I’m a huge Tolkien fanboy, loved LOTR and the Silm since I was a kid. But I swear interacting with other super fans is like walking on thin ice. Everything’s chill as long as you go with the hive mind, but then you say that you think X character isn’t that good or that a certain aspect of the plot wasn’t done well and you get dogpiled. This also includes the obvious, like the blatant racism on display with orcs and elves or the treatment of some characters who are implied to be neurodivergent or gay. The r/tolkienfans subreddit comes to mind, I’ve seen a lot of threads turn into passive aggressive shitflinging because the OP talked about gays, praised the movies or made a “childish” thread about a character they like (God forbid every post isn’t an essays worth of analysis)
Rings of Power definetly made things worse. If you expressed anything but pure contempt for the very concept, and everything attached to it. You get called out hardcore. I told a guy that it didn’t look too bad and suddenly, I’m a fake fan that loves to consume corporate trash. Amazon’s an evil company of course, but I remember a lot of th backlash being more about the women and POC than anything Bezos is up too.
All I have to do to remember how that fandom is is to remember how they reacted to Baranor becoming a playable character in Shadow of War. It was not pretty, but that could also be chalked up to the Gamer™ contingent.
I think you get that in many subcultures/communities. Especially on subreddits. People want to gatekeep their little community. It’s unfortunate, but it kind of comes with the territory.
I just think Tolkien fans in particular are super two faced.
It can be appreciated for what it is and for some positive messaging but, given the mythology, can also be interpreted as promoting a certain kind of white supremacist politics.
I can see how this tension world cause rifts in the fan base. I can also see how a diverse cast would annoy those who enjoy the white supremacist undertones (fuck them, though).
(I’ve not seen the new series, btw, so I don’t know how diverse it actually is – one thing I’ll say is that while there’s a lot of talk about how Hollywood is going woke, the idea that this is a new trend is ahistorical because lots of older movies and series are rather more diverse than the current culture war would have us believe. Not that things were or are perfect; just that on-screen diversity is not new.)
Wait till you see Star Wars fandom…
“I hate the sequel trilogy. I also hate the prequel trilogy. I also hate the original trilogy, and I also hate George Lucas and he’s a horrible director. I also think Andor, Kenobi, and Solo were horrible. I’m a star wars fan I swear.”
Most normal situation in fandom:
…LOTR is okay. Then fanbase who are shitty is every bit what the Simpsons imagined a comic book nerd to be.
Enjoy LOTR for what it is.
I fucking love Tolkien’s works, own everything he has written including is lectures, but I fucking hate the community, it’s important to be honest about the problematic aspects of the universe and the community is absolutely brain dead. Also, I fucking loved Rings of Power, I loved the diversity in the cast and just want more non white folks going forward. I know the story is a bit hamfisted but I think it’s great for a screen adaptation of what is essentially an info dump book and some afterwords.
The book puritanism is exhausting.
I will say I don’t particularly like the Peter Jackson movies, but it’s mostly because they aren’t the book in my head. (For me, Gondor is Yugoslavia, but medieval, and Mordor is the US Army, and that’s what I want to see on screen, damn it.)
But I don’t go out of my way to attack people who like the films.
like the blatant racism on display with orcs and elves
treatment of some characters who are implied to be neurodivergent or gay
Elaborate on these two, please?
Orcs are the dark skinned savages from the east and the Elves are the perfect fair skinned people from the west who are responsible for everythijng good in the world. Which, to be fair, is an extreme oversimplification but it’s the general idea.
Okay, this I can see. What about the second one?
Gollum, maybe? (I’m just guessing.)
There are some poor depictions of physical impairments, too. The movies make a kind of grotesque spectacle of physical differences. Especially in the Hobbit movies. Not so much in the book.
Oh that’s just me being petty. I’ve noticed that if you like certain characters, you get weird looks. Like Feanor. I’ve seen people legitimately argue that Feanor fans are fascists or something.
Feanor is… not exactly my favorite character, but I think he’s one of the most well-crafted given what Tolkien was going for (something that reads like an actual ancient mythology). He’s like someone out of a Greek tragedy.
He’s one of the best characters in the book, precisely because he’s such a bastard. We’re so used to seeing Elves be wise and stoic that an Elf whose passionate, proud and hateful just blows my mind. Besides, the Valar are incompetent and let a lot of bad things happen.
Fair
Do you think the idea of giving different races their own special traits is problematic, too? Or am I taking into it too much?
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In fandom there is actually more racism against the elves than against the orcs. Orcs are just taken for granted so they are not much discussed. It’s even more pronounced in other fantasy fandoms, for example warhammer.
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Damn I love the movies wtf those were my childhood.
Which characters and plot parts they think were good?
Tolkien himself had a sort of gay relationship with his friend from his club
I liked the wheel of time series and Amazon completely fucked that one up. Rings of power will probably suck. Idk they make a lot of trash, but almost everything is trash these days and people have to like something I guess. I haven’t watched The Lord of the Ring since I was a kid. They were pretty good.
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