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Why on earth would it be a problem to create a fantasy world that uncritically repackages the lies of racism as lore? 🤨 particularly when these fantasy races are so overtly taking their qualities from a very specific real cultures which are subject to these prejudices

What could possibly be the downside of indulging in racial bioessentialism at absolute face value? What are we doing here

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"The guy who wrote about the slant-eyed black-skinned amoral beast race that is orcs? The guy who wrote about a race of short hairy guys with a god different from everyone else who speak a Semiticly-inspired language and are racially predisposed to greed? Yeah he seems pretty above board to me??" Thats what you people sound like

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oh and FUCK every Tolkien defender who says, “Well seeing negative stereotypes in a fantasy race and connecting it to a real race when the text does not explicitly do that says more about you that the author”

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Not to quote jon stewart of all fucking people but you cannot, “He who smelt, dealt it” racism what an absurdly stupid thing to say.

Like. What are Tolkien’s bad and evil races? Goblins and Orcs primarily. He’s a writer sparing in sensory description, but when he gives them, what does he say? What’s their culture like? Foul, black and evil. The first encounter you have with a (half?)orc in Fellowship of the Ring takes pains to describe him how? Slant-eyed and unlovely. How’s their language sound? Brutish and harsh.

So they’re racially predisposed to absolute moral failure, theyre squint-eyed and ugly and their language is primitive? This is the language of racism. Only, in real life these are lies that racists make up. In Tolkien’s world, he has brought it into concrete reality. Read letter 210 from, “The Letters of Tolkien”. Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmmmmm. I was definitely the one who unloaded my own racism onto this fantastical construction and not....someone who recognized the language of racism??

like god damn can we be real for a second? a whole minute if we can manage it? stop it with the stupid arguments like this

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fuck tolkein and fuck dnd for being the originator and modern popularizer respectively of the race science tropes that have glued themselves parasitically to the fantasy genre and refuse to come off

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I don’t have words strong enough to express how much I despise the goblin slayer style of fantasy

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white people: fantasy has no impact on real life

tolkien, dnd, dragon age, elder scrolls, etc: *blatantly use aspects from various indigenous cultures, east Asian cultures, as well as MENASA and west African cultures in their worldbuilding around certain races and civilizations in their work while often demonizing black and brown people specifically as well perpetuating racist stereotypes*

white people: but fantasy has nothing to do with real life :(

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FUCK every Tolkien fan out there that I’ve seen countless times repeating the mantra of, “he cant be an antisemitic, didnt you read that letter he praised jewish people and culture to a nazi publishing company that wanted to work with him? didnt you know how much he hated hitler?” as if prejudice works in absolutes. As if as decrying a monstrous genocidal project automatically exempts you from having or perpetuating any kind of prejudicial thoughts?

Was he entirely against nazism and hitler? By all accounts, yes! Good for him, he fucking should be! But I’m sorry to say, being horrified by the holocaust did not stop him from taking a large part of his inspiration for his Dwarves from Jewish stereotypes, the most of egregious and persistent of which was their racial predisposition for greed.

The Hobbit, for as much as it is read and beloved for espousing the virtues of modest people who live modest lives does so by creating our virtuous modest hobbit protagonist Bilbo (Hobbits in general and the greater Shire around them all inarguably having heavy pastoral-british influence) who exists in contrast to Thorin Oakenshield, king of the Jewish-inspired dwarves who succumbs to incredible greed that pushes him to go to war in defense of his hoard, that ultimately leads to his downfall.

Do you see no problem with Thorin’s whole deathbed speech essentially being the king of your jewish-surrogate race praising the modesty of your gentile hobbits and decrying the greed of his own people?

Throughout his entire legendarium, what kind of stories are told of the dwarves? How Caranthir first became lord of Thargelion, met the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost and what the fuck happened? Caranthir came into great wealth through allying himself with them! What caused Durin’s Bane to make its home in Moria? The dwarves delving too deep and too greedily into the mines in search of Mithril! When elves, men and dwarves received rings of power, what did those dwarven rings do exactly?? Multiply wealth. that’s what they do.

Among the themes that tolkien brings up over and over and over again when it comes to the stories of the Dwarves is Wealth. Their connection to it. Their desire for it. He does not grapple with this in any way, it is simply a fact of their being.

Why the fuck are people so resistant to criticizing the overtly racist and antisemitic building blocks of his stories?? Because you like reading them?? Are you scared that if his racism is acknowledged, he’s gonna get cancelled? That someone is gonna take your dog-eared books away? Smash your $80 extended-edition Blu-rays?? Call you names?? Like, he’s fucking dead you cant cancel him. There’s no committee coming around to burn your god damn books GROW UP. You likes those books? You love the genre? Fine. Then engage with the text god damn you.

You don’t have to sit down and write essays about what a pill move this was. All you have to do is not go around saying stupid shit like this fucks sake

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Frodo: Sam hates Gollum, but that is what I shall become once I have lost myself to the ring… he’ll despise me… 

Sam if Frodo did turn into a Gollum: That’s a very nice fish you caught with your bare hands, Mr. Frodo, and its very smart of you to eat it raw, saves us the trouble of starting a fire. I knitted you a sweater in case you get cold running around in that loincloth of yours. Is the sun hurting your eyes? I’ll kill it if it’s bothering you. I’ll kill the sun

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aragorn and gollum are the opposite ends of the third wheel spectrum. discuss

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Gandalf and Bilbo by Ian McCaig

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//some recent art of Frodo, the trio and a corrupt Mairon

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I do not want my fantasy media to be realistic. I want my fantasy media to be convincing.

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Lotr au where frodo forgot legolas' name when they were first introduced and only ever realizes that he has no idea how to address his companion in Lothlorian. Obviously it would be....unspeakable to ask for it outright at that point, they'd already gone through losing Gandalf together and...whatshisname had already saved his life multiple times.

He decides the solution is simple and to just wait for someone else to address him only...

Gimli has taken to calling him variations of 'you dratted elf'

Aragorn sticks mostly to 'my friend'

Sams been defaulting to calling all the big-folk 'sir'

Boromir sticks with a curt yet polite 'my lord'

Perhaps Merry and Pippin would be of some help but the two of them always manage to have their talks with whatshisname out of frodo's earshot.

Legolas meanwhile shamelessly cannot tell the hobbits apart.

"Good morning Samwise," he says serenely to Pippin most mornings, "where's your master Harry got off to?"

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Oh the bilbo baggins tag is vile. All of you are getting blocked