#fandom studies

Last week, I shared data showing a 7% drop between the 2020 and 2025 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data around whether fans consider each others’ views on the canon when writing fanfiction. The survey contains five items structured this way: “When writing fanfiction, I consider ____ views on the canon.”

I’ve always been fascinated by Tolkien fanfiction writers and authority because fan studies wisdom would claim that we disregard traditional authorities over canon* and hand that power to ourselves, and I’ve long argued that Tolkien fans aren’t that way. Most of us do put some stock in Tolkien’s authority (and some put quite a bit!)

* "Canon,” when referring to fanfiction, means the texts that writers consider the factual basis of the world they are writing about. It’s a complicated concept, especially in Tolkien fandom where so much “canon” remains unsettled, but it’s important to recognize that its meaning is very different from the usual literary meaning. My article Who Gets to Say? delves into these questions in much more detail.

Curious if the pattern with fan authority was true elsewhere, I ran all five survey items about whose views on the canon writers consider when crafting their stories. The results show decreasing consideration of all sources of authority (though the biggest decrease is still others fans’ authority).

The graph above is a revision of the graph originally presented in “Who Gets to Say?” There is a lot more work to be done before these data can be fully analyzed, but my off-the-cuff explanation is that the across-the-board decrease can be explained by the fandom aging and growing more experienced. We are a fandom that has weathered multiple big media releases, several new books, and years of fandom debates about canon. Perhaps these data show that we are just … cynical about canon by this point? It will be interesting to see how a tendency to reject authority (or different sources of authority) correlates with time in the fandom and other items that may get at the why.

Ironically, I put together this graph to try to avoid a full article this time around about authority, and now I find myself contemplating just that. It’s dangerous business, Frodo, putting formulas into a spreadsheet …

"In the hierarchy of this [Western cultural] hegemony, queerness is relegated to a subordinate position, a position of powerlessness, discrimination, of subjugation, and of Othering. Stereotypical representations in cultural products reinforce replicate heteronormative structures, actively contributing to keeping them alive and well. Consequently, all those marginalized by the system are forced to witness their own marginalization through proxy, proving detrimental to their efforts to establish a healthy, stable relationship with their own identities.

"… By reclaiming media in which queerbaiting occurs, and bringing it into the democratized, anticapitalistic realm of fandom, queer viewers also reclaim control over their own narratives. “Stealing” and recontextualizing those cultural products is an act of self-defiance — of self-empowerment, of queer activism. It enables fans to establish counternarratives far away from the commodified spaces of popular culture. Narratives that they can control, narratives that have the potential to subvert dominant heteronormative structures, narratives that make explicit what is refused to be shown. Fandom spaces in which (queer) fans can both publish and consume those kinds of narratives foster a culture in which it is possible for those invisible in the cultural mainstream to (re)claim agency, to alter the cultural tapestry."

When I was working with the source data for last week’s post on the One Book to Rule Them All among Tolkien fanfiction writers, my eye caught on several responses in the “Other” field that cited other fans as a source for fanfiction. This is pure anecdata: just where my eye happened to land—but I recall being surprised in the 2020 data that other fans were second only to Tolkien himself as far as who writers considered authorities on the canon.

Is this still true?

Short answer: nope! It is not. The 2025 data show a shift away from fans regarding other fans as authorities.

In 2020, 61% of authors agreed that “I consider other fans’ views on the canon” when crafting their stories. Five years later, only 53% of authors agreed.

Interestingly, a similar question that asks about writers’ consideration of Tolkien’s views remains essentially the same between 2020 and 2025, so what is it about fan authority in particular—especially in a fandom that appears to be older, more experienced, and less influenced by media adaptations than it was five years ago—that leads to skepticism?

To say you are a Tolkien fan in 2026 does not imply a single origin story. Did one of the films spark your interest? Did you read The Hobbit as a child and never left Middle-earth? Did you become acquainted with legendarium through a game or even through fanworks? Tolkien fans arrive in Middle-earth through all of these ports of call and more.

Yet fanfiction writers—at least according to the data from three Tolkien Fanfiction Surveys now—are largely book writers. Yes, they use the films and, more recently (though less commonly), Rings of Power, but you rarely encounter a Tolkien fanfiction writer who has not picked up the books.

I made this point in my 2022 article Becoming Bookverse, which responded to mounting anxiety among Tolkien fanfiction writers as the debut of Rings of Power neared: Media adaptations of Tolkien bring fans into the fandom and, in the fanfiction fandom, then entice them toward the books. I predicted that The Rings of Power would do the same.

I was wrong in that Rings of Power has been but a ripple in the fanfiction world, but more importantly, I was not wrong about the precedence of the books. Data from the 2025 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey shows that this is more true than ever.

In 2015, two authors used only the films for their fanfiction; in 2020, four authors responded this way. In 2025, not a single author used only the films as a source for writing fanfiction.

Put another way, in three surveys, ten years, and 1,341 responses from fanfiction writers, only six people used only the films as sources.

No one used only the Rings of Power show as a source for fanfiction (and only 16% of authors used it at all—the least-used source among the choices in the survey).

The Rings of Power is set for at least five seasons. It’s possible that the ripple could become a wave if future seasons do more to encourage fanworks—but it’s also hard to imagine that wave being anything on the order of the Lord of the Rings films, and if bookverse fandom remains in place after that tsunami, I think we’re good for a while yet.

... and that book is changing.

Since the release of The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s, the One Book for fanfiction writers has been The Lord of the Rings. The past two Tolkien Fanfiction Surveys documented this, showing it to be the source used most often by fanfiction writers in crafting their stories.

In the 2025 data, this fact remains unchanged—but the gap is narrowing. The Silmarillion is very close to being the source used most often by fanfiction writers.

In 2015, 89% of authors used The Lord of the Rings. Only 78% used The Silmarillion.

In 2020, that gap widened: 91% of authors wrote stories using The Lord of the Rings. 75% used The Silmarillion.

In 2025, there was motion in the opposite direction. The number of authors using The Lord of the Rings dropped to 87%, while the number writing based on The Silmarillion rose to 84%.

Past analysis of survey data shows that Tolkien fanfiction writers expand their use of books the longer they write in the fandom, which might partly explain these data as well. Tolkien fanfiction is aging with a reduced influx of new authors, so it makes sense that those who stuck around since 2020, who may have been Lord of the Rings or Hobbit writers, have possibly expanded into The Silmarillion. What these data don’t explain is the drop in interest in writing based on The Lord of the Rings.

One year’s worth of data does not make a pattern, so it will be interesting to see if the 2030 survey continues this trend, maybe even with The Silmarillion overtaking The Lord of the Rings.

One of the pieces of data I was most excited to get my hands on when the 2025 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey closed concerned the impact of the Rings of Power television series. In 2022, amidst rising anxiety that the show would overtake Tolkien fanfiction fandom, I wrote to “expect a new wave of fans eager to read and learn and write about Middle-earth … from the books.” That was the effect of the two trilogies produced by Peter Jackson and his team. Both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit had a massive effect on the fanfiction fandom, but neither became sources for fanfiction in their own rights, absent the books.

Data from the 2025 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey shows that the influence of The Rings of Power is so far significantly less overwhelming. The film trilogies didn’t just create a splash; they kicked up a tsunami. In the 2020 and 2025 surveys, 45% of authors agreed that they started writing fanfiction because of these films. 45%! Nearly half! Even ten years after the last Hobbit film rolled credits in the last theater showing it!

In comparison, 9% of authors agreed with the statement, “I started writing Tolkien-based fanfiction because of the Rings of Power television series.” And this is while the series is airing.

Furthermore, 85% of authors disagreed with the same statement. (69% strongly disagreed.)

I’m excited to unpack these data further. For example, do those 9% of fans follow authors inspired by the film trilogies in turning to the books? Or is this a splinter fandom, using a media adaptation as its sole source? Among those who strongly disagreed, is this because they’re fandom olds, like me, who started writing fanfiction while the showrunners were still being carded? Or is their choice of “strongly” intended as commentary on the show itself?

The show has many seasons left to air, and it’s possible that it will capture the interest of fanfiction writers in seasons to come, but so far, it is not making a tsunami, wave, or splash—just a ripple.