Tolkien fan fiction is fantasy fiction, often published on the Internet, by Tolkien fans, in large quantities. It is based either directly on J. R. R. Tolkien's books on his fantasy world of Middle-earth, or on an adaptation of this world, especially in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film series or other film depictions of that world. Enormous quantities of writing have resulted, including homoerotic slash fiction and several strands of feminist storytelling.
Many works of fan fiction, including slash, are written by women. They often select as subjects Tolkien's minor female characters, where the limited detail provided allows them to write as they please. An alternative is to invent non-canonical characters, again often women, embodying authors' personal wish-fulfilment. Scholars have discussed the validity of fan fiction, given Tolkien's apparent dislike of the genre, but noting that he had indicated the possibility of "other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama." Scholars have begun to accept fan fiction as one of multiple genres within the Middle-earth tradition.
Early fan fiction was published in fanzines, followed by mailing lists and other Internet platforms. The genre accelerated with the arrival of the World Wide Web and specialised websites for fan fiction. These had rules governing what could be written. Much fan fiction is potentially in breach of copyright law, even on non-commercial websites.
Context
J. R. R. Tolkien is best known for writing the fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. He was a scholar of English literature, a philologist interested in language and poetry from the Middle Ages, especially that of Anglo-Saxon England and Northern Europe. His professional knowledge of poetical works such as Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shaped his fictional world of Middle-earth. His intention to create what has been called "a mythology for England" led him to construct a fully-formed world with its own languages, peoples, cultures, and history.
Tolkien fandom grew rapidly in many countries after the appearance of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film series in 2001–2003.
Fan fiction has precursors in Medieval explorations of Arthurian legend, though modern fan fiction began in the Star Trek fandom in the 1960s. In the 21st century, the Internet afforded fans wishing to publish their own writing, with a wide variety of blogs, discussion groups, lists, live journals, role-playing games and other media formats. A subgenre is fan-written slash fiction, which imagines romantic or homoerotic relationships between Middle-earth characters, such as Sam Gamgee with Frodo Baggins.
Authors
Susan Booker, writing in the 2004 scholarly collection Tolkien on Film, notes that her own experience of interacting with fans bears out the general belief that "the fan fiction universe is composed mainly of the female sex". Some scholars have identified fan fiction as "a genre of resistance against and reparation of media products written by, for, and about heterosexual, cisgender, white, able-bodied males", implying that both authors and readers are women. Dawn Walls-Thumma states that this may cause scholars to discount the genre. Another assumption is that fans choose such feminist or slash genres to criticise or amend Tolkien's perceived worldview, but the goals are not necessarily linked, and women's fan fiction is not always "fully resistant". Karen Viars and Cait Coker write that while Tolkien was not a misogynist, most of the characters in the novel are male, while many Tolkien fans, possibly a majority, are women. Una McCormack comments that, despite plentiful "excellent Tolkien fan fiction" by female authors, a small number of stories by men have gathered much of the attention: in particular, the 1999 The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov, and the 2010 Mirkwood by Steve Hillard.
At least one fan fiction writer, Marion Zimmer Bradley, became a successful novelist. Early in her career, she wrote the 1961 The Jewel of Arwen, filling in how Arwen came to have the jewel that she gave to Frodo, beyond what Tolkien narrates. Also in 1961, she wrote the essay "Of Men, Halflings, and Hero Worship", analysing Éowyn's supposed love for the hero Aragorn, and "the strong love between Frodo and Samwise". This was first published in a fanzine, Astra's Tower, and later reprinted in a scholarly collection. In 1962 she wrote another story, "A Meeting in the Hyades", bringing Aragorn into the world of her 1962 novel The Sword of Aldones.
Topics
Fan attention has, Karen Viars and Cait Coker write, "unsurprisingly focused on many of those topics Tolkien scholars are fond of today—homosexual overtones..., racism..., Tolkien's literary sources and forebears, and the roles of women in his world." Walls-Thumma surveyed Tolkien fan fiction writers' attitudes, finding that 62% agreed that their writing helped them to "correct problems with race, gender, and sexuality that I see in Tolkien's books". Respondents with less than 2 years' experience of writing were the most likely (69.6%) to agree with the statement. Robin Anne Reid suggests that fan fiction like Thorinsmut's Free Orcs alternate universe effectively "writes back to Tolkien's construction of Orcs", offering a non-racist perspective on these beings. Reid comments that the effect is to make the story into one about relationships between Dwarves and Orcs, from the cultural and personal through to politics and trade.
Sexuality
Anna Smol notes that the "enormous outpouring of fan fiction and fan art" has greatly increased discussion of sexuality in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's account of the male intimacy between Frodo and Sam, mirroring his wartime experience of the officer-batman relationship, has, Smol writes, "provoke[d] an active engagement with the story that can lead to a questioning of ideas about adult male and female sexuality, heroic masculinity, and the possibilities for male intimacy." She adds that such engagement can equally be through fan fiction. This may help in promoting tolerance of homosexuality, though she notes that Tolkien fan fiction's heterosexual female authors may be "expressing their own sexual desires through their identification with attractive male characters".
Between July and September 2020, the cartoonist Lee Knox Ostertag published an illustrated fan fiction story about Frodo and Sam, called "In All the Ways There Were".
Lives of minor female characters
The small amount of detail about several of Tolkien's female characters has left much of the backstory of these women as a blank canvas, allowing fans to reimagine Middle-earth's women as they like. Much attention has been given to Rosie Cotton, Sam's girlfriend. Some fans explore what Amy Sturgis categorises as "Rosie the healer and helpmeet". Others look at what Sturgis names "Rosie the sensual hobbit", adventurous in the bedroom, with the possibility that Sam is at the same time involved sexually with Frodo, and indeed that Rosie too has other lovers, making her relationship with Sam symmetrical. The "Pretty Good Year" series features polyamory with Rosie, Sam, and Frodo. Yet another strand named by Sturgis sees Rosie as a "vampire hobbit" who has supernatural powers, sometimes by wielding the One Ring.
Other storytellers have worked from the small hints provided by Tolkien about women such as Finduilas, Denethor's wife who "died untimely", or Ioreth, the talkative woman in Gondor's House of Healing. Una McCormack notes that Ioreth is a servant, a working-class woman, the kind of person missing from Tolkien's recorded history. When women write about such characters, in her view, they "perform acts of transformation, reparation, and radicalization on The Lord of the Rings, establishing female presences, queer presences, and urban working class presences, in a text chiefly concerned with the masculine and the heroic".
Some fans have developed the Appendices-only Lord of the Rings character Lothíriel, wife of Éomer. Since Tolkien has said so little about her, she forms, in Viars and Coker's words, "the perfect space for the fan writer to play in Middle-earth", since "she may be beautiful or plain, clever or foolish, obedient or rebellious", according to the writer's taste. They note that fan versions of Lothíriel often render her either as a "contemporary romance novel heroine", or as a "neo-Victorian".
Non-canonical characters
The simplest way to compensate for the lack of women is to invent some. McCormack suggests that in this way the fan fiction writer "is arguably reinscribing a history that has somehow been lost in translation or transmission", since, according to fan fiction writer Firerose, the civilisations of Middle-earth could not have survived with the sex ratios that Tolkien documents for the noble families in the Appendices. Firerose's story "Missing" creates Lóriniel, younger sister of Faramir, whose short and tragic life ends during the time described in The Lord of the Rings. Faramir discovers from scraps and small clues that his father Denethor, mad with grief and despair, "has turned to Lóriniel for sexual comfort, eliding wife and daughter."
Sirpa Leppänen writes that some women intentionally compensate for the paucity of women in Tolkien. She gives as example the story Letters from Bree by Arwen Imladviel, in which Estella Brandybuck brushes her adopted daughter Eowyn "of Brandy Hall"'s hair: she isn't surnamed Brandybuck as she was born out of wedlock. Leppänen comments that the female author skilfully imitates Tolkien's prose style, but creates a "much more diffuse" narrative with female characters who lead domestic lives and conduct "personal and intimate discussions with each other", in marked contrast to Tolkien's epic narrative and "heroic adventures".
The creation of new, "original" or non-canonical characters, McCormack writes, brings dangers; one is that fan fiction groups especially despise so-called "Mary Sue" characters. These represent wished-for personalities of their authors, and are accordingly unnaturally perfect and idealised. Yet another genre is "Middle-earth tourism", escapist fantasy in which someone is transported from normal life into an adventure in the imagined world.
Validity
Basis in Tolkien's writings
+ "I would ... leave scope forother minds and hands" Tolkien's attitudeto adaptations Media Approved of Painting Music Drama Actively disliked Film Disliked an instance;Not in 'approved' list Fiction
In 1966, Tolkien wrote to his publishers complaining that a male fan had sent him an "impertinent contribution to my troubles", a draft of a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. He described the fan as "this young ass" and the sequel as "tripe". He went on: "I once had a similar proposal, couched in the most obsequious terms, from a young woman, and when I replied in the negative, I received a most vituperative letter."
In a letter to another publisher, Milton Waldman of Collins, some years earlier, Tolkien wrote of his intended mythology for England that
Megan Abrahamson, writing in Mythlore, comments that this opens the way to fans to create a works filling gaps in the Tolkien canon, but that the next word in the letter is "Absurd!" She notes that the thing Tolkien was calling absurd was his own wish to create a mythology, but that the word "also makes suspect fans' use of his quote as a kind of letter of marque to write music and fanfiction". Renée Vink notes both Tolkien's "young ass" remark, and the ambiguity of his "Absurd!", adding that fiction was not among the media he listed in his scoping of extensions by other hands, and that he disliked film adaptations of his works, as recorded in his letters.