#my beloved unwritten fanfic is real

[phantom-of-the-keurig]

THIS IS NOT A DRILL, EVERYONE WATCH THIS CLIP THEY BROUGHT THE BABY CLONES BACK 😭

[tryan-a-bex]

In light of the conversation today about Fuckboi Dream, I wanted to counteract the mean accusations in my inbox by giving some recommendations. First of all, FBD itself. Mind the tags, it is a dead dove fic. Maybe don’t read it if you struggle with separating fiction from reality or have a hard time quitting a fic if it’s just not doing it for you. But if you are an adult and have gotten over purity culture, the first 22 chapters are an amazing exploration of consent and healing in a risk aware consensual bdsm relationship. Chapter 5 was one of the most romantic things I’ve ever read. Chapter 8 was life changing, in terms of helping me examine the unwritten rules I live my life by, and the consequences of them. It suggested better rules which tbh are doing me much better than my old ones did. After chapter 22 it is an exploration of grief. The most recent chapters are finally resolving this section, and I’m so curious to see where the plot will go next, drawing as it does on both the comics and the show, sometimes in unexpected ways.

If you want the same kind of experience but aren’t ready for 300k words, I’d like to recommend The Undone and the Divine, also by @dancinbutterfly . This is a cannibalism fic, okay? I don’t approve of cannibalism in real life, but in a fic, as a metaphor for the desire to be utterly consumed and become one with a lover? Oh yes. This one is also very much consent oriented. Consent, my beloved. The art @teejaystumbles did for this one is stunning. The fic is moving and disturbing and glorious. Be an adult and mind the tags, it’s based on 24/7 (episode 5) and there is consensual violence. The sequel is started but not posted yet.

If you want to try a bdsm fic that’s not messed up but still has lots of great consent and eventually communication, @lostelfwriting ‘s Dancing with the Brutes is also one of my favourites. I loved what she did with Lucienne and Titania for me in Queen Brat. It gives a better picture of what bdsm might look like in real life.

If you want to try dancinbutterfly’s writing but aren’t ready for bdsm, Fuckboi Hob vs the Endless Family Dinner is hilarious and rough but not so heavy. It’s also a favourite, but in a normal fic way, not an obsessed with it way.

And hey if you’re caught up on FBD and want to read my fanfics of it, here’s a link to my master list of those!

[dawnfelagund]

Fandom Snowflake: Day 10

Join in the challenge here!

In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (Or a few!) Tell us what makes it work for you, and why it appeals to you so much. Talk about what you like to see in fanworks featuring that theme most. Feel free to include recs and examples!

I absolutely adore fanworks that assume that the texts don’t tell the whole or only story. In my scholarly work, this rears its head in my fascination (obsession?) with documenting evidence of historical bias in The Silmarillion. I would love to see a fandom where the “canon” is questioned constantly and reimagined/reconstructed by fanworks creators assuming the perspectives of characters disfavored or ignored by that canon.

Part of this love has to do with the fandom I entered twelve years ago. My blog is called the Heretic Loremaster because I self-styled myself as a heretic because I did not take the canon as the infallible Word, and I wanted to alert people of that and so head off the inevitable criticism. I feel like I got less than I would have if I’d entered the fandom even a year earlier. In the way of pendulums swinging, in 2005, the Tolkien fandom had started to correct somewhat for the intense and often mean-spirited canaticism that had defined many of its spaces in years prior. But the idea that fanfic should be more than a paint-by-numbers story that showed off its author’s knowledge of canon minutia was still new and somewhat radical in many fandom spaces.

What first clued me in that The Silmarillion isn’t an entirely reliable account of the history of the First Age and earlier was that Fëanor was called “the most beloved” of the sons of Finwë, yet The Silmarillion has almost nothing nice to say about him or his sons. As I posted about on Day 8, I came to realize that I shared some important beliefs with Fëanor, and I didn’t believe I was a bad person (although, like him, I have my flaws) and, in fact, think that people like us have much to offer the world. And as I began to look at the deeds of his sons, I came to realize that the positive things they did--which were many--were underwritten or unwritten altogether, left to be read from between the lines. (An example of this would be their eagerness to assume the most dangerous realms in Beleriand, those that would be first in nearly any line of attack from Melkor, being directly south of the break in the mountains that protected the other princes of the Noldor. The author of The Silmarillion admits of Maedhros that “he was very willing that the chief peril of assault should fall upon himself” but says nothing of the other brothers, who arrayed themselves behind Maedhros while their cousins retreated behind mountains or to hidden realms. Even the celebration in The Silmarillion of opulent realms--on Gondolin, Menegroth, Nargothrond--shows this bias because the Fëanorians couldn’t build elaborate, decorative kingdoms: They were sharing a border with and defending a geographical gap against Morgoth. It was essentially Middle-earth celebrity culture at the expense of ignoring the real work being done by people who are actually trying to make the world better, not just look prettier. But I digress.)

I have loved to see these kinds of fanworks become more popular and also to see greater acceptance that “not in the texts” =/= “contrary to the texts.” This has opened up fanworks to represent the perspectives of characters who aren’t just straight white guys. I have loved to see the work of authors/scholars like @vefanyar result in people wanting to write about women, and femslash in particular. (Femslash was once so rare as to be nearly nonexistent in Tolkien fanfic.) This appeals to me because art is one of the few places where our ideas and experiences are equal to those in power, and I like to imagine that writing the perspectives of those who don’t hold power in Middle-earth makes us more apt to consider those perspectives in our own Modern-earth.