Wanderers in Middle Earth

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Wanderers in

Middle-Earth:

A hierarchical comparisonbetween the structure of the Lordof the Rings fan phenomenon and

the academic world.

MORN IGLESIAS, Laura09/01/2012

Narrativa Inglesa5 Filologa Inglesa


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says Bilbo Baggins to his old friend Gandalf, in one of the opening scenes ofThe Lord

of the Rings adaptation by Peter Jackson (Jackson, 2001). Replace Frodos name for any other,

and you will have a perfect description of what a fan feels towards the world created by J.R.R.Tolkien. Thousands of readers have fallen in love with Middle-Earth, page by page, completely

captivated by its magic. In this essay, we will analyze the impact that The Lord of the Rings has

in its fans, and how these fans have answered to the calling of the Fellowship of the Ring.

When, in 1937 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien published The Hobbit, he could not imagine

how little Bilbos adventures would affect the world. Bilbos quest with the darwes was just the

beginning of something bigger, something that became a reality with the publication of The

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ringin 1954, almost twenty years after the release of

The Hobbit. Soon after the publication of The Fellowship the Ringerphenomenon became

global. Tolkien had as many defenders as critics; amongst the latters, Edmund Wilson was one

of his most bitter detractors. He defined The Lord of the Rings as juvenile trash (Wilson, 1956)

and many critics were by his side. Nevertheless, the growing phenomenon for Tolkiens work

was unstoppable. In no time, the books became number one bestsellers and occupied the first

position in the list of the hundred greatest novels of the 20th century in England; The Hobbit, the

one who started it all, was number nineteen. Since that day on, The Lord of the Rings has

captivated as many readers as it did before; and, even though it still has many critics, its

supporters are even more. The most impressive thing about The Lord of the Rings is not,

however, the number of lovers or haters it has. For its fans, Tolkiens work is more than a piece

of literary fiction: it is something alive that accompanies them through every step of their lives,

which inhabits their dreams and fills their minds with a great deal of creativity. Lord of the

Rings fan phenomenon can only be described using the fans own words.

Ringers: Lord of the Fans, 2005

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Many pieces of fanworks1 are mentioned in this extract, but many others have been left

out. Shorts, animations, music videos, comic books, illustrations, web pages, essays and

graphics amongst others; and one of the most popular fanwork in fandom 2, the one that will be

thoroughly analyzed in this essay, is fan fiction. In the course of this essay, it will be explained

what fan fiction consist of, and it will be analyzed taking into account genre and popularity.

There will also be a comparison between fan fiction and academic writings, and we will see

where they differ and where they dont. We will also analyze a phenomenon that only takes

place in The Lord of the Rings fandom and which divides written works, fan made or academic,

into works socially acceptable or minor works.

Firstly, we will see what fan fiction is. Fan fiction, also called fanfiction or fanfic, could

be seen as just one kind of fanwork. Its definition is very simple: Fanfiction is a work of fiction

written by fans for other fans, taking a source text or a famous person as a point of departure. It

is most commonly produced within the context of a fannish community [fandom] and can be

shared online such as in archives or in print such as in zines 3. (Fanlore, 2008) Why is it, then,

more relevant than other fanworks? Because it is the most widespread fanactivity. There is

fanfiction for any fandom, but you may not find fanarts4for all of them. Or you may find them,

but in a minor number. There are extremely skilled fanartists forThe Lord of the Rings fandom

who not only draw, but also modify captions from the movies and make graphics, icons and

parodies with them now that the technology allows us to do so. Nevertheless, fanficiton is the

predominant fanwork for every fandom and The Lord of the Rings is not an exception.

Fanfiction.net, one of the major online archives for uploading and sharing fanfiction of any

kind, proofs the popularity of the LOTR5 fandom. There are, at this very moment [January

2012], 45.944 fanfics uploaded in the webpage for The Lord of the Rings, divided into many

languages, genres and ratings. Tolkiens work is the third one in the list of fanfiction.net, only

exceeded by Twilight, with 194.614 fanfics and Harry Potter, with 572.174. The number of

fanfiction for all of them grows every day not a week ago, The Lord of the Rings had twentyeight fanfics less than today, and Harry Potterhas today 1.310 fanfics more than a week ago.

Though it is impossible to compare Tolkien and Rowlings work in terms of content, it is also

1Fanwork: Fanworks are the creative products of fannish endeavor. In other words, fanworksare workscreated byfans, generally intended for other fans. [...] Some element of a canon work -- thesource text or event -- is taken and incorporated into a new creative piece. (Fanlore, 2008)2Fandom: community of people with similar interests, participating in fanactivities and interacting insome way, whether through discussions or creative works. The interaction may be face-to-face atgatherings such as conventions, or written communication, either off- or on-line. (Fanlore, 2008)3Zine: The word zineis short for 'magazine' (...). It has been used for several types of amateur periodicalfrom different communities.(Fanlore, 2008)4Fanart: any amateur art for a specific TV show, movie, book, or other media event not owned orcreated by the artist.5 Abreviation forThe Lord of the Rings.

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unbelievable to compare them in terms of fandom Harry Pottercannot be compared with any

other fandom; it surpasses its most competent rival for 377.560 fanfics just in one archive.

Moreover, we have to bear in mind that The Lord of the Rings fandom was born long before the

Internet and the fandom boom, reboosted by the released of Peter Jacksons movie versions, and

Harry Potteris a fandom born with the generation of online communities.

We have more data that supports the predominance of fanfiction over other fanworks,

and that shows how alive The Lord of the Rings fandom is. We should not forget that fandom is

also divided into several different languages, and within fanfiction.net the English language for

this fandom has no rival. It occupies the first place in the ranking with more than 41.500 fanfics

in fanfiction.net. German is the second language more used to write LOTR fanfiction, with

1.457 fanfics; in third place is French, with 1.232 and in fourth place is Spanish, with 647. The

difference is enormous, though it does not mean that Spanish fandom is minor than the English

one: it is a fact that many writers, independently of their mother tongue, usually decide to write

and read in English. Regarding genres, we should also make an exception with one of them: the

crossovers. Crossovers themselves may not be considered a genre, but here we will treat them as

one. Crossovers are, in a few words, fanworks that mix two different source materials. For

example, in fanfiction.net there are 1.184 crossovers of the Lord of the Rings with other

materials, such as Harry Potter(with 422 crossovers), The Chronicles of Narnia (with 63) or

things as unexpected asBuffy: The Vampire Slayer(with 54) orNaruto (with 44). As I have said,

crossovers are not a genre in itself because each crossover has its own genre; they can be

comedies, romances or adventure fanfiction. But as we shall not deal further with the subject I

will not go in detail with it; we will see now, therefore, the question of genres.

Applied to fanfiction, genre is a tricky label. Fanfics are divided into traditional genres

as any other kind of fiction: you can find romance, adventure, humour, tragedy or comedy. But

there are three other labels that apply to fanfiction and that are independent from traditional

genres as they can coexist together in the same fanfic. These labels are slash, femslash and gen.Slash fanworks are those dealing with male/male relationships that go beyond friendship. They

are not about two male friends but about two male lovers, or two male friends that become

lovers. There are many kinds of slash relationships, and a slash fanfic can be romantic,

humorous or tragic, but the main protagonists will be two males involved in a romantic situation

or with romantic inclination towards each other. Femslash is, therefore, easily defined once you

know the meaning of slash: femslash fanworks are those treating female/female relationships.

This is usually less popular than its counterpart and, also, more romantic and less sexual. Slash

is usually, if not always, rated NC-17, whereas you can find a lot of femslash with no sexualconnotations at all. However, as this is not the topic of the essay, we will deal now with the

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third label: gen. Gen, or general, includes heterosexual relationships or fanfiction dealing with

no relationships at all. In a recent survey done in latierramedia.livejournal.com, a Spanish

Livejournal community forThe Lord of the Rings fans, the results found were that gen and slash

were the most read kind of fanfic, whereas no one read femslash at all. We will analyze the

implications of these results in the following parts of the essay, as we will move now to the

other topic we shall deal with: academic writing.

Many things have been written about The Lord of the Rings in the world. From short

articles to longer essays and books, treatises of Middle-Earth and Tolkiens legendarium,

uncountable writes have devoted themselves to explain and understand his world. In order to

analyze it, we will divide this enormous amount of works into two types: highbrow and

lowbrow. This decision is not arbitrary: though many critics considered Tolkien a minor writer,

due to the genre to which he devoted himself to, the growing trend is to consider him a high-

class artist. Despite being denied the Nobel prize in literature fifty years ago because it has not

in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality (sterling, 1961), literary critics

have grown fond of Tolkien. And not only critics, but many other writers as well, became more

interested in his work after the release of the movies. Therefore, the traditional division of

writings for or against Tolkiens masterpiece was transformed into what we have called

highbrow and lowbrow works. Literary criticism, whether it is praising Tolkien or trying to

demystify it, will be considered highbrow; and, on the other hand, lowbrow works will be all

those so-called lower articles, such as magazine reviews, minor essays and literary critics made

by non-academics. But, why does this division exist? What makes a work relating The Lord of

the Rings highbrow? In order to answer this question we will use two different parameters: the

audience towards which a particular work is directed, and the perception of that very audience

of said work.

To clarify both aspects, we will look at some examples. One is A Question of Time:

j.R.R. Tolkiens Road to Farie by Verlyn Flieger. In this book, the author investigates thequestion of time and the importance of dreams in Tolkiens fiction, and the main proof that it is

not directed towards a common audience is how many Tolkiens works the book covers. An

average reader, fond of fantasy, will sure have read The Lord of the Rings. A Tolkien fan will

also have read The Hobbitand, at least, tried his hand with the Silmarillion. Hardcore fans will

also be aware, if they have not read them yet, with the existance of books such as The

Adventures of Tom Bombadil, The Sons of Hrin, the Unfinished Tales and The Book of Lost

Tales. Nevertheless, only scholars will have had the chance to work with Songs for the

Philologists, Tree and Leaf, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, articles in The Oxford Magazine, The

Lost Road and Other Writings, Morgoths Ring, his essays, The Return of the Shadow, Sauron

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Defeated: The End of the Third Age, Smith of Wootton Major, The Treason of IsengardorThe

War of the Ring. This list of works, all written by Tolkien, is part of the bibliography ofA

Question of Time; apart from many other references to writers of which an average reader would

have not read. As Flieger does, many scholars writing about Tolkien will use cross-references

with the rest of his works not just those dealing with Middle-Earth but also those which

Tolkien wrote as a scholar himself, such as the edition ofSir Gawain and the Green Knightand

his essay onBeowulf. It is difficult to read such an essay and not get lost in the different names

and references made by the author, thus creating clear boundaries for his audience. We find

similar examples in Jane Chances Tolkiens Art, defined as a serious critical study of Tolkiens

works by the Choice. Chance makes reference to 45 works written by Tolkien in a book 228

pages long notes included. She also metions, at least, twice the number of works written by

other people regarding Tolkien; and we could go on with many other works. The audience

towards these works are clarely oriented is an academic one they are not meant for fans, but

for scholars.

The limited number of readers is one of the main factors that make a work highbrow.

Nowadays we do not measure the quality of a book for the number of readers; on the contrary,

best-sellers are usually treated as cheap novels ment for enterteinment. As it has always

happened in literature. Therefore, this kind of books dealing with Tolkien are not meant to be

bestsellers: they are meant for a small audience. And this deliberate characteristic has another

consequence that helps in the creation of the highbrow label: a common fan approaching, for

example,A Question of Time, will reject it because he will not understand it. Not because it is

under his knowledge but because it is over. Therefore, a fan who is able to read and understand

it may consider himself in a higher position that one who rejected it creating the illusion of

highbrow.

On the other hand we have lowbrow. If highbrow works are those directed towards a

reduced public, lowbrow works are the rest. An essay directed towards fans? Lowbrow. Aliterary critic made by a common journalist? Lowbrow. A magazine review? An article in a

newspaper? Summaries of Tolkiens works in a webpage? All of them are regarded as lowbrow.

They are directed to everyone: you can understand them by having very little knowledge of

Middle-Earth. If you have read the books and enjoyed them it is enough. Some will not even

need that: just by having seen the films a reader will be able to go through the article; are they

are intended that way. Theyr functionality is to entertein and give information; and, in some

cases, to invite the reader to go to the original work and enjoy it himself. We are not implying

that lowbrow works are actually low this label is used here to divide works as society does.Some scholar works have avoided the highbrow label an actual statement that their audience are

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common fans themselves. Patrick Curry starts his bookDefending Middle-Earth. Tolkien: Myth

and Modernity stating that this book will undoubtedly make more sense if you have already

read The Lord of the Rings; but if you have not, or need reminding, here is a very brief synopsis

(Curry, 1997). The Complete Guide to Middle-Earth: From The Hobbit to The Silmarillion

(Foster, 1978), a reference book compiling all the terms Tolkien uses in his Middle-Earth

works, is also a good example. It is a very exhaustive piece of research, carefully designed; yet,

devoted to fans.The question of what makes a work high or low belongs to a different essay

here we will use the term as it has been given; and that the differences exist cannot be denied.

Now that we have analyzed the differences between higbrow and lowbrow works in the

academic or rather in the out-of-fandom world, we will apply that division to the fandom. Do

highbrow fanworks exist? Are there any lowbrow fanfic? What we will see now is that yes, they

exist. Though fandom and fanfiction have their own divisions, which cannot be applied to an

academic essay, they can be measured with the same barometer as outer works. Fandom has its

highbrow or lowbrow fanfics, works that share some of the characteristics of their academic

counterparts; but, as always, they also have some peculiarities that make them worth an

analysis.

In previous parts of this essay, we have seen that LOTR fandom has a great number of

writers; and, therefore, of readers. But what do they like to read? Now that we know what slash,

femslahs and gen are, we can answer this question easily. After a survey in

latierramedia.livejournal.com mentioned previously and a careful analysis of the content of

webpages, we have to conclude that what readers most do is slash and gen. Heterosexual or

femslash fanfics are not very usual inLOTR fandom; whether it is because of the lack of women

in the source material or for any other reason, we do not know. I will use the results of the

survey, which was done to a limited number of people (eighteen women, varying in age from

adolescents to adults) to exemplify patterns found at a larger level. This brief analysis will help

us comprehend how LOTR fandom works and to divide it, afterwards, into highbrow andlowbrow.

Firsy of all, we have to bear in mind that even though there are a great deal of fanfic

readers, not every fan involved in other fanactivities read fanfic. In Latierramedia, seventen out

of eighteen read fanfic for any other fandom; but just eight read it forThe Lord of the Rings. The

reasons were many: some did not know good fics, some other had no interest, some would not

mind if they were recommended one, but would not look one for themselves. But the most

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common answer was that they respected and enjoyed the canon6 too much. This answer rises

many questions. The first one is why. Why they have in such esteem Tolkiens words? The

answer could be that they considerLOTR a classic, something of high culture, unchangeable and

sacred. The other question is why it is, therefore, allowed to write about other source materials

except this one. The answer could be the same. Other works canon, such as the canon ofHarry

Potter, does not have the same treatment as The Lord of the Rings. This attitude towards

fanfiction is a hint of what is considered highbrow in fandom, and we will come back to it later

on. Amongst those who read, the favourite genre is gen over slash. LOTR fandom is divided

mainly into those branches, and all slash fiction usually involves the two main male figures:

Legolas and Aragorn. There are also fanfics involving Legolas and Haldir and, also very often,

fanfics protraying an incestuous7 relationship between Elladan and Elrohir. Slash fanfiction in

The Lord of the Rings, mostly those fics Aragorn/Legolas, protray Arwen as dead or as an elvish

witch who has enchanted Aragorn; Boromir as in love with either Legolas or Aragorn, and thus

having to die for the sake of the plot; and take place during the Fourth Age, when Aragorn and

Legolas reign Gondor happily with their children8.

On the other hand, gen fic conveys every other kind of non-slash fiction. Some

heterosexual relationships, hobbit-related fiction, frienship-related issues and so on. A very

widespread and usually accepted in fandom are parodies. Parodies of the books and the movies

can be seen through the whole net, and fanfiction parodies are not an exception. One example of

a parody made into a comic book can be found on the Spanish zine SupeinGO! It is divided in

three parts and the authors nickname is Kaoru Okino

A very popular genre (though no one read about it in the survey done in Latierramedia)

forThe Lord of the Rings fandom are the rewritings of the story. Most of them involve one or

more Original Characters (OC) that will become the 10th Walker of the Fellowship and thus

change the fate of the Ring. These OCs are usually young girls, and they can enter the story in

6Canon: Canon (in the context offandom) is a source, or sources, considered authoritative by the fannishcommunity. In other words, canon is what fans agree "actually" happened in a film, television show,novel, comic book, or concert tour. The term derives from the theological concept of canon, thefoundational texts of a religion. Specific sources considered canon may vary even within a specificfandom. (Fanlore, 2008)In The Lord of the Rings, canon may be the book-canon, the movie-canon or a mixture of both.7 Incest and slash fandom deserves an essay on its own. I want to clarify, nevertheless, that it is notstrange at all to find brother/brother relationships in fanworks. To say even more, twincest (twin/twinincest) is even more popular amongst its followers than common incest. Two famous examples of incest:Fred/George, the twin Weasley brothers inHarry Potter; and Wincest, Sam/Dean Winchester brothers,

protagonists ofSupernatural.8 Children of their own. M-Preg, or male pregnancy, is a usual component of some slash fanfiction. Fans

want their ships (pairings, comes from relationship) to have their own children; and thus mpreg is given.They usually pay no attention to tha laws of nature or science, and invent magical explanations or giveno explanations at all.

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two different ways: by being a person existing in Middle-Earth, most usually an elf, or by

magically appearing in Tolkiens world, usually before the Council takes place. The latter kind

of retelling has resemblances with other fantasy novels in which a person of the normal world

appears in another and gets involved in many adventures, having to save said world of a fatal

destiny. Two well-known series novels The Chronicles of Narnia, written by one of Tolkiens

best friends C.S. Lewis. Another characteristic of this kind of fanfiction is that the female

protagonist tends to fall in love with one of the male protagonists usually Legolas, as he is not

taken like Aragorn, will not die like Boromir, is neither a hobbit, a dwarf nor and old wizard

and is, moreover, beautiful and inmortal. It exists the possibility that another man Boromir or

Eomer will fall in love with said OC as well as the OCs love interest, but they will soon

understand that they have nothing to do or, in the case of Boromir, will die in repentance. The

phenomenon of the 10th Walker is, nevertheless, curiuous in itself because, even though it

superpoblates the fandom, the main characters are usually Mary Sues9 and the great majority of

fandom tends to hate them. Why are these fictions so abundant, then?

We have seen now the preferences of fandom regarding LOTR fanfiction. There are,

nevertheless, some contradictions, or at least strange cases, that could be explained if we

divided written fanworks as we divide academic ones: not because of their genre but because

their status. As we have previously stated, we are going to apply the distinction between

highbrow and lowbrow to fanfiction, and classify all the subtypes we have analyzed into one of

these two groups. We will also explain why some kind of fanfiction belongs to one group and

not to the other. We shall start with highbrow fanfiction.

First of all, it is needed to be reminded that highbrow works are those directed to a

limited audience. This is also true for fanfiction, and a very important characteristic. Fanfic

writers or fanfickers who belong to the highbrow fiction write their stories for fans that are

very aware of the canon of the books. They do not write for fans of the films or for those who

do no relate as much as them to the canon of the books. Therefore, highbrow fiction will bespecific, full of references to minor places and characters; references that a true fan will surely

understand, but that a mediocre fan will fail to perceive. A fanfic that illustrates this very well

is the well-known The Captain and the King by plasticChevy. It narrates the story of the

9Mary Sue: AMary Sueis anoriginal character in fan fiction, usually but not always female, who forone reason or another is deemed unrealistic by readers. The usual rationale behind labeling a character aMary Sue is that she is "too perfect" or excels in one or more ways. She is often considered a mere "self-insert" of the author. The main difficulty with true Mary Sues in fan fiction is that they warp the

characterization and even the established story lines of the canon characters and settings.The male version of a Mary Sue is a Gary Stu .

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Fellowship from the moment when Merry and Pippin are taken hostages of the orcs. It is an

AU10about Aragorn and Boromir, and how Boromir helps his King gain the throne of Gondor.

Another example, written in Spanish, is the one by the livejournal user inesika8. She confesses

herself a not very asiduous reader ofLOTR fanfiction, and never planned to write one to begin

with. It is called Razones para quedarse Reasons to stay and tells the story of how Bilbo

decided to adopt Frodo. She even mentions characters that appear but once in the book, such as

Dudo Baggins, younger brother of Drogo Baggins, father of Frodo.

The second characteristic that a highbrow fic must posses lays in its genre. One piece of

fiction can be extremely well written, with as many details as possible, and still not be

considered highbrow because of its very genre. Curiously enough, this of fanfic suffers the same

treatment that Tolkiens work itself suffered fifty years ago: it was disminished because of its

very genre, fantasy. One example of this is a fanfiction written by Azalais called Amid the

Powers and Chances of this World. With 49 chapters plus appendix and acknowledgements, it

narrates the story of Rowanna, a girl from Rohan who ends up in Rivendell. Though her story

interacts with the one of the Fellowship, she does not become the 10th Walker and follows her

own path. The writer clearly shows her manage of Middle-Earth in a style very similar though

they are not up to comparison to Tolkiens. Nevertheless, she is still an original character and,

even worse, she and Legolas fall in love wihin the little intercourse they have.

Slash and femslash are also clearly left out from the highbrow labels, because of reasons

we will later see. This leaves us with the conclusion that highbrow fanworks are those made by

real fans for real fans, dealing with familiar settings and treating topics such as friendship,

courage and the value of family and love. Very close, indeed, to the topics Tolkien itself dealt

within his books; and that may be the final and most important characteristic for a fanwork to be

highbrow: its closeness with the original canon, the perfect management of characters and

places portraying them as they actually behave, as Tolkien would have done.

Lowbrow works are the rest: slash fiction, fics with OCs and those written following the

movie-canon or with the canon mixed. But it is not only the genre what makes a fanfiction

lowbrow. Bad spelling and grammar, poor writing, wrong characterization of characters and

places, cheap plotes, Mary Sues and M-Preg are, amongst others, the principal causes for a

fanfic to be considered lowbrow. These are, moreover, the more usual kind of fiction: not

portraying them all, but every having one kind of defect. A Spanish forum, Los Malos Fics,

dedicates itself to correct such fics and clean the fandom, as an Ivory Tower for High Culture in

10 Alternative Universe, in which elements of the main plot are changed or completely removed, such asBoromirs death.

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Fandom. We will take the first fanfic that appears in the thread forum as an example of what a

fanfiction should not have and makes it, therefore, lowbrow. Said fic is called Secretos del

PasadoSecrets from the Past and was written by Lost Souls of Destruction. It tells the story

of two Elvish princesses that appear in the middle of the Council and become themselves the

10th and 11th Walkers of the Fellowship. In the forum, they point out the authors many mistakes

the major one not having read the book hoping that she will correct them, improve her fic and

consequently to improve the fandom. Those mistakes are, as said before, bad spelling and

writing, poor characterization, misspelling of some names Guimli instead of Gimli, Lgolas

instead of Legolas, and so on; and that the two main characters, her original characters, are

considered Mary Sues.

To further exemplify what a lowbrow fic is I will quote two different works. Both are in

Spanish, belong to the slash genre and one of them has hints of incest and deals with the issue of

M-Preg. Both can be found in a Spanish archive for slash fiction, Amor-Yaoi. The first one is

called InmortalidadInmortality, by Lady Baelish. Its summary states very clear what kind of

fic the reader will find: Boromir, under the negative influence of the Ring, rapes Legolas. This

rape breaks the Mirkwoods prince mind; and, at the same time he is trying to recover, Aragorn

is trying to seduce him. The second one is called La Salvacin The Salvation, written by La

Oscura Reina Angel. Here is the summary, as it was written in Spanish:

11

These two extracts clearly exemplify what fanfic writers should not do if they wanted to be

labelled as highbrow.

As we have seen through this essay, written works inspired by The Lord of the Rings are

two different worlds sharing one common structure. Even though it may seem that fan

phenomenon is just one obscure, uncomprehensible mass as seen from the outside, it

structurates itself with the same social hierarchy as academic works do. There are fanworks

more accepted than others, genres more popular or devoted than others, and pieces of writing

better considered than others. The only differences that exist in reality between academic works

11 It is imposible to translate this extract into English and not lose meaning in the process, that is why it isleft in the original Spanish. I have not changed anything of it.

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and fanworks, is that fans pour all the love from their hearts in their works expecting nothing:

not publication, not financial remuneration, no social recognition. They just have the hope that,

trhough their words, they may make feel, live, vibrate another person as the source material

made themselves feel. They want to inspire because they were inspired, in this case, by J.R.R.

Tolkiens words. That is why they will always be Ringers, wanderers in Middle-Earth.

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_World

Broadway, C. & Cordova, C. (2005). Ringers: Lord of the Fans. United States: Sony Pictures

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Chance, J. (2001). Tolkiens Art. Kentucky: Kentucky U.P.

Curry, P. (1998). Defending Middle-Earth. Tolkien: Myth and Modernity. London: Harper

Collins.

Flieger, V. (1997).A Question of Time: J.R.R. Tolkiens Road to Fari. Kent, Ohio: Kent U.P.

Foster, R. (1999). Gua Completa de la Tierra Media. Barcelona: Minotauro.

Inesika8 (Mdnight Juliet).Razones para quedarse. In http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7020782/1/

Jackson, P. (2001). The Lord of the Rings. New Zealand: New Line Cinema.

Kishimoto, M. (1997).Naruto. Japan: Shueisha.

LadyBaelish. Inmortalidad. In http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?

sid=59110&warning=5

La Oscura Reina Angel.La Salvacin. In http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?sid=20341

Lewis, C.S. (1950-56). The Chronicles of Narnia. United Kingdom: Harper Collins.

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plasticChevy. The Captain and the King. Inhttp://h.t.ioki.tripod.com/lotr/Captain1.htm

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et al. (1936). Songs for the philologists. London: University College.

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(1993).Morgoths Ring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
http://alicexz.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4fkx9lhttp://alicexz.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4fkx9lhttp://www.fanfiction.net/s/6582878/1/bAmid_b_the_bPowers_b_and_Chances_of_the_Worldhttp://www.fanfiction.net/s/6582878/1/bAmid_b_the_bPowers_b_and_Chances_of_the_Worldhttp://www.fanfiction.net/s/7020782/1/http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?sid=59110&warning=5http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?sid=59110&warning=5http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?sid=59110&warning=5http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?sid=20341http://supeingofanzine.deviantart.com/http://supeingofanzine.deviantart.com/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/05/jrr-tolkien-nobel-prizehttp://h.t.ioki.tripod.com/lotr/Captain1.htmhttp://h.t.ioki.tripod.com/lotr/Captain1.htmhttp://alicexz.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4fkx9lhttp://www.fanfiction.net/s/6582878/1/bAmid_b_the_bPowers_b_and_Chances_of_the_Worldhttp://www.fanfiction.net/s/6582878/1/bAmid_b_the_bPowers_b_and_Chances_of_the_Worldhttp://www.fanfiction.net/s/7020782/1/http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?sid=59110&warning=5http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?sid=59110&warning=5http://amor-yaoi.com/fanfic/viewstory.php?sid=20341http://supeingofanzine.deviantart.com/http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/05/jrr-tolkien-nobel-prizehttp://h.t.ioki.tripod.com/lotr/Captain1.htm


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(1992). Sauron Defeated. The End of the Third Age. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

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Webpages:

All definitions at http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_PageFanfiction.net www.fanfiction.net

Latierramedia http://latierramedia.livejournal.com

Amor-Yaoi www.amor-yaoi.com

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http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://www.fanfiction.net/http://latierramedia.livejournal.com/http://www.amor-yaoi.com/http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Pagehttp://www.fanfiction.net/http://latierramedia.livejournal.com/http://www.amor-yaoi.com/


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SPECIAL THANKS

Special thanks to Ada Ross, the best beta that ever existed;

And to the whole community oflatierramedia, who patiently fulfilled my survey and

answered my questions in detail. Thank you for helping me out and sharing with me your ringer

experience.

Elessarby Alicexz.

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Documents

Wanderers in Middle Earth