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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   34503 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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I am, remain, and probably shall still be, salty about this. Because the Rings of Power showrunners (I refuse to refer any longer to any relation to "The Lord of the Rings" because they were happy to rip up canon and wipe their backsides with it) were too incompetent to spend literally two minutes on "this is Dísa, princess of the Eastern House of the Blacklocks" as an explanation for why she's black and Durin is white (there were a few other black Dwarves in Khazad-dum, but in crowd scenes and no speaking or named parts). But no, this would have taken up valuable screen time that instead was needed for the interminable singing as the Brandyfoots meandered around the map.

"We have a black Elf!" And that was exactly what they had: one (1) black Elf. In amongst a troop of mainly white Elves (again, any Hispanic or brown Elves were blink-and-you'll miss them turning up to deliver a message and no lines to speak), so he stuck out really obviously.

Like you say: if you're going to have black or brown or non-white characters, introduce them. Give them a reason for being there. Don't plonk down one black Dwarf and one black Elf in amongst white Dwarves and Elves with names and speaking parts, and then claim you're doing Representation.

But only fascists, white supremacists, and trolls could possibly object to such shitty writing! It's not because these two losers Payne and McKay couldn't run a show to save their lives!

Don't plonk down one black Dwarf and one black Elf in amongst white Dwarves and Elves with names and speaking parts, and then claim you're doing Representation.

Or do like southpark and name them Tokenir son of Diversir and Tokenfin ...

In one of the recent episodes of South Park they reveal that Token's name was actually Tolkien the whole time (because his parents loved Lord of the Rings) and Stan was the only person who actually thought it was Token.

Any chance it happened after rings of power started airing?

It was definitely before it started airing, but it was after they had done the previews with the diverse casting, so it's possibly related, dunno.

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