🚪 Going 'Through the Wardrobe'
A new section comes to Jokien with Tolkien. PLUS: Giveaway winners!
Congrats to the winners of my Tolkien Reading Day giveaway!
Grand Prize: Jessica S | 1st Prize: Isaiah L | 2nd Prize: Matt H | 3rd Prize: Justin H
The winners have all been contacted and responded to me and their prizes are en route!
Also: quick reminder that The Fellowship of the Readers kicks off a yearlong readthrough of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings tomorrow, 4/12! Subscribe today to take the journey from the very beginning!
Hello all!
As you may or may not have not have noticed, I have organized the newsletters that I send out here at Jokien with Tolkien into a few broad categories. In Substack parlance they’re known as “sections” and they function a bit as newsletters within a newsletter.1
These sections here at Jokien with Tolkien are:
LOLs of the Rings — Lord of the Rings and Tolkien humor. Good examples of these sorts of posts are the recent “Gandalf Attempts to Access His Account on Moria.net” and “Tolkien and Lewis Bicker Over Fantasy” posts:
Tolkien Talk — essays and articles about Tolkien, his works, and their adaptations. Some examples from this section are my essays on grief and loss in The Lord of the Rings and on Easter and eucatastrophe:
Tolkien Treasures — roundups of Tolkien content from around the internet. This section has shifted from a monthly feature to a more occasional one, but along with the most recent Tolkien Treasures I’ve included here my annual gift guide, as it falls under this category too.
But they were — all of them — deceived, for another section was made…
Introducing Through the Wardrobe
I began this newsletter in November 2022 as a place to keep in contact with you all directly, unbeholden to the capricious whims of social media algorithms, and to write expanded thoughts on Tolkien, faith, and (pop) culture. Up to this point the ‘recipe’ for content here has been mostly Tolkien with a bit of faith and culture sprinkled in, and I don’t have any complaints about that! I’ve enjoyed how this space has developed and am proud of the content that I’ve put out this past year plus.
But while I absolutely love Tolkien and have no plans to stop writing humor pieces or serious analysis of his works and their adaptations to share with you all, I occasionally have a hankering to share my thoughts on broader topics in sci-fi fantasy and literature/film in what I’ll call Tolkien-adjacent subjects.
But what to do with these topics? What I’ve decided on is to introduce a new section for Jokien with Tolkien to collect them under a single banner.
I’m calling this new Jokien with Tolkien section ‘Through the Wardrobe.’
Why “Through the Wardrobe”?
Those familiar with C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia will recognize a wardrobe as the titular portal connecting England to the magical realm of Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It is one of many stories in the “portal fiction” genre — like Alice in Wonderland, Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Fionavar Tapestry, and The Ten Thousand Doors of January — where a key component of the plot is the protagonist(s) traveling from one reality to another by means of a portal of some kind.
And that’s just how I envision this occasional feature here at Jokien with Tolkien: an occasional newsletter-length journey to Narnia, or that Galaxy Far, Far Away, Arrakis, or any number of other worlds out there in the genres of Sci-Fi and Fantasy (or somehow related to Tolkien and his creations).
This week’s special shout-out goes to Christian C, Matthew P, Dan J, and Majik who all became a member of the Jokien with Tolkien: Extended Edition this week! I so appreciate each and every paid subscriber: your support of me and this newsletter means everything to me!
To join them and all the other members of the Extended Edition in receiving an additional newsletter a month, participating in exclusive community discussions, and helping make this newsletter possible, consider upgrading for $5 a month or ($45 a year) today:
“What’s In It For Me?” Managing Substack Sections
Like I said earlier, a section here on Substack is a newsletter within a larger publication. Think of it as different sections in a newspaper (Sports, Opinion, Local, etc.) or even different television channels that categorize and collect similar content under a recognizable brand so audiences know what to expect.
“Well that’s great for you, Josh,” you might say. “Glad you’re so organized. But why go on at length about this?”
Here’s the benefit to you, reader:
A newsletter that has sections enables subscribers to receive only what they want to receive from that publication.
Let’s imagine that you’re a subscriber to Jokien with Tolkien who really loves all the humor in LOLs Of The Rings but doesn’t really care for the curated Tolkien links and deals that I send out in Tolkien Treasures. Or perhaps you’re someone who craves the in-depth essays and analysis in Tolkien Talk but isn’t all that interested in content about other media or pop culture subjects.
If you go to jrrjokien.com/account you can manage which sections you’ll receive emails for when I have a new post in that section.
Just toggle the sections in question on/off and you’re set!
If you’re reading this and subscribed you should already be receiving posts from all the sections unless you’ve changed something manually. Again, if you’d like to change that, head to jrrjokien.com/account.
Of course my preference would be that you all read every word that I send out as frequently as I do so! But let’s be honest, I’d rather you hear from me less frequently than unsubscribe because you are getting too much from me that you don’t care for compared to what you do enjoy!
So what would a typical monthly schedule look like?
If in a typical month you hear from me a minimum of four times, you can expect:
One humorous post in LOLs of the Rings
One to two Tolkien Talk essays, one being exclusively for paid subscribers
One Through the Wardrobe newsletter
An occasional Tolkien Treasures newsletter
At least that’s the plan! We’ll see how things develop from here. Maybe Through the Wardrobe will end up being more occasional and not monthly, maybe I’ll have multiple humor pieces in a given month, you get the idea. But you can expect me to rotate through the sections in coming months and not be all humor or all serious (and don’t worry, this newsletter will stay firmly rooted in Tolkien and his writings).
One last thing before I wrap this up:
Call for Submissions
You may have noticed that I like to occasionally feature guest posts here on Jokien with Tolkien. Up till this point they have been articles that (understandably) focus directly on J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and other Middle-earth topics. These have typically come through relationships I already have or through people pitching me on an idea. But I haven’t put out a call for guest pieces. Until now.
Now with the introduction of Through the Wardrobe, I’d like to extend a broad invitation for submissions to Jokien with Tolkien!
If you have a Tolkien-specific idea for an article for Jokien with Tolkien, I’d love to hear it. It can be serious or humorous (or somewhere in-between.
But if you have an article that focuses on Narnia, Star Wars, Earthsea, Arakkis, or any number of other closely related sci-fi/fantasy universes that you’d like to pitch as a guest post too, I’m open to that as well!
If you’re interested, please send me an email at jrrjokien@jrrjokien.com with either your pitch for the article or your draft if you have one (a link to google docs is the preferred method if you have a draft already, but you could send a word doc or link to a Substack draft too).
I can’t promise I’ll accept every pitch and may pass for a number of reasons, but I’d love to at least consider how we might work together to spread quality writing on literature and pop culture — from Tolkien to beyond — to interested readers.
The Road Goes Ever On
Thank you all for bearing with me through this post that’s a bit more “inside baseball” than usual. I hope that you’re excited for what’s to come and where we’ll all journey together! I know I am.
Namárië,
Josh
There and Back Again
Wherein I share highlights from previous years of Jokien with Tolkien
This week last year I shared an essay on how Tolkien’s works help us to carry on in the face of death, planting gardens and promises of hope.
New Life, In Defiance of Death
There’s a scene from The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies that Peter Jackson left on the cutting room floor that I’ve been mulling over for the past few weeks.
Appendices
It has just occurred to me that I can use this space to share some of my favorite Notes! Here are a few recent ones of mine for your amusement:
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It’s newsletters all the way down
Love this idea! I’m excited to hear what you have to say on broader Sci-fi/fantasy subjects!
I'll certainly consider sending a guest essay if I can find the time to write one.