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I don't see what is creatively bankrupt about race swapping a character. And I don't see how or why doing so would indicate that they are out of ideas.
Aragorn, especially after the movies, is an icon and he is white. People who ingroup blacks as morally superior see positions of power and feel an emotional need to elevate blacks to those positions. People who outgroup whites as morally inferior feel an emotional need to lower whites from those positions.
Amazon, WotC and all the 'woke' engaging companies are not creatively bankrupt. They are not 'out of ideas'. They are simply exploring a vision, chasing a dream, following ideology, walking certain priors to their logical conclusion. It's not about writing an original story that no one cares about. It's about representing truth and justice. Black people are better than white people. They are morally superior. They have been standing up against the racist injustices of America and the Western world for centuries. They have been oppressed throughout that time yet have persevered through all of it. There is no good reason for the iconography of the modern era being white. There is no reason why it shouldn't be black.
If you don't care about race there is no reason to care about Aragorn being black any more than that there is reason for you to care that the hero is destined to become king. If you do care about race, whether you consciously recognize it or not, there are two extremely predictable emotional responses to this sort of thing. You either like it or you don't. You feel an emotional resonance with the fact that something of value was changed to elevate one over the other. You feel an emotional resonance with someone expressing group allegiance to one over the other.
All in all, this isn't a problem of creativity. It's a problem of people wanting to hold on to the whiteness of the world without any institutional power to back it up. Sorry, you can't.
You're being a little too glib in dismissing "we just don't want the character changed" and "we want verisimilitude in a medieval western european setting" as motivations. For the first, I'd love a test case where hollywood whitewashes an iconic black character (say, Morpheus) to see if it inspires the same indignation in me. Hollywood has yet to indulge.
As for the second.... it's a turnoff to me that modern fantasy depicts societies where the ethnic makeup makes no goddamn sense. A well-realized setting is the draw of the genre. I want fantasy settings where the creator has designed the entire history of their world, far past what could possibly be useful, and then writes a plot set in that world. Back in the day Morrowind had relatively few white people, and none in the uncolonized bedouin interior, and I loved it; everything in the world was carefully considered. Modern studio fantasy writers, though, don't write like this. They reason backwards from the requirements of their story. Aragon must be black, not because the creator thought of the migration patterns of the Numenoreans coming from the tropics of whatever, but because... he's just black, okay? End of story.
The fact they don't care about the internal logic of the setting bleeds into everything else in worldbuilding. Rings of Power was not shit because Harfoots were racially diverse; it was shit because the writers were the sort of people who didn't care why the Harfoots would be racially diverse.
I'm not dismissing them for nothing. I'm asking you to make a value judgement. What matters more, fiction or reality? Aragorn must be black because we are in the throes of transforming a living breathing hateful society that exists all around us into something loving and caring that is open for everyone, not just white people. It's a real battle between good and evil. Not a fictional representation of it where somehow all the good guys happen to have white skin and the bad guys don't, discounting the 'traitors'.
If every single character in LoTR was made black, so the ethnic makeup makes sense, you would not take issue with it? Pardon my prejudice but I feel like you would be more than able to reason why that's not an acceptable circumstance either.
I am sure you can entertain the novelty of white fantasy with fictional races that represent white peculiarity. Be that green skinned orcs or blue skinned elves. I am not sure you can enjoy a fantasy that is no longer white. With real races that represent the reality of a hateful world that white people have lorded over for centuries.
It is amusing watching you play this straight and leaving all the people unfamiliar with your history aghast, but I am familiar with your history and we do not like trolling, however well-crafted a test of Poe's Law it may be. So speak plainly and stop trying to see how many people you can lure in with a gotcha.
It's more a steelman than a troll, I would argue. But for clarification, I'm rather confused watching people get dragged from one IP to another bemoaning 'just what the woke are doing' when these very same people buy into every single prior that the woke base their arguments on. Slavery, Jim Crow, Civil Rights. The virtuous nature of blacks implied by the mainstream historical narrative on those events. The proposition that race in America is a social problem with social causes and social solutions. (Not saying everyone I replied to fits that bill, but it's certainly very rare to find people who reject those things outside of 'extremist' circles.)
So how does one draw the line at race swapping Aragorn when one also wants to change society? It seems like an advanced form of having ones cake and eating it to. Or to be less charitable, a sort of NIMBY-ism. Where we look at the airbrushed history of black racial struggle, say it was good and just, and say it's consequences were more good than bad but then can't bring ourselves to let go of our fantasy books and popcorn flicks. Considering the sacrifices and conditions imposed on the white people of the past in the name of racial equality, the position seems absurd.
And that's fine as a stand-alone argument. Just make that argument. Then maybe someone will address your theory that you cannot simultaneously be in favor of desegregation and opposed to blackfacing white characters, instead of just getting wound up at your poe-faced devil's advocacy. This whole stunt is bad for discourse, and if people engaged in this routinely, then no argument could be taken at face value. This is supposed to be a place where you can make arguments and have them taken at face value.
It is a genuine position regardless of everything else.
And no, just stating the argument in the abstract is not the same as actually having the argument in earnest. When you cut the argument from context you remove all necessity and connection to reality. It just becomes a meaningless game of words where someone can, with no reservation, say that they will be having their cake and eating it to.
But you're not having the argument in earnest.
You are taking the position that progressives believe "whites=bad, blacks=good," and that making Aragorn black is a logical extension of that. (Yes, I know I'm simplifying your argument considerably, but that's the gist.) Fine and good, people can agree or disagree that this is what progressives believe, that they believe it in as totalizing a fashion as you've described, or that it's hypocritical to be in favor of racial equality while also being opposed to blackfacing white characters.
The problem is that by "pretending" to be a progressive who actually believes all those things, you may think you are forcing people to confront their beliefs or whatever, but you aren't actually doing so honestly. As you have seen, people are reacting mostly with outrage to "Blacks are virtuous and white civilization is bad" and they aren't actually engaging with your underlying point. When a steelman isn't presented as a steelman, it's just trolling. Is there a point at which you intended to take off the mask and explain what you were really doing, or just keep going and see how much you can get people wound around the axle?
I am making the argument in earnest. I don't need you to simplify the argument, there is no 'gist'. It exists in its totality. It can be read as presented. I don't make any claims about what progressives believe. I don't pretend to be one. I don't care what you think my underlying point is. I found the discussion engaging and worthwhile as it was and would have liked to continue it.
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