Fandom-related news

[cimorene]

• Last summer we watched Teen Wolf and then read a lot of it. In spite of the fact that it was so bad I needed alcohol to get through an episode, I was having fun until the creator/writer made such an ass of himself online that I got irritated anytime I saw his name. And then the same thing happened with the fanon, because for like a month every story I tried to read was irritating. It has now been added to Tumblr Savior. Hopefully the sensitivity will subside by the time a new series airs to at least allow me to watch the scenes with Dylan O'Brien in them.



• As mentioned in the last post, my wife has gotten too far into the hockey rabbit hole. She isn't watching hockey, but she's reblogging random images of hockey players who aren't even part of the big OTPs and the other day I caught her reading a completely earnest long screed about how hockey fandom doesn't take Sidney Crosby's pain seriously enough. And nodding along thoughtfully.



• I've been reading a lot of Hobbit fic, but, as my Pinboard account will show, not bookmarking very much of it. I've even been reading WIPs, because several of them are good. I suppose I feel at home in a high fantasy environment, and then there's all the nostalgia for Lord of the Rings (I spent years there and met my wife!).
  
  It might be my imagination, or the fact that I was litearlly a teenager at the beginning of LOTR[/iPS], but it does seem like so far there is not as much decent reading material in this fandom as there was in that one. That doesn't really stop me from reading it and mocking the historical inaccuracies, incorrect punctuation, lack of line breaks, lapses in canon (and speaking as someone who's only read The Hobbit once as an adult and who threw the Silmarillion across the room after a few pages, the fact that I can criticize your lore is a very bad sign indeed), and general failure to understand how the world works (eg [a]the idea that putting a lot of wildflowers in a pot of boiling water would produce a paste instead of a tea followed by a pot with burnt flower bits in the bottom of it, or [b] the notion that the Company would or even could gallop their ponies into Mirkwood and keep galloping all day.) (It's quite cute for the most part. It's like the fanfic equivalent of a baby animal tripping over its own feet.) (In fact it reminds me of the stories I wrote when I was 10 or 11. I didn't have much idea how the world worked either, but I think, if nothing else from the quantity of smut, that these authors are generally a bit older.)
  
  The overwhelming majority pairing is Thorin/Bilbo. I can't actually say it makes NO sense, although I was a bit flabbergasted when I first saw it, because they are after all the two main characters, and exactly the sort of middle-aged dudely characters that fandom loves (and white which fandom also loves). And of course, both characters have an internal character arc that sort of involves each other, even in the book, but rather more so in the movie, where they also have the advantage of the facts that
  
  1. Martin Freeman is, thanks to Sherlock, already a widely-acknowledged fandom sex object, and
  
  
  2. Richard Armitage apparently has an army of female fans already, plus has been styled in The Hobbit so he always looks like he's leaping off the cover of a long extremely purple romance novel about Her Viking Lover or something, one with a spine that automatically falls open to the horribly badly-written dirty bits.
  
  
  The next most popular pairing on AO3 and the kinkmeme seems to be Fili/Kili, which also makes sense because, well, the Hot Dwarves. I'm more surprised that there's very very little RPF than I am by the existence of the incest, there.
  
  After that is probably Bilbo/Bofur, which seems to be fed in equal parts on the scenes where they interact in canon, and the fact that everybody loves James Nesbitt, the twinkly Belfastian George Clooney.
  
  So far, I am reading everything, which is very unusual for me. I'm naturally such an OTP-based reader that in the past I have multiple times imprinted in favor of an OTP simply by reading one story featuring it when I had no familiarity with canon whatsoever, and then refused to read anything else. However, I think the reason for this might be that mostly I just want to read about the characters again, preferably as many of them as possible. I was trying to make a list of which dwarves I most wanted to see more of a few days ago, and eventually decided that "how much I adore this dwarf" is basically correlated 1:1 with "how much I know about this dwarf based on his screentime". Therefore, I conclude that my preferences are meaningless, unless someone is going to convincingly write an Irish or Scottish accent, in which case I will lap it up because I adore accents.
  

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

thank you for posting this; i haven't read any of the fic yet, which for me is quite unusual, but i blame real life.

are most of the stories set inside the timeframe of the movie we have so far? or are there stories that range before or after?

i read the silmarillion, but boy it wasn't a narrative, was it? it was more like reading the bible.

[cimorene]

Hmmmmm.

There's not very much fic from before the movie, but some of the dwarf-centric things are. Most of these are Fíli/Kíli or het with OCs, though, and I don't like that very much. Or rather, I like F/K sort of okay as long as neither one of them is a kid at the time, and as long as the plot isn't all melodrama and angst. But I do tend to steer away from ones set around teenagerness/coming of age because the chan-kink stuff squicks the hell out of me.

But while a majority is probably set during the timeframe of the book, there's also a pretty decent amount set after everything. When I say during the book, that isn't the same as during the FIRST movie - there's the whole GREAT BIG EMOTIONAL HUGGING SCENE at the end of it and people like to set their Thorin/Bilbo after this, so a lot of it is set in the portion of the book that will fall during Movie 2. And of course, the stuff set after everything is often a fix-it. There are also a fair number of ones with Bilbo sitting around crying though.

[princessofgeeks]

fascinating; thank you. i hope to start catching up with fic someday. real life, grrr. i've only seen the movie once!!!

here via network

[marina]

Hi! I'm actually super curious about 1 & 2:

1. WHAT POST ABOUT SIDNEY CROSBY'S PAIN. (I realize you probably don't care enough to know, but I'm super into hockey and I haven't seen that post!)

2. Wait, when did the creator of Teen Wolf make an ass of himself? I'm just wondering because you may be the second person I've met on the internet who thinks the creator is an asshole, so. I FEEL THE NEED TO MAKE SURE.

Re: here via network

[cimorene]

1. I don't know; it was on Tumblr and several days ago. Also, it's not like it was a good or particularly coherent post.

2. Um, he got mad because some people critiqued Teen Wolf for racism and misogyny and various other things, and after having arrived on Tumblr with a lot of fanfare about how much he wanted to mingle with his fans, he pulled a spectacular flounce combined with some righteous, snotty preaching about how people who can't behave and be polite can't have nice things.

Re: here via network

[brownbetty]

Re 2. He was very "I GAVE YOU MEXICAN TYLER POSEY AND NOW YOU'RE CALLING ME RACIST!?" Because giving us Posey in a role that, lbh, could have been played by Ryan Gosling without making any changes to the writing is super progressive, amirite?

(Posey has said Scott's Latino? Which, great! But... I really don't think the writing supports that in any particular way.)

He really flounced, when all he needed to do was say "Yeah, I too am sad Boyd's gotten so little screentime, and I haven't had a chance to explore his story, and I hope you'll like what you see of him in future seasons."

[brownbetty]

I share your feelings of surprise on Thorin/Bilbo. Yes, in retrospect, obvious, but boy did I not see that coming. I guess it means that Jackson was more successful in selling Thorin's emotional growth, (or whatever "Why Bilbo, you're beautiful useful!" was) than I had thought.

But I also find hilarious the fact that their appear to be the two streams of Thorin fans: the "Thilbo" fans, who I can only imagine appreciate him sincerely? and the "Majestic!Thorin" fans who appreciate him ironically, although possibly also sincerely.

Have you come across any Thorin/Bilbo that seems to come from the "Majestic!Thorin" school?

[cimorene]

I wonder what I am in your typology, then? I mean, I can't look at the way he's shot without laughing! I do actually like the character though. Sometimes, I mean. I can unironically enjoy the pairing if it's well-written and stuff. But they've definitely changed him up for the screenplay. It's not just a matter of shifting the emphasis, though. I think they've genuinely made him more... dignified, I guess. Or maybe 'noble' is the word I want? Because in the book - and I think this has to be taken as true even if you consider Bilbo an unreliable narrator since it's for children or whatever, unless he like, HATED him or had some other slightly far-fetched reason? - in the book he's ridiculous. I mean, he's certainly on his dignity, but he's, well, pompous and long-winded...

...anyway.

I have seen some fic that is obviously inspired by Tumblr memes, but I think it was in all likelihood written in somebody's Ask box or Tumblr and then just archived on aO3... like the one where Thorin gets lost three times on the way to Bilbo's house or the one where he gets lost in Erebor.

[brownbetty]

Well, I am totally an outside observer of the fandom; I've never read a single fic, just browsed tags. I am prepared to be totally wrong in my model of the fandom, if, as you say, it doesn't really reflect your experience.

I just really have a lot of difficulty taking movie!Thorin seriously, even though I can see how there's a serious character there; the fact that they filmed this movie around him is so distracting to me!

[cimorene]

Hmmm. Yes, I suppose I don't really take him seriously in the movie either, but then, I often don't take movies very seriously, and it doesn't bother me much, or prevent me from reading, or from reading fic that is meant to be taken seriously.

However, I think in this I am a standout in the fandom, or at least wouldn't fit in the writing portion of it. Most of the people who are writing fic with Thorin as a main character seem to read him totally seriously, if only for fic purposes. The amount of humor and crack is quite small. - On the other hand, the people writing in other pairings do poke fun at him a lot.

[cimorene]

They've also added more emotional growth to him but that's kind of necessary with the Other Main Character, and he's really the Heroic Hero whereas Bilbo is more the viewer's intermediary. He has to have some sort of emotional growth in each movie so they can have both an emotional-internal climax and an external plotty climax that involves fire or orcs or whatever.

[brownbetty]

I'd actually kind of prefer it if he didn't have emotional growth in every movie, and the next one was, like, "Fili learns that Kili is ready to spread his wings" or "That one Dwarf with a starfish head explores his dream of being an aesthetician," or whatever. I don't know if I want "Thorin has a Personal Growth!" three times.

[cimorene]

I understand those feels, bro, but I fear that PJ is going to disappoint you there. Still, here's hoping...

[brownbetty]

I just wrote an alternate movie in my head where Nori appears in a different, awesome, Queen Amidala-esque coif and beard-coif every scene. It was AMAZING.

[cimorene]

His hair is amazing, isn't it? I love the eyebrow braids! Think of how much work he does for that. And they must fix it over and over again on the road, because it gets disheveled several times in battle.

Yeah, I'd definitely like more Nori fic. I've only seen a couple, even counting badfic.

[stranger]

I'm thinking back now to LotR fanfic, and the Strider/Frodo stories that at the time made me go Huh? in a very Huh? way. In retrospect, the movie structure (and book structure) makes them hugely parallel heroes, both attractive, and so they must be slashed. (Kinda like charismatic enemies must be slashed, regardless of whether the characters like each other, or even *meet* each other.)

Thorin and Bilbo similarly each have heroic journeys that support each other, so I'm not surprised now to see them amid the slash smorgasbord. They're a better character fit as well in more ways than one.

[cimorene]

Yeah, that's kinda what my initial processing thoughts were like. Bilbo is also a character who becomes an old bachelor and never hooks up with anyone, and while Tolkien is generally never going to MENTION sex at all, that is still weird for hobbits. Having had a romantic disappointment in his youth is a plausible enough explanation for this and the fact that Thorin dies makes him more suitable, from a shipper's point of view, because nobody would want to think he had a romantic disappointment with someone who was still ALIVE, because that would mean they didn't love him enough or something like that, and we pretty much always want our slash objects to be loved in a giant, epic, complete fashion.

[princessofgeeks]

i heart this entire thread.

[stranger]

Hello to you both. It's true that slash loves to be epic about the love; it's always Best Evar, and if for variety it's not perfect the first time, it becomes perfect in due course. Except, a good lot of the high-end slash is written about well-delineated characters, and humans tend to have human flaws.

Sometimes the fictional suspense of disbelief works, sometimes it has to be read as a bit of fantasy perfection, sometimes the characters are perfectly themselves and therefore imperfect...

I do have to say that finding the love of one's life during an epic adventure away from home, where one learns all kinds of other interesting things along the way, sees the world, and earns a treasure chest, would have to be pretty damn romantic in all senses. Extra epic points for appropriately romantic tragic ending.

[cimorene]

It's definitely more epic that way, and hence fitting in a way, even if it does leave everybody apparently starved for fix-its.

[msilverstar]

I've been reading some Hobbit FPS, and RPS of which there isn't much. What are the WIPs you like?

[cimorene]

I believe they're all on my Pinboard account, or at least all the ones I think are good are...

http://www.pinboard.in/u:cimness

[lobelia321]

OT: Cim, yo, where is your fic??? Where is your lotrps and your lotfps wot i want to rec? I went to your site but all the links iz broken, argh.

Plz find me it...? *bats lashes*

Sorry, I seem to have fallen into a pseudo-lolspeak trap.

[cimorene]

I haven't really been updating that mirror in a long time. My fic is primarily at AO3. Older versions of most of the stories are still at cimorene.net, though.