avarindigenous

[avarindigenous]

[avarindigenous]

precisely!

you’re completely right that Tolkien had a remarkable amount of nuance - enough nuance that despite being a person of color I can enjoy his works and work through their flaws with the help of reparative reading, which is more than can be said for several of his contemporaries. I don’t trust this particular show to handle the complexity well, or to address his failings in a way that remains canonically compliant, because they haven’t managed this so far. that forms a large part of my concerns and my desire that they do… well, anything differently than how they’re doing it now.

I stand by what I said in the original post regarding Pharazôn; I think that making him the obvious evil chancellor who seems to be the only one with imperial ambitions removes other characters’ responsibility to address colonialism and examine Númenorean supremacist ideas. the series has positioned Elendil and Isildur and other Númenorean characters as victims of Pharazôn’s plotting, not as collaborators with varying degrees of culpability. this centers a view of colonialism and racism and xenophobia as personal problems that can be overcome or defeated by defeating the bad man at their center, which is very very white and was not what I hoped for. it also positions Míriel as a Black woman forced to bear responsibility for a white man’s greed and colonial violence, limiting her own agency and making her more of a victim than she would otherwise need to be.

as to Gondor, it’s already canonically ethnically diverse; Pippin observes many different-looking people in Minas Tirith, including darker-skinned men. echoing this diversity in Númenor, and perhaps minimizing the presence of white people far more significantly (there is no serious reason why Galadriel or Celebrimbor or Elrond or Gil-galad must be white, after all, especially in combination with the completely unnecessary neoclassicism in their costumes), would at least allow for a vision of Middle-Earth that is racially diverse in all areas and not merely Men and Dwarves and Avari. it would definitely require more thought and examination than is currently present, but with nearly a decade of development time and the largest budget imaginable, there’s no excuse for quick and easy solutions or an all-white creative team.

well, I’ve now seen episode 5 of The Rings of Power, and my hopes for meaningful commentary on empire are entirely dashed.

the Easterlings of Tir Harad might not be devil-worshiping barbarians caught between Yellow Peril and the Saracen Menace, but they are quick and eager to submit to an evil overlord, and Bronwyn’s insistence that in fact the elves were right about her people while Arondir tries to explain to her that mortal Men are in fact good was stereotypical and insulting. watching a group of people who have been classified as faceless servants in the source material immediately cave to the slightest pressure was intensely upsetting. the placement of a Black person as the first to raise their hand to volunteer to fight and resist only to have white and white-passing people agree to submit was adding insult to injury.

on top of that, Númenor continues to be anything but imperially ambitious. Pharazôn may have the desire to craft a vast empire, but he’s also little better than Iago from Othello or Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin. he’s the obvious villain, and giving him the evil plots and schemes and twisted ambition means that the writers are classifying imperialism and colonialism as, again, something only evil individuals do. it’s not a systemic problem or an institution that benefits those who are born into it, and the good Númenoreans are now in a position where they can say they were tricked into doing bad things by a single bad man. it’s blatant, and disheartening.

and, most frustrating of all, the elvish table that is sent back with Durin because it’s crafted from sacred stone is heavily implied to be something Gil-galad obtained through graverobbing or other forms of looting, but the writing neither states this outright nor denies it and no characters address this as the act of deeply traumatic violence that it is.

the way it’s introduced is jarring and badly written, with no setup or explanation in advance to allow the audience to share in Durin’s anger and sadness, and as a plot thread it’s dropped immediately and solved by the elves instantly agreeing to repatriation. watching this was deeply upsetting to me, not because the Noldor are exempt from committing violent acts against the dwarves (Finrod’s colonization of Nargothrond happened, after all) but because by neither confirming it nor denying it the writers are attempting to have it both ways. they can both preserve the Noldor as good white people who do the right thing and are culturally sensitive and introduce the question of politically topical subjects like violence against marginalized ethnic groups. if the elves are in possession of a sacred dwarvish artifact that they’re using for a table, that indicates a level of disregard for and ignorance of traditions that aren’t their own, and implies they see nothing wrong with stealing from other races. if the elves found the stone by accident and didn’t know it was sacred, then they’re totally innocent and their guilt is only because they’re good people. it should be one or the other, if we must have this plot at all. both cannot exist at once.

also, I can of course only speak to this issue from the indigenous perspective, but I want to point out that the dwarves are not indigenous-coded in Tolkien’s works, they’re Jewish-coded. there is a long history of theft and desecration of Jewish religious items and artifacts by Christians. while I immediately thought of indigenous people having our graves robbed and our sacred items stolen for display in private homes or museums, and our spiritual practices commodified for settlers, I want to acknowledge that my voice isn’t the one that should be the loudest. personally, I’m of the opinion that either the writers are trying to comment on the Jewish coding with this plot or else they’re ignorant of it and have unintentionally echoed real-life acts of antisemitism in their story that’s meant to be addressing some sort of anti-indigenous racism. (I personally don’t feel as if these dwarves are meant to be Jewish-coded, but I’m not Jewish myself and don’t feel comfortable drawing that conclusion definitively.)

I didn’t intend for this blog to turn into prolonged discussions of the flaws of this adaptation, but I do think that there are flaws worth pointing out. it concerns me greatly that the version of this story with the greatest amount of racial diversity and the greatest focus on racial diversity is failing to even begin to meaningfully address the racism in the source text, and is introducing additional racism or reinforcing the biases of the author.

[avarindigenous]

@brownpuffball - you didn’t give any offense at all, and I’m glad you said something. I’m not perfect by any means, and I’m already very agitated by quite a lot of what the series is choosing to do. as a result any additional commentary is very welcome, especially since I don’t want to be part of any kind of erasure.

my concern about Rhun and Harad being correlated with Asia and Africa by Tolkien (which, you’re right, he did, and I would be glad to see non-Western or at the least diasporic adaptations engage with that) is mostly that I’m unsure I want an American-made production to address any of that coding or correlation at all. I don’t particularly trust the production team to avoid common pitfalls and stereotypes, especially since their two major Black characters are dealing with in-universe racism and dealing with misogyny and the presence of a usurping white man, respectively.

that is of course only my opinion, and I’m only one person (and one person from a perspective that heavily favors ‘don’t talk about us if you’re not one of us’ as an approach to representation, for that matter) - the fact that we’re not a monolith goes both ways, and if I’m overruled by the community I’m perfectly comfortable with that. the question of whether or not a majority-white and presumably majority-Western creative team should address the idea of ‘fantasy Africa’ or ‘fantasy Asia’ in a series that has already failed multiple times to avoid subjecting its characters to racism is one that shouldn’t be answered by one person. I know I’d certainly be glad if there were non-Western voices in the writers’ room, and I think the series would improve overall.

well, I’ve now seen episode 5 of The Rings of Power, and my hopes for meaningful commentary on empire are entirely dashed.

the Easterlings of Tir Harad might not be devil-worshiping barbarians caught between Yellow Peril and the Saracen Menace, but they are quick and eager to submit to an evil overlord, and Bronwyn’s insistence that in fact the elves were right about her people while Arondir tries to explain to her that mortal Men are in fact good was stereotypical and insulting. watching a group of people who have been classified as faceless servants in the source material immediately cave to the slightest pressure was intensely upsetting. the placement of a Black person as the first to raise their hand to volunteer to fight and resist only to have white and white-passing people agree to submit was adding insult to injury.

on top of that, Númenor continues to be anything but imperially ambitious. Pharazôn may have the desire to craft a vast empire, but he’s also little better than Iago from Othello or Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin. he’s the obvious villain, and giving him the evil plots and schemes and twisted ambition means that the writers are classifying imperialism and colonialism as, again, something only evil individuals do. it’s not a systemic problem or an institution that benefits those who are born into it, and the good Númenoreans are now in a position where they can say they were tricked into doing bad things by a single bad man. it’s blatant, and disheartening.

and, most frustrating of all, the elvish table that is sent back with Durin because it’s crafted from sacred stone is heavily implied to be something Gil-galad obtained through graverobbing or other forms of looting, but the writing neither states this outright nor denies it and no characters address this as the act of deeply traumatic violence that it is.

the way it’s introduced is jarring and badly written, with no setup or explanation in advance to allow the audience to share in Durin’s anger and sadness, and as a plot thread it’s dropped immediately and solved by the elves instantly agreeing to repatriation. watching this was deeply upsetting to me, not because the Noldor are exempt from committing violent acts against the dwarves (Finrod’s colonization of Nargothrond happened, after all) but because by neither confirming it nor denying it the writers are attempting to have it both ways. they can both preserve the Noldor as good white people who do the right thing and are culturally sensitive and introduce the question of politically topical subjects like violence against marginalized ethnic groups. if the elves are in possession of a sacred dwarvish artifact that they’re using for a table, that indicates a level of disregard for and ignorance of traditions that aren’t their own, and implies they see nothing wrong with stealing from other races. if the elves found the stone by accident and didn’t know it was sacred, then they’re totally innocent and their guilt is only because they’re good people. it should be one or the other, if we must have this plot at all. both cannot exist at once.

also, I can of course only speak to this issue from the indigenous perspective, but I want to point out that the dwarves are not indigenous-coded in Tolkien’s works, they’re Jewish-coded. there is a long history of theft and desecration of Jewish religious items and artifacts by Christians. while I immediately thought of indigenous people having our graves robbed and our sacred items stolen for display in private homes or museums, and our spiritual practices commodified for settlers, I want to acknowledge that my voice isn’t the one that should be the loudest. personally, I’m of the opinion that either the writers are trying to comment on the Jewish coding with this plot or else they’re ignorant of it and have unintentionally echoed real-life acts of antisemitism in their story that’s meant to be addressing some sort of anti-indigenous racism. (I personally don’t feel as if these dwarves are meant to be Jewish-coded, but I’m not Jewish myself and don’t feel comfortable drawing that conclusion definitively.)

I didn’t intend for this blog to turn into prolonged discussions of the flaws of this adaptation, but I do think that there are flaws worth pointing out. it concerns me greatly that the version of this story with the greatest amount of racial diversity and the greatest focus on racial diversity is failing to even begin to meaningfully address the racism in the source text, and is introducing additional racism or reinforcing the biases of the author.

[avarindigenous]

@brownpuffball - to begin, I didn’t at any point call either Nazanin Boniadi or Tyroe Muhafidin white. I pointed out that in the scene where Bronwyn is confronted by the white cultist, the first person to volunteer resistance is Black, and then white and white-passing people immediately overrule them by siding with that cultist. Boniadi potentially falls under ‘white-passing’, as my white friends watching the show never thought she wasn’t white, but she wasn’t who I was talking about, and Theo never came up in that conversation. you’re right that they aren’t white, and I never intended for them to be described that way, and if that was communicated in my wording, I apologize.

second, if I did misinterpret the sequence with the table - which is possible; I was extremely upset by it and as a result had difficulty paying attention despite the fact that it was the middle of the day and I had nothing else to focus on - it’s because the writing in the show is bad. I mean that in all seriousness. introducing a concept of grave robbing and repatriation only to have it be resolved in less than ten minutes of total screen time with the revelation that it was all a jest at the expense of the elves, and adding that revelation as a subtle part of what I can only assume is Durin and Elrond’s episode-end conversation, is a bad way to handle a very sensitive topic that will absolutely alienate any viewers of color who have dealt with graverobbing and religious objects being appropriated or desecrated or otherwise stolen. I am indigenous. this is a real thing that happened to my people and is still happening, and I have to imagine I’m not alone in being insulted that it’s included so casually.

(I also dislike that the series has adopted the long-standing fandom tradition of taking things from non-elvish people groups and assigning them elvish significance. mithril being robbed of its status as a uniquely dwarvish cultural artifact that they control access to and profit from is another addition to a long list of instances where everything good and worthy in the Legendarium is judged by its proximity to the Eldar.)

third, I agree that more writers of color are a necessity, but I disagree with the idea that the Haradrim and the people of Rhun must correlate directly with real people inhabiting specific geographic regions. my fear would be that if the series takes inspiration from other less well-developed speculative fiction where there is a clear ‘fantasy Africa’ or ‘fantasy Asia’, it then brings with it additional tropes and stereotypes. this is because I doubt the white writers will be fired or that the series will completely retool itself to match a more canonically accurate examination of empire, and their ‘inspirations’ so far are already insensitive when it comes to representing Celtic mythology and culture. the ethnically diverse melting-pot approach on both the Númenorean and Easterling sides is one of the better ideas in the casting so far, though I think that all groups, including elves and dwarves, have too many white actors and too much visual inspiration from Classical motif.

well, I’ve now seen episode 5 of The Rings of Power, and my hopes for meaningful commentary on empire are entirely dashed.

the Easterlings of Tir Harad might not be devil-worshiping barbarians caught between Yellow Peril and the Saracen Menace, but they are quick and eager to submit to an evil overlord, and Bronwyn’s insistence that in fact the elves were right about her people while Arondir tries to explain to her that mortal Men are in fact good was stereotypical and insulting. watching a group of people who have been classified as faceless servants in the source material immediately cave to the slightest pressure was intensely upsetting. the placement of a Black person as the first to raise their hand to volunteer to fight and resist only to have white and white-passing people agree to submit was adding insult to injury.

on top of that, Númenor continues to be anything but imperially ambitious. Pharazôn may have the desire to craft a vast empire, but he’s also little better than Iago from Othello or Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin. he’s the obvious villain, and giving him the evil plots and schemes and twisted ambition means that the writers are classifying imperialism and colonialism as, again, something only evil individuals do. it’s not a systemic problem or an institution that benefits those who are born into it, and the good Númenoreans are now in a position where they can say they were tricked into doing bad things by a single bad man. it’s blatant, and disheartening.

and, most frustrating of all, the elvish table that is sent back with Durin because it’s crafted from sacred stone is heavily implied to be something Gil-galad obtained through graverobbing or other forms of looting, but the writing neither states this outright nor denies it and no characters address this as the act of deeply traumatic violence that it is.

the way it’s introduced is jarring and badly written, with no setup or explanation in advance to allow the audience to share in Durin’s anger and sadness, and as a plot thread it’s dropped immediately and solved by the elves instantly agreeing to repatriation. watching this was deeply upsetting to me, not because the Noldor are exempt from committing violent acts against the dwarves (Finrod’s colonization of Nargothrond happened, after all) but because by neither confirming it nor denying it the writers are attempting to have it both ways. they can both preserve the Noldor as good white people who do the right thing and are culturally sensitive and introduce the question of politically topical subjects like violence against marginalized ethnic groups. if the elves are in possession of a sacred dwarvish artifact that they’re using for a table, that indicates a level of disregard for and ignorance of traditions that aren’t their own, and implies they see nothing wrong with stealing from other races. if the elves found the stone by accident and didn’t know it was sacred, then they’re totally innocent and their guilt is only because they’re good people. it should be one or the other, if we must have this plot at all. both cannot exist at once.

also, I can of course only speak to this issue from the indigenous perspective, but I want to point out that the dwarves are not indigenous-coded in Tolkien’s works, they’re Jewish-coded. there is a long history of theft and desecration of Jewish religious items and artifacts by Christians. while I immediately thought of indigenous people having our graves robbed and our sacred items stolen for display in private homes or museums, and our spiritual practices commodified for settlers, I want to acknowledge that my voice isn’t the one that should be the loudest. personally, I’m of the opinion that either the writers are trying to comment on the Jewish coding with this plot or else they’re ignorant of it and have unintentionally echoed real-life acts of antisemitism in their story that’s meant to be addressing some sort of anti-indigenous racism. (I personally don’t feel as if these dwarves are meant to be Jewish-coded, but I’m not Jewish myself and don’t feel comfortable drawing that conclusion definitively.)

I didn’t intend for this blog to turn into prolonged discussions of the flaws of this adaptation, but I do think that there are flaws worth pointing out. it concerns me greatly that the version of this story with the greatest amount of racial diversity and the greatest focus on racial diversity is failing to even begin to meaningfully address the racism in the source text, and is introducing additional racism or reinforcing the biases of the author.

[avarindigenous]

well, I’ve now seen episode 5 of The Rings of Power, and my hopes for meaningful commentary on empire are entirely dashed.

the Easterlings of Tir Harad might not be devil-worshiping barbarians caught between Yellow Peril and the Saracen Menace, but they are quick and eager to submit to an evil overlord, and Bronwyn’s insistence that in fact the elves were right about her people while Arondir tries to explain to her that mortal Men are in fact good was stereotypical and insulting. watching a group of people who have been classified as faceless servants in the source material immediately cave to the slightest pressure was intensely upsetting. the placement of a Black person as the first to raise their hand to volunteer to fight and resist only to have white and white-passing people agree to submit was adding insult to injury.

on top of that, Númenor continues to be anything but imperially ambitious. Pharazôn may have the desire to craft a vast empire, but he’s also little better than Iago from Othello or Jafar from Disney’s Aladdin. he’s the obvious villain, and giving him the evil plots and schemes and twisted ambition means that the writers are classifying imperialism and colonialism as, again, something only evil individuals do. it’s not a systemic problem or an institution that benefits those who are born into it, and the good Númenoreans are now in a position where they can say they were tricked into doing bad things by a single bad man. it’s blatant, and disheartening.

and, most frustrating of all, the elvish table that is sent back with Durin because it’s crafted from sacred stone is heavily implied to be something Gil-galad obtained through graverobbing or other forms of looting, but the writing neither states this outright nor denies it and no characters address this as the act of deeply traumatic violence that it is.

the way it’s introduced is jarring and badly written, with no setup or explanation in advance to allow the audience to share in Durin’s anger and sadness, and as a plot thread it’s dropped immediately and solved by the elves instantly agreeing to repatriation. watching this was deeply upsetting to me, not because the Noldor are exempt from committing violent acts against the dwarves (Finrod’s colonization of Nargothrond happened, after all) but because by neither confirming it nor denying it the writers are attempting to have it both ways. they can both preserve the Noldor as good white people who do the right thing and are culturally sensitive and introduce the question of politically topical subjects like violence against marginalized ethnic groups. if the elves are in possession of a sacred dwarvish artifact that they’re using for a table, that indicates a level of disregard for and ignorance of traditions that aren’t their own, and implies they see nothing wrong with stealing from other races. if the elves found the stone by accident and didn’t know it was sacred, then they’re totally innocent and their guilt is only because they’re good people. it should be one or the other, if we must have this plot at all. both cannot exist at once.

also, I can of course only speak to this issue from the indigenous perspective, but I want to point out that the dwarves are not indigenous-coded in Tolkien’s works, they’re Jewish-coded. there is a long history of theft and desecration of Jewish religious items and artifacts by Christians. while I immediately thought of indigenous people having our graves robbed and our sacred items stolen for display in private homes or museums, and our spiritual practices commodified for settlers, I want to acknowledge that my voice isn’t the one that should be the loudest. personally, I’m of the opinion that either the writers are trying to comment on the Jewish coding with this plot or else they’re ignorant of it and have unintentionally echoed real-life acts of antisemitism in their story that’s meant to be addressing some sort of anti-indigenous racism. (I personally don’t feel as if these dwarves are meant to be Jewish-coded, but I’m not Jewish myself and don’t feel comfortable drawing that conclusion definitively.)

I didn’t intend for this blog to turn into prolonged discussions of the flaws of this adaptation, but I do think that there are flaws worth pointing out. it concerns me greatly that the version of this story with the greatest amount of racial diversity and the greatest focus on racial diversity is failing to even begin to meaningfully address the racism in the source text, and is introducing additional racism or reinforcing the biases of the author.

[avarindigenous]

I think a more significant problem with the writing is, frankly, that there are certain flaws and problems that characters are ‘allowed’ to have for audiences to find them compelling or sympathetic or worth watching. personal evils or problems like ruthlessness, ambition, murder, lying, and infidelity are more forgivable in the eyes of an audience than anything that strikes too close to home and home’s systemic injustices.

an honest adaptation of the Second Age, even one drawing from the Appendices only, would mean an acknowledgement that every person in the story is impacted by the Númenorean empire, and shares some degree of either victimhood or responsibility. even Gil-galad and Círdan and Celebrimbor don’t object to the growing empire in a way that we can see on the page. of course, the writers could choose to make Númenor so powerful that the lack of objection is due to fear, and present the King’s Men as unambiguously evil and the Faithful as a powerless minority on the edge of annihilation doing what they can to protect what few slaves and underlings they have influence over, but even that would require the story to acknowledge that the system of empire is bad and this is larger than personal grievances.

it’s very easy to write a xenophobic populist movement as the enemy, because that’s what America has been dealing with and what’s most easily criticized by the majority of the population. it’s much harder to say that even if Elendil and Isildur are good people, they’re part of a corrupt system, and good people can exist in a colonialist state while also perpetuating colonialist aims. these flaws aren’t fun to watch, they’re a mirror, and one I don’t know if the audience is prepared for.

there’s of course also the fact that Jeff Bezos himself might be uncomfortable with a class of progressive-minded well-meaning rich imperialists who seek to become more wealthy and more self-obsessed on the backs of exploited workers and forced labor as the villains of the story. he was involved in development and gave feedback on the scripts; it wouldn’t surprise me if he wanted to shift the blame towards a more Trump-shaped antagonist.

the first comment I have on The Rings of Power (because I have been watching it; I wanted to at least try to support an adaptation that attempts to add racial diversity into Tolkien’s works) is that I find it absolutely infuriating that Númenor is being portrayed as a benevolent power coming to the Southeast for the express purpose of providing aid to the poor besieged people of the Southlands.

the majority of the plot surrounding the Southlands is already a racist mess of anti-indigenous or otherwise stereotypical tropes, but taking a group of canonical colonizers and reframing their military expansion as something done for the benefit of the people they originally enslaved is something I’d expect from an American film circa 1950, not a project that is explicitly trying to tackle racial diversity and political themes. I was already concerned at the removal of the Númenorean empire, and this only proves that the showrunners don’t seem willing to properly address anything to do with colonialism or imperialism. my hopes going forward are sadly not high.

[avarindigenous]

@tol-himling makes a fantastic point here, but it also illustrates a serious concern I have with the way the series is, so far, handling questions of empire.

the Second Age is, fundamentally, about the failure to rule and control. the elves are no longer at any point politically dominant, as their great kingdoms are drowned, and they both fail to establish replacements that match what was lost and don’t seem very concerned with recreating places like Nargothrond and Gondolin. they instead turn to controlling time and decay and entropy, losing themselves in an ultimately futile attempt to ensure that the world will never change and therefore what they built will be forever present and timeless. the Men in Númenor are similarly obsessed with both the immediate power of having an empire with global span that they rule and with forestalling death. their actions mirror the actions of the elves; both groups of people are similarly seduced by Sauron because both are striving for a level of ‘immortality’ that is currently beyond their grasp.

since Númenor is now an isolationist state that will only assist other Men, and since the elves of Eregion are pursuing the Ringmaking project because of Celebrimbor’s own personal pride, the central themes of this part of the generational cycle are nonexistent. while I would be interested to see imperial ambitions develop, the writers’ approach to the politics of the era now, in these early episodes, gives me very little confidence because the fundamentals that underpin the narrative are gone.

Tolkien’s own justification, whether or not you as the reader are meant to interpret it as the author genuinely believing it or the author presenting an in-universe view of the characters’ motivations, at least acknowledges that there is imperial ambition. my hope was that The Rings of Power would more directly call it what it is, and would cease with any ambiguity and would present the conquest and expansion as negative and ominous, but now it seems that they instead want to create a divide between the Noldor and the Edainic descendants that, while it might have existed in canon, is certainly not something that needs to be present in any serious exploration of the Second Age.

I also want to echo your comment about the sudden pivot from isolationism to militarism, because that forms the other part of my concerns. the writing in this series has, thus far, been extremely disappointing. characterization is inconsistent, plot threads appear and are dropped in ways that don’t feel natural, and most major actions happen because the script dictates they must happen. the actors of color are delivering the best possible performances they can and are standouts among a sea of mediocrity as a result, and our protagonist Galadriel is so grating and unpleasant that I find her hard to watch. all of this is of course subjective criticism, but the unpredictable, uncertain, inconsistent nature of each new episode makes me worry that motivations and justifications will arise and be accepted simply due to narrative necessity. merely acknowledging that Númenor has problems and then painting them in a primarily positive light is consistent with the shifting, badly-paced style of storytelling that so far has been on display, and that’s why it’s very difficult for me to expect things will improve.

the first comment I have on The Rings of Power (because I have been watching it; I wanted to at least try to support an adaptation that attempts to add racial diversity into Tolkien’s works) is that I find it absolutely infuriating that Númenor is being portrayed as a benevolent power coming to the Southeast for the express purpose of providing aid to the poor besieged people of the Southlands.

the majority of the plot surrounding the Southlands is already a racist mess of anti-indigenous or otherwise stereotypical tropes, but taking a group of canonical colonizers and reframing their military expansion as something done for the benefit of the people they originally enslaved is something I’d expect from an American film circa 1950, not a project that is explicitly trying to tackle racial diversity and political themes. I was already concerned at the removal of the Númenorean empire, and this only proves that the showrunners don’t seem willing to properly address anything to do with colonialism or imperialism. my hopes going forward are sadly not high.

[avarindigenous]

my other complaint is that Arondir (who is my obligatory favorite, and whom I want the world for) has no cultural signifiers in his costume or his hair that indicate indigenous identity or mark him as different from the others. instead, his armor has the Green Man on it, and his clothing is indistinguishable from the Noldor he serves with. he does use the same gold-fletched arrows that Legolas uses in the Jackson films, but that’s at best an imitation, and Legolas’s identity in those films isn’t as ambiguous as it is in canon.

if this meant something, if it indicated any sort of depth to him, I would find it interesting - several indigenous groups assimilate to some degree or take part in cultural exchange, after all - but what it tells me instead is that the production team didn’t care enough about his story to showcase his identity. we know he loves nature, we know he weeps for the trees and the dead things of the world, and we know he is skilled to an extent in healing arts: none of this must be uniquely Avarin, and all of it is quite stereotypically elvish.

indigenous-coded elves do exist. Arondir is one of them. it feels as if I’m reading too much into his visual assimilation, but I still am hurt by the fact that he’s not allowed to have any ties to his own people.

[avarindigenous]

the first comment I have on The Rings of Power (because I have been watching it; I wanted to at least try to support an adaptation that attempts to add racial diversity into Tolkien’s works) is that I find it absolutely infuriating that Númenor is being portrayed as a benevolent power coming to the Southeast for the express purpose of providing aid to the poor besieged people of the Southlands.

the majority of the plot surrounding the Southlands is already a racist mess of anti-indigenous or otherwise stereotypical tropes, but taking a group of canonical colonizers and reframing their military expansion as something done for the benefit of the people they originally enslaved is something I’d expect from an American film circa 1950, not a project that is explicitly trying to tackle racial diversity and political themes. I was already concerned at the removal of the Númenorean empire, and this only proves that the showrunners don’t seem willing to properly address anything to do with colonialism or imperialism. my hopes going forward are sadly not high.

[avarindigenous]

It really bothers me how so many of you are unable to say “hey it’s not right to harass actors of colour in rop” without adding “but I hate rop because x y z”.

“Throwing racist abuse at actors isn’t ok” is a full standalone statement. You don’t need to bring in your personal feelings about the show into it. Condemning racism against real people doesn’t imply you support rop.

Too often “racist abuse is bad but I hate rop because…” reads as people sidelining/minimising racism. Of course you can dislike the show! But don’t put it as a “disclaimer” on posts about racist backlash. Stop detracting from the very real and heartbreaking vitriol these actors are subjected to. 

[avarindigenous]

all musings on reliable narration from last night aside, the question of Noldorin intention wrt leaving Aman (including if Fëanor and Galadriel can be argued to reflect the goals of all the Noldor, and if we should make that argument when Fëanor died and Galadriel assimilated into the Sindar to accomplish her own imperialist aims) as opposed to Noldorin action once they arrive in Beleriand is actually worth discussing from a perspective informed by anticolonialist theory.

as I said earlier, the Noldor did not actually, in reality, do any of the things they are accused of doing by Eöl. nearly all of the colonial action we see taken against other elves is taken by Sindar. all of that colonial action is taken by elves who are at least part-Sindarin and affiliated with Telerin or Sindarin culture. the elves who suffer most because of this colonialism are Avari, not Sindar/Teleri. Fëanor might have talked about ruling and subjugating and defeating humans but he died before he could do this and his host and his children don’t carry on his aims.

there is a serious tendency in fandom scholarship to act as if stated intent by a character accurately reflects that character’s later actions, to vilify the Noldor and pardon the Sindar, and to downplay the subtlety in the text surrounding elvish expansion, imperialism, and colonialism. this makes the space extremely hostile to and inaccessible to indigenous fans who don’t agree with the dominant non-indigenous-authored narratives, and I don’t think that’s either fair or indicative of good analysis. there should be space for our perspectives, and space for us to make points that center the actual harm to Avarin and Silvan elves done by Sindar and Sindar-affiliated characters. I would probably be less insistent upon this point if the Sindar weren’t consistently allowed to do whatever they please in fandom conversation and be defended by non-indigenous fans for their xenophobia and canonical anti-human racism, but they are allowed that level of “free pass” for their actions, and I’m growing very tired of it.

[avarindigenous]

Eöl’s central arguments rest on a few key points, and all of them are suspect.

“the Noldor invaded the lands of the Teleri (here meaning the Sindar) and occupied them and destroyed homes.” the Noldor set out with both the express intent to rule (as seen in Fëanor and Galadriel) and the express intent to fight Morgoth (Fingolfin’s host). the death of Fëanor meant that his imperial aims were stifled and his sons did not do what he intended to do. what actually happened (as mentioned in my earlier post about Thingol and interpretation) was that the Noldor under Fingolfin negotiated peacefully with Thingol, were given leave to settle in the north, and then did. they at no point occupied lands without the express consent of the King of Beleriand, and no Sindarin homes were destroyed.

“the Noldor brought war and unrest.”Morgoth was already making war upon the elves of Beleriand before the Noldor arrived (see the First Great Battle, which was entirely without a Noldorin presence). the Noldor had nothing to do with increasing hostilities and in fact allowed the Siege of Angband and the Long Peace to happen at all.

“the Noldor siezed realms that weren’t theirs.” again, they only lived where Thingol gave them leave to live, and the realms they established were not in existence prior to their arrival. at no point does their behavior indicate any kind of usurpation. if Eöl feels slighted by this (which makes little sense, as Nan Elmoth remained entirely his) then he should take this grievance to his king rather than mistakenly blame people doing what Thingol permits.

I understand the urge to rehabilitate perhaps Tolkien’s most frustratingly racist character, but trying to argue that what he’s saying is in any way an accurate reflection of the reality portrayed by earlier parts of the text weakens the argument. Eöl at no point convincingly critiques any sort of colonialism, instead misapplying the responsibility for perceived slights and drastically altering the facts to suit his own ends. there is something to be unpacked and discussed there, but it isn’t how the fandom usually handles him.

I’ve long since resigned myself to being the only person in the fandom who truly believes that Eöl is an unreliable narrator and should not be considered an accurate source regarding the realities of Noldorin settlement in Beleriand, but it is disappointing to see people I otherwise agree with pointing to his sentiments as if they are some sort of trustworthy source.

Eöl accuses the Noldor, more than once, of doing things that they did not do, and completely ignores that they settled in Beleriand by express permission of Thingol and respected his laws. his representation of Noldorin behavior is in direct contradiction to what the text says the people he’s discussing actually did, and as a result his entire anticolonial position is suspect. this could be argued to be some kind of commentary by the author on painting indigenous people as stupid or incapable of understanding what’s going on, but the fannish discussion I’ve seen about Eöl completely ignores the fact that what he says happened and what actually happened are two different things, instead painting him as a sort of noble dissenting voice speaking truth to power. the problem is he’s not that, at all, and his inability to accurately critique what the Noldor are doing (and what they did vs. what they would have initially tried to do) means that I can’t take him seriously, which is another layer in the complicated mess of reasons why I hate him as a character but I hate the conversations surrounding him much, much more.

[avarindigenous]

I’ve long since resigned myself to being the only person in the fandom who truly believes that Eöl is an unreliable narrator and should not be considered an accurate source regarding the realities of Noldorin settlement in Beleriand, but it is disappointing to see people I otherwise agree with pointing to his sentiments as if they are some sort of trustworthy source.

Eöl accuses the Noldor, more than once, of doing things that they did not do, and completely ignores that they settled in Beleriand by express permission of Thingol and respected his laws. his representation of Noldorin behavior is in direct contradiction to what the text says the people he’s discussing actually did, and as a result his entire anticolonial position is suspect. this could be argued to be some kind of commentary by the author on painting indigenous people as stupid or incapable of understanding what’s going on, but the fannish discussion I’ve seen about Eöl completely ignores the fact that what he says happened and what actually happened are two different things, instead painting him as a sort of noble dissenting voice speaking truth to power. the problem is he’s not that, at all, and his inability to accurately critique what the Noldor are doing (and what they did vs. what they would have initially tried to do) means that I can’t take him seriously, which is another layer in the complicated mess of reasons why I hate him as a character but I hate the conversations surrounding him much, much more.

[avarindigenous]

HOLD ON A MINUTE!!!

I HAVE CONNECTED THE DOTS!!!

Everybody knows that New Zealand is Middle Earth.

So doesn't that mean

That Old Zealand

Is

Beleriand

I hope I don’t come across as a spoilsport but it’s my understanding that there’s currently a debate going on over whether this country should be known as New Zealand vs Aotearoa (which is the Maori name), which has brought to my attention that this is a more sensitive topic than I had previously known. I’m not accusing you of being insensitive or anything, but since my understanding of the issue is very, very superficial, I am not entirely sure how appropriate it is to make this kind of jokes. Maybe it’s fine! But I Don’t Know so I’ll err on the side of caution here and not riff off your joke

[avarindigenous]

I am delighted by this. thank you crab anon.

[avarindigenous]

I’m going to be making a pair of posts exploring what it is I mean by performative posting, I think.

I’m realizing I did a bad job explaining the difference between purposefully looking for clout, liveblogging and/or venting in a context that wasn’t meant to be reblogged and spread, and trying to engage in productive or critical examinations of the text. there’s a lot of grey area, and the last thing I want to do is discourage well-meaning white fans from joining the conversation because they think I’m saying that all discussion is frustrating to read (that isn’t what I’m saying at all, and I welcome white fans’ thoughts on the subject).

also, I’d like to talk at a greater length about why using specifically colonialism and imperialism (either as a trait present in characters’ actions or motivations or as a claim about Tolkien himself) as a sledgehammer for the sake of winning an argument about who’s the worst or the best or the most sympathetic or the most justified bothers me, and why I don’t think it’s conducive to actually examining the problems in the text or the nuances of the in-universe prejudices (yes, there are nuances).

if people have questions, or commentary - anybody, not merely other fans of color - and would like certain points addressed, feel free to send asks or reply! anon is and will always be on.

[avarindigenous]

#i will say for me personally as a fan of color I do appreciate seeing posts discussing the racism in tolkien#even when made by white allies#bc it affirms that there’s not just white silence/not seeing the issue of it#esp with stuff like structural source material issues that can be perpetuated in fandom spaces#and seeing posts acknowledging that help me feel safer knowing that people see it and are working to address those structural issues#and I feel better knowing that fans of color aren’t the only ones who’ll have to stick out our necks to say something about it

@clown-champion​ I wanted to respond to something you said in your tags, because there’s some nuance here I didn’t really articulate well in my initial response. there are a lot of posts by white allies that I do like, that have productive things to say about the problems in the text or the situation in the fandom, and I quite like those and appreciate them. they do make me feel less alone.

there are also a lot of posts by white people who claim to be allies that aren’t about anything except “I have seen something that makes me uncomfortable and now I feel bad about being a fan of a problematic thing, so I need to assuage those bad feelings by loudly saying that I’m uncomfortable and therefore justifying that it’s fine for me to keep liking this” or else about a bias or an interpretation of the text that furthers their own point of view rather than contributes to the conversation.

this particularly frustrates me when colonialism is used as a sledgehammer to win an argument about which character is the least problematic or the most victimized, and that happens quite a lot. it’s difficult for me to find that comforting - either I’m expected to congratulate someone for noticing something, and soothe their feelings or validate their discomfort, or I’m expected to agree that the acknowledgement of problematic elements of the text means that someone is automatically correct in their interpretation.

that’s the kind of post I’m referring to more than someone trying to genuinely help out, and those are the kinds of posts that I least want to spend my time engaging with or validating.

I’m sort of peripheral to silm fandom- I’ve read it enjoyed and I like that people make things about it but I don’t remember enough about the characters to really engage, I just hang out. Also I’m white. When I first found the silm fandom on tumblr one of the things that seemed really exciting about it was the racial diversity in fan works (HEllo Black Galadriel) but I also agree that I’ve noticed a decrease in the diversity of characters in the fanart I’ve seen recently. I wonder if it has anything to do with the new show? I wasn’t in the good omens fandom before the show was made but the impression I’ve gotten is that the characters were much more regularly portrayed an non-white before white actors played them. I wonder if fan artists/writers who were not particularly dedicated to diversity in arda are seeing the predominantly white cast (except for random ocs? What’s up with that?) of a Silmarillion-adjacent show and going oop! guess they were white all along! I don’t know if that’s what’s happening, but I’ve wondered what the effect of the show is going to be on fandom and this might be one of the first things we see. I’m glad to have found your blog and I hope that the trend doesn’t continue.

I think there are a lot of factors at play when it comes to the question of why this has happened, and the frustrating part is that most of it has very little to do with conscious racism.

as I mentioned in other reblog chains of the post you’re referring to, there’s been a downgrade in general fandom activity the past two years or so. the Silmarillion fandom tends to have a “cycle” of three to six years when people are most active - a new blog comes in and starts posting about a particular topic, it attracts attention and other like-minded blogs join in the conversation, the same points get rediscovered and newly discussed and litigated by each group of people, and then eventually people cease actively posting as much, either by leaving the fandom, leaving the site for somewhere else like Twitter, or by simply being less present online. because the conversation can get very toxic and political (from an intracommunity perspective) those of us who do manage to pay attention for years, even by lurking, usually refrain after a while from taking part in discussions and focus on content creation or on appreciating others’ art and fanfiction.

on that note, I don’t think it’s much of a secret that the Tolkien fandom is not a particularly chill or calm fandom space, even excluding questions of bigotry and prejudice. people get very attached to their interpretations of canon (myself included) and many will react very harshly to perceived bad takes or bad-faith engagement, or will take someone disagreeing with them over a characterization detail or a plot point as a personal slight. friendships have been ended, harassment campaigns have been launched, and groups of people have been bullied into lifelong trauma, all over questions of textual analysis. even if there’s no harassment present, a larger blog posting a “controversial” opinion is almost guaranteed to lose followers and receive anon hate or passive-aggressive DMs. you’ll note I’m not giving specific examples of what kinds of opinions trigger this behavior, and that’s because no one is immune to it. the reason I separate this from bigotry is because it truly is about scholarship. it’s the equivalent of giving a controversial talk at an academic conference and having all your friends cease to talk to you because they’ve decided you’re abrasive and rude simply for voicing your own opinions. why this is relevant in a conversation about diversity is that I need to make it clear that in order to be comfortable in this fandom space in the first place, you need to be comfortable with everyone in the world finding fault with your ideas and interpreting them in the most bad-faith way possible even if you’re white and you never talk about racism or diversity or LGBTQ+ issues at all. the people who endure this (which is anyone and everyone who develops some sort of large following on Tumblr and probably Twitter as well) and who decide to stay in the fandom will usually become extremely uninterested in anything but reblogging other people’s work and shitposting, or will else block everyone they never want to see their posts and threat monitor to avoid discourse and backlash.

fanartists, more than fanfic writers and editors and meta writers and analysts and even shitposters, are the backbone of the Tumblr Tolkien fandom. all of the other kinds of fanworks - including songs and fanvids! - are significantly less likely to get serious engagement. what the Silmarillion fandom “looks” like is crafted by the artists, and fandom activity lives and dies by fanart. graphics, fanfic, and other works get more engagement if there is an active fanart scene. the trouble here is that fanartists never stay in the fandom long, usually averaging two or three years. right now, almost all the fanartists regularly posting are drawing white characters, and there aren’t a lot of fanartists period. as a result, nothing is really getting noticed - @arwenindomiel mentioned trouble getting graphics to crack a hundred notes, and other friends of mine who aren’t white and make diverse edits have had trouble for years getting more than twenty or thirty people to like and more than five or six to reblog. even when they include white people, the situation isn’t much better.

as mentioned once more in other posts on the subject, being a POC and not having anyone engage with you is depressing. no asks, no fanfic prompts, no edit prompts, no interest in the creative work we do - even if we never face racism through direct slurs or criticism, the silence is exhausting and isolating. additionally, since several of us had a limited platform only a few years ago that now seems to have dried up entirely, we face the question of why we bother, why we create. this becomes even more frustrating if we love the canon and aren’t constantly angry about Tolkien, and want to reblog and talk about the things we like rather than assuaging white guilt, validating posts made by white allies about how they noticed something problematic (which also comes under assuaging white guilt; no one is helped by self-righteous “look, this thing in the text is bad!” posts because nothing in the text is mysterious or hidden, and fans of color have been aware of the problems for many years), or talking about how the text has problems. I genuinely like the story and the worldbuilding and it is my right to choose not to engage with the racism in ways dictated by an online fandom because I am always engaging with the racism in everything I do, but the posts that get noticed and that start conversations are posts about the problems in the text. this creates a space where fans of color are only allowed to be fans of Tolkien if we always hate him and hate being in these spaces, which is a negativity that takes a serious psychological toll and makes fandom feel like a duty. on top of this, we’re uniquely vulnerable to being singled out for bad takes as mentioned above, which makes wanting to speak out in the first place a daunting proposition. there’s very little room for error, or for opinions that go against the grain, and what little room there is is usually reserved for white fans.

the end result is where we are now - very little fanart, relatively little queer content, and almost everything featuring white faces. I’m unsure if I want to blame all of this on the show, as it’s a consequence of people cycling out and people being less proactive as well as general unexamined bigotry (it’s as if we reserve our vitriol for our fellow fans’ perceived bad takes and not actual structural problems in the community). it’s a frustrating problem that could be solved both by an attempt to be kinder to people we disagree with (and I am including myself, I am making a conscious effort to be as calm and as compassionate and as understanding as possible, but I’m certainly not perfect) and by resolving to champion diversity and diverse voices.

but this is a mess, all told, and I’m not sure how we can solve it.