If I might make the gentlest, most sotto voce suggestion:
what if instead of panels "beyond Tolkien" using Tolkien as shorthand for ubiquitous fantasy features, we had the occasional 301 panel looking at what Tolkien did in his work that's now rare or unusual?
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I just--I really love Tolkien, obvious warts & all, & I get a really specific thing from his work that I rarely get from contemporary work, & I'd love to explore that on panels.
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These tweets brought to you by my recently uttering words from the Silmarillion out loud & thus activating all the deep hungers of my childhood heart for fantasy myths of origin at the same time that HPC is repurposing The Fall of Gondolin for publication.
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(The same Fall of Gondolin that I read in The Book of Lost Tales while sitting cross-legged with my back against the wall of a haunted library that no longer exists, gulping down words & lineages & lyrics in fantasy languages)
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Appending 's thread in response to my OT here for ... maybe ease of reading? Who even knows with Twitter nowadays, but it's such a good thread!
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Love this thought. Especially since so much of post-Tolkien fantasy, especially commercial fantasy, strongly misreads Tolkien imo... twitter.com/tithenai/statu
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I'm deeply moved by how far this thread has gone! Thank you so much for your contributions! I'm delighted by how many wonderful con-running folk have said they want to take up this suggestion in their programming.
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My wish now: that those panels be as diverse as the responses to the thread. My *only* Tolkien-loving friend growing up was another woman of colour, & I'd love to see more of us get the opportunity to discuss together what it means to love this work so deeply.
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Yes, please -- not to mention the elements people who love Tolkien actually love, as opposed to the ones people who don't love Tolkien think we love.
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I think that people who love Tolkien love a wide range of varied elements. I don't want to No True Scotsman anyone here. But there's definitely one facet of that love that gets disproportionate attention.
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Seconded. Mostly when people say “Beyond Tolkien” they seem to mean something like “Beyond Shannara” or “Beyond Dragonlance” anyway.
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