#legendarium fanwank

For no particular reason, I’ve been navel-gazing about obnoxious comments I’ve gotten on fic over the years.

Of course, “obnoxious comments” aren’t created equal. I basically divide the ones I’ve personally received into three types: 1) breaches of etiquette, 2) trivial shit, and 3) wtf?

#1 is stuff like leaving a comment on a new fic to ask when I’m going to update an older fic for a completely different fandom. Please don’t do this! But it’s not a huge deal. Or just saying “update soon” and nothing else like I’m some sort of fic-writing machine. Or trash-talking the genre or ship that I’m writing to emphasize that my fic is good even though my taste in ships/tropes is shit or something. I don’t like any of these things, but they’re essentially just different ideas of courtesy.

#2 are things like … correcting me for making up a title for the blank Fitzwilliam earldom in P&P instead of going with “Earl of Matlock” (an invention of the 1995 P&P—I’ve gotten multiple complaints about not using it). Or the occasional complaint about calling my genderbent Luke Skywalker “Lucy” instead of something more obscure and space-y (as opposed to the obscure sci-fi name Luke, I guess). Or my physical descriptions of the characters not matching the casting in someone’s preferred adaptation (again, P&P 1995 fandom is particularly prone to this—one person felt the need to inform me that they always imagined my Darcy as Colin Firth, despite knowing of my dislike for the 1995 and the descriptions in the fics not matching him, in response to a fic where Darcy is a woman). Or there’s “well actuallyin the novelization/Expanded Universe/film/whatever…”

#3 is easily the least common. The most objectionable of the “wtf” genre of comment was undoubtedly the person who thought I was implying that Elizabeth Bennet is a WOC in Season of Courtship, and went on a screed about it. The weirdestwas the person who asked if leaving Subsequent Connections unfinished made me feel desirable. I was also pretty “wtf” at the person who urged me to stop writing screenplay-format fic because it reminded them of a different fic writer who they disliked. And there was someone (at AO3, of all places) who told me that my fic was great but I was personally shitty.

There have also been some kind of peculiar edge cases, like someone responding to my Ivriniel fic with a pseudo-above-it-all comment about how hilarious they found the idea of anybody in Gondor ever resenting Aragorn (i.e. the premise of the fic). There was also some person who was indignant that the other comments on First Impressions were positive despite Henry not being manly (there actually were plenty of other people who had criticisms of First Impressions, but most were clustered at different sites than this commenter’s). Obviously not anywhere near as bad as the straight-up racism or homophobia, but those still struck me as weird and wanky beyond just fannish obsessing over minutia.

Ihavegotten criticisms that I don’t think of as obnoxious—some were (non-adaptation-based) corrections of genuine mistakes, like Americanisms and getting Italian phrases wrong and continuity errors and things. Some people have noted where longer fics meandered off track and the pacing got uneven or seemed directionless (fair!). Some people don’t like my readiness to give substantial roles to OCs/near-OCs. Others don’t like specific decisions I made, like the Rebellion’s limited roles for women in the Lucyverse or the justification for Catherine’s proposal in First Impressions. Okay!

Also, while obviously I’ve seen and remembered the obnoxious comments, they make up a small proportion of the overall comments I’ve received over the years. Most people are nice. I’ve very rarely received reallynasty direct comments, despite writing sketchy things at times, deliberately rejecting popular fanons, etc.

And … I mean, my two biggest fandoms by a mile are P&P and SW (in terms of what I’ve written fic for). And Austen fandom has always been the odd one out for me, fandom-wise. If I excluded the responses to Austen fic specifically, my experience of fic comments would be even more overwhelmingly pleasant (and the comments on Austen fic are mostly pleasant, but it is definitely the wankiest fandom I’ve ever been: both very particular about conformity to its norms and very Cult of Nice about addressing pretty much anything). I know that SW fandom does have awful people in it who leave worse comments than anything I’ve ever received—that’s just what my personal experience has been.

So, yeah, the occasional obnoxiousness I’ve encountered seems like … not nothing, by any means, but given how much I’ve written, what I’ve chosen to write, and the basic contrariness of my nature, I’ve probably come out pretty lucky as far as fandom goes.

The NOME passage on Elf/part-Elf beardlessness is interesting in a lot of ways, honestly.

The thing is, you can quibble with Tolkien’s sweeping generalizations about how beardlessness works. He saysthatallElves are beardless, which is canonically not true; Círdan is bearded in LOTR. He says that the mortal descendants of Elves are beardless, such as Aragorn, Imrahil, Boromir, and Faramir, contrasting them with the bearded Théoden and Éomer … who are also descendants of an Elf (the same Elf as Imrahil’s ancestress, at that). So it’s easy to go, eh, not compatible with canon, whatever.

Of course, Tolkien elsewhere has a less sweeping explanation of Elvish beardlessness. Typically, only very old Elves can grow beards (with the occasional rare exception). Círdan’s beard is a mark of his age, not something characteristic of male Elves in general.

What’s less clear is how this more limited beardlessness manifests among the mortal descendants of Elves. Maybe they never live long enough to reach the beard-growing stage. Maybe the Númenóreans’ strange lifespans and aging are essentially a hybrid of Elvish cycles of life+mortality, so they can grow beards at their own equivalent of the late Elvish life-cycle. Tolkien isn’t really clear on how the clarification of Elvish beardlessness affects the beardlessness of Elvish descendants.

But it is very clear, IMO, that the statement that alldescendants of Elves are beardless is an over-generalization. For Tolkien, it seems that only some descendants of Elves “count” for these purposes. Théoden is the son of a Númenórean woman of the line of the Princes of Dol Amroth, but he’s so powerfully identified with his father’s culture and ethnicity that he’s basically never treated as Númenórean or part-Elvish in any way. UT attributes Éomer’s height to his Númenórean ancestry but nothing else.

However, Tolkien also suggests that Boromir’s and Faramir’s beardlessness is partly attributable to their descent from the Princes of Dol Amroth through their mother (as well as Denethor’s descent from Elros). So it’s not just some patrilineal take on genetics at work. And the beardlessness of the royal families of Gondor and Arnor goes back to a woman, anyway—Princess Silmariën, who herself inherited the Elvish blood of Idril, Nimloth, and Lúthien, all women. This can definitely be transmitted through the female line.

It’s maybe a bit uncharitable, but my suspicion is that Faramir and Boromir’s Dol Amroth heritage “counts” for Tolkien in a way that Théoden and Éomer’s doesn’t because it doesn’t reallychange anything. Faramir and Boromir are already part-Elvish Númenóreans on Denethor’s side, so Tolkien can tack on “and Finduilas was part-Elvish, too” to reinforce it, whereas Théoden and Éomer are so thoroughly identified with the Rohirrim that their function would be undermined by any signs of Elvishness.

In any case, it’s not that Tolkien is perfectly consistent here by any means, or that his preference for patrilineality doesn’t color a lot of how this works. But I do think it’s more complicated and intriguing than the “Círdan and Théoden have beards tho, checkmate” crowd allows.

I just remembered the other thing I was going to say on my Arvedui and Pelendur post earlier today.

It’s sometimes presumed that Aragorn’s claim to the throne of Gondor is interchangeable with Arvedui’s, but this isn’t true. Arvedui pretended or believed that Númenor allowing women and their children to inherit somehow gave him a claim to the throne of Gondor as Princess Fíriel’s husband. He was wrong. Under Númenórean law, he would be a usurper had he succeeded, either of Fíriel or of their son Aranarth. But Aragorn is Aranarth’s heir, so had he chosen to claim the throne through Fíriel, the claim on that side would not be nearly so groundless.

However, Aragorn doesn’t actually try to make that claim. He firmly identifies himself as the heir of Isildur and claims the throne of Gondor as heir of Valandil -> Isildur -> Elendil, evading the entire prickly issue of royal inheritance through the female line (something that neither Arnor/Arthedain nor Gondor ever permitted, though the Stewards managed it by not claiming royalty).

On top of that, though, the rejection by Pelendur and the Council of Gondor is so sweeping that I suspect they would have rejected any argument that Arvedui made. This is veering into headcanon, but I think their overriding concern—above misogyny, above whatever Isildur may or may not have intended—was the subordination of Gondor’s interests to Arthedain’s. And Pelendur was a descendant of Anárion (according to POME and NOME) through some line that couldn’t claim the throne—likely through a female line. He excluded himself and his own descendants from the succession forever to keep the house of Isildur out of Gondor.

Something that’s interesting about Aragorn in the book, though, is that he’s … pretty damn enthusiastic about becoming King of Gondor for its own sake. Like, yes, he restores Arnor and reunites the kingdoms and all, but I think it’s clear that Gondor is not subordinated to Arnor in his rule or mind. If anything, the end of “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” indicates that Aragorn’s rule was centered on Minas Anor to the end of his very long life.

So while the heirs of Isildur were eventually able to take power in Gondor, it makes sense that Aragorn—the victorious captain who was willing to jeopardize himself for Gondor and who clearly loves and values it for its own sake, and who is much more straightforward and honest about his claim—was a lot more palatable to Gondorians than Arvedui would have ever been. And it certainly didn’t turn out in the way that I think Pelendur and the Council might have feared.

I was thinking some more about Tolkien’s choices with the Stewards, and the inevitable difficulties we run into with them because of the basic dynamics at play.

The thing is that, in LOTR, the Stewards come from and rule over Gondor’s Númenórean elite. I suspect it was pretty difficult for Tolkien to see the Dúnedain of Gondor accepting the rule of a family with zero royal ancestry—and, indeed, he emphasizes in NOME that Húrin of Emyn Arnen’s royal ancestry was part of why he was chosen for such an important position at all, even before the Stewards became de facto monarchs.

But they also can’t have strong enough ties to the royal house to actuallybe kings, or even serious claimants, because otherwise it screws up the return of the king plot. You can see Tolkien trying to work this out in drafts of the Appendices in POME, where he mentions the Stewards’ royal origins multiple times in different drafts—it’s not just a NOME thing.

Also, in some ways, the Stewards actually benefited from their non-royal status. e.g., The Council led by their ancestor, Steward Pelendur, decided that Gondor’s crown couldn’t be inherited through women and were apparently supported in that decision by all the Dúnedain of Gondor. But later on, Ruling Stewards did inherit their position through women and got away with it because technicallythey weren’t kings, even though they had the authority of the kings. Okay, lol.

But it does leave us at a kind of odd place in terms of the stakes of restoring the House of Elendil to power in Gondor.

Kind of interesting how the Ruling Stewards were, collectively, so competent and upstanding right up to the last hours of their 969-year rule while the kings were kind of all over the place. Tolkien couldhave laid the groundwork for Aragorn’s rise in some inadequacy on their part, but … doesn’t, really? He’s very insistent that they’re awesome. They’ve still got to go, though.

fairy-anon-godmother replied to this post:

Inquiring minds would love to see? (We’re watching the appendices right now and it’s very topical lol)

I read a lot of Denethor threads, but found this one especially soothing!

I was feeling down and apathetic today. I could have exercised or cleaned something or done something productive, but instead I ended up digging up old (c. 2013-2018) threads about how badly PJ et al fucked up Denethor in the LOTR movies. I actually do feel better now!

(Strong agreement with the threads, obviously.)

incognitajones replied to this post:

hmmm, and yet I don’t recall him having anything to say about Aragorn’s attractiveness… does that mean Aragorn is an uggo?!?

Sort of, lol! Aragorn cleans up nice on multiple occasions (and Denethor is noted as attractive and strongly resembles him), but in his ragged graying wilderness man persona, he’s … well, there’s a reason that the hobbits decide that he would probably “look fairer” if he were actually trying to deceive them. :P

echoofthemusicsaid:

Sorry that was annoying, I’ve not considered this detail before & it’s very funny

No problem, and thanks!