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#diverse Tolkien
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Isn’t it funny that you never see anyone throwing a hissy fit over the inclusion of flora not native to Medieval Europe in Tolkien or other fantasy works.
Tomatoes, tobacco, POTATOES, tea and sugar, are all perfectly acceptable and normal for Tolkien to have included in Middle earth, but depict a single character with brown skin, and suddenly it’s not realistic, and WHAT ABOUT OUR HERITAGE.
Forget that we don’t analyze the heritage of white actors playing these rolls to make sure they’re from the proper culture to represent Tolkien’s extremely English story. Has a single person ever complained that Frodo and Sam were played by Americans when Hobbiton is CLEARLY based on rural England?
According to some, Hobbits can grow food and other crops that were only introduced into Europe through the violence of imperialism, but to have the hobbits look like the people who originally grew those crops is sacrilegious.
Medieval Europe, which wasn’t as homogenous as people think anyways, is only ever trotted out to justify hating the inclusion of black and brown characters.
If Sam can wax poetic about potatoes, he can look like came from Peru, like potatoes did.
And if that idea bothers you, maybe examine why.
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okay this episode of code switch podcast on race in dungeons and dragons (and fantasy as a genre more broadly) is mostly all stuff i talk about here all the time but the specifics surrounding gary gygax the history of d&d/rpgs was new to me and really made it clear how it's just like. oh you really don't have to connect any dots you don't have to extrapolate or read between the lines it's just right there huh
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also sidenote i know this is something i never shut up about but honestly the amount of harm jrr tolkien did to fantasy as a genre (and obviously, you know, real life people of color) by constructing the modern conception of orcs as, in his own words, "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types" … truly immeasurable. literally imagine what we could have if the foundations of this entire fucking genre hadn't been built on white imperial fantasies about good and evil and wanting to be able to guilt-free dream up scenarios where they could massacre hordes of some inherently evil subhuman species to save the world
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mirra-kan · 1 year
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FAITHFUL HARADRIM KING I created several lore-friendly OCs to represent the Faithful haradrims. This is Yaroh the Just from Near Harad. Khisar's Father. This might turn to a ZIne one day, I believe ☽ ☼ ☾ 
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camille-lachenille · 9 months
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@tolkiengenweek DAY FIVE: Culture • Diversity • Traditions:
Being of the same age, rank and of similar enough mixed heritage, their parents and guardians had declared they should play together. Elwing glared at Eärendil, arms crossed on her chest. “You speak weird!” she declared with a definitive tone.
Ëarendil glared back. “You speak weird!” he replied with a pout. “I speak just like my ammë and my papa speak.”
“They speak weird too!” Elwing countered. “And I learned how to speak like a princess with Lord Oropher and Nellas.” She didn’t say that Lord Oropher was a stuffy old grump and Nellas called her Lúthien on the days she was less present. She didn’t say she had no parents to pick language tics and mannerism from.
Eärendil’s frown softened. “Maybe you can teach me how to speak like the people here?” he asked with uncertainty. “And I can teach you songs in exchange?”
Elwing nodded firmly and extended a had for him to shake. “We have a deal!”
From that moment on, they were best friends, and one was never seen without the other. Elwing taught proper Sindarin to Eärendil, and hand games with silly songs in Iathrim Sindarin. He taught her to play hopscotch in the sand. “In Gondolin I drew it on the stone with the colourful chalks Glorfindel gave me,” he said as he traced the grid on the beach with seashells and driftwood. “But this is pretty too.” The song to play hopscotch was in Gondolindrim Quenya, and Elwing felt she was doing something very bad by speaking this language. She asked Eärendil to teach her more of this forbidden language. He taught her Taliska, too, his father’s language.
They were thirteen and Eärendil spent his summer apprenticing with the carpenters at the heavens of Sirion. He came back each evening with splinters on his hands and sea shanties in the Falathrim dialect with lyrics that made them giggle and blush when they sang together. Elwing made him Lembas for his first day of sailing. “The receipt comes from my ancestress Melian,” she told him. “Only the highest ranking lady of the Sindar can make and give Lembas, and only to people she deems worthy.” Eärendil beamed at her as he accepted the leaf-wrapped package.
On the eve of the first day of summer, the refugees from Gondolin all regrouped around Idril on the easternmost square of Sirion, and, from Midnight to Dawn, stood silent there. At the first light of day, they sung laments in their old language. The year they turned fifteen, Eärendil brought Elwing with him. “It was a night of celebration, when I was a child, Tarnin Austa,” he explained after the silence was broken and the laments sung. “Now it is a night to remember the fallen city of Gondolin and all those who died defending our escape, and all those who couldn’t escape the fire.” When his voice cracked at the end, it was not because he was a teenage boy but because of the grief. Elwing held his hands as he cried.
They were twenty and both adults by the laws of Men when Idril and Tuor decided to try sail West. Elwing gave them plenty of lembas and blessed their ship the Falalathrim way. Eärendil said his farewell in the mix of Quenya and Taliska proper to his family. He stood on the pier until the ship disappeared on the horizon. Elwing stood with him, wondering if she would ever leave Sirion. Life at the mouths of the sea was hard and grimmer by the day but it was all she had ever known, no matter how much the surviving lords and ladies of Doriath had tried to raise her in the culture if her birth. Idril and Tuor, a Noldo and a Man, were more her parents than Dior and Nimloth ever had the chance to be. She spoke Sindarin with the undefined accent of Sirion, this ragtag town of exiles and refugees from all over Beleriand. Elwing was as much an Elf as she was a Daughter of Men, she was all and nothing at the same time. And, as she silently walked back to her house, she knew she wouldn’t want it another way.
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entishramblings · 2 years
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soo I just watched the rings of power……
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tarninausta · 2 years
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And behold! There Luthien walked before his eyes in Rivendell, clad in a mantle of silver and blue, fair as the twilight in Elvenhome.
- J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Return of the King”, Appendix A
trans Arwen ⭐ queer tolkien headcanons (4/?)
[ID: A picspam consisting of 12 images in pink, blue, and white.
1: Stars, from space / 2: A woman with brown skin behind a pink veil with golden embroidery / 3: A window in a pink wall / 4: Text reading “Arwen” and “noble maiden” / 5: A peacock with white and golden feathers / 6: A fountain with clear blue water / 7: A woman wearing a pink outfit consisting of shirt, skirt, and a veil and scarf / 8: A golden star garland / 9: Text reading “Undomiel” and “evenstar” / 10: A doorway in a wall built from blue patterned tiles  / 11: A crumpled piece of turquoise, translucent fabric with a golden trim / 12: A meadow of pink flowers /End ID]
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Tolkien artist @ismeneee illustrations and character portraits fairly leap off of the screen ... or now the page. Ismene's artwork was recently featured on the cover of the Tolkien Society Seminar proceedings for Tolkien and Diversity. Since Shadow recently reviewed this volume, we hoped that Ismene would chat with us about what it's like to be a self-taught Tolkien fan artist whose work was chosen for the proceedings of the best-attended Tolkien Society Seminar, and she kindly obliged.
In this month's Tolkien Fanartics, @anerea-lantiria spoke with Ismene about the draw (pardon the pun!) of The Silmarillion as an inspiration of fan art, her creative process, and of course the Tolkien character she would meet in person if given the chance. You can read Anérea's interview with Ismene here.
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antiracist-tolkien · 2 years
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I love fanworks of Tolkien characters where they have dark skin and it doesn't change anything, but I wish there were more works where a character’s blackness or brownness was more than their appearance.
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This week brought another battle over representation, “wokeness” and pop culture. The release of the new “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” streaming series on Amazon generated backlash over the fact that Black actors were cast as elves in the adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work. Writers for conservative outlets blasted the show: “Properties are being ripped out from the past in order to be revamped and remade for modern times, and this always includes an injection of woke culture and social justice values,” said one essay in Red State. [...] I swear, I’m lucky I don’t have more headaches with all the eye-rolling and side-eyeing I’ve been doing lately. The manufactured panic of mostly White men about characters of color and “wokeness” in today’s public discourse is just so tiring.
How many times have Black people had to endure having their music and creativity repackaged for White audiences? A few of the endless examples: The show “Friends,” with its all-White cast, was essentially a remake of “Living Single,” the ’90s sitcom with an all-Black cast. The sound of legendary singing groups like “Boyz II Men” was basically copied by all White boy bands such as ’NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, and 98 Degrees — all of whom became icons. (This is captured well in the Netflix documentary “This Is Pop.”) And for that matter, haven’t we all been subjected to White Cleopatra, White Jesus and Elvis Presley? [...] Non-White actors in fantasy roles seem to trigger the Hollywood equivalent of “white replacement theory.” As much as we eye-roll over the panic and backlash, I worry. As I write from Texas, a state that is moving to purge books from school districts that attempt to be more progressive on race and sexuality, what is to stop officials from going a step further — and banning movies they think are Trojan horses for “wokeness” and critical race theory, too?
Would these actions surprise anyone at this point? This is the tragedy of living in a world where whiteness and maleness gets centered at all times.
In such a world, elves can’t be dark-skinned. In such a world, action heroes can’t be dark-skinned Black women (more on that below). And have no doubt that this cramped vision translates to real life, too, in that it makes it harder for many people to imagine women and people of color in leadership positions, putting even more obstacles in their path (more on that below, as well).
Fantasy, science fiction and the creative retelling of history can expand our imagination about alternate worlds, scenarios, relationships. White supremacy in our storytelling deforms our collective imagination and impairs our ability to understand the past, to make change in the present and to dream of new worlds to build for the future.
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There were no “real” elves in history. They were imagined by Tolkien. And according to a Tolkien aficionado, Tolkien only described one elf, Maeglin, as having white skin; nowhere does he say that all elves were white. That so many fans believe that Tolkien’s elves were all white is a projection by a dominant white society onto the characters in Tolkien’s novels. 
But regardless of what skin color Tolkien imagined for his elves, it can help a society to grow if there can be “creative retellings” of stories. As Karen Attiah points out: 
Fantasy, science fiction and the creative retelling of history can expand our imagination about alternate worlds, scenarios, relationships.
If we can imagine women and people of color in leadership roles, or as heroes in a fantasy, we as a society will better be able to make room in reality for diversity in leadership and in role models.
________________
Screencap via People
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overthinkinglotr · 1 year
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RE: Amazon's Lord of the Rings series: I think this excellent video from Sarah z -- about the way that right-wing backlash against certain media properties makes it nearly impossible to have genuine conversations about them, because you can't talk about them in good faith without inadvertently adding to the right-wing dogpile of people criticizing them for racist sexist reasons -- conveys pretty much everything I should probably say about it ladjflksdfs. Sarah Z makes a great point that this kind of vicious right-wing backlash often tends to deliberately focus media properties that are mediocre because of other reasons (like boring corporate mandates) and claim they're mediocre because of diversity. Right-wingers intentionally ignore properties that have diversity and are Good, and intentionally ignore the billions of shows/movies that aren't "woke" but are also similarly mediocre. Because right-wingers don't actually care about the "quality of art" unless they can use that as a weapon to attack the people they hate.
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radicalposture · 6 months
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tolkien i love you but if you describe one more character as dark haired pale skinned and grey eyed
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mihrsuri · 9 months
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sparked by @captainlordauditor tags because just now I went ‘Narnia had a thriving trading relationship with Calormen that actually continued somewhat under Jardis (or posssibly illicitly)’ because damn it Clive I will world build your world and that, that is how Marmalade.
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mirra-kan · 1 year
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Peoples of Middle Earth: character concept sketch Khand / Near Harad borderlands (?)
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ravenpuffheadcanons · 8 months
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Readers should read widely for a variety of reasons - different genres and topics appeal at different times; immersing yourself one week in a complex intergalactic war, the next week in the political machinations of the Tudor court, and the next in the in-depth dynamics of a dysfunctional family - without leaving your house - feels like a form of very advanced magic; exposing yourself to different perspectives broadens your horizons and helps you think about the world in more depth.
Writers should read widely because sometimes you read a short story by a respected mystery writer, accepted by a real publishing firm in 1942 and then republished on purpose in 2023, where the solution was "an eagle did it". If that can find a receptive audience, so can I.
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Article by @thedaughterofshadows, photograph by @dawnfelagund.
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Diversity in the works and fandom of J.R.R. Tolkien has been a topic of much discussion in recent years as recognition grows that Tolkien's "mythology for England" is read by far more than the English ... or English speakers even. The Tolkien fan community is an international one, with fans from every inhabited continent on the globe bringing their perspectives to bear on the legendarium. Within this international community, Tolkien fans belong to myriad identity groups, some of them marginalized in both Tolkien's and the real world. Significant media coverage devoted to the diverse casting of Amazon's Rings of Power series rocketed these discussions—once limited to some fannish and scholarly enclaves—into the realm of popular discourse.
The 2021 Tolkien Society Seminar on the theme "Tolkien and Diversity" was therefore timely. The best-attended seminar to date, Tolkien and Diversity has now been published as a book containing some of the papers delivered at the seminar. In our latest Read & Review column, Shadow takes a look at the proceedings and what they have to offer to the Tolkien fan who is interested in the topic. They conclude that the proceedings balance discussion of the international fan community with papers about marginalized identities and provide a summary of each paper before offering advice to potential buyers about whether the book is a good addition to their Tolkien collection.
You can read Shadow'a review of Tolkien and Diversity here, published by @silmarillionwritersguild.
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essenceofarda · 2 years
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