be women.

Obsession_inc was clear in the passage I quoted above that "affirmational" and "transformational" are but endpoints on a continuum of fannishness. Obsession_inc was also abundantly clear that both endpoints are "celebrational fandom," i.e., one is not superior to the other and both are legitimate ways people "do fandom." However, in my years of sloshing around in the fan studies pool, I have observed that 1) people enjoy mightily treating "affirmational" and "transformational" like buckets into which fans should be plunked, especially where fanworks and gender trends are concerned, and 2) there is definitely a whiff of superiority for transformational fans in the fan studies scholarship. These are, after all, the fans who are imaginative and subversive and using the canon for important things like more and better representation of groups marginalized in the mainstream media (not merely collecting action figures or dominating trivia night).

I've pushed back on the assumption that fanworks = transformational fandom, at least for Tolkien fandom. (I don't know any other fandoms well enough but strongly suspect this holds true for at least some of them.) Instead, I've made the case that Tolkien fanworks creators tend to employ both. Fanworks creators, for example, highly value learning the canon. Many value Tolkien's authority as well. Getting the details right (or knowing what they are changing and why) matters to many of them too. Fanworks creators also devote energy to discussing canon and putting together canon resources, often for other creators. These are all practices associated with affirmational fandom.

A Tale of Two Stories

The received wisdom of Tolkien fandom history is that the first known Tolkien fanfiction was George Heap's Departure in Peace, published in 1960 in the first issue of the fanzine I Palantir, the oldest known Tolkien-only fanzine.¹ In June 2021, SWG member Lindariel posted to our Discord server about discovering a possibly older Tolkien fanfiction. In one of those roundabout ways that such discoveries are made, she saw the piece mentioned by Douglas A. Anderson in a blog post about when the public began to expect the publication of The Silmarillion² while researching hithlain, the fiber used to make the otherworldly Elven ropes in The Lord of the Rings (LotR). She tracked down a copy of the text from the University of California, Riverside library and discovered it was a fanfic: A Study of the Hithlain of the Wood-elves of Lórien.

"A Study of the Hithlain" was not, unfortunately, older than "Departure in Peace." In fact, it was contemporaneous, having been published in the same 1960 fanzine, I Palantir. Even weirder, it is available online, like "Departure in Peace," so it is not exactly an obscure text and, doubtlessly, many of the people who read "Departure in Peace" probably at least skimmed it as well and managed to miss what Lindariel caught: that "A Study of the Hithlain" is not strictly a research essay but is mostly fanfiction.

These two early fanworks make for an interesting comparison side by side. They are both highly speculative about Silmarillion material, both concern the doings of Dark Lords, and are both written by men. They also illustrate how fanfiction can inhabit the vast space between the affirmational and transformational poles. While "Departure in Peace" is more transformational and "A Study of Hithlain" is more affirmational (which is why I suspect it was missed as a fanfiction for this long), both stories use aspects of the opposite fandom type too—in fact rely on them.

Before He Was Mairon: "Departure in Peace"

Given the Tolkien fanworks fandom's fascination with Sauron, it is fitting that one of its earliest fanworks is in the subgenre of Misunderstood Dark Lords. The story is told from Sauron's point of view—implied until the very last line when the narrator identifies himself—as a conflict between the power-hungry "Immortals" against Sauron, who is attempting to wrest domination from them to assure the rise of Mortals (Men).

In this alternate history of the First and Second Age, Mortals "grew in stature, gaining knowledge, and the passing of wisdom from generation to generation bid fair to match the age-long memory of the Immortals."³ This invoked the jealousy of the Immortals. It's not entirely clear exactly who the Immortals are. Clearly, they include the Elves, but Heap mentions actions by the Valar without ever naming the Valar in his story. (The Valar are mentioned in the LotR Appendices, so he would have been familiar with them.)

These envious Immortals then beguile Mortals into seeing the Immortals as their benefactors while using Mortals as cannon fodder in wars they otherwise lack the power to fight. They also wage a disinformation campaign against Sauron: "The Immortals posed as the saviors of Men and taught that I was the arch-enemy."⁴ The major events of the Second Age, as outlined in the Appendices, are recast to show how Sauron was acting in the interest of Mortals. The forging of the One Ring becomes a defensive act. Sauron's captivity by the Númenóreans is a conscious decision to gain access to the island "to weaken the influence of the Immortals," who had bestowed long life on the Númenóreans, knowing it would bring discontent, internecine warfare, and ultimately help to "regain [Immortal] ascendancy in the world."⁵ The refugees from Númenor's destruction are presented as arrogant and domineering, unjustly wielding power over other Mortals under a pretense of superiority.

Heap's story calls the One Ring the "Pawn of Power," setting up an extended metaphor by which Sauron uses it like a chess piece to exact his desired endgame of Mortal domination over the oppressive Immortals. Within this pretext, all of Sauron's actions during the Third Age can be seen as minor movements of the Ring that position it for its "last journey," after which "its passage drove the darkness of the Immortals from the world."⁶ This refers, of course, to the events leading up to Frodo and Sam's eventual destruction of the Ring in Mount Doom, after which the Elves/Immortals leave Middle-earth.

Within the alternate history that Heap presents, this is Sauron's endgame—and his triumph. Most importantly, Sauron's own destruction becomes the ultimate self-sacrifice. Knowingly, he placed his power within the One Ring and set it on a course for destruction, knowing that, in the Immortals' lust to see him defeated, they would also bring about their own demise through the draining of power from the other rings, the fading of Elven realms, and the eventual emigration of the Elves from Middle-earth. "[T]hough I may not walk the world again," Heap writes, "I saw that day mine enemies' doom. … [T]hus was the world made free."⁷

"Departure in Peace" is an example of a fanwork that takes a transformational approach. First is the matter of authority. In casting Tolkien's Elves, Dúnedain, and Istari as power-hungry opportunists and Sauron as the misunderstood benefactor of the beleaguered Mortals, he subverts Tolkien's authority. The major themes of LotR, so beloved and important to Tolkien, do not apply in this telling of the story. The "Pawn of Power" is what sets up Frodo's success, not his humility or the friends that rally behind him. The idea of an ultimate good—exemplified in characters like Aragorn and, we Silmarillion readers know, derived ultimately from Ilúvatar—does not exist. Thus the moral frame of the legendarium is nullified and this "fundamentally religious and Catholic work" takes on a very different moral tone.⁸ Those characters whom we might classify as capital-G Good are sly, conniving, and power-lusting.

Of course, the theme of self-sacrifice as the ultimate virtue remains. It is impossible not to see Tolkien's use of this theme as rooted in Christianity (remember all those fannish squabbles over which character was the Christ-figure?), so while the theme remains, the assignment of the ultimate Christlike virtue to Sauron also comes off as subversive.

One of the major functions of transformational fandom is its ability to amplify the perspectives of people who are often marginalized in mainstream media and literature. Decades before Tolkien fandom would undertake in earnest discussions about the colonial aspirations of the Eldar and Númenóreans, Heap presents a Middle-earth where Númenórean dominance is not the product of their God-given superiority but the result of an unjust willingness to overpower and exploit their mortal brethren. The inferiority of Mortals compared to Elves and other Mortals compared to Númenóreans/Dúnedain is due to systemic, often violent, marginalization and oppression. Especially given that Tolkien was steeped in British imperialism, and given that "Departure in Peace" was written amid independence movements from many of those British (and other European) colonies, this approach seems particularly cutting commentary on this particular aspect of the legendarium.

"Departure in Peace" is not wholly transformational, however. Given the context in which the story was written—without access to The Silmarillion and bare years after the publication of The Return of the King and the LotR appendices—the story showcases Heap's canonical knowledge, as well as his comfort working with (and subverting) the larger themes of the legendarium as published at the time. Heap could have written a gapfiller from the Fellowship's journey or he could have spun off a tale about a LotR character that drew on narrow canonical expertise—both approaches that would have required shallow knowledge of the canon. Instead, he stitched together allusions from LotR and Appendix information about the early ages of the legendarium into a story that, with a few exceptions, continues to make sense, even after the publication of a dozen additional volumes of Tolkien's writing. That one of the earliest Tolkien fanfics chose a complex engagement with canon attests to the foundational importance of canon to the fandom, even in a transformational context.

Narrative Fission: "A Study of the Hithlain of the Wood-Elves of Lórien"

"A Study of the Hithlain of the Wood-elves of Lórien" is a text that has been mired in confusion that has recently begun to be untangled. As noted above, the text came to Lindariel's attention while researching hithlain and finding it mentioned in Douglas A. Anderson's blog Tolkien and Fantasy.⁹ Anderson, citing the date of the text as given by the University of California, Riverside, which held a copy of the text, identified the text as 1957 and the format as a self-published booklet. Lindariel, requesting and receiving the text from UC Riverside, discovered it to be a fanfiction text, not a research article as it is commonly identified. Anderson, pursuing the matter further as well, finds the date and format incorrect: The manuscript held by UC Riverside is a copy of the submission sent to I Palantir, which gives us a publication date of 1960.¹⁰

The tl;dr: "A Study of the Hithlain" is a research-article-cum-fanfiction published in 1960 in the fanzine I Palantir by the author Arthur R. "Doc" Weir, a Tolkien fan and chemist. The most interesting question to arise from all of this confusion is why Weir's work went so long without being identified as fanfiction?

"A Study of the Hithlain" masquerades as a research essay (and, in places, it is a research essay, which serves as a sort of frame for the fanfiction that forms the bulk of the text). In Johnstone's introduction to I Palantir, he identifies Heap's "Departure in Peace" as a "fictional narrative," while Weir's contribution is described as "an addition to the previously published lore combined with an erudite scientific paper" (emphasis mine).¹¹ In hindsight, describing Weir's piece as "an addition" to the canon rather than a "fictional narrative" seems rather euphemistic: an unwillingness to attach the concept of fiction (especially fanfiction!) to a piece that is strongly oriented in research. In reality, the term fanfiction as we understand it today didn't come into use until 1975,¹² so Johnstone's differentiation of the two pieces of fictional work is likely due to a lack of genre taxonomy and a sense that the two pieces are very different.

And they are. I would argue that the difference Johnstone was trying to represent can be described by their placement within obsession_inc's affirmational-transformational continuum. As explained above, "Departure in Peace" is a highly transformational work. "A Study of the Hithlain," on the other hand, is highly affirmational—even though it contains, page for page, more fictional content than "Departure."

"A Study of the Hithlain" is presented throughout as a research paper. It begins with a lengthy quotation from The Fellowship of the Ring, of the scene where Sam watches the Elves of Lórien provision each boat with coils of silken gray rope. Next is a heading titled "Historical Section," which does indeed begin with "history" drawn from the Appendices. Within the second paragraph, however, this "history" transitions from Tolkien's canon to Weir's original additions to that canon.

The crux of "A Study of the Hithlain" is to offer a history of the plant that would eventually provide the fiber from which the otherworldly Elven ropes are made. In Weir's telling, Middle-earth was subjected to two nuclear attacks, brought on by the servants of Morgoth, in Beleriand and Mordor. This event is used to explain multiple facets of the canon: the sinking of the "defiled" Beleriand by the Valar, the barren hell of Mordor, and the presence of "monsters" throughout the legendarium.¹³ One monstrosity to emerge was a plant called the "Fearful Nettle" for its venomous fibers strong enough to pierce the sturdiest armor. This nettle caused such excruciating agony, Weir describes, that it caused death in the weak-hearted and was used as a torture method in Sauron's dungeons. Again, Weir weaves his fiction with details from the texts. Dol Guldur, he says, was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of these nettles, and Gollum's habit of licking his fingers and his outsized reaction to being bound with hithlain rope are both explained by his torment with the nettle.

The story goes on to tell of an Elf-woman named Ilmarin who learned botanical lore from the Ents. Using her skills, Ilmarin bred a strain of the nettle that retained the strength of the original plant without the inconvenience of its crippling poison: hithlain. Both the Elven cloaks and ropes gifted to the Fellowship in Lórien are attributed, by Weir, to the enchanted strength of hithlain. Ilmarin's story does not end there. When the Elven rings are forged, Ilmarin contributes her strength to Nenya, and after her death in the fall of Eregion, it is her power, passed on to Galadriel, that permits Galadriel to "exert marvellous powers over all things that lived and grew"¹⁴—including, presumably, the ability to preserve Lórien from decay.

"A Study of the Hithlain" ends with a subheading titled "Discussion Section" that functions much as author's endnotes do today: as a way for the author to explicate connections between the story and the canon. Weir, an accomplished chemist, draws heavily on real-world science in this section, citing as well details from LotR that lend credibility to his account of hithlain.

As a work of fiction, "A Study of the Hithlain" is not a traditional story in that it does not center a conflict around which a plot is structured. Certainly, multiple conflicts (and potential plots) are implied, but unlike Heap's story—which tells a single coherent tale from beginning to end—Weir's story is episodic with none of the episodes fully developed. (Ilmarin's story, interestingly, is probably the closest to a main plot in the text.) The piece is, however, unequivocally fiction; very little of it is actually Tolkien's, and most of it is pure invention on Weir's part—invention spurred from an expert's subject knowledge and strongly rooted in the canon, but invention all the same.

So what caused "A Study of the Hithlain" to go unnoticed as fiction for so long? I suspect it is the confidence with which it masquerades as a research paper, using affirmational fandom conventions to cloak what is in fact a transformative fanwork. As noted in my summary above, "A Study of the Hithlain" uses section headings similar to a research paper. It also includes textual citations to LotR throughout—thirty-nine of them, to be exact, including the introductory quote—and three citations from non-Tolkien sources. These citations pepper the fictional text, giving it the appearance of a research paper when much of it has come from the author's imagination. Aside from these citations, Weir does not distinguish between his ideas and Tolkien's—indeed most fanfiction writers do not. Of course, when Lindariel encountered it, as a fanfiction writer herself, she honed in on those fictional elements in a way that other fans—more accustomed to affirmational fandom—likely did not.

"A Study of the Hithlain," then, is an early example of a fictional fanwork that falls toward the affirmational end of the continuum. The constant use of citations, even in the midst of the story, anchors it in Tolkien's authority. The citations remind the reader that Weir, despite using his inventiveness to create this text, does not stray far from what can be explained using Tolkien's own words. The number of citations also point to the curative tendencies of affirmational fandom, and the text becomes a means for Weir to showcase a collection of canon quotes that are then used to frame a work of fiction.

There are transformational elements in "A Study of the Hithlain." The foregrounding of a woman scientist—likely Tolkien fandom's first OFC—certainly hearkens to transformational fandom's penchant for amplifying the experiences of marginalized people. Ilmarin's connection to Galadriel is even more intriguing for its creation of a line of female power, where Galadriel inherits not the power of the male Celebrimbor but another woman. It would be interesting to know more of Weir's thinking in making this narrative choice, and perhaps someone with a stronger grounding in the history of the science fiction and fantasy genres might shed some light on the role women played in those texts circa 1960, and whether Weir's inclusion of Ilmarin is as progressive as it seems or merely imitative of a larger trend in the genres. (I suspect it actually was progressive, but I cannot say for sure.)

Also transformational is Weir's use of the imagery of nuclear desolation. "A Study of the Hithlain" was written in the throes of the Cold War, and the imagery of nuclear apocalypse is some of Weir's strongest narrative writing in the piece. Whereas the approach to Mordor is assumed to be a reflection of Tolkien's World War I experiences, Weir overlays his own (imagined) experiences of nuclear war in these settings instead, drawing on common fears of the era. As noted above, transformational fandom involves the fan interpreting and reworking a text through the lens of their own experiences, in this case, the dread of nuclear war.

Conclusion

As a fan studies scholar and one who has spent considerable breath advancing the idea that fanworks can be affirmational, I am well aware of the risk of seeing Heap's and Weir's respective stories as prototypical. Current evidence points to them as the two earliest works of Tolkien fanfiction. One is strongly transformational; one is strongly affirmational. It is tempting to see these two stories as an invitation to future Tolkien fanfiction writers to use both: to orient in the canon even while transcending it.

Lindariel's discovery too points to the dearth of work on Tolkien fan history. I'll count myself among the guilty. I've read the few Tolkien fanfics from the zine era on FellowsHub and assumed that is what we have until I can afford the journey to inspect the zines in person and gain access to material that can't yet be archived online. I've avoided the other fanzine content as a result, feeling it wouldn't be productive to my research on Tolkien fanfiction. Lindariel's find has caused me to reconsider my stance and to wonder if there are other so-called "articles" lurking out there that actually contain a good amount of fanfictional content and to what extent, in early fandom—when the ink was still drying in Tolkien's books and fandom was an evolving concept—fanworks were an amalgam of research and imagination.

Notes

1. "I Palantir," Fanlore, March 23, 2023, accessed June 14, 2023. In the realm of Tolkien fandom firsts, Ted Johnstone edited I Palantir and was also the author of the first known Tolkien fan poem, the 1959 "The Passing of the Elven-kind."
2. Note that Douglas A. Anderson has since updated this post with newer and more accurate information: "'Doc' Weir Revisited," Tolkien and Fantasy, June 9, 2023, accessed June 13, 2023.
3. George Heap, "Departure in Peace," I Palantir, no. 1 (August 1960): 5.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 6.
7. Ibid., 7.
8. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "142 To Robert Murray, SJ."
9. Douglas A. Anderson, "When Did the Public Learn to Expect "The Silmarillion" as an Actual Forthcoming Book?" Tolkien and Fantasy, June 15, 2021, accessed June 13, 2021.
10. Anderson, "'Doc' Weir Revisited."
11. Ted Johnstone, "From the Hobbit Hole," I Palantir, no. 1 (August 1960): 3.
12. "Fanfiction," Fanlore, June 10, 2023, accessed June 14, 2023.
13. Arthur R. Weir, "A Study of the Hithlain of the Wood-elves of Lórien," I Palantir, no. 1 (August 1960): 10.
14. Weir, "A Study of the Hithlain," 12.