My biggest problem was firstly the costume design (All dwarves should have beards regardless of gender and all elves should have long hair. :P) but we got rail roaded into world building and races.
I never pretended to be a LOTR expert or waive my knowledge around like a lawyer on what the best approach. I am casual lotr fan and my knowledge is limited just as a filthy casual.
So as a casual fan who has seen LOTR and Hobbit and read the books long, long ago. I saw elves and dwarves as white skinned and had read them described as such. If initially all elves were black and a white one showed up⌠damn sure I would have the same questions.
Where is this one from? Why do they look different? Are they from different regions? etc and etc.
I really donât think I am⌠like why is the line crossed here? Maybe for some this isnât important. Thats fine by me but I like details like this. It makes it more immersive, its more complex and it has more flavors.
Yeah it doesnât necessarily mean any of that but there needs to be an explanation.
Look in the story if you have a culture and race that all look the same way then its easy to explain because you are working off of an assumption.
If your race has more diversity then explanation is needed⌠just putting that in there with zero work is just lazy.
In wow we apparently have the titan answer for the humans. Its weak and still not totally confirmed but at least its something.
Writing that is âmore immersive, more complex, and has more flavors,â can also be completely overbearing and crush creativity in the process.
I think itâs important to look at the World of Warcraft universe in the context of being a setting where people engage in role play not as a setting like a book. Using your imagination is an important part of that activity and if an author is too overbearing and too inflexible it has a negative effect on people being able to write their own stories within the framework of a setting.
Not everybody is creatively challenged to the point where they need everything spelled out.
Eh, not so worked up about those, although when I did look it up about this, I really like the look of the apparently dwarf princess from.
Fair enough, just there is a thing as too much complexity that can get a story into its own way. Thereâs already enough history and all the various stuff that Tolkien put into the backstory for the language he made up, itâd probably be a mess to try and weave into all that new details to be added to explain physical features that donât play an important part in the story.
As for the line being crossed I just mean youâll never get a perfect casting for a book role in a movie (Other than Andre the Giant as Fezzik since the author kinda based that character on him) so when casting them youâve got a ton of factors that go into it. Personality, ability, and so on outside the various physical details the book might have. Sometimes you have to give up on some things that arenât important to the story to get an actor that will give you the things that are needed for the role. Like I think the one forest elf in the trailer was pretty awesome, with the shot used he was kinda like a shadow in the forest, it worked for the part. If thereâs no explicit statement saying thatâs wrong and it has no real significance to the story, does expanding on that really add that much to the story?
So my experience with this thought process is the author Terry Goodkind.
I wonât get into his insane politics with a thousand-foot pole but in his stories the end justified the means. You had plot holes that you could park an aircraft carrier through.
His philosophy was he was telling human stories and how he didnât want strict magic system rules and world building to stop his writing.
Needless to say I am more of a Brandon Sanderson fan who approaches these completely different than Terry.
But hey you may be right⌠both authors are afterall new yorktimes best sellers so whatever Terry was doing was working for some people. It wasnât with me though.
I honestly think a good writer can still work within these boundries and limitations.
Yeah I mean thats fine but it may sound bizarre but it felt like with kingdoms like Stormwind, Lordaeron, Kultiras, Gilneas, Theramore and etc.
All white.
If wow is such a rich and diverse place why is there no single kingdom that has PoCs in it?
It genuinely feels like I am riding in the passenger seat. And PS. I donât want Blizzard to apologize and make Gilneas black in one patch to compensate.
Just give a short description, maybe have noble house who had PoC main characters in it. idk⌠something. Anything that any diversity only exists because the players made it rather pre-existing and established for the world itself.
Very true that. I love Wheel of Time and the new amazon show⌠idk somehow the trailers looked off and the characters are not how I imagined them. Never even watched the first episode.
Honestly, it really depends on the story. After everything is said and done, you could have amazing world building but if the final quality is garbage then its still garbage. If a show works without the world building its not successful because it didnât have good world building⌠its successful despite its world building shortcomings.
Avatar the Last Air Bender movie is a good example of great world building terrible performance and product anyway.
But they didnât fail because they had strong world building.
I wish Amazon would stick to the really detailed set of rules of Tolkienâs world, I mean, itâs really disrespectful to keep changing authorsâ works with tokenism.
I am absolutely not against POC in the setting, we would have the Haradrim, the Easterlings described exactly like that, I mean, a Haradrim we can connect with, a sympathization of the Easterlings WHY they swore allegiance to Sauron to this day, you could put that in SO well, i even would beg for such a thing, to get a cool haradrim character that would STICK to us, and an awesome easterling, and sympathisize with them, give us the blue mages as easterling/haradrim old menâŚnot as men of the west people like gandalf and saruman.
but no, Amazon goes with the cheapest option of all_ TOKENISM_, that is lazy, wasted potential and ignores the work of one of the best authors of all time.
Tolkien described the dwarves, the elves, what they look like, where is the womanâs beard from the dwarf princess? And why is she dark when it was written that dwarves have light skin?
He really took a lot of time to describe the Shire, especially the feet, that was a bit weird.
And he described the elf ears as pointed and longer, which can be interpreted accordingly.
The point is, tokenism in a world where there is room for POC, but just in other peoples and culturesâŚis not necessary, I think.
give us instead cool Haradrims and Easterlings, sympathisize with themâŚand spare us with this unnecessary abuse of the writers workâŚthis is disrespectfullâŚand ignore the lore entirely. We even know, the blue mages traveled in the east to build an revolution, SHOW US THIS REVOLUTION AGAINST SAURON, show us the reason why they are loyal toward sauronâŚ
I donât even like LOTR but this person is making me root for the show success. Iâm going to watch and support the show just for its forward thinking if the case is their casting more than just white people.
These same sorts of people in the ASOIAF fandom are big mad about House of the Dragon. And I for one just canât wait for the fact House Velaryon are about to be fan favorites in House of the Dragon too, and no amount of their suspect âmuh loreâ takes will change that.
Like I canât even imagine being mad at diverse casting. Canât wait for the new little mermaid too for and I know itâs gonna be hit.
Oh yeah, because some want LOTR as written, and the Haradrim and Easterlings never got much attention, and then wanting them to be a focus is racism again how?
Tokenism does not necessarily lead to more success.
and the House of Dragons is different, we know the House of Dragons has often married with the House of Dorne, it is anyway unusual that they are often described so pale, because actually they should be much darker in skin color, there it is lore-wise explainable, well explained, and also logical, as you can see, there are reasons why something is, and if the lore says so, go ahead, Iâm the last one who then has something against it.
But in LOTR, the show, it is clearly tokenism. And that is so unnecessary, and disrespectful.
You know very well that the dwarfs were created differently, they are a creation of Aule, and if there was no original black dwarf, how could there be a black dwarf later?
As I said, this is clearly tokenism? Am I for POC presentation, yes! Am I for Tokenism, no.
Itâs A) Lazy, boring, and often ignorant to the work itself (As is the case here).
And B)âŚwe have a whole subsection, which by the way, is not that lacking in information, what you could create something like this from, we even know there are the blue mages, why doesnât Amazon finally do something with it? The blue mages helping the Haradrim and Easterlings, it would be true to the work, and still cool.
Well not that Iâm going to sit here and justify a casting decision that was a job well done in my book.
I just wanted to let you know House of the Dragon pre dates Dorne joining by some 100 years (I kinda enjoyed letting you know this given you seem to have an issue with non white people existing) but itâs neither here nor there because non white peoples existing is valid and House Velaryon is iconic as are their actors that everyone besides people with sus takes are hyped to see.
I would also note that if youâre that off about ASOIAF lore perhaps you should relook at Tolkienâs stuff because Tarrok is more than likely correct, or at least since Iâm not a Tolkien fan if I had to choose who was more likely to be correct I wouldnât bet on the person who has to rationalize non white people existing in ASOIAF by saying they married into Dorne meanwhile Dorne doesnât marry into the Iron Throne or have positive relations with them for quite some time later.
I have nothing against POC in movies, I have everything against tokenism.
Tell me, would you like it if suddenly there was a white Black Panther on the road? I would hate it because itâs tokenism.
When does the series take place again? to the Dance of the Dragon or not? the Dance of the Dragon was a period when they had already subjugated the Seven Kingdoms, and therefore marriages with the House of Dorne already existed.
and the house of dragon was descripted as very pale, blonde hairish, this is the lore around the characteristica of the house of Dragon (Thats the reason daenerys, her brothers, aegon, all of them looked similary) thats the story from martin, but the people of the house of dorne and the people of the house of Dragon mariaged often, out of mutual respect, because dorne never was conquered, but joined voluntarily after the long unsuccessfull siege, they never surrendered to the dragons.
Dorne doesnât join or have marriages with the Iron Throne until Daeron II, house of the dragon is set when we havenât even had Daeron I as a king yet, I have no idea why youâre bringing up Dorne other than to you diverse casting isnât a good thing and youâre trying to justify it as opposed to just being happy and moving on.
HBO made the right move, as did this new LOTR show apparently and despite not being a LOTR fan you have convinced me to support this show!
Because itâs tokenism. And I am an opponent of tokenism, especially when it is so clearly described, as in this case, because Tolkien always took a lot of time for the descriptions, always.
Why should a Eurpean be the last samurai? I didnât like that either, because the same thing arose here, Tokenism.
Tokenism is not beneficial in my eyes, rather the opposite, it is disrespectful, because it is lazy.
As I said, why not expand the story, which can be expanded, which revolves around exactly that, and where the foundations are all there to take care of it, finish Tolkienâs unfinished work on the blue wizzardsâŚwhere he never had a chance to finish it. The licence amazon bought gave them the freedom to create new stuff, builded on unfinished thing, but they are not allowed to change existing stuff, for example, it would be not allowed for them to write faenor as a black men, for example, butâŚit would be allowed to name the blue wizzards, to show us their adventures during the ring of power period, show us their rebellionâŚand fightâŚall of this would be allowed, and it would be such a good storyâŚ
here, even from an black men, if you think that only âWhite peopleâ think soâŚno, its not.
House of Dragons should be set in the time of the Dance of Dragons, not in the time of Aegon the Conqueror, or not? Or have they changed that?
Yep, house of the dragon, the show, is build around the book fire & blood, and this is builded around the dance of Dragon, 200 years after the conquering of the seven kingdoms.
soo, the dorne should have allready joined and be marriaged with the Targaryen Dynasty.
It plays during King Viserys I Targaryen rule, so my point is correct, the marriage of the house of Dorne and the house of Targaryan allready Happened, a few times to be exactly.
