This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'd posted a while back about how Wizards of the Coast was making Aragorn black in the soon-to-be released Lord of the Rings Magic set.
Since then most of the new cards have been released.
There were several more race swaps—see, for example Theóden, along with many other Rohirrim, was made black, but not Éomer. If they had made them all black, this would have been closer to my original suggestion—that they change races, if they really must, do so in ways that make sense in the world. But they did not do that for some reason, and keeping Éomer white makes no sense, if you're changing the rest of the Rohirrim.
Nevertheless, I was surprised at how good the set was, if you ignore the race changes in the art, for fans of Lord of the Rings. They referenced all sorts of relatively obscure things, had cards that had thematic abilities, (for an especially fun example, see how Merry+his blade or Eowyn can defeat the Witch King, who is ordinarily rather invulnerable), or just had fun flavor text quoting from the book, or nice art. And was faithful to the lore in another respect where Rings of Power was not, although I don't remember such a character actually existing…
Ignoring the race issue, I was very impressed overall. I think it's interesting that they were willing to put so much effort into it, while at the same time having unnecessary race changes. I suppose it's not entirely the same people making the various decisions. But I had read it as first as "we don't care that much about Lord of the Rings," which now seems to be false. They must have cared both about signaling leftist politics and about making a good product, and so this was the result.
I might be willing to overlook the problems, because Tolkien is dearer to my heart.
I was surprised how well the raspberry tart turned out, if you ignore that the recipe was completely changed to be a fish pie.
This kind of dropping in lore is nothing but a fig leaf, same as Rings of Power. The main problem is the huge changes. As you say, if they're going to make Aragorn black and Theoden black, then go the whole way and make everyone black. Taking character A and character D and race swapping, but not character C and character E, is senseless. It has no interior logic: how is Aragorn black? Is that via his mother, or did the change come further back in the line of the Dúnedain of the North? How is Theoden black? We know who his parents were ("Théoden was the only son of Thengel, the heir of king Fengel of Rohan, and Morwen of Lossarnach, a descendant of a former prince of the fief of Belfalas"), so unless we're now making it that Eomer's mother wasn't Theoden's sister, how is he black and Eomer is not? Did Thengel have a side chick from Far Harad? A second wife so that Theodwyn is white and thus her kids are, too?
If a particular artist goes "I think X is really cool and I'd love to draw him as black/brown/yellow/red like me", fine, knock yourself out, nobody objects to fan art (too much). But issuing a commercial property that is this half-assed? I don't get it.
EDIT: I forgot a possibility! Theoden could have been adopted, a foundling raised like their own!
It's definitely not Rings of Power, since Rings of Power messed up the lore in all sorts of non-racial ways, while this has turned out to be mostly racial things.
Yes, the racial things make no sense. My point was that, contrary to my expectations, they did a really good job with most other things, including faithfulness in non-racial matters to what's in The Lord of the Rings, which was not at all true of Rings of Power.
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:
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.
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.
4 out of 10, jaw too small.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link