With the smashing success of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Desolation of Smaug, the Tolkien fandom has found new life and new fan fiction. The lack of female representation in Tolkien’s Middle Earth has been addressed through a plethora of rule 63 fan fiction; rule 63 is the rewriting of a male character as female character—also known as “gender-bending.” It is no surprise that fandom—a predominantly female and feminist dominated space—would rewrite Tolkien’s world with female protagonists; what is surprising, however, is the predominance and reassertion of heteronormativity between fandom’s most popular pairing, Thorin Oakenshield and Bilbo Baggins. Once Bilbo Baggins is rule 63ed his name is often feminized to “Bilba” or “Billa,” his hobbit size and proportions are rewritten from stout to “curvy and cute,” sometimes even “delicate,” and the quiet gentility of hobbit customs is translated into a sexually repressive construction of patriarchal gender norms most similar to modern historical romance fiction set in the early Nineteenth century. In a world where gender continues to be the epicenter of a tumultuous and far too often violently fatal struggle, this tendency in fandom to reassert heteronormativity raises pressing questions for how the myths of compulsory heterosexuality remain fundamentally unchanged despite the explosion of feminist discourse in social media spaces. Using rule 63 Bilbo I will consider how fan fiction uses gender-bending to subvert and rewrite the patriarchal myths of Middle Earth while paradoxically reasserting and upholding the myth of compulsory heterosexuality.
About the presenterJessica McCall
Dr. Jessica McCall is a Professor of English at Delaware Valley University. She received her Ph.D. in Early Modern Literature from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas under the guidance of Dr. Evelyn Gajowski. Dr. McCall’s research interests involve the functions of myth and its intersections with gender, power, and who gets to be fully human. Her first monograph, “Myths of Warrior Women from the 16th Century to the Present” is forthcoming from De Gruyter.