Saying this as a huge LotR fan… Tolkien was a crazy genius academic whose focus was on languages. Languages and writing was pretty much all he ever thought about. His political views, not surprisingly then, are just a sort of mish-mash of contradictory ideals. Like how it is for most people. He clearly had some sort of admiration for monarchy. At the same time, he definitely hated industrialization and was very skeptical of power structures. But if you sit down with him and ask him how he reconciles all this in his head, he’d probably give you a puzzled look and be like “idk man I just write stories”.
From what I understand, his idea was that people should base things around personal relationships, not abstract concepts or systems.
Thus you should be loyal to the king, but you should be loyal to the concrete person and not the monarchy or the Crown or some other representation of the state. The only valid form of authority is when you follow the king because he is specifically himself a great person.
In other words,Tolkien doesn’t want you to respect tthe institution or the position, he wants you to stan.
Elves as capitalist/fascist stand ins is the basis for my d&d world. The long lifespans allows them to create and abuse “generational” wealth excessively easily. Combine that with the idea of bloodline purity (treating half elves like abominations) and you got yourself some metaphor.
counterpoint: he knew that orcs were sus and struggled with it, also he made a point of having a character muse on the essential humanity and victimhood of the non-white “barbarian” humans coerced into fighting for Sauron
counter-counterpoint: dwarves are a secretive, small, bearded, gold-and-jewel-hoarding people with a language based on Hebrew
Counter-counter-counterpoint: I think Tolkien draws on a lot of european-based traditions and myths about dwarves. Which, maybe those have some basis in anti-semitism, not sure. But I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as that Rowling TERF who clearly made goblins based directly on jewish stereotypes.
yeah tolkien’s dwarves might be a tad sus but they’re not rowling’s hook-nosed banking goblins, that’s for sure
I’m doing a re-read right now for the first time in many years. Mostly it’s just hiking and people saying “a really long time ago there was cool shit here but now it’s gone”
I do love it though
Dwarves aren’t really secretive at all, in the actual book they’re some of the most prolific travelers in Middle Earth, and you’ll see dwarves popping everywhere you go.
he also was a product of his time
Stop repeating this. Being born in the past doesn’t give you excuses for morality. Plenty of people were born into racist environments and became not racist.
This is literally Warhammer Fantasy Battle if you add “Elf Atlantis” in the middle of the Atlantic lmao.
It’s partially why they rebooted it.
GW’s worldbuilding is pretty shit, and they only gets away with it because the average geek are honestly poorly read and just didn’t know better.
Horror stories of Warhammer neckbeards are the reason I’ve been hesitant to get into tabletop wargaming.
That said, if I do get into tabletop wargaming, it’ll be board wargaming rather than the WH40K “You must spend a shitload of money on miniatures and then hours painting them before you can start playing” variety.
Fuckin A. I’m reading 1491 right now, and I’m wondering where are all the goddamn historical epics and time travel stories focused on the empires of Central and South America.
I haven’t read it, but Liliana Bodoc is a (white) argentinian fantasy writer that created “La Saga de los Confines” that IIRC is a fantasy epic obviously based on the American colonization from the native americans point of view. It had some mixed reviews, but Ursula K LeGuin liked the saga, and that’s all I need to have it in my read-list
Don’t forget the desert full of shifty merchants
