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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   38185 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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faithfulness in non-racial matters to what's in The Lord of the Rings

Making Aragorn black is a pretty big chunk of change to the canon. If it were "random Hobbit" like this card, I'd grouse about it but agree. But when it's a major character like that, then "oh but they got the name of the third Breelander mentioned in the inn right!" is not something to boast about.

The Lord of the Rings cards could exist in a world where skin colour can have a wide variance from one's family based on exactly which genes someone gets and nutrition and what not. Like how a short mother can have a tall daughter, a dark skinned father can have a pale son. It's a bit ridiculous and personally I don't like it, but it's Or maybe genes don't exist there and people physical traits are personally determined by Eru when they're in the womb. It's silly and I don't like it, but it's ultimately one change to the world: skin colour isn't genetic like how it is in our world(unless they release other materials indicating that in their set Eomer is actually adopted or something, which would bring back to being really upset).

Problem is, it's meant to be our world; from one of the selected letters, where he's tearing into a proposed script for LOTR:

The Lord of the Rings may be a 'fairy-story', but it takes place in the Northern hemisphere of this earth: miles are miles, days are days, and weather is weather.

And genetics are genetics and skin colour is skin colour. There may well be some fiddling around so that the Noldorin tend to all have black hair and gray eyes, but that's because Edith Tolkien had black hair and grey eyes and he decided that the most beautiful people in his created world would look like her (original conception of Luthien was to make her blonde with blue eyes but he changed that for his fiancée/wife).

I'm also not too happy with some of the other cards, e.g. the one for the Woses - that looks like someone's bad version of pseudo-Celt/Pict instead of one of the Druédain.

Like how a short mother can have a tall daughter, a dark skinned father can have a pale son.

Sure, if the father is tall, or there are tall people in the family on both sides so the genes come through. Same with the lighter-skinned children of dark-skinned parent, if one parent is light-skinned (see Meghan Markle) or both parents have mixed ancestry. But if you're going to do a Disney movie adaptation where mom is black, dad is white, and the son is Filipino - we're not in Tolkien-verse anymore, why even bother?

I looked up Edith Tolkien and JRR had good taste.

From a letter to Christopher Tolkien in 1972:

I have at last got busy about Mummy's grave. .... The inscription I should like is:

EDITH MARY TOLKIEN

1889-1971

Lúthien

: brief and jejune, except for Lúthien, which says for me more than a multitude of words: for she was (and knew she was) my Lúthien.

July 13. Say what you feel, without reservation, about this addition. I began this under the stress of great emotion & regret – and in any case I am afflicted from time to time (increasingly) with an overwhelming sense of bereavement. I need advice. Yet I hope none of my children will feel that the use of this name is a sentimental fancy. It is at any rate not comparable to the quoting of pet names in obituaries. I never called Edith Lúthien – but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing – and dance. But the story has gone crooked, & I am left, and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos.

I will say no more now. But I should like ere long to have a long talk with you. For if as seems probable I shall never write any ordered biography – it is against my nature, which expresses itself about things deepest felt in tales and myths — someone close in heart to me should know something about things that records do not record: the dreadful sufferings of our childhoods, from which we rescued one another, but could not wholly heal the wounds that later often proved disabling; the sufferings that we endured after our love began – all of which (over and above our personal weaknesses) might help to make pardonable, or understandable, the lapses and darknesses which at times marred our lives — and to explain how these never touched our depths nor dimmed our memories of our youthful love. For ever (especially when alone) we still met in the woodland glade, and went hand in hand many times to escape the shadow of imminent death before our last parting.

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